Ya Bezzer!

Playing Pearson in a diamond formation worked quite well, until the second half when he was clearly blowing out his arse.

An enjoyable match and a decent performance from us although we ran out of steam towards the end and Hearts had become the dominant side. Create a lot of chances and might have scored more. Though the keeper was suspect for both Hearts goals, very slow to come off his line for the first, not exactly convincing on crosses either. Hopefully something is done about Delgado. Disgraceful cheating towards the end of the match there.

Minging' day and feeling pretty pessimistic about our chances. I'll be there though and maybe I'll be surprised. Maybe.

Celtic match aside our last four home attendances have been v Kilmarnock 4,136 v Ross County 3,545 v Partick 3,963 v Inverness 3,659 Hearts will probably bring a decent crowd on Saturday but with poor form, winter weather and Christmas shopping and bills coming up you can't see much money coming in from the turnstiles in the immediate future. We've never been a well supported team but even recently we used to be a 4,500 - 5,000 team, these days we are 3,500 - 4,000, basically we've lost 20% of our fan base. Our recent European 'adventures', and those of other clubs, have shown that Scottish clubs can't really compete at European level any more and therefore the appeal of challenging for a European spot has been ruined when most fans know what it really amounts to is a £30 home ticket defeat to third rate opponents. No one can win the league except Celtic and the whole league has become a boring procession and as we know at the other end the relegation struggles are pretty dire when they consist of heavy defeats in dark, soulless stadiums in the freezing cold. Is it any wonder fans are drifting away? Even cup football which might just be the last remaining bright spot has only seen fans completely alienated by some of the worst performances and defeats to lower league clubs you are ever likely to see. The thing that really worries me is that most of our problems are outside our own control.

If we had 11 players with the attitude of Dougie Imrie we wouldn't be where we are. Maybe it's why Accies have consistently been better than us over the last couple of years as well. I've said it before and I'll say it again Hamilton have recruited better players than we have with a quarter of the money. Fair play to them.

I don't know if McGhee will get us out of this but I'm prepared to support him until such time as I can make a reasonable judgment. 31 defeats in 53 league matches since the beginning of season 2014/15. McGhee is responsible for 3 of those to give it some perspective.

Kilmarnock, Dundee, Inverness, Partick and Ross County all picking up at least a point this afternoon, basically all the teams we should be competing with minus Dundee Utd.

Well Robinson came on so.....

Goes back further than that.

If we lose today it will be 31 defeats from 53 league matches since the beginning of the 2014-15 season.

Inverness looked better for about 25 - 30 minutes. We need a bit of luck and a confidence boost but I don't think we are a million miles away from being at least competitive in the league. Don't think any of the teams outside the top four, maybe five, are much better than us but we sure is a big grey cloud sitting over us right now.

Not if they both gain a point. For some reason I have a feeling our away form is going to be better than our home form for the immediate future.

You can put out any formation, any team, with any instructions and any tactics but if you have basically been losing for a year and a half then it's not going to work, at least immediately. Player confidence is very low and you can see that out on the pitch. However I think we have improved on the latter stages of the Baraclough era but it's not going to be something that turns around in 3, 4 or 5 weeks. McGhee has to be given time to get us going again, not a week by week autopsy of what hasn't miraculously changed in the last 7 days. A few weeks ago we didn't even look like a rotten team, we looked like 11 rotten footballers who had never seen each other before. Now we look a lot more organized with some actual structure and team work going on. We had 16 shots on Saturday - a big improvement on recent form. The quality of the final ball, the final shot, the final cross is still lacking but I do believe we are only one step away now, a month ago we were miles away. It's not going to be easy to get to where we all want to be and everyone has to accept that there is probably still a lot of disappoints and false dawns before we actual do but the objectives need to be longer term, at the end of the season we need to look back and evaluate, but there is still a lot of football to be played before then. By all means give your views on individual matches, individual performances and so forth but also put those individual matches into a larger and more important context. This season is surely going to be about slow gains, slow improvement not a sudden transformation.

Technically correct maybe, but the referee blew his whistle for the penalty to be taken when the players involved were already in the box. At the very least the referee has to make sure all players are outside the 18 yard box before the penalty is taken. What Thomson has basically said there is "the rules only matter if the penalty is saved".

Moult for the goal.

Grimshaw had his best game today but I don't think there is much to his game. Don't see any goals or assists coming off this guy. Is he really a step up from Carswell? Pearson was apparently carrying an injury today. The fact that he even played tells you something.

We can agree on the left back. Angol was better than this guy. Fletcher had no impact on the game whatsoever, at least McDonalds gets himself on the ball and doesn't hide, even though his performances have not been great this season we are poorer without him on the field most of the time. Inverness played 2 at the back today with full backs pushed right up into midfield, Tansey as anchor man, three across the middle and the supporting striker dropping back to give them basically 7 midfielders. Talk about flooding the middle of the park! We really needed to get them down the wings but Ainsworth and Johnson were poor and Joe Chalmers was terrible.

I think Moult will score up to a certain level but I'm not sure he's a Top 6 level player. Still our best bet for a goal at the moment right enough.

I thought we'd get stuff like this based on the chat at the game. I disagree. Take away the penalty decision and the game comes down to Inverness hitting a thunderbolt that goes in and us hitting a thunderbolt that comes off the underside of the bar. Louis Moult has also missed free header a yard from the line in the first half that would have got us right in the match. Don't remember Inverness really making Ripley earn his money. Spent most of the match going forward but Inverness have been very clinical with their chances. Not saying there aren't deficiencies in the team but today was hardly "one of the worst", we've played poorer and won this season. Taking off McDonald was a mistake because we were poorer without him on the ball. Also Vigurs is miles better than most of the guys that have passed through our midfield in recent times, and I'll keep that view until the likes of Leitch, Taylor or Grimshaw hit a volley like that.

In terms of TV highlights the BBC does pretty much all it can with the available rights it has. You can say that you want longer highlights but the BBC are not allowed to show them. Comparing Sportscene to MotD is a bit like comparing the Scottish Premiership to the English Premier. You can do it if you like, but it doesn't get you very far. MotD gets about 4 million viewers, Sportscene will get a tiny fraction of that. In fact Scottish football gets way more media coverage that it ought to get rather than not receiving a 'fair' amount. If you take something like Glasgow Warriors they are pulling in more fans than most Premiership level football teams. Braehead Clan, an ice hockey team are getting better attendances than teams like Inverness, Hamilton or St. Johnstone but get next to no coverage in the Scottish media.

To be fair he had more or less had two seasons of injury and poor form. Was going to be difiicult for him to get a gig at a decent level.

We've been shite for a long time, confidence doesn't just return over two or three games, its going to be a long term project over months. If you look at Ross County last season it took them 4 or 5 months to slowly turn things round, making small improvements and then finally finishing very strongly. In our poorest passages of play yesterday we still looked like a team rather than individuals so that alone is a big improvement and I think everyone most look at us now and have more confidence in the shape and organisation of the team.

Josh Law. Funnily enough the only other time I gave him a MotM was against Kilmarnock

Think McGhee is just giving everyone a fair crack of the whip but its pretty obvious our best front two is Moult and McDonald.

Kilmarnock probably should have won, they had most of the chances, although not too many clear cut ones. We did reasonably well though, looked organized and if you can hold out till the last ten minutes in any game you have a chance. Got to give Josh Law a mention, I've been a critic but he was my MotM. Very good today, the left hand side is a concern though because Chalmers was poor again.