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I've been out of the loop for the last week so apologies for going over old ground.

I'm sure this irony wasn't lost on a number of you but I found it depressingly amusing that Scott Allison stated on his Jagzone interview that he'd be picking a formation and strategy which suited our squad; only to send them out against United in an absolute clusterfuck of a system, illustrating perfectly the abysmal recruitment at the club in the last 18 months.

I had a few quid on Caldwell to be the next manager but had more on McCall who I really think should have been the appointment and who, despite his protestations on the radio, was actively interested in the job.  Caldwell strikes me as being more of the same that we've had; the coaching manual type, all the modern day phonyisms like "we're in a bad moment" and on Saturday's evidence, the same commitment to playing football only one way. The team needs the dust knocked off it, not just a different face expressing the same message as before.

He did a fine job at Wigan, at least initially although I would imagine their budget would have dwarfed their competition; doesn't detract from the achievement however. I believe there were mitigating circumstances for his failure at Chesterfield but there's no denying that 3 wins out of 29 is a dire record. The worry is that he's coming into a situation more akin to the one faced at Chesterfield where he's managing a squad not of his own making.

He's going to have to overhaul the squad on a scale similar to St Mirren when Jack Ross took charge. I know it's been said but the amount of utter shite that has been recruited is criminal - it's truly laughable that anyone on the Board can claim, with a straight face, that promotion is a realistic objective for that bunch of jobbers. But to further claim that even more money will be available in January in this seemingly futile pursuit is a move right out of Dundee United's playbook. How about reigning it in and letting Caldwell manage without the hindrance of some ludicrous expectation given what he's got to work with. Give him time to weed out the guff in the squad, add a couple in January, more surgery in the summer and make a push next season - that seems a far more reasonable and realistic approach rather than indulging in this fantasy of an immediate return to the Premier. Colour me pessimistic but I've seen plenty of promotion-winning teams, Thistle and otherwise, and this ain't one by a long shot.

In the short term, we have to pray that there's an able right back available and within our budget because unless he can get out the spotlight for a few weeks, this could be the end of Christie Elliott. A similar example that springs to mind is Colin Stewart who, whilst being a pretty abject goalkeeper, was unforgivably hung out to dry by Dick Campbell when anyone could see his confidence was absolutely shot. Elliott needs to sit on the bench for a few weeks and rebuild his confidence. I actually feel a bit sorry for him because it has been inept squad management that has put him in this position, not only this season but last year too.

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I think that realism is needed here in terms of our ambitions for the rest of the season and it's ridiculous that our main aim is to avoid relegation but (and it's a big but) our target has to be 4th place and having a confident team in the play offs.      I'm not overly optimistic but surely given a decent transfer window that must be achievable

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13 minutes ago, professor challenger said:

I think that realism is needed here in terms of our ambitions for the rest of the season and it's ridiculous that our main aim is to avoid relegation but (and it's a big but) our target has to be 4th place and having a confident team in the play offs.      I'm not overly optimistic but surely given a decent transfer window that must be achievable

No, I'd say aiming at survival is the realistic approach and not ridiculous at all - 4th place is a pipe dream when you look at our personnel and is a laughable aim right now, as Armand2 has just said above.  We are where we are due to the Board's frankly suicidal decision to let Archibald attempt to rebuild a squad over the summer, even though a) he'd just got us ignominiously relegated, and b) his track record for recruitment has always been pisspoor.  Our stars in the past few years have pretty much all been players who pre-dated him, with the rare exceptions of Lyle Taylor, season 1 of Barton (more than cancelled out by season 2), and Liam Lindsay.  The sheer amount of dross that has passed through Firhill in the past 5 years is mind-boggling - and sadly, much of it is still there.   Miles "2 goals in 33 games" Storey is a good example, as are the fact that we have one decent defender, O'Ware, who is out for months, no right back, and no better-than-bang-average midfielders apart from Bannigan. 

"Archie" has dug us a very deep hole, and Caldwell now has to try to get us out of it.  He could start by giving game time to Fitzpatrick, a young, talented, hungry player, which is something Archibald seemed incapable of doing.  Other than that, we need to hope for a few solid new players in Jan who are genuinely better than what we have, and goals from Coulibaly. Survival in the 2nd tier is by no means guaranteed at the moment.

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Good grief, dodged a couple of bullets..........

"DUNDEE are lining up a move for ex-Ross County and Partick Thistle midfielder Martin Woods.

SunSport understands Dens Park boss Jim McIntyre wants to add the 32-year-old to his squad".

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On 23/10/2018 at 13:42, VictorOnopko said:

No, I'd say aiming at survival is the realistic approach and not ridiculous at all - 4th place is a pipe dream when you look at our personnel and is a laughable aim right now, as Armand2 has just said above.  We are where we are due to the Board's frankly suicidal decision to let Archibald attempt to rebuild a squad over the summer, even though a) he'd just got us ignominiously relegated, and b) his track record for recruitment has always been pisspoor.  Our stars in the past few years have pretty much all been players who pre-dated him, with the rare exceptions of Lyle Taylor, season 1 of Barton (more than cancelled out by season 2), and Liam Lindsay.  The sheer amount of dross that has passed through Firhill in the past 5 years is mind-boggling - and sadly, much of it is still there.   Miles "2 goals in 33 games" Storey is a good example, as are the fact that we have one decent defender, O'Ware, who is out for months, no right back, and no better-than-bang-average midfielders apart from Bannigan. 

"Archie" has dug us a very deep hole, and Caldwell now has to try to get us out of it.  He could start by giving game time to Fitzpatrick, a young, talented, hungry player, which is something Archibald seemed incapable of doing.  Other than that, we need to hope for a few solid new players in Jan who are genuinely better than what we have, and goals from Coulibaly. Survival in the 2nd tier is by no means guaranteed at the moment.

Think you'll find  that I agree with you that our main aim is to avoid relegation.      I merely stated that it was a ridiculous position to be in.

I do however feel that if we can keep remotely in touch, a good transfer window might give us a shot at 4th.

Blind optimism I know.

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13 minutes ago, Slacker said:

We're getting £370,000+ as a result of Celtic reaching the Champions League group stage last season. Happy days.

For youth development but I'm sure we can swap around funds to get Shankland in January...:angel

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We're getting £370,000+ as a result of Celtic reaching the Champions League group stage last season. Happy days.


How many non utter dumplings will that help bring in at the new year transfer windae , I wonder.
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2 minutes ago, H Wragg said:


What is this thing?

image.png.d8cef59ea8ef2c4ec29669a25a66ab2c.png

It doesn't seem to be for charity.

The other speaker is Graeme McGarry- as much as he comes across as a decent bloke, if I wanted to ask him anything I'd just tweet him. And I don't particularly want to ask him anything.

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8 minutes ago, H Wragg said:


I thought the point fuctifano was making was that this page wasn’t also linked to on FB/Twitter?

Aye, I would imagine a majority of thistle fans get their news that way rather than sporadically checking the website to see if it's been updated. 

May just have been an oversight of course. 

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On 10/20/2018 at 21:56, Nightmare said:

Christie Elliott’s career has come full circle. Started off as a complete jobber, gradually built up to the point where he was genuinely a decent quality top flight RB, and now back to being utterly useless again.

I don’t begrudge him or Doolan (especially not Doolan) a testimonial, but we really need to be ruthless going forward. None of this “but he loves playing for Thistle” bollocks. If someone isn’t good enough any more, which applies to the vast majority of this team, then time to go.

Elliott absolutely.  Good backup with his versatility, but nothing more.  Doolan doesn't have it in him to do everything he's trying to do.  If we could set up in a way that makes the shiftless gang of shitebags we call a midfield actually do their work and get support to a Kris Doolan that is just there to finish, then we'd start seeing decent returns from him.  As it is though, there's better options. 

I'd also lump Erskine in there, he's looked like he's lost quite a few yards recently.

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