Ya Bezzer!

We had 3 out of 11 perform today. If that's good enough for you fine. Most likely St. Johnstone will be no worse and probably better than Rangers today so we are going to have to improve in all the areas I've mentioned if we want any points on the board in Week 2. Our passing, crossing and finishing aren't good enough and the fact that a poor Rangers team were a bit lucky to beat us doesn't change that. Standards have to be raised if we want to get better than scrambling around at the foot of the table every year. As for balance, I gave a thumbs up to Heneghan today, a player I've been fairly critical of, while being fairly scathing of McHugh, a player I've mostly praised. You can't really accuse me of agendas or ploughing the same old furrow. All I do is say what I see. We lost at home to a very average side today and if we had shown even just a little bit more quality when it mattered we would have got something out of the game. Dropped points are dropped points whether its the first day of the season or the last.

Kipre, Heneghan and Cadden were the three players that could say they had a good game today. Going for Cadden.

A few people have said that recently while cutting out the praise I've given from their quote.

Thought it was quite exciting but low quality match. The ball was given away more often than not and the final ball from both teams was shite. Finishing was poor. Besides the first 20 minutes or so I felt we were always in the match, despite most players not playing that well, that maybe tells you something about Rangers. I said last week the gap between Kipre and Tait was going to be a weak spot and so it proved to be. Middle of the park was poor, Rose was fairly anonymous and McHugh gave the ball away just about every time he played a pass. Dunne/Frear on the left just wasn't working. Sometimes feel like Frear is tied to our post with an elastic band. He just doesn't make the runs and when he does he usually makes the wrong decision. Dunne's balls forward were howling and he needs to concentrate more when defending. On the up side Heneghan and Kipre did well at the back and I thought Cadden was excellent today. We should have scored more goals but so should Rangers so in that sense the result could have varied wildly, we could have won, we could have got a pasting. Overall though I felt we competed reasonably well but our quality needs to improve - crossing, passing, finishing. Ultimately a little bit unlucky not helped by a shocking display from Madden but we just looked like we lacked that little bit extra quality that in the end gets you the points.

Quite bizarre that they chose to go full time after being relegated from the Championship. Looks like they are going to romp that league based on early form so it might not be his last hat trick of the season.

Generally, I think if you go toe to toe with a team that's on a different level of quality you are likely to come off the worst, whereas if you try to tactically nullify a teams advantages you have a fighting chance. The thing is we are going into a game tomorrow and we don't really know how good or bad either team is.

BIGIRIMANA, Gael BLYTH, Jacob BOWMAN, Ryan CADDEN, Chris CAMPBELL, Allan CARSON, Trevor CLAY, Craig DUNNE, Charles FISHER, Alex FREAR, Elliott GORDON, Shea GRIFFITHS, Russell HAMMELL, Steven HASTIE, Jake HENEGHAN, Ben KIPRE, Cedric LIVINGSTONE, Adam MacLEAN, Ross McHUGH, Carl McMANUS, Stephen McMILLAN, Jack MOULT, Louis NEWELL, George ROSE, Andy TAIT, Richard TANNER, Craig THOMAS, Dom WATT, Luke Of course Dom Thomas and Craig Clay have left and Ellis Plummer has come in. I mistakenly included Craig Clay but that still gives you 27 players.

Loans can be used as a form of player development. Unfortunately in recent times we've used loans to simply move youth players out of the way and sideline them until their contracts run down. See - Dom Thomas, Dylan Mackin, Craig Moore, Tom Fry, David Ferguson, Luke Watt.

I've voiced similar concerns many times and I won't repeat them but on top of what you are saying above I think it's worth noting that we now have a first team squad of 28 players. That doesn't seem like a sensible number on a whole number of levels.

Funnily enough although I'm not Heneghan's biggest fan I think he's been decent in the recent matches against Rangers.

Great analysis comparing Berwick Rangers, Edinburgh City and Queens Park to Dunfermline. Add in Morton and the Dunfermline still have about 2,000 more supporters than the average of all of them.

Do you want me to post a list of lower league teams that have put us out cups? If only we could dominate Hearts at Tynecastle.

Called it.

Dunfermline have been in very good form for the whole of 2017, only lost 4 out of 25 matches - including 3 draws against Premiership teams. Think they will be up there challenging for promotion this season and I think this would be a tricky tie with Motherwell with the dreaded 'favourites' status.

Ross County away is my prediction.

He'll have another week to work towards full fitness but yeah, perhaps a place on the bench would be best. In my view Moult hasn't often played that well without McDonald to support him and today was certainly not one of his best performances. He also just didn't look happy today whether it was fitness, lack of support or perhaps behinds the scenes stuff and all the speculation around him.

Kipre. Strolled through the game. I guess we'll find out if he can actually defend next week.

Impossible. His Twitter is shite.

A wins a win but today was pretty laboured against a team three leagues below us. Berwick never really threatened us and parked the bus but they did it fairly well and perhaps we could take some tips from them about defending. Overall Moult was kept quiet and we struggled to create much in the way of chances for much of the match. In the latter stages Berwick tired as you'd expect and they started sitting even deeper. This allowed us to start getting a few decent crosses into the box which is where our goal came from but it was pretty basic stuff. You'd have expected more from all our forward going players today. Newell came on and showed a little bit of movement, Fisher was anonymous though. Frear scored the goal again you expect a Premiership level winger to doing more against part time defenders. He's got the ability to beat players but too often his final ball is poor. Very difficult to judge the team on these league cup matches as we've been handed a pretty weak draw. We've had virtually no defending to do over the four matches but I can see problems from diagonal balls being played into the space between Tait and Kipre. Look out for that. Still big question marks over players like Dunne, Fisher, Tanner, Rose, Carson etc. We'll almost certainly learn more next week than we will have over the last month.

Had most of the ball but as the game has gone on we've looked increasingly desperate and sloppy. Can only remember one save from the Berwick keeper. Berwick are well organized and have defended pretty well up to now and can't break them down. Getting nothing from the right today, need more from Tait and Tanner. Frear has been more involved but his final ball hasn't been good enough. Cadden doesn't seem to know what do when a team in sitting deep and there is no space to run into. He's been ineffective playing behind the strikers.

Looked like a facial injury - perhaps a trip to the dentist!

Will surely be 3 at the back with Tait playing right midfield and Cadden and Tanner supporting the striker.

I think making wholesale changes is a pretty stupid idea. First of all it weakens the team, secondly I think it has a psychological effect on players performance in the sense that you are giving out the idea that it is an 'easy' game or that it doesn't matter much. It's also not fair on younger or less experienced players who aren't getting the same level of support that arguably they need more than established first team players. If you want to introduce other players you should be playing your strongest XI with maybe 2 or at a stretch 3 alternated in or out. Once you start making 4, 5, 6 changes I think you are not even really learning much about the players you are putting out there.

The structure of the league hasn't changed much in 40 years in which time we've brought through a list of youth players as long as your arm, in fact, the major change over that time has been to go from a top league of 10 with 2 relegated to a top league of 12 with 1 relegated. It's simply a matter of priority. If we hadn't brought through guys like Ally Maxwell, Dougie Arnott, Phil O'Donnell, Chris McCart, Jim Griffin etc when the standard of the league was much higher and staying in the league was much tougher our last cup win would be on the very edge of living memory. The strategy is just all wrong when we release Dylan Mackin while paying out the second year of a contract to Jacob Blyth to be our fourth choice striker. That just doesn't make sense either in youth development or from a financial point of view. As for Zak Jules - the mistakes he made in a Motherwell shirt were purely negative. If they had been made by a youth player we might actually have got some benefit out of them in the long run.

Season 2017-18 Former players plying their trade in the Scottish Leagues Carswell, Stuart - Dumbarton Clarkson, David - St. Mirren Chalmers, Joe - Inverness Caledonian Thistle Cummins, Adam - Queens Park Currie, Max - Stranraer Ewings, Jamie - Dumbarton Fitzpatrick, Marc - Airdrieonians Forbes, Ross - Morton Hateley, Tom - Dundee Hetherington, Steven - Alloa Athletic Higginbotham, Kallum - Dunfermline Athletic Higgins, Chris - Ayr United Lawless, Steven - Partick McDonald, Scott - Dundee United McHugh, Bob - Morton Mackin, Dylan - Livingston Martin, Alan - Queen of the South Mensing, Simon - Forfar Athletic Moore, Craig - Ayr United Murray, Euan - Raith Rovers Neill, Morgyn - Stranraer O'Brien, Jim - Ross County Page, Johnny - East Fife Reid, Craig - Ayr United Reynolds, Mark - Aberdeen Samson, Craig - St. Mirren Smith, Darren Lee - Stirling Albion Smith, Graeme - Brechin City Stewart, Ross - St. Mirren Sutton, John - St. Mirren Thomas, Dom - Kilmarnock