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Hellowe'en Horrors: Thistle vs Hearts


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He's younger than Alexander, he's more than fine for a few weeks until Cerny is back.

You know Gallacher better than me. However if Alexander stopped playing for a few months I don't think that I would expect to see him back at a decent level at his age.

Risk aversion is in my nature and I just think that where you are in the league you need quality back up, even up until the January window.

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What on earth is Scully doing there? :lol:

He didn't half look like a pub keeper today. Playing for Clyde next season, IMO.

That would have been silly even if you were hanging onto a 1-0 lead.

To take that risk in order to try and preserve a 3-0 deficit takes a special kind of stupid

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Massive gulf in class between the two teams was evident today. Thought Thistle were very good first half and the first goal was unlucky. Second goal being conceded so early after half time totally killed us because that was when the heads went down and we just gave up. Dumbuya had a great game as per, Amoo and Lawless were good and I actually thought Lindsay had a great first half. Lindsay needs to have a bit of self-confidence though because as soon as he makes one mistake his head goes straight down and horrible to watch. Scully had a terrible game as far as I'm concerned. Made one good save before the first goal and aside from that flapped at everything, including one where he palmed it straight into the middle of the six-yard box. His sending off is a blessing in disguise as Gallacher is a more solid option. Scully to be papped out on loan to a Championship team in January to learn how to be a goalkeeper at a higher level. Actually felt far more confident with Stevenson in goals. Welsh's best game this season since he didnt actually do anything. Maybe one day he'll get dropped. Pogba is utter muck as well.

Thought Hearts looked very good though. Nicholson had the ref in his back pocket with his Oscar-winning performance today, but aside from that, looked as if they would score every time they went forward. Osman Sow is absolutely quality.

Total heads gone, foaming at the mouth material etc but I'm quite worried for where we'll finish this season. The next two months are massive as we play pretty much every team who will likely be finishing in and around (or above :( ) us so we'll have a far better indication of where we'll most likely finish at the end of the season come the turn of the year.

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Doesn't seem obvious to me reading Jags fans comments as many actually think we have a chance to stay up.

Nothing suggests we are good enough to stay in league.

It's a difficult one to guage as the two extremely winnable games in August were the two games we finished up with 10 men. Had we retained 11 men(not that I'm disputing we shouldn't have been down to 10) then a win in one/both would have meant we didn't need to go through the whole of September with the whole "no wins" drama and we could possibly have picked up a couple of points rather than been under pressure.

The bottom line is we are 11th for a reason at the moment but we have 25 games still to go.

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He nearly saved the pen as well.

No he didn't! He went the right way I'll give you that but it was a good pen and he wasn't getting it.

Partick are going to have to have a couple of good signings in January. What's particks youth set up like? Teams like Queen's Park and Hamilton seem to do very well in that area surely thistle should be doing the same?

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Back to reality / normality after a win over a rock bottom United and a rare spawny win at Perth. Hearts are a decent side but we just bent over in the second half. I left at 3-0 after a period of about 5 minutes where we didn't touch the ball.

Watched the youtube video from earlier in the thread and I think we can agree that Ryan Scully's performance was the opposite of stepping up to the plate, should have done better at the first and no idea why he threw himself on a grenade at the 4th, I can see Gallacher keeping the jersey until Cerny is fit. We're on pace for 12 red cards this season, which would be something to remember the season by other than relegation.

We actually have loads of attacking options, they're all shite though. I think it's beyond doubt that Welsh needs punted, he should have been off at HT. Stick with Osman and Bannigan as the sitting players, beyond that I don't think anyone including Archie knows what our best front 4 are.

Next 5 games are Dundee, ICT, Killie, Motherwell, and United aka the other 5 teams in the bottom 6. If we're still- as I expect- in the bottom 2 at the end of that I think the second half of the season will be a bit of a death march.

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Totally non scientific, but from my observations there are three things that have saved teams in the past, in any combination that you choose.

One is "doing a County" and spending money wisely in the January window (in the olden days you just bought players from smaller teams)

Two is changing the manager

Three is changing the way you play

One seems unlikely given Thistle's relative poverty and inability to attract players over the summer

Two seems unlikely unless Archie walks

Three is also unlikely since we have a tiny squad

At the moment we've cobbled together a few points more by luck than judgement, but this present group of players needs to grow a set and stop collapsing like a burst balloon.

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Sean Welsh is seemingly untouchable right now. Gary Fraser must be raging (even more so than usual) that he can't get a game over someone who has proven for the past month that he's just not up to it. I fully expect him to play again against Dundee, though, for reasons only Alan Archibald really knows.

Scully blew his chance yesterday, and I doubt we'll see him play at this level again, at least for another few years. He has absolutely no command of his area, and there were numerous times where Hearts had played a ball over the top that was clearly his, and he left it, leaving Seaborne and Lindsay to then get mixed up over which one should be sorting out his mistake. Not to say either of them weren't poor yesterday, but Scully didn't help them out at all.

Yesterday was a bit of a scudding, but I wasn't really expecting to take anything anyway. It'll be the games against those around us that really define our season, and we've got 3 more fixtures against Kilmarnock, Inverness, Motherwell and Dundee United, so there's obviously plenty of time to sort ourselves out, but right now we're just far too powderpuff and carrying too many passengers.

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Would like to see us go back to last seasons formation, with someone behind the striker. There's been a huge gap between the midfield and our striker, meaning most of our attacking play involves going down the wing then passing it around or, eventually, crossing it in to a crowded striker. It's usually been extremely ineffective, doesn't make any difference wether Doolan or Pogba plays.

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The problem we've got ultimately is that the squad just isn't very good and replacements for key players are nowhere near as good as the players they replaced. Look at the players we've lost in the past couple of years and can anyone honestly say we're better off with what we have now other than Cerny being an upgrade on Fox?

Fox replaced by Cerny - Better off.

Gallacher replaced by Scully as our number 2 - Worse off

Taylor-Sinclair, Booth ultimately his replacement after a few months of Jake Carroll and McMillan playing there - Worse off.

Balatoni replaced by Lindsay - Possibly better off long term but right now Lindsay isn't as good as Balatoni was in the last few months of last season - Worse off

O'Donnell and McMillan replaced by Miller and Dumbaya - Worse off

Higginbotham replaced by Amoo - Worse off

Taylor replaced by Pogba - Worse off

Then on top of that you've got Welsh being shoehorned into the team every week leaving us a man down in the middle of the park with him constantly holding onto the ball for too long or just giving the ball away. You've also got Seaborne and Lindsay as a partnership having a couple of f**k ups per game in them and even though I was never convinced by Balatoni and Frans individually they undoubtedly formed a decent enough partnership towards the end of last season.

It's little surprise we are where we are. We pretty much just need to try and get within touching distance of 10th between now and January and hope Archie can do similar to what was done in the first January we came up. Although I don't even know if that'll be worth it when the board push the boat out for a few months only to use it as an excuse to cut the budget further next summer.

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Totally non scientific, but from my observations there are three things that have saved teams in the past, in any combination that you choose.

One is "doing a County" and spending money wisely in the January window (in the olden days you just bought players from smaller teams)

Two is changing the manager

Three is changing the way you play

One seems unlikely given Thistle's relative poverty and inability to attract players over the summer

Two seems unlikely unless Archie walks

Three is also unlikely since we have a tiny squad

At the moment we've cobbled together a few points more by luck than judgement, but this present group of players needs to grow a set and stop collapsing like a burst balloon.

Don't agree about the tiny squad, when Gallacher plays next week I think that'll be 25 players used already this season with Elliott still to come back and no doubt a couple of new faces in January. Issue is quality rather than quantity.

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Don't agree about the tiny squad either. We've brought in more than we've lost this season and in addition we've chose to use the budget on numerous contract extensions. Doolan and Gary Fraser ain't saving the day either. Infact I haven't been impressed by Fraser at all for a while despite his initial early promise.

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Don't agree about the tiny squad, when Gallacher plays next week I think that'll be 25 players used already this season with Elliott still to come back and no doubt a couple of new faces in January. Issue is quality rather than quantity.

We don't have a tiny squad apparently. Hooray. That means we can play a 3-5-2 with two wing backs and three centre halves, Frans, Archie and Shaggy.

1 post with actual facts showing our squad isn't tiny, one with a complete tantrum because people disagreed. Aye we're sure convinced now that we've got a tiny squad.

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