Goggles & Flippers

Good post Oats, but I don't think it's fair to lump in McGhee's first stint with vastly different players to his current squad. Therefore when comparing to the likes of Archibald, Hartley and Clark his record since returning should be used and that's far from encouraging. If you've still got access to the stats, what's his % since returning?

I suspect his public and personal faces are very different. I do think he think he's knows his shit, even if he doesn't. He does have a wealth of management experience to back it up so I'm more inclined to listen to him than someone who has just progressed from playing to coaching. The issue I have is since he was appointed I repeatedly said "once he has a pre-season under his belt, we'll see a different team with bite and guile that's been missing". I was unimpressed with how we started and how we looked back in July, far from what I expected. I suppose we were spoiled back in his last stint at what he achieved with the likes of Stepover and co. His signings have appeared to misfire. We don't know where many of them were on the signing target list. If it was 5th or 6th that would explain a lot. While looking at the league table, everyone outside Celtic is very tight, there isn't much at all, but drubbings are much more common than I recall, either receiving or giving them. I'm all for giving Celtic a degree of respect just because of their strength in depth and financial clout, but I don't want my manager (and McCall was even more guilty) vocalising that to the media. ICT's record against both Celtic and the previous incarnation of Rangers is something we used to do around 10-15 years ago every season.

My attendance on here is similar to my visits to Fir Park, they've wained recently due to work and apathy. My friends who I sat with have all ditched their season tickets (there was 5 of us at one point). I was active when I genuinely was optimistic about the future and the team. Now I'm just for want of a better word "mehhh", partly because I feel a little let down at my attempts to help the WS and club which were dingied. There's a lot to be said for knowing nothing of the background and just rocking up to watch the football. That has spilled over into here and just find myself reading and only commenting when I see something that brings on the red mist. With respect to here, its turned a tad negative but you'd expect that, it was a nice place to be when we were amassing points.

Andy, I found your comment "Perhaps the traffic on this site isn't what it once was" a bit of an eye opener. Obviously we non-admins can't see the back end, but are the numbers down on here significantly?

Hammell is making too many mistakes, don't know if it's judgement or reading the game (which at his experience level shouldn't be the case) or he is unable physically to put into place what his brain tells him to do. Samson's continued desire to punch, parry and deflect over catching and smothering is putting undue pressure on the defence. We have a goalkeeping coach, I sincerely hope his role is more than drop kicking balls at waist height, 5ft left and right of Samson. Crow-baring players into a starting formation opposed to playing the best players for what you're going to play .... that has to rest with McGhee .... again! The league was meant to start after the international break according to the manager. The goal was a fluke, the second was slack to allow the shot, but what a finish. Need some guile, not giving the opposition as much respect and not defending so deep, our back 4 aren't competent in their current makeup to combat sustained attacks.

I've always found it hard to reason dropped points from refereeing decisions unless the happen after a pivotal moment. In this case that would have been our equaliser. Safe to say when a goal is scored it changes the dynamic of the game, either leads to a hardening of resolve and a fightback or gives momentum to the scoring team. Last week is a prime example. I could understand the "dropped points" camp if the disallowed goal came after our equaliser. However when it's before it, it's hard to quantify if we would have went on to score a second because the game would have changed intrinsically as a result. Long and short is, we didn't turn up, if we performed and did the job then we wouldn't be clutching at straws to get something from a match that by all intents and purposes we deserved nothing from except a free warm shower at Firhill.

Apologies, St Johnstone, play in blue, up north, drive tractors, have sex with livestock, easy mistak-a to make-a

Down from 4th to 5th now and Ross Country have a game in hand. Looking at the table, Aberdeen in 2nd have 12 points from a possible 21. There can't be many leagues in the world where the 2nd place team have managed just over half the points available to date. I don't leave games angry (even if we've been gubbed) if I feel we've battled and had bad luck or a host of other issues fighting against us. But to go to places and either not show up, give too much respect or fold winds me up beyond belief.

Many would argue that we haven't had a fully functioning midfield since Jennings left the team. Rears its head every few months that the midfield is missing something and many of out competitors outplay and boss this pivotal area of the park. If I was McGhee I'd be concerned with the lack of consistency, week to week but also within games. I get that a half time dressing down can give impetus to a lacklustre first half but we're seriously blowing hot and cold with little in between. Manifested to the extreme last week with a sublime first half performance and a shakey second half. What struck me in the past few years under McCall and McGhee is the amount of games we were chronic for the first 30 minutes but came onto a game after that. After getting the old firm out the way so early on, the remaining fixtures until the end of October when we go into the second phase of the league was all about amassing points from those around us. We're not performing adequately but I accept McGhee's plans probably centred around having McHugh and Kennedy available as starters. Just looking at the league table tonight, a bit of oomph in the game today and against St Johnstone and we could be sitting in second.

In's and out's .... aye?

Could be putting a curse on it, but it appears the McInnes honeymoon and lovefest is over.

Must be sitting alongside him then. Flow seems to be putting a team in place around him to fill the gaps in revenue identified by many now we have this internet thingy and we can be hyper critical.

Derek Weir once told me if we could get another 1,000 (adults) through the gates then we'd break even and that was 5 years ago when our wage bill was running in the top 5 of the league. We're critical of the BBC website labelling the captions to player pictures, and a host of other inaccuracies. Jim Spence goes on the podcast and explains that there's a chronic funding shortage and each employee does the job of x others, therefore you're will have omissions and errors. When furnished with this you think .... ahh OK, makes sense. Same thing with the club, sometimes the business case for employing someone on £xx,000 a year has to be justified by the income they bring in being more. Only thing is it's not generally guaranteed and in football the thinking is too often why have 2/3 office staff when we can get a £2k a week first team starter. Consequently the club has been run with a skeleton staff and some oversights highlighted by Welldaft come to the fore. Good appointment, lets give this guy at least as much time as we give a 18 year old promoted to the first team .... currently 2 weeks before the "useless" shouts surface. This guy managed 3 hours. Would be interested to know if Keith Campbell is still in post.

Maybe fan engagement shrouds what he's really here to do in business speak babble. If he gets 150 adults to sign up to season tickets at 300 quid a pop, he earns the club 45k and no doubt probably pays for the lions share of his salary.

Ryan Murrant joins the club as Marketing & Fan Engagement Manager. Flow's 3rd significant appointment in the Chapman with Head of Marketing & Commercial, Keith Campbell. This job title does sound very samey, is he still there?

Players should be able to tell fans what they think of us, we have no qualms telling them. Fair is fair!

I recall that Plymouth fans were raging we got him back in the January window, thought he was destined for stardom. Looks like we took him because we could, however he never shined for the U-20's so therefore never progressed up to the first team. Must be quite a dilemma for a Manager, a player that turns on the ability in training but doesn't deliver on the park on a Saturday.

For the record my 6 year deal comment was tongue in cheek, harking back to the McLean era where it was a running joke/fact. I think you'd find few agents willing to accept a 6 year deal unless the player was chronic and the agent recognised it but the club didn't/hadn't.

Pick up 2 players for £50k each a season and punt them on for 500k a pop after 18 months seems a decent strategy going forward. The issue is when you try to do that with free agents the pickings are slimmer and the odds longer in turning them into something attractive. Let's not ignore that a few other teams have seen our cross border raids of the conference and the sidestep that allowed us to get Chris Humphrey without having to pay a development fee with envious interest. I hope Blyth, Bowman etc. have been sourced using this much vaunted Billy Beene software that finds hidden gems. Oh and do a Dundee Utd and get Cadden signed up on a 6 year deal.

I now have a mental image of Rab's boaby popping out in an iconic photo. Talking of pricks .... Tom Boyd, did he actually play for us? He seems to do his best to gloss it over

Good bit of business all round it appears. Shame a few others weren't in the mix to make it a bidding war but a lot of that is down to his inconsistency.

Isn't our former head of acquisitions now their manager?

Fishal's back

Is that a clue .....Corporal Jones?

350 folk in here, it's like the night Aberdeen took Jack & Victor away