joewarkfanclub

Very sad to hear this. He was a very able replacement for Ally Maxwell and if I recall correctly played in goals during our first ever European campaign. Another one gone far too soon........

Well thats the last peice of the jigsaw puzzle in place. You may not rate Hammy. You may think the board are shite. You may think that these players are still shite and we are doomed to relegation anyway. But you can no longer say Hammy didnt know what the problems were or the board havent backed him in addressing them. Now we need to see a reaction. Lets do our bit.

As Ive said before. I dont doubt his ability, and whilst we had no alternative replacement, it would have been madness to take our only goal threat out of the team. Maybe Im being harsh, and maybe he deserves another chance to show what he can do with someone alongside him, but Id be making it very clear what was expected and challenge him to show me the player that we saw in his first game against Hibs. He's by no means the only one who falls into that category, but he is the most visible culprit due to his body language.

No I wouldnt. As a senior professional, I would be leading by example, running my ass off, putting myself about and shouting encouragement at my team mates, telling them exactly what was required. Not throwing my arms in the air and blaming everyone for not being as good as me.

I think I covered that.......

Will support stop him from being a huffy manchild with a bad attitude? PS not doubting his ability before you bring that up again.

Is Blaney confirmed? I had hoped he was one on the physio table that might make it. Our problem is midfield options. We cant drop both Slattery & Goss unless we plan on going with Cornelius or Lennon Miller. Without a proper DMF its hard to see how we become harder to beat without going 5 at the back or 5 in midfield. No Blaney limits our options and probably means McGinn and Lamie in a 4.

If the senior players back the manager, lets see it tomorrow. Regardless the team needs freshened up....... Kelly McGinn Lamie Blaney Johnston Furlong Danzaki Slattery McKinstey Obika Aitchison KVV and Goss need benchtime and we dont have a proper defensive mid to play much else and not expose our defence again.

All the more reason for him to play the new players and get them to dig him out the hole he amd we are in......

I think thats probably why the change came about. Was certainly under Alexander that it changed, and its the kind of thing he would have done to gain that extra 1%.

I agree with most of that. But we need to see improvement from both Hammy and the team. If he gets his new players on the field and they are given time to bed in and there is no improvement, or even worse they do an Aberdeen and down tools and throw him under the bus, then unfortunately the board cant just stand by and watch the inevitible happen without trying everything in their power to avoid relegation. Lets hope that it doesnt come to that though, because I do agree changing manager again is likely to have a poor chance of success.

That is interesting and would explain a lot on the SOD front. Just goes to show how much speculation occurs on message boards without knowing the full facts. Its the kind of thing we would have known 2/3 years ago, but fhe clubs position on these things has clearly changed and that has been covered elsewhere. Given McGinn had been tried there previously and hadnt looked comfortable and our only other option was a new signing who had just walked in the door, the decision to play SOD on Wednesday might have made sense from Hammys perspective, however, I wouldnt expect to see it again on Saturday.

I was just talking about this very point last night at work........ Carson, Tait, Dunne, Gallagher, OHara, Watt, Main would all walk back into our first team right now. And all have that little bit of backbone and nastiness in their game that we sorely lack. I understand all were let go or moved on for the right reasons and with few exceptions we probably couldnt have changed that, but the challenge is to go out and replace them with better or at least as good. Christ, even Donnelly and to a lesser extent Polworth at Kilmarnock wouldnt be too far away from our first team. Its quite clear what part of the club has been failing, although part of that probably rests on the Alexander appointment. Anyway, no use crying over spilled milk. We are where we are and Hammy has the players he has until the summer. Good response from him. He sounds angry at last. Hopefully home truths have been aired and we see some sort of reaction tomorrow.

Im sure he is. Maybe signing one who wants to play for us is more difficult than we think.

There is the possibility he was told that he needed to move some out to get some in and trusted the board / CEO to make it happen. It may still yet. Regardless, its not all solely at Hammells door.

The first goal is definitely on Goss. He has to see that Wright is unmarked and at least cut off the pass, if not actually marking the man. The second is unfortunately on Dean. He gets the wrong side and never recovers.

This. All day long........

How did Crankshaw get the ball then? If KVV took the same gamble he scores.....

The point is Crankshaw anticipated what was happening and reacted to it. KvV didnt. Its the kind of thing Sheilds got pelter for all season. KvV should have been on the front foot waiting for the ball to come across to tap it in. Its his only job.

Taken a while to process last night and not jump to any rash conclusions. The response to the result is entirely expected and mostly justified. However, I backed Hammell yesterday off the back of the transfer window and it would be hypicritical of me to change now after only one game when not all of the players signed have been integrated into the team. That said, I share many of the concerns others have highlighted. I get the fact that a lot of the players were signed very late, so to expect them all to go straight into the team is unrealistic. What I didnt expect was Hammy to drop Johnston and McKinstry who have been 2 of our most consistent performers over recent weeks. That seemed very strange, when leaving those positions alone would have allowed changes to be made in other areas more requiring of attention. Blaney getting injured clearly didnt help the situation, but is typical of the type of luck we have been experiencing. The 2 goals we lost last night are just 2 more in the long list of preventable goals we have given away this season and up front appeared disjointed at best. Going forward Hammy needs to accept the fact that we are in a relegation battle and change the way we are playing. He needs to identify the players he can trust to put a shift in and not let the heads go down the minute things go against us. Some of the others need a spell on the bench to show that there are consequences for poor performances and time to reflect whether they really fancy a season in the championship (given some of them are on contracts beyond next season). Time for some hard decisions and truths to be told.

Why do you need to pick a camp? He is an infuriating player. clearly has lots of ability and in the absence of a credible alternative we would have been mad to drop him. However, he is also clearly a lazy, huffy manchild who only plays when he feels like it. The chance created by Crankshaw last night is the perfect example. Now, I realise, thats the reason he is with us instead of a bigger club, but how long do you put up with it? We now have alternatives up front. Time to give him a seat on the bench to give hime time to reflect on how much he wants to be playing in the Championship next season.

Not the part of his post that I objected to. I too hope for changes in midfield. It was the "showing the 3 stooges the door" without a thought for what that meant that got me......

Now thats a post I can work with....... No one would argue that our midfield hasnt been dysfunctional. The problem we and Hammy has had is that without a transfer window he had to go with what he had. He has tried Maguire, Cornelius, and your 3 stooges in various combinations. None of them were significantly better than the others. We have brought in 1 midfielder in Danzaki and loaned out Maguire. So whilst the quality may have improved, numbers have not. It would be suicide to jettison any further midfielders until we have replacements, particularly since the 3 you object to are all on decent contracts and will be in no hurry to go anywhere. A decent DMF this afternoon would change the dynamic of our midfield significantly and allow Hammell to rotate on the basis of performance. That will also allow us cover for injuries / suspensions. We should always be trying to improve our team, but it has to be done with an element of reality.

Thats the kind of black & white nonsense you always serve up. I dont know if you mean it or are just constantly trolling, but ever thought there might be a middle ground? Firstly, the board have just backed Hammell in the window with 7 signings and possibly 1 or 2 more to come. There is no way he is getting emptied any time soon, far less tonight. Secondly, the 3 stooges, as you call them, all do have some ability. But the mix isnt right and their form / confidence has suffered as a result. They shouldnt all play together tonight, and I doubt very much that they will. But until we see the final make up of the squad after today, I wouldnt be ditching any of them as we may need some or all of them individually at some point between now and the end of the season. The whole point of this window was to give Hammy choices. Choices that until now he did not have and forced him to play players together that clearly you dont like/rate. You are entitled to hold that opinion. But you never give an alternative as to what you would do differently. Lets just see what happens tonight. And PS, if you are just trolling for juvenile fun, well done, you caught a whopper!

Id guess since Flow was still at work at 3am he is probably just getting up around now! Hopefully more news this afternoon. Ideally we would want both those positikns filled, but Id take one. If I had to choose it would be CDM as I think thats our big problem area and would take a lot of pressure of the defence, which hasnt actually lost that many goals in comparison with other teams.