Ya Bezzer!

One of the best products of our youth system in recent times is Jamie Murphy. He wasn't an overnight success it took him a couple of seasons coming off the bench and then a couple more seasons to develop into the player he was in his latter time at the club. There is far too much impatience and rush to write people off. Dom Thomas is a talented player but he needs to be given a chance to reach his potential both by management and fans. Dom Thomas is a player who is young and who should be developing. When you put Thomas in, you aren't putting a fully formed footballer into the team and you don't judge in the same way as a player with 100 first team appearances. You don't judge him over 15 minutes or 90 minutes, you judge him over a season, two seasons by how well he develops his talent against his exposure to first team experience. He's 20 years old now and if we are going to give him a chance it has to be now. As well as being impatience, we are also far too conservative about getting young players in the team. They should be getting that chance at 18, 19 never mind in the case of Thomas or Moore at 20, 21 and still lingering around the bench if at all. Get them in the team, give them a chance and give them a break!

Think this is very unfair on Thomas. He came on in a game where we were being completely dominated in the middle of the field, a match where we were almost defending our 6 yard line at points. Thomas was the one player who wanted to get forward every time he got the ball. He had very little support when the team was sitting so deep. It's also worth noting that Dom Thomas, and this is off the top of my head but I think it is correct, has had 2 first team starts in his entire career. Start him in front of Ainsworth. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out but you have to give the guy a chance before you write him off.

He didn't get hit thankfully but it was close and we were inches away from disaster. If he had been struck then there would have been repercussions. I'm no fan of stewarding and policing but I'm afraid our guys go on about 'heavy hands' and yet can't seem to behave themselves. The list of incidents gets longer and longer and the reputation of the club is suffering, so might our bank balance when we are already struggling financially. In a sense the club has to do things like this now because our fans just can't be trusted having been given warning, after warning all to no avail. The 'we, the persecuted' chat starts to wear thin after a while and we are getting to that point pretty rapidly now. Everyone knows where the line is, and yet some of us can't seem to stay on the right side. If these guys have the club at heart they need to start showing it in a way that really counts.

Think we would have been in trouble if we had a match in midweek. Players tired in the latter stages of the first half. East Stirling at home should be an opportunity to use a few younger players. Maybe give Thomas and Campbell a start.

In this day and age fans don't buy home match tickets. If it's not on the season ticket people aren't going to go out of their way to either a) get a ticket or b) pay the extra expense of other tickets and people can't just come along and pay at the gate.

We dominated the first 15-20 minutes, then there was about another 15 minutes where Rangers started to come back into it. By 35 minutes they had command of the match, so he's about 20 minutes out. Did he mention anything them being potentially 6-0 down at HT?

Thought Tait looked a right good addition.

McGhee after the match reiterated that there would be no more signings as "we've spent our money" and that "we'll have to work with what we have".

Also worth noting that McGhee repeated on the radio after the match that we wouldn't make any more signings and that his aims for the season was "to stay up".

Started well and, with no exaggeration, should have been 4-0 up after 10-15 minutes, the likes of Johnson and Cadden need to sharpen up their decision making/finishing. However our fitness seemed to go off a cliff after half an hour or so. We were struggling to get to half time and the whole second half we had no legs whatsoever and were more or less defending our 6 yard line and couldn't get anyone forward to support McDonald. Two good finishes from Rangers but I think at 100% fitness those goals wouldn't or at least shouldn't happen. On the up side I thought Samson continued on from last season and looked assured in goal and I thought Richard Tait looks like an excellent signing, my MotM.

Poor friendly form, missing important players and a big hole in the midfield won't be encouraging many of a third win on the trot against Rangers. Think Rangers have only played one friendly and they have a lot of new players so it's difficult to really judge what we are up against but looking at the squad you'd have to assume Rangers will be able to dominate the midfield tomorrow. One potential bright spot is that Rangers record away from home under Warbuton has not been great so, fingers crossed, that remains after Saturday.

I'm McDonald's biggest fan.....but not as a midfielder. The fact that Moult is out makes it doubly important he plays higher up the field. Not ideal for Campbell to be plunged into a big game like this but we need to play players in their most effective positions first and foremost.

Even if fit, would he play?

My heart sank a bit when he said that. It's madness to go into the season with two recognized central midfielders, one of whom is 36, and the other who is completely untested at this level. We'll need some of the young lads to really step up or it could be a long season.

I had the radio on, think it was Saturday and Mapas was on. I couldn't believe some of the stuff coming out of his mouth. An absolute clown. Still amazes me that a player as genuinely great as Malpas can be that bad as a coach. Where the hell did he get his ideas from because it sure as hell wasn't from his own playing career or Jim McLean. Anyway I'm having one of those weeks. Probably get absolutely cunted off them on Saturday.

Listen, Marvin is the best technically skilled player in the squad but he's never really attained any form of real consistency in a fairly weak league. He wasn't near anyone's SPFL team of the season last term. £1.6M? Of course we'd take it but the point is no one is going to offer it. Guys like Johnny Hayes and Greg Stewart have been much more effective players over the last couple of seasons so are they worth £2M plus?

I'm sure the inflatable thunder clappers I've hung on to since the Nantes match will one day pay for the new house!

Stephen Pearson is a much dirtier player than Keith Lasley.

Josh Law - No problem with attitude just ability. We want to be challenging for the top half of the Scottish Premiership and Josh Law just wasn't good enough. Lee Erwin - A frustrating player. Good pace, good with the ball at his feet but very poor for someone his size in the air and crucially for a forward, not a very good finisher. Will cause defences problems without actually scoring too often. Connor Ripley - A young goalkeeper learning the trade. Decent shot stopper, sometimes flaps at crosses. Good at coming off his line to narrow angles for oncoming strikers. Doesn't take command his area enough although that is usually something that comes with experience for goalkeepers.

The sponsor logos are poor, look like they have just been stuck on without any kind of design input. Also agree there is too much amber in the home kit and that we need to put the '91 Cup Final to bed but overall they look like decent kits.

Colin O'Neill would have done a wheelie into the canal.

This really. Not good enough for this level although I'd never question his effort.

Don't like it when Jocks get one up on them. Encouraging though that they are so upset about losing him.

I seem to remember Viktoria Zizkov giving a Scottish team a battering at one time. Dundee Utd maybe?

Ripley was probably our best goalkeeper since Randolph but he still made quite a number of mistakes that Twardzik would have been and Samson will be absolutely crucified for. I'm not saying for a minute that he was a poor goalkeeper (see above) but with that position I think you get away with things based on preconceived notions rather than actual performances. If you come with any sort of supporter baggage, you get ripped to shreads at the first mistake and its curtains for you. If you have a clean slate, fans will say 'these things happen'. Grimshaw wasn't uniformly awful but he had more bad performances than good over his time at the club. Coming on to a bit of form towards the end - is that enough over the period he was at the club to put him down as a hit? The truth is Grimshaw's performances were very mixed. Hit and Miss is a bit, well hit and miss. Sometimes things don't breakdown that neatly.