BigManTam

I'm not so sure. If possession football is not done correctly it can be as dull and frustrating as hoofball. And less effective to boot. Previous attempts at various Scottish teams have turned out this way (only exception probably being celtic under Rogers). Why are middling teams from similar sized leagues (Denmark, Croatia, Czech) able to play better football than our mid sized teams? I don't know, exactly. If i had to guess, I would say it's more down to individual technical skills and a more positive mentality than playing the right brand of possession football. Culture, you could say. The best Well team I've ever seen (I'm mid 30s) was our McGhee 1.0 team with Porter, Hughes, McCormack et al. Did they play possession football? Not in an intentional way, I dont think, like JBA is attempting now. There were some good technical, experienced players, who found form and the team just clicked. Anyway, I'm not trying to be negative about the possession stuff. I think it may well work out, but there's also good reason other teams have tried and failed with it in the past and it could still be the case with us, even if we are patient. However, let's get behind the team and see where we end up!

First glimpse of the team I've caught this season. Only tuned in for the final 30 minutes and caught the 2nd and 3rd goals. Impression: You can clearly see the style JBA is trying to implement on the team, and there were some promising moves. Individually, you can see there are some players in the team eho really struggle with the idea of retaining the ball and looking for a pass. It goes back a bit to that general lack of quality in Scottish Football. It's not even just technical ability, it's also creativity and confidence. We've seen with the national team how painful it can be to watch players playing a possession game, but without confidence and quality. There is a real risk we end up going down a similar path this season. However, I've seen enough to look forward to the new season and hope to see further improvement. As many have said, anything new is better than the pish which has often been served up in recent seasons. COYW

In all seriousness though, how did our team finish 11th that season? When you look at all the good talent we had...Marvin Johnson, Ainsworth was decent, young Lee Erwin coming through, experienced players like McManus, Pearson, Hammell Keith Lasley and John Sutton. Maybe I'm viewing the past in an overly-positive light, but that team could have been top 5 in the season just passed. Has Scottish Football gone so far down hill?

Central defence today looked solid and in control. Central midfielders all played well and looked creative going forward. Bair up top didn't look like scoring and I'm not sure he ever will. About passable as a back up, but we'll struggle to get goals if he's our starter all season long. The main positive with Bair is at least he's not Mandron, who's no good at even the basics of holding up and running with the ball which Bair can do. Wing backs good enough defensively, fairly poor going forward. Young Georgie Gent came on towards the end and, although it's too early to tell yet, looked like he might be able to make a contribution. Him at left back and McGinn/Spencer at right back would be a big improvement. We were a bit unlucky today. I'm not sure we deserved to win, but we were the better side. Perhaps due this one as we seemed to ride our luck at times against Killie and Hearts in the previous 2. If one of our strikers comes good, we could be on to a top 6 season (and Euro football?!). If we keep struggling to find the net, we could be looking at 7th-9th position-wise. Onwards and upwards!

Not a classic today by any means, but feel I got my money's worth by the end of the 90. To start with the negative stuff, we were pedestrian for large parts of the game. As some have mentioned previously our 2 wing backs (Souare/O'Donnell) don't offer very much going forward. They lack pace and can't do much with the ball except boot it long. There also seemed to be an issue transitioning the ball from defence to attack more generally. The central midfield seems to be lacking a reliable CM/DM (a la Goss - although himself not exactly perfect) who can take the ball in and distribute. Slattery and Spittal seem to be better in attacking positions and young Miller, although he looks alright, probably doesn't have enough experience for such an important role. On a positive note, Hibs didn't really cause us too many problems. This is, in part, because they're shite, but our defence and midfield did generally look solid. On a side note - Lee Johnson has to be favourite for first sacking of the year! Spitall and Slattery had some nice touches and should do as a turn this year. Wilkinson and Bair didn't have much to work with until Beireth came on, although they didn't look great together. Beireth could well be a find - more than anything he just looked really up for it and fought for everything, adding that little bit of quality for the assist and the goal when it counted. I hope he'll be starting next week. All in all, we look worse than the tail end of last season but, if we can get the strikers set up and sort out our ball retention in midfield, we could have a decent season. I'm not concerned about relegation at this point, it's just a question of how far we can kick on up the table, which will probably depend on whether we can find a winning combination up top. COYW!

Lewis Grabban. Always remember watching him training at half time while he was on loan and thought he looked decent. Never really got a chance though. He went on to have a very decent career. Banged in quite a few championship goals and a couple of multi-million £ moves if memory serves me correctly.

It'll be interesting to see what/if bids come in for him in the summer. 1m is a lot for an older player but if an offer of around 500k came in, I think we'd be better off just keeping him and let the contract run out. Bigger bids than that would perhaps only come from a country outside of Euro (China, Saudi). The question is how he'd react to the club rejecting a mid sized/low ball offer from a club down South, for example. If he's going to go in a huff then that could be the deciding factor in forcing a move through. Anyway, all ifs and buts. At least we can enjoy watching him for the next 5 games!

RE KVV - I think him along with Butcher seem to be the 2 guys in the team who seem to have a bit of an 'X Factor ' about them. Not just the quality they offer, but their ability to raise the level of the team as a whole. On current form, we could probably lose a Spittal or a McGinn without affecting the performance as a whole too much, take away one of those 2 though (or both), and the whole thing could fall apart. As others have said, with talents like KVV, they can blow hot and cold but ultimately they're the type of players that get a lot of folk through the turnstiles... you just never know what might happen! Getting a bit ahead of myself but I'm increasingly starting to think he'll be away in the summer, and deservedly so in fairness. Wouldn't accept any less than 1m though.

Agreed. United will be well up for this one, these are the kind of games they'll need to get a result from if they're going to get out the bottom 2. Having said that, we're on great form, we're playing well and scoring lots of goals. We've got momentum and a positive mindset, they'll be playing with fear. I'm going for a 3-2 'Well win. Who knows, we might go to parkhead next week with a half decent chance of getting top 6!