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Walking Down The Halbeath Road


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Any news on Ryan Dow? Missed him last year. Someone who could dig out a goal when the pressure was on. Dundee showed the benefit of having “big time” players like that. There’s that conundrum between only being as good as your weakest player or having a few star players and a bunch of kids. We usually end up finishing the season with a mediocre bunch. 

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6 minutes ago, DA Baracus said:

This is worse news than the impending Grant appointment!

Those are surely the away shorts in that picture though.

Yeh sorry the home shorts are plain black

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Christ. I’ll remain optimistic that with a better budget he can perform better but on the face of it that’s an extremely uninspired appointment.

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2 hours ago, Brashy's Boots said:
11 hours ago, Chubbychops said:
I think the dads army being constructed along the road is even better

Aye, McGlynn's recruitment has been suspect for years. Remember when he pulled a team together which won League 1 then immediately romped to 3rd in the championship, pumping your mob on the telly twice?

Twice?

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I find that a strange appointment, I’d have been disappointed if Sons had appointed him so I’m fairly shocked he’s managed to bag himself the Pars job. I watched one of those Si Ferry interviews with him and he came across as really smug and unlikeable. Was yer man Petrie not interested or is it simply a case of the Pars board favouring Grant?

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2 hours ago, Smokerson said:

Absolutely amazed the Dunfermline board think Peter Grant could be the man to get them promoted,  he was a disaster as Alloa manager, turned a pretty useful group of players who had a good balance of style / mentality into pretty much useless no hopers. I thought his next job would've been as an assistant or a coach or perhaps down in league 1/ 2.

This is a bizarre take on his time at Alloa and has provoked me into a wordy and most probably boring response.

He came in right on the eve of last season and inherited a pretty small squad as Goodwin normally brought in a few loans late summer. Grant was obviously new to the level which was another problem but he added a very good loan CB in Robbie Deas and also Kevin O'Hara. I wasn't impressed with that signing initially but Grant talked him up and said he'd be playing as striker rather than wide. His encouragement and coaching worked as O'Hara got better and better, giving defenders no peace and showing great movement and finishing. We were too short on numbers until new year though and had bad luck with injuries to key men, although Grant made another terrific signing in getting Jamie Macdonald in to replace the injured Neil Parry. 

In January he got some more loans in, Scott Banks among them. We had a rocky spell between Macdonald leaving and Parry coming back but after that we seemed to be on a nice course just before Covid hit. The last game we beat ICT 2-0 with Banks on fire and the general opinion was it could have been 5. For the first time that season we had pretty much everyone fit and decent strength in depth. Can never be sure, but I think we'd have been well of clear of relegation last season. Partick and QoS were shite and we were on the up. We had more points at that point than Goodwin's team the previous season. Also interesting that Grant increased the park dimensions which was a major error from Goodwin that worked against us. 

Anyway when football restarted we had lost those impressive loans and also the massive loss of Iain Flannigan in midfield, basically irreplaceable for Alloa, plus the goals and threat of O'Hara. Since the club also made the decision to keep everyone else on due to the wider situation he was prevented to a degree from freshening up the core of the squad, which was now getting a bit tired. In Ray Grant and Stefan Scougall he did make promising signings but for different reasons they didn't quite work out. The experienced nucleus was getting on and players made individual errors we hadn't seen before. The general performances were frequently decent but we were just a bit short. My only real criticism of Grant was that he didn't use the loan system properly this past season. The team was crying out for a wee bit of help and although he said Covid made loans harder, other clubs did manage. When he did get Innes Cameron in he made a big difference. Had we also added some pace in attack and perhaps at CB then we'd have better off. 

But overall Grant did well the first season and not bad in very challenging circumstances in season two. In normal times he would have had much more freedom to rebuild that squad. Saying he turned us into "useless no hopers" is nonsensical. We beat Hearts in the cup and were competitive most weeks. For all the crazy goals we conceded, we lost a late goal against Arbroath in a 6 pointer late in the season that could have gone either way and that would have put the "useless no hopers" right in with Arbroath and Morton with 4 games left. We weren't that far away despite everything. 

I'm not sure he will be a terrific success for the Pars and his constant moaning about refs and shouting non stop all game will annoy some, but he showed he has an eye for a player and an ability to improve players. He can also set a team up. Looking at Crawford's very impressive group of players, I couldn't see what he was trying to do with them, they were a disjointed mess in games I saw. Grant is an upgrade on that for sure. 

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