CanadianDee

Firstly, the owners are having to foot the bill for operating losses largely because they have been running the club without structure, without direction, and without any type of a coherent long term strategy both on and off the field. Secondly, they had to know what they were getting involved with when they took us over so I have no sympathy as to what they are 'having' to do as owners to see that we operate without trouble. My suggestion was basically that every summer we identify our biggest weakness and address it with a proper and thorough scouting search and if we had the will to pay a fee of 50 to 100k (we did for JackHam ffs!) for one or two players instead of just shopping in the free transfer market then things may go better for us with time. In amidst the clusterf*ck that is our club let me say something positive. We are doing the right thing by searching our Championship for emerging talents like we did with McCowan and like we are doing with Rudden and getting them signed. Those two may or may not work out in the long run, who know, but it is the right idea. Only the gruesome twosome, Hibs, Hearts, Sheep, and United pay more than us per week. Every year we should be identifying and signing and/or getting on pca's one or two players from the group of similar sized Scottish teams or even the teams that pay more than us if we can possibly identify players we can nick. Any one signing can be a disaster or go wrong, but overall we should bear fruit over time. We may survive our current relegation battle or we may not, but we'll be back here again next year scrambling around in January in desperation at the foot of the table. We need a new plan.

Tough times for Rangers, imo. I guess you'll struggle through somehow with your squad of 31 players and another 10 out on (re-callable) loan.

Basque Jon is in the 2nd tier in Poland these days, I thought he was a pretty good find. It's guys like him that tell you these types are all around and are even more plentiful if you're willing to spend a little bit of money. How we allow ourselves to get in this situation time and again is bewildering. I realise that we have no recruiting infrastructure in place, but neither did McCann when he found Kamara and Basque Jon. Beyond the bigger issues that we have in how our club operates in recruiting and forward planning I'm perplexed about our approach to this January window. Given that we had 4 league games and 1 cup game between the 18th and Feb 1st we needed to shore up the defence early in the window. If we don't do it until the evening of the 31st, and lose our next 3 games in the meantime (even if we do bring in players on the 31st that would mean playing them without a training session on the 1st) then our goose might well be cooked already.

Are you Legzdins agent or something? Why does it bother you so much that some people don't rate Legzdins? I mean he isn't very good. I hope he does well in the run in and finds some better form in terms of shot stopping. Having said that I do agree that given the situation we're in we should be addressing the backline first (of course we aren't doing anything there either). On a general note, let me ask you something while keeping in mind that we paid 75k for JackHam: given that it is so hard to get back into the Premier League, and it is so costly to get relegated to the Championship why do you think our braintrust don't ever identify the weakest part of our team and scour Scotland and England and the rest of the European leagues and spend 100k or something and bring in a couple of proper defenders (our weakest link heading into the summer) instead of mucking about and landing us predictably where we are now?

We won't just extend Fontaine, we'll go ahead and give him 2 years. At this rate I'm half expecting McPake to announce he's coming out of retirement to anchor our defence. Perhaps we will go for a swashbuckling 2-3-5 formation. Our club has lost its collective marbles.

Thank you, yes it's pixellot. I understand the benefit for many clubs and idea behind it. Just confused as I outlined in previous post. Interesting stuff about the stand. Over the years I've probably seen Dundee play away in 20 different venues, but have never made it to Dumbarton. Cammy may look like a pellet, but that's not his game usually.

I knew about pixellot, I guess I was more wondering why if there was good video coming from the other side they couldn't just use the good feed for the ppv delivery. Probably some good reason. It was weird when I watched the highlights and saw crystal clear shots from much closer up than how I remembered watching the game. A bit of a shame about the stand as that would be some way to watch a game. Thank you for the response.

Great picture. A couple of questions lads. As a streaming customer on Saturday, and having just seen the highlights on the 'The Scottish Cup' youtube channel there was a substantial difference in quality between the two. Also the highlights package was obviously taken from the opposite side of the stadium for one thing, but they were much closer and seemed more focused on the action. Anyone know why the difference? Also given the great setting of your stadium why not have the stand on the opposite side in order to exploit that tremendous view? There must be some logic as to that decision, is the ground not suitable for a stand on the other side. Anyways it wasn't a red, and I've never seen Cammy Kerr play anything up like that as it's not his style. And as for the other incident I guess it was a penalty by the letter of the law, not a big fan in general of how that law is applied. You deserved a to get us into extra time at the very least. I hope you get above Alloa and Clyde and send one of them into the playoffs instead of yourselves.

It was funny because it was laughable. American sports owners reward failure every day so I can't wrap my head around why this is surprising to anyone. Especially because Keyes and Nelms didn't show up yesterday, and we know what they are all about by now. Regardless of that I still can't grasp why when we're in the 2nd tier we try so hard to get out of it, and then when we get into the first tier we do so little to stay in it.

I refrained from commenting on that one. Many people have a weird notion that every living, breathing 'Mercan is a financial wizard and business expert that is a lean mean walking embodiment of business expertise and a six sigma black belt. Most Americans don't know their arse from a hole in the ground. No offence to you of course. It's even funnier because our owner's business wizardry comes from the fact that he is the son of a rich guy and the first time he operated a business without his father as a partner it failed miserably, oh and our managing director is the pal of said son of said rich guy.

Farcical is a good word for us. To me it's surreal watching our club operate. We've got a 'technical director' that has a second job with, checks notes... another team in the very same league!! One half of the gruesome twosome no less. We've got no scouting system and/or recruitment director. Half of our fanbase is so beaten down that if you complain about the state of our club you'll get told that 'we're lucky to have a team to support' or 'well at least when we're in the Championship we win some games' or 'at least the Americans pay the bills' or some other wtf garbage. I have had had it up to here and am fed up... so having said that anyone going through to Dumbarton on Saturday?

'Cowardly'? Holy overreaction, Batman. Gowser savaging his teammates in the press is an annual ritual at Dens, and there is no doubt he has told them all how he feels inside the changing room. In fact, he's usually saying it to them on the pitch during a game. Gowser has been very quiet and subdued lately during games and it was always going to boil over into the press with each loss piling up. He picks his spot when to 'lose it' in the press and what this tells you is how desperate things are that McGowan felt it was time to pull the trigger on his annual rant. Sometimes he gets a wee reaction out of it and sometimes he doesn't. This 'outburst' is simply a guy grasping at straws trying to give us a jolt when he knows we're an utter mess.

This sounds about right.

There it is... other players were bad so the goalie letting in soft goals is overlooked or excused. They were weak goals from a keepers perspective. Yes of course our other players were shocking, but Legzdins is weak at those two goals last night. He's the last line of defence, that's why he's there and I think he is bang average at best. The fact that other players are bad shouldn't obscure that he should never be letting the first goal go through his legs from that angle, and the second goal he had the opportunity to hold it but instead pushed the ball back into the action and they subsequently scored. It's poor goalkeeping. I hope he tightens things up.

Sorry mate, making a couple of good saves doesn't excuse letting in two soft goals. Making a good save doesn't absolve him of letting in soft ones. It's his job to make good saves. It's no use to tip a hot shot over the bar, and then let a guy slide one through your legs from a bad angle 10 minutes later. I will say that I don't think he's anywhere near our biggest problem, but I do think he is an issue and I don't think any other team in the league would swap their #1 keeper for ours. And I do wonder what we might have in our other keeper. I don't rate him.

Aye, but aside from the disaster of the 0-5 at home to County we are a different animal at Dens. On the road we are a mob of utter wasters. How many times have St Johnstone scored 3 in a game against anyone other than Dundee in the last couple of years?

On the subject of Legzdins I absolutely agree. I've raised the subject of him before with other Dees both on and offline and am usually met with the argument that well our defence is bad so Legzdins gets put in bad positions? My counterargument would be that I don't care if the other team is passing and running circles around our team if the goalie lets in soft goals then they are soft goals regardless of how bad our defence was leading up to it. Ultimately he will never steal us a point or allow us to hold on to a win with a stunning save. I think he get's overlooked because of how shambolic other aspects of our team are, but the bottom line is that Legzdins not very good, imo.

The bad news for you is that you're right and you will be in a spot of bother if you lose to Dundee next week. The good news for you is that the last time Dundee had a real chance to step on the throat of the bottom placed team we lost to said team 0-5 at home!! We don't kill teams off when we have a chance, and let me remind you that St Johnstone. put 3 past us the last time we showed up to McDiarmid. We're diabolical.

What a club we are: We've got an invisible owner that is represented by another man that is also invisible except for once or twice a year when he manages to pop up and embarrass himself, and the rest of us Dees by doing or saying something dumb. The club shop, our ticketing system, our stadium, our future stadium plans, the less said the better. We've got Liam Fontaine playing defence for us in 2022 in the premiership. Read that twice and let it sink in... We were a mid table championship team with an abhorrent defence that was dragged into 2nd place and through the playoffs by one special, but aging talent. We made one addition to that defence. We have two forwards (albeit with baggage) that are capable of individual bits of magic, they watch from the bench as Danny Mullen runs about. I've got nothing against Mullen and I respect that some Dees rate him, I do not, and when he is bad he is honking. Also Cummings and Griffiths are being rubbished in the press everyday (I'm not saying they don't deserve a lot of it) often with quotes from our own manager and the atmosphere around the camp can't be good. Many of our senior players must look at McPake and wonder wtf he is playing at with his tactics and subs and recruiting. I have a lot more to say, but I'm done for now, I've already gone on too long. I mean aside from all that everything is fine, right?

Unfortunately as pertains to this topic I am of no use. Although I am a dual citizen, and I have spent half my life in Canada I have never seen an MLS game on TV or otherwise. I don't even take much note of the Canadian men's team as my only 'soccer' interests are Dundee and the wider Scottish game and our national team. I've never heard the name Jay Chapman until this thread. Having said that feel free to ask me about beavers, surviving a prairie winter, the Canadian electoral system, and Canadian football (helmets and pads).

*Colombian

We pay 25% of LG's 9k per week wage. I heard that Lafferty was on more than 2k per week at Killie and demanded a raise to stay when they got relegated. Nelms and McPake would really be putting together quite a collection of nutters if we added Lafferty. I don't like Lafferty one bit, but what is going to happen here is that we're going to chase Cummings off to Oz, completely fall out with Griffiths when he fails to get his condition sorted over the break and his loan will be mutually cancelled. On the 31st of January McPake will bring in a promising striker playing in the conference in England add him to our strikeforce of Danny Mullen and Alex Jakubiak... Amazingly our CB rotation of Fontaine, Sweeney (I actually like this player), and fresh off a successful trial Watson will turn into a wall at the back just in time for Charlie Adam to re-injure his hamstring and us to go 12 games without scoring a goal, but getting 6 draws. Oh and St Johnstone's newest player Kyle Lafferty will score a goal a game to leave us in their wake.

Hello TCM, well I'll be darned... it is common knowledge that these writers trawl through the fan forums to check the pulse as it were, but I am going to issue an unreserved denial that I am George Cran. In his defence and I presume everyone else that read my post at the weekend that the situation was as stated. I just felt like fleshing out the numbers to see how stark they actually were. Unless McPake pulls out some real transformative moves to reinvigorate us in January I'm going to stick with my assertion that if Charlie plays a lot after Xmas we'll stay up, if he plays a little we're heading down and if he plays say half the time the we're in a coin flip for survival.

He's not been binned for participating in that event although rumour has it the club suggested to him that they'd rather he didn't attend. Having said that he was sent home for turning up and being 'unfit to train' in the words of the manager. McPake is pulling no punches in the press about this whole matter as he obviously feels stabbed in the back by Cummings after, despite his baggage, vouching for him to the owners and bringing him in. Having said that Cummings has our best goal to game ratio in a Dundee shirt over all of our forwards. Despite that he dropped off the radar completely when Griffiths came in. Anyways he'd probably knock the goals in regularly for a Championship club if allowed to just hang around near the goal.

You know very well what the problem is, don't you? Hearts fans are just slightly below the Old Scum when it comes to condescending to and sneering at other teams supports. You've been at it for as long as I can remember... you treat non Celtgers fans like they treat all of us, but you can't or won't see it. Your greasy manager is always lecturing and scolding, denying and deflecting and because your victim mentality won't allow you to just take a win and get out of dodge you're going to try and noise up some trouble for a young Scottish guy trying to make out like he is a hatchet man. I'll give you the 'benefit of the doubt' and say that maybe you lost the head when blaming everyone else but yourselves for getting relegated... but that benefit is really doing a lot of work as you roasters were still all over social media crying about it yesterday ffs.