Infirmary Street

Cove were miles ahead of us today but that won’t be the case for most teams in this division. When the likes of Fyvie, with a hundred games in the premier league or something, isn’t even their best player ( Glass) then you’re always going to struggle. I did think the selection was pretty brave with Hamilton, McManus, ngoy, McCord and Knox all on the pitch but tbf there wasn’t much left on the bench to work with. Inglis maybe should have started but that’s about all he could have changed. Do agree that he needs to strengthen the squad a bit and hope he’ll be allowed to do so, although he’s obviously going to be limited to unattached guys now. But the likes of McCord, Hill, Watt, McLaughlin should all be comfortably better than the bottom of L2 and if Wilson can get a tune out of them we should be alright. The keeper did well today too. Don’t think he did much wrong and Cove could have had 8 were it not for him. You have to worry about the defence tho. Dougie Hill seems to have been doing his nut at one or other of them since July yet there’s been little improvement and for all that Cove were good, several of their goals were preventable. Just defenders switching off, not picking guys up, not being alert to second balls, etc etc

Rumours of a saviour originating in the stables - could be the miracle worker we need

Yeah we rode our luck at times and the Rovers fans could be forgiven for feeling a bit hard done by this evening. Both of our keepers made important saves to keep us ahead. But the right result is the best measure of a good away performance, I guess, and there was certainly no lack of effort/commitment from City. Let’s just hope some/all of the walking wounded are fit to turn out next weekend as this will surely provide a much-needed confidence boost. It we could take something from another away game then we’d be in much better shape going into the international break and perhaps with a new face in charge for the next home game? Well done today lads

‘Down, negative man’! No, and can we take it that you weren’t at the game? Much better today, particularly in the 2nd half with a great chance to win it with about five to go. Yes the keeper made some good saves to keep us in it (which bodes well) but we also had a perfectly good goal disallowed cos the lino couldn’t keep up with the game. Not brilliant by any stretch, but things have improved game on game for me so far and despite the results i’d say we are heading in the right direction. Two key players out today in McCord and Watt shows that we still need an extra head or two for good cover, esp in defence. But the team were knocking it around in the 2nd half with a bit of confidence and at times it was like a Brechin 2nd half of a few years back, piling forward down the hill towards the cemetery end. The players visibly gained in confidence as the half went on. McManus put in a great shift for most of the game and I’d have given him MotM ahead of McLaughlin, although he did well too. I thought McIntosh looked much better than in previous games and all the subs offered something when they came on. Crawford will scare defences and Emile showed off some fancy footwork that will scare his manager Let’s hope Barry goes with a bit of that attacking intent in the league next week and he wasn’t just kidding us on today because it was a dead rubber

Fingers crossed we do, or i’ll be giving it a miss. Though Barry didn’t actually do a bad job on Sat it was still pretty embarrassing and I’d prefer not to be facing premier league opposition having to make excuses for my team/club. Besides which, we want to see them WIN games - not just put up a reasonable performance in difficult circumstances, and then lose anyway. I know these aren’t the worst kind of defeat but losing can easily become a dangerous habit as we’ve seen for the last two seasons. Edit - i’ve Just realised we are home to county tmrw, not away to st Johnstone! In which case, ignore everything I just said - i’ll be there whatever....!

Think the hedge is protected by UNESCO these days

Surely no longer??

This. Alright we need some numbers in still, but let’s get behind Barry for now at least? Looking forward to seeing a few of these guys in action on Friday night against Utd. Crawford didn’t get a lot of the ball against Dundee, unsurprisingly but he looked like he could be a handful and I was impressed by Luke Watt. Plus Paddy, Dougie and McCord should be more than capable at L2 level. [edit - McManus obvs knows his way to goal as well, assuming his legs can still get him there] Hope to see one or two more promising new faces tomorrow as well. Am also in the market to be referred for my first season ticket. If any existing STH wants to befriend me (!) and claim their £20, drop me a DM

Good stuff - if we can get another half dozen in of this kind of quality we'll not be in bad shape. Keep em coming!

PS Guys you should definitely snap up Scobbie as well while he's still available

I'd forgotten about Miller but I liked him at the end of last season - he'd be better with a decent pre-season as well. Him & McCord in CM wouldn't be a bad start for L2

First match in five and a half weeks. If I was Barry I'd be getting in an order for several slices of Brymer's finest humble pie and heading round the houses of messrs Sinclair, Spark, E Smith and anyone else he released that doesn't have a job for next season yet. Does he seriously think he can fill 10 more jerseys by then - to say nothing of the bench? And if by some miracle he does manage it, will folk turn up to watch a bunch of no hopers that will never feature again after the first month? Mind when Clyde held 'open trials ' a few years back and it was like the Dirty Dozen but without the Hollywood ending...?? "watch out for that boy Borgnine in midfield!" Tho in fairness I reckon Donald Sutherland could be pretty decent at CB tho maybe a bit slow

Rush goalie for sure

This. Good player when fit - think we would have stayed up had he been available all season. Hope for their sake (genuinely) that Forfar fans aren't saying the same thing come the end of next year. They seem to be acquiring most of our squad from last year which isn't an obvious strategic master stroke

Accrington Stanley have a loyalty card scheme that I thought was a good idea - where you qualify for it after attending x no of games and then get a reduced walk-up rate. It will never be cheaper than a season ticket because you pay for x games at full whack first, but might encourage a few folk to turn up to 2 or 3 more games a season. And £12 is better than £0 On the player recruitment, plenty of guys were released without offers. I'll put my hands up and admit I was one of those saying we needed more or less a clean sweep but it's not looking so smart now. The likes of Lynas, Sinclair, Smith, Orsi, all played in the championship just over 12 months ago. Admittedly not very well - but it's not unreasonable to think they could have been effective in L2. Of course we don't know the personal circs of these guys and maybe some weren't offered new deals because they'd already indicated they were likely to be away. But hope Barry has some better ideas soon

If this is true then great shame. Super player and captain. Sounds as tho Smith is staying in that case then as it was starting to look like he didn't fancy Paul towards the end of the season. Much good that did him, and us. Sinclair another I would have kept, notwithstanding he could never finish a game but neither of their faces fitted. In that case I really hope for all our sakes that Barry has some better ideas for next year and some better than adequate replacements lined up. Not United duds! Pabs - hope all works out for you and thanks for everything but particularly for that goal v forfar. I was right behind the goal and will remember Rab Douglas's despairing dive for many a year...

Sorry for all Berwick fans suffering today and - assuming there's no miracle next week - hope you can regroup, get the right people in the right positions both on and off the field and get yourselves back into the spfl sooner rather than later. not sure I can agree with jamama tho - I think what we're actually seeing, partic in the Highland League, is a bunch of teams being funded very generously by rich individuals (mostly oil men) whose largesse enables these teams to pay above spfl 2 level wages and in some cases to invest in other areas of the club as well e.g. Stadium and training facilities. now this is not necessarily a bad thing but it does need to be sustainable otherwise we may end up with a Gretna situation on our hands. Cove should be ok as long as their home games don't clash with the Dons but I do wonder/worry about how long Brora can sustain a team competing at the top of the HL, for instance? And there are others

I'm with this. The core of the side we've had for the the last two years have forgotten what you need to win a game of football - or at least that's what it looked like to me last saturday. If Jacko is away, as it sounds, then thanks Andy for all your efforts and hope you have a good season next year wherever you end up. The rest I think we need to be pretty brutal with - I'd keep Dougie Hill def, and Jordan Tapping on the strength of his endeavour last weekend when few of his team mates showed up. Callum - great player but doesn't play enough games - I think someone else will take him & if so I wish him an injury free season next year. Otherwise - McLean if he's still got the legs? Orsi and Sinclair if Barry goes as he doesn't appear to fancy them, but if we had a more attack-minded manager they could feature more. But it's prob one of either Orsi or Thomson presuming neither have better offers.

A lot like last season, but without the highs

Can't really argue with any of this. We got what we deserved, today and across the season as a whole. Scobbie would have done better to concentrate on the game and on improving his rotten final ball as well as maybe looking like he was halfway bothered about the final result - in stoppage time he was strolling around to take a throw from the other side as if he had an hour to kill. Compare that to Jordan Tapping who was throwing himself at everything - Scobbie looked like a guy who knew the game was likely up for him as a professional footballer and didn't honestly give a flying one about the fans on the cemetery end who were about to see a second relegation in 12 months. Very disappointing. Smith's United signings have in general failed - Toshney has been the best for me (injured yesterday) although even he has had a few aberrations. I am assured by others that Scott Robertson has put in good performances but I must have missed those. Thomson had a great chance in the first ten mins that if he puts away, maybe makes it a different game. But as someone said earlier, at 1-1, needing to make a breakthrough at all costs, we are reduced to punting long in jacko's direction. For all his strength, he's not going to win too many headers against big CHs. Like for like change in bringing on Euan Smith for Robertson when there was the option of the more creative Sinclair, and Orsi wasn't even on the bench as an option. Surely facing 10 men a better option would have been to go wide, try to stretch and tire them? Incidentally the red looked soft from where I was? But as above, generally can't complain. If we consistently fail to beat the next-worst team in the division with at least one extra man, there's only likely to be one outcome. Squad needs completely renewed; whether Smith & co should get the opportunity to do that, I remain to be convinced. We should never have started the season with Darren Dods in charge but in fairness to him, Smith has been little better, arguably worse. And, his teams have been almost as dismal to watch as they slid down the table. His only real possible excuse is injuries to key players, of whom the two Tappings were probably our best players yesterday. We should be competitive in L2 but we'll need a few more folk to buy season tickets or walk up regularly in order to fund that, and that won't happen if more defensive drudgery is going to be the order of the day. And finally.... was nice to see the 1993 promotion winning team enjoying a stroll around the pitch. Let's hope we can be talking about the 2020 team in a similar vein in years to come.

Can guarantee that however bad we get, we'll never reach the lowland league (Edit) as others have already pointed out. I guess it was a pretty glaring error

This. What has BBC Scotland come to when this makes the news? Next week: Top prize awarded to wrong pensioner in Dumbarton fc tombola. Shame this didn't come off tho. We had vaguely intended to go so perhaps are slightly culpable but if it was that 'inevitable' then I guess 2 skulls either way wouldn't have made much difference. Supporters club doing a good job for me and the club is trying different things at least - they won't all come off. When's the race night again??

Saw he scored. Hope he did enough otherwise to get a deal - thought he was quite unlucky with City - started the season pretty well, worked very hard and scored a couple. Then drifted onto the bench as the squad bulked up a bit, and never really seemed to get more than the odd few minutes as a sub after that, under either Dodd or Smith. Maybe he didn't show up all that well in training, but I always felt there was more of a chance of something happening when he was on the pitch. Best of luck Boris!

'Just outside the play-off places...' Aye Darren - which ones tho? That article just makes him look very naive and whilst you never know whether that accurately reflects the tone of his conversation with the journalist, to say that you didn't see it coming is ridiculous. Even leaving aside having not won a game all year last year, to have been beaten home and away by 'bottom-of-the-league-montrose' (sorry lads no offence meant but you are now a big game for us) by the end of October must surely have raised a doubt in his mind. Either he has the self confidence of Ronaldo or he is deluding himself. Although to blame it on fan power is a bit rich. As per my last post, the committee deserve a medal for sticking with him as long as they have. Loads of folk on here would have had him punted by January last season, and not just the rabid ones. Anyway - we have some top players at this level so let's hope we get someone who gives them license to show it - starting on Saturday (rare away game for Infirmary st & family)

The right decision after Saturday. Darren's hands were tied last season and fair dos to the committee for giving him a crack at making it right this year. Their perseverance with him has been admirable, based on his good record in his first two seasons. Which I think all City fans will, eventually, remember fondly. But his approach last year turned out to be wrong, and unfortunately he apparently hasn't learned anything from that experience and continued to set up the same way this year, in the process not doing justice to some players who are very talented at this level. Saturday showed that he had lost the ability to get the best out of them, and I think it will have stuck in the craw of a lot of City fans that he was trumpeting his ability to set up defensively at an SFA/SPFL conference for coaches last week having lost a huge proportion of his games in charge, and in doing so put lots of us off attending as much as we might otherwise do. Thanks for the good results Darren and hope you get the right job next time round. Onwards and upwards now and let's get behind the team and the new management whoever they may be. Plenty of time left this season and no reason why we can't make the playoffs again, starting with a good result on Saturday