Walking Down The Halbeath Road

[1320Lichtie]

The spine of the team is fucking chronic and the older players are mostly honking.

He said we were going to sign mentors but they are the ones making mistakes. Scully, Paton, Ashcroft, Devine.

We need some leaders but we’ve blown the budget on inexperienced players. That’s why we are getting schooled by the likes of Arbroath.

 

No being funny, know we are part time but there genuinely only a handful of players I'd take from Dunfermline and even then wouldn't have put anybody along your starting midfield or back 4 into ours yesterday. Scully over Jamieson or Gaston too? Nah. Turner a cracking player but I like our centre mids just as much. Nisbet and Ryan though yes please.

 

The chat of Tom Lang having to come into the team proves that too, nowhere near as good as ToB or Ricky Little.

 

That's not just unique to you guys either, seen a few teams now. The one main difference for me between L1 and the Championship is teams are a lot more organised and they all have 2/3 very dangerous players who will hurt you if given a chance.

[D.A.F.C]

Don’t disagree with anything you’ve said, I do think it will be a different story at east end. If/when we get organised.

TOB should have been looked at by us instead of shit like Devine. 

[1320Lichtie]

Don’t disagree with anything you’ve said, I do think it will be a different story at east end. If/when we get organised.
TOB should have been looked at by us instead of shit like Devine. 

Hard though isn't it, you've got to give up your career. I believe Dundee United have been interested, he's in his late twenties now (like vast majority of our team) so FT football is probably not on his mind at the moment. His wage with us plus work will be good.

Dunfermline should be in the Prem imo. Need to get the finger out. McDonald in for Coley and Cochrane sitting along with Paton would be an immediate improvement too imo. Would drop Paton but you probably could do with his experience/cuntiness.

[D.A.F.C]

2 minutes ago, 1320Lichtie said:

 

Hard though isn't it, you've got to give up your career. I believe Dundee United have been interested, he's in his late twenties now (like vast majority of our team) so FT football is probably not on his mind at the moment. His wage with us plus work will be good.

Dunfermline should be in the Prem imo. Need to get the finger out. McDonald in for Coley and Cochrane sitting along with Paton would be an immediate improvement too imo. Would drop Paton but you probably could do with his experience/cuntiness.

 

What really riles me is that Dick Campbell and also teams like Alloa, Ayr, Livingston and others can get well drilled organised units built on very little money. We seem to build shambolic messes then spend even more trying to fix it. 

I think Bert and Dick were the last managers at our club capable of building a squad from not very much. We really deserve better as we have a fantastic and loyal support who keep getting let down by charlatan managers. The championship really isn’t that hard, as you are seeing being solid and organised is a big part of it. I think it’s a massive blunder, or being naive to think you can develop a team of youngsters in this tight cutthroat league. As a long term strategy absolutely we should be trying youth but we’ve went too far one way. Already our squad is getting bailed out by loan players from another clubs youth system. It’s a bit messy.

Still hoping Crawford can see the light and change his tactics but the same thing happened last season and the season before that. Total rework of the team and tactics. It’s hiding incompetence and costing us money we can’t afford.

We must win three out of five now to get back on track.

[HoBNob]

1 hour ago, 1320Lichtie said:

 

No being funny, know we are part time but there genuinely only a handful of players I'd take from Dunfermline and even then wouldn't have put anybody along your starting midfield or back 4 into ours yesterday. Scully over Jamieson or Gaston too? Nah. Turner a cracking player but I like our centre mids just as much. Nisbet and Ryan though yes please.

 

The chat of Tom Lang having to come into the team proves that too, nowhere near as good as ToB or Ricky Little.

 

That's not just unique to you guys either, seen a few teams now. The one main difference for me between L1 and the Championship is teams are a lot more organised and they all have 2/3 very dangerous players who will hurt you if given a chance.

You're allowed your opinion of course but outwith ToB I'm not sure there's any players I'd take from Arbroath, probably Linn. Those were two brutal, brutal sides yesterday. 

[1320Lichtie]

You're allowed your opinion of course but outwith ToB I'm not sure there's any players I'd take from Arbroath, probably Linn. Those were two brutal, brutal sides yesterday. 

Not even our keeper? [emoji23]

You could do with Jamieson, ToB, Little, Murphy and Linn from what I saw

And brutal conditions made it that way and we played them properly. We played some nice stuff last week against Alloa but I got a lot more joy out of the way we managed that game yesterday. Every time we got fouled we were complaining to the ref, we kicked for touch straight from kick off when we had the wind at our backs, took forever to take goal kicks and throw ins playing against the wind and hoofed for touch when 1-0 up with the wind behind us.

Glorious. A team that would wind me up if I was watching us play against them

[Poet of the Macabre]

Dick Campbell knows what he's doing. It's not always great to watch and his sides will get skelped now and then but he has done a great job with Arbroath.

I said back in May that I wanted Tam O'Brien and Sam Roscoe to be our centre backs this season but instead we are still trying to play imposters like Devine. It's finished for him, he will never win the fans over and would better for both him and the club to just shake hands and move on.

[HoBNob]

4 hours ago, 1320Lichtie said:

 

Not even our keeper?

You could do with Jamieson, ToB, Little, Murphy and Linn from what I saw

And brutal conditions made it that way and we played them properly. We played some nice stuff last week against Alloa but I got a lot more joy out of the way we managed that game yesterday. Every time we got fouled we were complaining to the ref, we kicked for touch straight from kick off when we had the wind at our backs, took forever to take goal kicks and throw ins playing against the wind and hoofed for touch when 1-0 up with the wind behind us.

Glorious. A team that would wind me up if I was watching us play against them

 

I've not seen Jamieson for a while but he was a useless diddy then, he may have improved somewhat but it was impossible to tell yesterday. 

Arbroath didn't wind me up at all yesterday, they didn't seem to be dirty or niggly, they didn't play the game in a nasty manner and the time wasting was pretty minimal, it was just a game devoid of well, anything. 

You had a chance in the first half from Linn? Scored a goal through an awful goalkeeping blunder and then we had a chance at the end. An absolute non event of a game. I've seen that games have been called off in the past for high winds and realistically that game could've got binned in the first half, you'd think the players were playing with a flyaway. 

[The Toun Clock]

On Saturday I'd have taken absolutely all of Arbroath players over ours, but only on Saturday. We could play again at East End this weekend and win. Take nothing away from Arbroath, they were better on the day and handled the conditions but in reality I don't look a their team and wish I had there players. I'd rather TOB instead of Devine but I'd also rather Mr Blobby instead of Devine. There was rumour of that move happening when Potter was in charge but his spell ended due to poor performances and AJ didn't fancy him.

I also don't get the panic in our support. In the opening of the season we've played the two teams that will battle if out at the top, well beaten by one but really should have picked up all three against Dundee. We played out our skin against the current Champions of every thing in Scotland. Two poor games down at Dumfries and now Arbroath but it'll come good.

A young team that still need to gel but we need to stick with it. A few massive games now coming up, all winnable games. Hopefully we've got one more to come in, preferably an older head.  

[1320Lichtie]

On Saturday I'd have taken absolutely all of Arbroath players over ours, but only on Saturday. We could play again at East End this weekend and win. Take nothing away from Arbroath, they were better on the day and handled the conditions but in reality I don't look a their team and wish I had there players. I'd rather TOB instead of Devine but I'd also rather Mr Blobby instead of Devine. There was rumour of that move happening when Potter was in charge but his spell ended due to poor performances and AJ didn't fancy him.
I also don't get the panic in our support. In the opening of the season we've played the two teams that will battle if out at the top, well beaten by one but really should have picked up all three against Dundee. We played out our skin against the current Champions of every thing in Scotland. Two poor games down at Dumfries and now Arbroath but it'll come good.
A young team that still need to gel but we need to stick with it. A few massive games now coming up, all winnable games. Hopefully we've got one more to come in, preferably an older head.  

Aye know what you mean.

My point was basically when someone said 'the likes of Arbroath' all I meant was I actually don't think there's really too much difference in a lot of the players other than teams in this league being more organised and having a couple of real quality players that we maybe don't.

[Smokerson]

14 hours ago, Grant228 said:

You're allowed your opinion of course but outwith ToB I'm not sure there's any players I'd take from Arbroath, probably Linn. Those were two brutal, brutal sides yesterday. 

Find that quite hard to believe, Murphy for instance was head and shoulders above any of your midfielders.

I don't there will be much between the teams at the end of the season if the squads stay the same and obviously our management team have way more experience which is always worth a few points on its own.

[Poet of the Macabre]

3 hours ago, JFPar said:

I also don't get the panic in our support. In the opening of the season we've played the two teams that will battle if out at the top, well beaten by one but really should have picked up all three against Dundee. We played out our skin against the current Champions of every thing in Scotland. Two poor games down at Dumfries and now Arbroath but it'll come good.

Why do you think it will? There has been very little evidence that we are any better than last season IMO. Everyone considered the start last year a shambles and we have one point less at the same point. We've also seemingly not played well in the league since the first half against Queens.

I'm supportive of going with a younger squad and I would love Crawford and Shields to be a big success but for every Celtic performance, there are 3 or 4 horrible ones. He's more popular than AJ - understandably so - but it's fanciful to say we're any better than we were when AJ left.

 

[The Toun Clock]

1 hour ago, Poet of the Macabre said:

Why do you think it will?

 

From watching how we played against Dundee on the opening game I feel we've got good, talented, hungry players. Just my opinion after all. I seen nothing last season to suggest we would. Even after beating Dundee Utd on the opening day last season I still didn't think we'd do well, I just didn't like the squad we'd put together. This season I do.

[HoBNob]

1 hour ago, Smokerson said:

Find that quite hard to believe, Murphy for instance was head and shoulders above any of your midfielders.

Is he really tall like? 

Both midfields were stinking, hence why there was absolutely nothing created by either of them. 

 

 

[DAFC.]

Paton is the one that’s stinking up the midfield. I see no problem in having Beadling, Cochrane and Turner in there with either Dow/McDonald/Coley/McCann out wide but Crawford has made him captain so he’ll not be dropped.

He’s already under pressure and we’re just going the same road as we were under AJ.

If we are going to make one more signing, it has to be a goalkeeper imo. Scully is honestly so pish and will keep costing us. I think we’re pretty much covered everywhere else tbh.

[Rob1885]

Paton is an easy scapegoat, he's not been nearly as bad as is being made out.

[Poet of the Macabre]

26 minutes ago, JFPar said:

From watching how we played against Dundee on the opening game I feel we've got good, talented, hungry players. Just my opinion after all. I seen nothing last season to suggest we would. Even after beating Dundee Utd on the opening day last season I still didn't think we'd do well, I just didn't like the squad we'd put together. This season I do.

See, I think we were excellent in the first half against Dundee and looked leggy in the second. We haven't played very well in the three league games since then.

We were also superb in the second half at Tannadice on the opening day last season and it meant the square root of f**k all for the campaign ahead.

Barring a repeat of the inexplicable 5-game winning run from Feb-Mar I can't see us moving far up the table. Does anyone actually expect us to beat Inverness in our next game?

[Poet of the Macabre]

1 minute ago, Rob1885 said:

Paton is an easy scapegoat, he's not been nearly as bad as is being made out.

Probably not but he's also not very good, as much as I get a kick out of the guy.

Poor fella runs like he's torn both hamstrings.

[CallumPar]

Form has been poor across the whole team lately and I’d imagine morale is pretty low. This is the real test for the players and manager. Need to show their ability to recover from this. Crawford struggled to get over the slump we had last season and used to excuse of not having his own team. Now he has his own team, he has to find a way to pick up results and improve performances. Likewise, this is when the players need to step up and show what they’re capable of.

I said previously that the time to judge our players is when they hit a rough patch. This is when we find out what they’re made of. I expected at least some of them to stand up and be counted though and on Saturday they all went into hiding and wouldn’t take any responsibility. Nobody was willing to try and drive the team on or take the game by the scruff of the neck. They all shied away and let the game pass them by. Hopefully that changes soon.

[Stellaboz]

Kirk Broadfoot within budget? I'd offer him a deal until season end and punt Devine at the same time.