Goggles & Flippers

I always saw Conor Grant as a creative middle to front midfielder, he was also brought in before McDonald who often drops back from the forward line. Centre circle to opposition box isn't our issue. We have plenty of options, just unfortunate that quite a few are taking time to find form/adjust. If we are going to pay a portion of someone's wages with an asset we won't see any return on, I'd rather it's for something we're lacking, namely a ball winning, steady head with an engine. Conor Grant isn't that I'm afraid.

Wanna bet on it .........

Agreed ... nail ... head ... 20lb hammer ... Has the Jackson Irvine thing been confirmed in anything official or is it just online chat?

http://www.soccerbase.com/players/player.sd?player_id=71156 Nathan Austin Striker Born in Hertfordshire 15th Feruary 1994 - has represented Scotland at lower age levels. Speedy forward who was signed from local amateur side, Leven United in July 2013. Nicknamed "Fash". East Fife is his first senior club.

The only thing I take from that is it's a glaring omission to not have cover as influential as he appears to be pivotal to our success. Not really felt we had a combative midfield since the days of Jennings (yes including the 3rd and 2nd place finishes).

For me, we have better personnel in place than we did last season. However we've failed to click with potential we have on the park and also failed in capitalising on our opportunities in front of goal. I do feel that will happen in time as familiarity and joint confidence grows. As for why I'm prepared to give him more time ..... His record from late January when he had an influence on players he could play was among the top 4 in the league from memory. However there's been a few occasions where we've both won and lost ugly. Also few occasions where an opportunity to close in on those above us or a lead was squandered with no sense of urgency or fight. When the fixtures were released I thought 4-6 from the first 5 games. We've got 3. I also can recall a lot of the players in recent years who were consigned to the scrapheap by fans early in their C&A careers who went on to be integral. Even this season, in the past two weeks I've seen people demanding Taylor's inclusion against Hearts with immediate effect with the assurances I can only imagine of those who had witnessed him recently and had a good working knowledge of his career and game. Now, 3 games under his belt, he's an imposter to some. It's just knee jerky and I find often on a board such as this people putting down their markers so they can claim a cyber "I told you so" in the future. I can't dispute some of his tactical decisions have left us exposed after it is made, mainly because substitutions are an easily visible and tangible change for all to see. However, many won't give any credit to in-game tinkering that has increased our performances because they are too busy watching the ball. If he does go then the club is facing a significant bill to replace him and the background team he's put in place.

Be interested to know why people thought we were entitled to anything when we're going away to a team who secured a higher league placing than us last season. Unfortunately it's slowly slowly, catchy monkey, but our leads have to be consolidated as our defence and midfield cover isn't enough to shore us up. Needless to say, seeing the twitter feed come in and then scrolling through this thread has been depressing.

Based on that, I'd be looking for Indiana Jones to pour water from the Holy Grail on his knee .... guess what I watched last night

I'm with UBH, if you're going to do something, may as well do it right.

If it is £1.75m and we did negotiate 25% then Sheffield Utd letting a well regarded player (from all accounts I've seen) go for £1.3m is good business in isolation considering what they paid for him, but not what I assumed they'd be willing to let him go for. All our deals now have sell on clauses, so we're looking at £175k at worst I reckon and £625k at best in a column of the balance sheet which is no doubt covered in cobwebs. Good news regardless.

He does appear to be "the dog that can be kicked"

Yeah but you're hedging your bets. 3 games in, we've not got a right to win any of them, 1 poor performance in the same way ICT had the same on day 1. Issue for us is our biggest wage appears to be doing a McFadden.

Something very steelboy about that post. It's almost as if you want vindication of your preemptive call when you started the thread. I didn't expect to get anything other than a point in Inverness, thought the fact Dundee Utd had a complete personnel change from what we last faced would result in 3 for us and expected to lose at the home of the team the cantered the Championship and had galvanised things over the summer. Therefore I see us as a point down, sitting in 7th, and still to field a full strength team. The players who have been misfiring will find their form at some point.

My bad, I thought I got it, the perils of copy and pasting. Now fixed. As for coverage, BBC get on my tits at times, the Celtic vs Killie game is on BT Sport and they also cover it on radio. While there's two other games including a near sellout at Tynecastle that would benefit their audience better. Michael Stewart is monotone and an absolutely chronic contributor. Maybe the BBC will get other folk from TV ads on, maybe the GoCompare Singer or Juan Sheet from the kitchen roll one as that seems to be an endorsement for BBC inclusion.

------------------Ripley--------------------- ----Law--Laing--McManus--Hammell--- -Ainsworth--Taylor---Lasley--Johnson- ------------McDonald---------------------- -------------------Moult-------------------- subs: Twardzik Chalmers Kennedy Clarkson Leitch Thomas Cadden

Well he's considered better than Leitch or Cadden, is that's high praise, then fair enough

I'm not getting sentimental, I'm basing things on merit and so far an unseen and untested player has your choice ahead of Lasley who has his faults yes, but nothing so far I've seen to dislodge him from the team. Your sentimental charge was already dead in the water when I said "I'm all for him replacing anyone in the squad ......" I'm not suggesting we have to drop anyone, he has an opportunity to start for the next 6 or so games, in that time he may shine, he may falter. Lasley may lose form or get injured, we may go 5 in the middle, what I'm saying is in this game with all the randomness involved to assume we'll have a full squad to pick from in 6 weeks time is ambitious.

So you'd drop our club captain, who in the two games this season has performed above average certainly compared to his contemporaries, for an untested/unseen guy from mid level Championship, unfancied by his manager that was loaned out to a relegated team in the 3rd tier of English football. Riiiiiggggghhhhhtttttttt I'm all for him replacing anyone in the squad, but on merit opposed to reputation or hearsay.

You are assuming nobody else will get injured and we won't change our tactics to say a 5 man midfield to combat certain opponents of course. Unless they've upped their fitness levels, you'd struggle to get a good 60 to 70 minutes out of both Ainsworth and Johnson.

I'd be happy with this, gives them as many problems to think about and deal with defensively as how they're going to try and get the ball in the back of our net.

I'd be interested to know if we were in for Jackson Irvine and if so, how close it was.

This will be the first time we've got Ainsworth and Johnson on each wing, frightening prospect. Hope the sharpness in front of goal has improved because looking at a 2-0 loss otherwise. Great if Taylor can hit the ground running, but with it being such a pivotal role I'd be surprised. Hopefully his arrival will allow Skippy to play in a more advanced role than Saturday where he was subdued.

Up to 6 weeks for Pearo http://www.motherwellfc.co.uk/2015/08/11/stephen-pearson-injury-update/

I sense Anthony Straker is turning into a Chuck Norris-esque figure on here

Can Anthony Straker play right back?