The New Raith Rovers Thread

[renton]

2 minutes ago, Scary Bear said:

Yes, but that was under Murray. Even that one season (2011/12) with McGlynn where it started off going pear-shaped, we ended it on fire.

Yeah, it's just that Murray team, built around a smallish squad with only one workable game plan, well the similarities have me anxious...

[da_no_1]

Hopefully Davidson will be back for Saturday 

Fingers crossed [emoji106][emoji106]

[Scary Bear]

48 minutes ago, renton said:

Yeah, it's just that Murray team, built around a smallish squad with only one workable game plan, well the similarities have me anxious...

McGlynn has hoofball to fall back on. Admittedly that didn’t work well for us against QoS. He just needs to do a Big Sam and get his squad to buy in to the ball being in the air most of the game. I’m sure the likes of Davo will welcome the return of hoofball.

We have a decent first XI but after that we’re struggling. Missing the much maligned Davo, and the MacDonalds weakens us. Then there’s the usual ups and downs of form. I hadn’t realised that Ethan Ross is only 19. Tait is also 19. When you look around our midfield of Hendry, Armstrong, Matthews and Spencer they are all between 22 and 24.

it was only a few days ago that we managed a great result at Alloa. Maybe it’s not time to bin Plan A just yet. Just do it better. Last night was dreadful but I wonder if it was just the exertions of that Alloa game which took their toll. 

Edited December 30, 2020 by Scary Bear

[Ro Sham Bo]

40 minutes ago, renton said:

Yeah, it's just that Murray team, built around a smallish squad with only one workable game plan, well the similarities have me anxious...

We did at least stay up that season, if it's any consolation? 

[renton]

1 hour ago, Ro Sham Bo said:

We did at least stay up that season, if it's any consolation? 

Not because we turned it round, just that our early season cushion, unlike the Locke season was just enough to keep us safe.

[Enigma]

2 hours ago, Scary Bear said:

McGlynn has hoofball to fall back on. Admittedly that didn’t work well for us against QoS. He just needs to do a Big Sam and get his squad to buy in to the ball being in the air most of the game. I’m sure the likes of Davo will welcome the return of hoofball.

We have a decent first XI but after that we’re struggling. Missing the much maligned Davo, and the MacDonalds weakens us. Then there’s the usual ups and downs of form. I hadn’t realised that Ethan Ross is only 19. Tait is also 19. When you look around our midfield of Hendry, Armstrong, Matthews and Spencer they are all between 22 and 24.

it was only a few days ago that we managed a great result at Alloa. Maybe it’s not time to bin Plan A just yet. Just do it better. Last night was dreadful but I wonder if it was just the exertions of that Alloa game which took their toll. 

We didn’t have a player over 30 on the pitch last night.

[parsforlife]

3 hours ago, Enigma said:

We didn’t have a player over 30 on the pitch last night.

That can’t be that uncommon in this league.

[HoBNob]

14 minutes ago, parsforlife said:

That can’t be that uncommon in this league.

Indeed, experience costs money, teams are also wanting to buy younger players with potential so they can still sell them on.  Our only 30+ players last night were OFW and Watson (who is 30) with the average age of the starting 11 being 23.45.

 

Raith seems to average out at 23.81, while there's no players at 30 or above there's a decent few in their late 20s.

 

Edited December 31, 2020 by Grant228

[RaithRover123]

12 hours ago, da_no_1 said:

Fingers crossed

Fingers crossed

[L. Brilliant]

Don't think the formation can be blamed so long as we have guys filling in.  I'm not keen for saying individuals are pish etc but we know that was not the first XI and crucially it's a right footed CB at left back (regardless of what a professional shift he put in there).  Opponents don't have to be that smart to capitalise on this.

If there's any budget at all I'd hope we were looking at guys that can cover multiple positions and ideally someone would be left footed. All depends on our ambitions for the season I'm sure.

If three big boys up top is really our plan B until Vaughan features then it really needs work.

[Scary Bear]

7 hours ago, Grant228 said:

Indeed, experience costs money, teams are also wanting to buy younger players with potential so they can still sell them on.  Our only 30+ players last night were OFW and Watson (who is 30) with the average age of the starting 11 being 23.45.

 

Raith seems to average out at 23.81, while there's no players at 30 or above there's a decent few in their late 20s.

 

The only players in their late 20s were Thomson (27), Benedictus (29) and Duku (27).

[Daz80]

Anyone know what this is all about?

[RRFC1989]

Anyone know what this is all about?

This suggests the share holdings within the club has changed, indicating that Sim now has less than 25% of the clubs shares and that nobody holds 25% or more.

[CALDERON]

Different type of striker should be a priority. As of end of next month, Vaughan will have played a total of 1 full league game in 2 years.  Can't rely on him featuring for us, if he does it's a bonus. 

[Raith Against The Machine]

24 minutes ago, Daz80 said:

Anyone know what this is all about?

I was looking at that this morning to try and get a handle on it, and it's difficult to work out exactly what's happening because New Raith Rovers Limited and Raith Rovers Football Club Holdings Ltd have both filed updates today, but NRR Investments (in which John Sim is the sole shareholder) doesn't file for another couple of months. Stark's Park Properties hasn't filed any updates recently either, nor has Raith Rovers Holdings Ltd. 

John Sim had mentioned previously that he was looking into simplifying the ownership structure, and this could potentially be the first signs of that. 

When I get the time I'm going to pull together a full picture of the various group companies. I don't think anyone has done that since the Trust did in 2016. 

[Ro Sham Bo]

Really that should've been filed in January, but yeah it signifies a reduction in the shareholding held by New Raith Rovers. 

[Raith Against The Machine]

I suspect this is just a bit of reshuffling. There's been a couple more updates New Raith Rovers Ltd.

John Sim is no longer registered as a person with significant control. Instead, NRR Investments Ltd has significant control. The sole shareholder in NRR Investments? John Sim. 

[McGuigan1978]

Absolutely clutching at straws here, but that match versus Queen of the South had massive parallels with the game versus Alloa when Ray McKinnon was in charge.

Doing well, midweek game versus an opponent who was struggling on a freezing cold evening, and generally being hopeless in defeat.

Now, we then spent the second half of that campaign being as good as we’ve been for about 20 years, albeit a lot of that was based on great recruitment in January.

I’m absolutely not saying history will repeat itself, as the January fixture list looks terrible and we probably don’t have the budget to make as many signings as we did back then, but regardless, as bad as we were on Tuesday, it doesn’t suddenly mean we’re guff*

*Feel free to bring this up when it transpires that we are, actually guff.

[R.R.FC]

20 minutes ago, McGuigan1978 said:

Absolutely clutching at straws here, but that match versus Queen of the South had massive parallels with the game versus Alloa when Ray McKinnon was in charge.

Doing well, midweek game versus an opponent who was struggling on a freezing cold evening, and generally being hopeless in defeat.

Now, we then spent the second half of that campaign being as good as we’ve been for about 20 years, albeit a lot of that was based on great recruitment in January.

I’m absolutely not saying history will repeat itself, as the January fixture list looks terrible and we probably don’t have the budget to make as many signings as we did back then, but regardless, as bad as we were on Tuesday, it doesn’t suddenly mean we’re guff*

*Feel free to bring this up when it transpires that we are, actually guff.

Couldn’t agree more with this. As bad as we were on Tuesday night, I still feel like there has been quite a large overreaction. Some of our usually more sensible posters bringing up the Gary Locke season and Grant Murray’s long winless run after only our second defeat of the season.

Just 3 days earlier we were all waxing lyrical about this exciting young attacking team who were a joy to watch and as good as anything we have had in years. We will have good days and we will have bad days. If by the end of January we are 6/7 games without a win then I may join in with the panicking but I think some people have jumped the gun slightly.

Even more recently than the game you listed above, I think back to last season. End of December, a few injuries, a makeshift defence saw us comfortably beaten 2-0 at home to a poor Dumbarton team without creating many chances at all. We all started to panic, with 4 teams all within a point of us at the top of the league. A week later we scored 5 away to East Fife and were never knocked off top spot losing only 1 of our next 10.

Obviously, we aren’t likely to go on a run like that again and the next run of games look tough but McGlynn and this group of players deserve a bit of trust and faith that they can bounce back positively from Tuesday and that our season hasn’t automatically turned to shit. We are still a really decent side on our day and every single one of us would have taken our current position before a ball was kicked.

We hopefully have Vaughan, Davo, Jamie MacDonald and Kieran MacDonald to come back into the squad soon. I think we could do with another winger to compete with Armstrong and Ross but I have already seen enough to suggest we are better than at least two other sides in this league which I wasn’t certain of at the start of October.

Edited December 31, 2020 by R.R.FC

[renton]

43 minutes ago, R.R.FC said:

Couldn’t agree more with this. As bad as we were on Tuesday night, I still feel like there has been quite a large overreaction. Some of our usually more sensible posters bringing up the Gary Locke season and Grant Murray’s long winless run after only our second defeat of the season.

 

I'm just an early adopter.

I get that it's an over reaction, and between holidays and lockdown I've really got f**k all to do except be irrationally angry about a football result. C'est la vie.

On the other hand you look at the fixtures: Dunfermline, Dundee, ICT and Hearts x2 before February. There is a reasonable worst case scenario where we pick up 0 from that. Hand on heart, I couldn't pick one of those I thought we had a decent shot at winning, let alone being favourites.

Tuesday was not an isolated incident. We had the same collective throwing up of hands as we ran out of ideas up at ICT as well, large spells of the game at Dundee, and even the cup game at Cowden. 

The Alloa game was almost a freak in so far as we scored a couple from open play. For all our nice football, we had little real penetration against Dunfermline, Ayr and now Queens.

As I said, you are right, an over reaction to only our second league defeat. Yet I think there are other signs out there that suggests we need to shift something about, otherwise a sticky patch becomes a bad run...