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Saw an interview in, I think, the Courier (link was on Facebook) where he basically said that. He'll pick himself if needed and will pick himself if he plays well.

We're definitely building from the back! Another decent recruit on paper.

I wonder if Wullie wants to make sure we are well covered so he isn't needed for every minute of every game like last year. Sure he'll be around as a player if required though but perhaps keen to focus more on the manager side this year.
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Have to say have been impressed by WG's policy of sorting out the poor back line from last season and installing a bit of height and strength in that area. Also give him the scope for formation changes as well. I think we still need another GK, a wide player, centre midfielder and another striker. Whether these would be some loans or permanent signings. 

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Apologies for bringing up a non football matter but I was supposed to be staying at the station hotel in Dumfries last night (down to see family and go to the Rich Hall gig) until they cancelled on us as the hotel has been taken over by the UK government for the next three months. Does anyone know what they're up to? 

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6 minutes ago, Walter said:

Apologies for bringing up a non football matter but I was supposed to be staying at the station hotel in Dumfries last night (down to see family and go to the Rich Hall gig) until they cancelled on us as the hotel has been taken over by the UK government for the next three months. Does anyone know what they're up to? 

Housing Ukrainian refugees.

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4 hours ago, Flash said:

In terms of shot stopping, according to the SPFL stats his saves as a percentage of shots on target was about 66%, or about a third of shots on target resulted in a goal. The best in the division was Hemming who had a saves % of 77%. Obviously, if you’re playing behind a worse defence, you’re generally going to be facing more difficult shots to save. But just taking the percentages on their own, if Queens 2 keepers had a 77% saves percentage instead of both being around 66-68%, they would have conceded 37 goals instead of 54.

 

Interesting, and I think helps to make my point which is that goalies in weaker teams can appear to be good because they are making saves a lot, but as those stats show proportionally they aren't actually making an especially high number of saves, it's just that they have more to do. Plus the more goals you lose the less scrutiny there tends to be on those goals, so mistakes can get hidden somewhat.

I have no idea whether this was actually the case with Rae as Queens were still competitive last season, it's not as if they were getting hammered every week. But I'm slightly wary of this effect. I think there are some positions where being in a weaker team can help you stand out - goalkeepers and combative midfielders mainly. And other positions where being in a weaker team makes it almost impossible to stand out (unless you are exceptional) like creative midfielders or goalscorers. 

Even if he's not quite at the level we hope I still don't think he'd be worse than Currie so if nothing else we'll have not lost anything by swapping keepers. But hopefully he's as good as some fans seem to think.

Edited by Diamonds are Forever
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1 hour ago, Diamonds are Forever said:

 

Interesting, and I think helps to make my point which is that goalies in weaker teams can appear to be good because they are making saves a lot, but as those stats show proportionally they aren't actually making an especially high number of saves, it's just that they have more to do. Plus the more goals you lose the less scrutiny there tends to be on those goals, so mistakes can get hidden somewhat.

I have no idea whether this was actually the case with Rae as Queens were still competitive last season, it's not as if they were getting hammered every week. But I'm slightly wary of this effect. I think there are some positions where being in a weaker team can help you stand out - goalkeepers and combative midfielders mainly. And other positions where being in a weaker team makes it almost impossible to stand out (unless you are exceptional) like creative midfielders or goalscorers. 

Even if he's not quite at the level we hope I still don't think he'd be worse than Currie so if nothing else we'll have not lost anything by swapping keepers. But hopefully he's as good as some fans seem to think.

Fair post. 👍

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1 hour ago, Diamonds are Forever said:

 

Interesting, and I think helps to make my point which is that goalies in weaker teams can appear to be good because they are making saves a lot, but as those stats show proportionally they aren't actually making an especially high number of saves, it's just that they have more to do. Plus the more goals you lose the less scrutiny there tends to be on those goals, so mistakes can get hidden somewhat.

I have no idea whether this was actually the case with Rae as Queens were still competitive last season, it's not as if they were getting hammered every week. But I'm slightly wary of this effect. I think there are some positions where being in a weaker team can help you stand out - goalkeepers and combative midfielders mainly. And other positions where being in a weaker team makes it almost impossible to stand out (unless you are exceptional) like creative midfielders or goalscorers. 

Even if he's not quite at the level we hope I still don't think he'd be worse than Currie so if nothing else we'll have not lost anything by swapping keepers. But hopefully he's as good as some fans seem to think.

Josh Rae saved us from a few good thumping’s last season. With all due respect I’ve no idea how he’s ended up at Airdrie as he clearly thought he was heading to bigger  and better things. 
 

Great signing for you. 

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8 hours ago, Grant228 said:

Appreciate QoTS fans would've seen allot more of him, but I can't remember him being as good as he's been made out in the past two pages. 

I just thought he was a reasonably competent championship keeper, he was just alright. 

Teams that finish bottom of the league tend not to have too much quality about them. Certainly, that was the case with us last season - all over the park.

Yes, some were better than others, and will have had a few good games and we can perhaps add him to that group. However, I doubt any of them will have a particularly long highlights reel from the season. 

Of course,  they might thrive in a lower league and with different team mates.

The Queens team from last season is the poorest I have seen since we turned  full-time, well over a decade ago. Closely followed by the squad from the season before. 

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Guest Flash
34 minutes ago, qos_75 said:

Teams that finish bottom of the league tend not to have too much quality about them. Certainly, that was the case with us last season - all over the park.

Yes, some were better than others, and will have had a few good games and we can perhaps add him to that group. However, I doubt any of them will have a particularly long highlights reel from the season. 

Of course,  they might thrive in a lower league and with different team mates.

The Queens team from last season is the poorest I have seen since we turned  full-time, well over a decade ago. Closely followed by the squad from the season before. 

Agreed.
And the one before that didn’t win a game after McCrorie, Brownlie and El Bak left (although the season was cut short, probably for the best).
And the one before that was in the relegation play-offs.
It is probably 5 years since we’ve had a team that lasted a whole season without being absolutely shite. And 8 years since we’ve had anything approaching what could be described as a good team.

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1 hour ago, Flash said:

Agreed.
And the one before that didn’t win a game after McCrorie, Brownlie and El Bak left (although the season was cut short, probably for the best).
And the one before that was in the relegation play-offs.
It is probably 5 years since we’ve had a team that lasted a whole season without being absolutely shite. And 8 years since we’ve had anything approaching what could be described as a good team.

The frustration is that we had Dobbie throughout, at the peak of his powers until his last two seasons, yet we were so hopeless.

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7 hours ago, qos_75 said:

Teams that finish bottom of the league tend not to have too much quality about them. Certainly, that was the case with us last season - all over the park.

Yes, some were better than others, and will have had a few good games and we can perhaps add him to that group. However, I doubt any of them will have a particularly long highlights reel from the season. 

Of course,  they might thrive in a lower league and with different team mates.

The Queens team from last season is the poorest I have seen since we turned  full-time, well over a decade ago. Closely followed by the squad from the season before. 

I completely disagree with this. Our squad last season was the best we've had for the last 4 years, in terms of quality "all over the park". To me it says a lot that we've signed 10 players from our relegated squad for next season, and there's not one of them that the majority (or even a significant proportion) of people are unhappy about. There are also 2-3 more people who the club would have received no complaints about should they have been re-signed (Rae, Fitzpatrick, maybe Cooper).

Yes, we got relegated so our opponents will be worse. But, as everybody knows, we still need a better quality squad than last season to get promoted this time around. We should no longer be fighting to survive; we need to win matches. It takes a lot to unanimously please a football team's support, and the fact the new contracts of 10 relegated players from the "worst team in the club's professional history" have done just that proves something for me.

We have been saved in recent seasons by strikers that can score goals. In each of the three seasons before our relegation one we had one of the two best stikers in the league. The season before last we had Connor Shields (who was the second best striker behind Liam Boyce) and then signed for Motherwell; we also had Ayo Obileye who was the second top scorer in the league (I'm not suggesting he was a better striker than Shields). The 2 seasons before that we were single handedly saved by the indefatigable Stephen Dobbie (and COVID-19).

The season before last, two of our better players were Rhys McCabe and a certain Daniel Pybus. Yet people were not disappointed to see them released. Last season, we were entirely competent against teams our standard (Dunfermline, Morton, Ayr). We just bottled it against any teams better than us. The lack of experience and belief (and obviously ability) in Allan Johnston's final squad as manager ultimately ended our status as a Championship club. But the ability was not worse than before.

Ultimately we got relegated because our top scorer in the league last season scored a grand total of 7 goals, with second top on 4. If we had a talismanic figure up front like beforehand we would have comfortably stayed in the division. Personally, last season's squad was the first since 17/18 that I've felt any sort of connection with. They didn't do that by being the worst I've ever seen. The amount of games I came out of thinking that we should have got more from that. The squad didn't get worse, the league got better, and we got slightly unlucky.

Edit: Just looked back at the post and it's very long, sorry!

Edited by Doonhamer19
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On 23/06/2022 at 21:12, Slipmat said:

As much as we Queens fans generally are in agreement Rae is a good keeper (and to be fair he will probably be the best in this division), I don't think any of us believe he is as good as Josh Rae himself thinks he is.

His farewell tweet said for him leaving was "a tough decision but one I had to make" which to me inferred that he saw his next move as an upward one, whether that may have been to a Championship side at worst or an English League side.  It looks to me like the flood of offers he had expected to receive from bigger clubs than either ourselves or Airdrie didn't arrive after all.   No disrespect to Airdrie, but moving down a division isn't really a career move that "has to be made".

My  impression is was he was leaving because he didn't want to play for Wullie. I could be reading too much into it but on a few occasions last season Wullie give him pelters over his distribution; Josh argued back then ignored his instruction. If he was told he would have to compete for first choice he may have decided to go somewhere he felt wanted. He obviously played with Reece so it's not a huge surprise he's gone there.

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7 hours ago, Doonhamer19 said:

I completely disagree with this. Our squad last season was the best we've had for the last 4 years, in terms of quality "all over the park". To me it says a lot that we've signed 10 players from our relegated squad for next season, and there's not one of them that the majority (or even a significant proportion) of people are unhappy about. There are also 2-3 more people who the club would have received no complaints about should they have been re-signed (Rae, Fitzpatrick, maybe Cooper).

Yes, we got relegated so our opponents will be worse. But, as everybody knows, we still need a better quality squad than last season to get promoted this time around. We should no longer be fighting to survive; we need to win matches. It takes a lot to unanimously please a football team's support, and the fact the new contracts of 10 relegated players from the "worst team in the club's professional history" have done just that proves something for me.

We have been saved in recent seasons by strikers that can score goals. In each of the three seasons before our relegation one we had one of the two best stikers in the league. The season before last we had Connor Shields (who was the second best striker behind Liam Boyce) and then signed for Motherwell; we also had Ayo Obileye who was the second top scorer in the league (I'm not suggesting he was a better striker than Shields). The 2 seasons before that we were single handedly saved by the indefatigable Stephen Dobbie (and COVID-19).

The season before last, two of our better players were Rhys McCabe and a certain Daniel Pybus. Yet people were not disappointed to see them released. Last season, we were entirely competent against teams our standard (Dunfermline, Morton, Ayr). We just bottled it against any teams better than us. The lack of experience and belief (and obviously ability) in Allan Johnston's final squad as manager ultimately ended our status as a Championship club. But the ability was not worse than before.

Ultimately we got relegated because our top scorer in the league last season scored a grand total of 7 goals, with second top on 4. If we had a talismanic figure up front like beforehand we would have comfortably stayed in the division. Personally, last season's squad was the first since 17/18 that I've felt any sort of connection with. They didn't do that by being the worst I've ever seen. The amount of games I came out of thinking that we should have got more from that. The squad didn't get worse, the league got better, and we got slightly unlucky.

Edit: Just looked back at the post and it's very long, sorry!

It's a good post though, containing truth.

The fact that, as you say, much of last season's squad has been retained, and that there's no great dissent about it, suggests they weren't completely without ability.  

I swung last year between feeling we were really poor, with too many players who simply weren't good enough, to thinking there was plenty quality in areas.  The problem was that, either way, we very rarely won.  

The hope has to be that the new additions, and dropping a tier, will allow the quality to emerge more consistently.  We also need to be more resilient though, if decent spells in games are going to start yielding victories.  

You're right in identifying the need for us to become more free scoring.  The failure to be anything of the sort, has been our biggest problem.  Not only does it mean we don't win, but it's also made us hideously unattractive.

I really hope that in the season ahead, we can look forward to looking forward to going to games again.  Like most, I'm feeling fairly upbeat about it, but time will have to tell.

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8 hours ago, Doonhamer19 said:

I completely disagree with this. Our squad last season was the best we've had for the last 4 years, in terms of quality "all over the park". To me it says a lot that we've signed 10 players from our relegated squad for next season, and there's not one of them that the majority (or even a significant proportion) of people are unhappy about. There are also 2-3 more people who the club would have received no complaints about should they have been re-signed (Rae, Fitzpatrick, maybe Cooper).

Yes, we got relegated so our opponents will be worse. But, as everybody knows, we still need a better quality squad than last season to get promoted this time around. We should no longer be fighting to survive; we need to win matches. It takes a lot to unanimously please a football team's support, and the fact the new contracts of 10 relegated players from the "worst team in the club's professional history" have done just that proves something for me.

We have been saved in recent seasons by strikers that can score goals. In each of the three seasons before our relegation one we had one of the two best stikers in the league. The season before last we had Connor Shields (who was the second best striker behind Liam Boyce) and then signed for Motherwell; we also had Ayo Obileye who was the second top scorer in the league (I'm not suggesting he was a better striker than Shields). The 2 seasons before that we were single handedly saved by the indefatigable Stephen Dobbie (and COVID-19).

The season before last, two of our better players were Rhys McCabe and a certain Daniel Pybus. Yet people were not disappointed to see them released. Last season, we were entirely competent against teams our standard (Dunfermline, Morton, Ayr). We just bottled it against any teams better than us. The lack of experience and belief (and obviously ability) in Allan Johnston's final squad as manager ultimately ended our status as a Championship club. But the ability was not worse than before.

Ultimately we got relegated because our top scorer in the league last season scored a grand total of 7 goals, with second top on 4. If we had a talismanic figure up front like beforehand we would have comfortably stayed in the division. Personally, last season's squad was the first since 17/18 that I've felt any sort of connection with. They didn't do that by being the worst I've ever seen. The amount of games I came out of thinking that we should have got more from that. The squad didn't get worse, the league got better, and we got slightly unlucky.

Edit: Just looked back at the post and it's very long, sorry!

looking at the teams , squads, signings so far QOS  look to be pre season favourite at he moment,    League 1 is a very funny league though just ask ourselves and Falkirk. Etc,      If and it's a big IF you can take to the fences and get a good start, you guys might take some catching....  Falkirk and Dunfetmline will probably spend all season tracking each other...

 

As I say things can change with a couple of decent signings for clubs but recruitment so far has been decent IMO

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looking at the teams , squads, signings so far QOS  look to be pre season favourite at he moment,    League 1 is a very funny league though just ask ourselves and Falkirk. Etc,      If and it's a big IF you can take to the fences and get a good start, you guys might take some catching....  Falkirk and Dunfetmline will probably spend all season tracking each other...
 
As I say things can change with a couple of decent signings for clubs but recruitment so far has been decent IMO

I think we'll be 3rd favourites with the bookies when the odds come out behind Falkirk and Dunfermline. It counts for nothing as you say though.

But for me to feel confident of an actual title challenge I think we need another decent striker. The defence should be ok if we don't have any Chima-style* injuries and I think the midfield would compete in the Championship. The jury's out on the GK as well tbf.

* A QoS reference.
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10 minutes ago, 19QOS19 said:


I think we'll be 3rd favourites with the bookies when the odds come out behind Falkirk and Dunfermline. It counts for nothing as you say though.

But for me to feel confident of an actual title challenge I think we need another decent striker. The defence should be ok if we don't have any Chima-style* injuries and I think the midfield would compete in the Championship. The jury's out on the GK as well tbf.

* A QoS reference.

If Reilly stays fit and scores goals will be massive.  Remember him from his last spell with Del Lyle and they were unplayable at times,  saw Reilly at Morton and I thought his legs were going a little bit...

 

Ruth is raw, but not near as bad as Falkirk make out, defence and midfield   looks excellent for League one..

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 Innes Cameron scored 2 for Killie in a friendly against Falkirk just hitting form before a loan move somewhere .

WG now has to get a quality wide player in and a big forward who can score goals very difficult as everyone Is looking for that .

 

 

 

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