Mr November

His constant lunging into challenges reminds me a bit of Chris O’Neil, who I felt was often caught in dangerous areas but generally had enough pace to get back and slide tackle his way to safety. On the other side, Deveney has his faults and tends to have plenty of moments where he panics and makes a mistake on the ball but that’s to be expected for an inexperienced player. Ballantyne’s not far off 200 career appearances and should know better at this point.

Clyde 2-2 Edinburgh Dunfermline 2-0 Queen of the South Falkirk 1-1 Airdrieonians Kelty Hearts 1-1 Peterhead Montrose 2-2 Alloa Athletic

Same for me, I thought it was an odd decision yesterday but the highlights show it was a very daft thing to do. I like Ballantyne as a player but that’s now three sending offs in nine games and all have come from very poor decision making. You can possibly write off the Edinburgh one but the other two were games we were pushing for a winner and his sending off killed any momentum. I did enjoy hearing what I’m pretty sure was someone shouting about John Beaton after the sending off though

I thought Gallagher was outstanding today. He had a tough shift up against three massive centre backs but he held the ball up really well, linked play with the midfield and possibly even got a rare goal from what looked like just outside the box. He’s always been a great goalscorer but his overall game has really improved this season. I can’t fault any of the players efforts today but Gallagher and Smith in particular put in a real shift as always.

I think I’ve seen enough of Lyness now to see that for every great save he makes, he seems to cost a goal too. As you say, I’d rather Henderson was in there as I’d at least be a lot more sympathetic to him making those mistakes. Admittedly I wasn’t at the game up at Montrose but other than the goal at Alloa, I don’t remember Henderson making too many obvious mistakes. Rae coming back soon would be ideal.

That’s been our issue all season, we’re very attacking and generally look dangerous against most teams, just so soft at the back. I’m not reading too much into extra time, I think Dundee could have scored as many as they wanted by that point, but no doubt they deserved to go on and win from there. I enjoyed that as a day out though. It was a pretty even game overall, Dundee perhaps having the ball in our half a bit more but I rarely felt like they were going to score during the 90 minutes. I felt we were worthy of the draw and the second half was a good cup tie with both teams really going for it. It was nice to be back at a ground we’ve not played at for a while too, makes not turning up in the play-off final last season even more annoying.

As soon as it went to extra time the game was done, we looked tired towards the end of the 90 and another half hour with ten men and no subs who aren’t school children is a tough ask. It must be great supporting a team who don’t concede comedy goals every week. Murray Johnson, maybe even Alex Henderson, in goals and we possibly win this.

I thought Mulligan was really good as a right wing back against us last season. No Jamieson for us is a big blow, he’s on good form and we’ll miss his pace. If we go with a compact midfield four and keep things tight we might do ok. The more likely scenario of a very open midfield three and Devenny out wide doesn’t bode so well.

They did the same thing with Kieran Offord at Alloa last night, so it wouldn’t be a huge shock to see one of them go back in January. I’m happy to offer them Dean McMaster as a compromise.

Bring him home

I think they’re going through the 30 teams still playing in alphabetical order, they started with Airdrie on Saturday. It’s quite a good idea to be fair, I certainly enjoyed seeing the goals from that game against Rangers today anyway!

I think the season so far being fairly clearly divided between five good results, seven bad ones (Clyde 5-0 aside) and then four decent ones doesn’t help. Fans are fickle (myself included) and we’ve went from a brilliant start straight into a dreadful run which hopefully we’re slowly coming out of. If that was spread out over the season then we’d probably see it as inconsistent but maybe not quite as bad. Top four would be a good achievement and as you allude to, I think last season has made the idea of a title challenge a bit more of an expectation for some rather than something we need to punch above our weight to do. I don’t see this team going on a similar kind of run at all, even with a few additions, but I think the next run of games will be a decent indicator how we cope against the better teams when not on a brilliant or horrendous run.

I think we did it in the semi final against Cove the year before too but looking back, I think the last time we won a league game after conceding the first goal was that 4-1 win at Forfar when big Nat came off and we went on to score four goals. That was over three years ago!

I think we’ll have a better understanding of these three games once we’ve played the next four, if that doesn’t sound too daft. Really it’s three games you should be looking to get maximum points from but a late equaliser and two narrow wins, without putting in any particularly good performances, isn’t the worst for a team we all consider to be quite soft. The next four league games look very tough though but if we can keep up the clean sheets we’ll have a great chance of pushing up the table. I do think we’re still very open though and better teams could have punished us over the last few weeks. I do feel a bit more confident in McCabe than I did prior to the Montrose game though. I think the most telling thing this season is we’re still so reliant on the first goal. We’ve now played 21 games in total and our record when scoring the first goal is W9 D1 L0. However, when we concede the first goal it’s W0 D4 L7. That partially comes from a lack of options to change things but it’s unsustainable if we want to make the top four.

Obviously don’t want to rush him back but he would be a massive boost for the Falkirk, Dunfermline, Montrose triple header next month.

I think that’s the main issue. Nobody is expecting three or four starting quality players to suddenly appear, we just literally have no options to change a game. To only have McMaster or ATS as a senior option on the bench when your only injured outfield players are Frizzell and McGill is embarrassing. They’re not going to win you promotion on their own but what I’d give for a few Craig Thomson, Jordan Allan, Euan O’Reilly type players just now.

Airdrieonians 2-1 Kelty Hearts Clyde 1-2 Falkirk FC Edinburgh 2-2 Alloa Athletic Peterhead 0-2 Dunfermline Athletic Queen of the South 2-3 Montrose

He’s generally been fine for us to be fair. Admittedly I went into it with low expectations but he’s the least of our problems just now.

I assumed he’s injured but is on the bench to make up the numbers or help out since he’s experienced. I don’t think he’s warmed up properly for the last few games, so must be the injury McCabe mentioned after the Edinburgh game. You’re bang on though. I think we all assumed we’d replace those players this summer but rather than brining in lesser players, we just haven’t replaced them at all. Jordan Allan isn’t a world beater but someone like him (or Salim) on the bench makes a big difference.

I agree, he’s been poor since the first few weeks of the season, but it goes back to the issue of having no one to bring in for him. The squad situation is a mess and while having Frizzell back will help massively, we’re still three or four players short of having a manageable squad.

It’s fine when we in but today was a great example of the (lack of) squad shambles. No harm to him but when literally your only senior option on the bench is Dean McMaster you know something has gone wrong. We don’t even have a particularly bad injury crisis, Frizzell and McGill are the only two outfielders injured as well as ATS who doesn’t seem fit. As others have said, I thought Deveney and Watson were very poor, the latter in particular, but we just don’t have the option of benching them. My main thing today was that it really showed up how bad a decision sending Salim out on loan was. All of his goals for us have been quite scrappy and in a game where we were lacking ideas and the ball wasn’t falling for us, his chaos could have made a difference. A good stat I was told today is that we haven’t won a game we’ve conceded in. I’m pretty sure McCabe will talk about missed chances or not scoring in his interview but once again the main issue is not doing the basics defensively.

Peterhead deserve their lead but back to slow, pedestrian football and very soft defensively. I think Gary’s had the better side of things here.

While it's been two defeats, I thought Clyde probably showed enough on Saturday and presumably against Alloa to justify Moore getting a few more games. Admittedly they never looked like scoring but equally if it wasn't for the penalty I don't think Airdrie were scoring either, although that was partially due to our own issues. Duffy might do a decent job steadying things but he was hardly a roaring success in his last couple of jobs. He's possibly the one manager with an even worse recruitment record than Danny Lennon too

Airdrieonians 3-0 Peterhead Alloa Athletic 1-1 Queen of the South Dunfermline Athletic 2-0 Clyde Falkirk 2-0 FC Edinburgh Kelty Hearts 1-1 Montrose

Not an experienced option but Scott Agnew was there as well. A poor game overall and if it wasn't for the penalty I think a 0-0 was a certainty. Clyde defended pretty well and made sure there wasn't big gaps for Jamieson to exploit. Cunningham and Roberts were lively but the lack of any physicality up there, or even beyond the defence, meant we were largely untroubled. I thought Fordyce had a few dodgy moments (again!) but we got away with them. Euan Deveney was the best player on the park, he has his moments defensively at times but I think he's worth persevering with, as while he's still raw and inexperienced you can never fault his commitment and attitude. We got away with it today but the lack of subs was a concern again today. We have plenty of numbers there with the young boys padding out the bench but even Clyde had better options today in Jordan Allan, whereas with ATS ostensibly not fully fit our only senior option was Dean McMaster. Still, a very good three points given the performance and it was important to keep another clean sheet and grind out a win.