Ya Bezzer!

I was trying to think about what word to describe the performance today and the word I came up with was 'bloodless'. There was just no spark there, no energy, no confidence, we look like a team that's given up on the season already. We started the match OK and arguably had the better of the opening stages but we always looked open at the back and as soon as Kilmarnock scored you could see the heads go down all over the pitch. Last season we came back from losing the opening goals but today the game was over at 1-0. You knew we weren't going to score and we would probably concede again and after 9 minutes of a match that's a pretty shocking state of affairs. The opening goal had a bit of swerve on it but not so much that it should beat the goalkeeper. Sitting behind the goals it seemed to go straight through him. Twardzik actually made a few saves in the match as was far from the worst performer but we just can't afford to lose goals like that when we are in such a fragile position. The defence in front of Twardzik was an absolute shambles. You could excuse Carswell at left back but not experienced players like McManus who had a shocker. I didn't get a good view of the Kerr sending off, but the Kilmarnock players looked furious about it and there didn't seem to much protest from us so by the looks of it he should have walked. Midfield was completely lacking any width again. Jack Leitch wide left was completely anonymous, Josh Law looks like an unnatural fit at wide right. It seems to be fashionable to slate guys like Lasley at the moment and I'm not for any moment saying he had a great game but him and Vigurs in central midfield were the best performing part of the team today but we need to sort out the wide positions quickly because as it stands we have very little threat up front. Again Vigurs wasn't brilliant but he did have four or five really nice touches and what chances we did have it was usually him that was the creator. Sutton was absolutely dire, he doesn't look interested right now and although he's not had good service he has to show more than he has been doing. He's just not working. We are struggling badly right now and it's just not good enough for a forward to expect to have things laid on a plate for him. Ojamaa ran about a lot but had little impact on the game. He rather luckily won a ball against a Kilmarnock defender and was straight through on goal and he dithered and then mishit the ball with his weak foot so he didn't even get a shot off. Summed it up for him. Overall, we look shambolic at the back, we have no width whatsoever in the team and upfront there is nothing going on at all. Things look bleak unless we can find something pretty soon. No exaggeration to say we are a few more bad performances away from a potential relegation season.

That was a 'strongest XI' line up, not one that I'd play against Kilmarnock, therefore I'd have Ramsden and Hammell in there in the full back positions. I know it's not perfect, as I stated, but I think it would be our team with the maximium attacking threat and creativity. It's a line up with all our best players in their strongest possible positions. For me Vigurs is our 'special' player. He is wasted out wide and, I think he needs to be more central. Lasley can play a more defensive role, than he currently does. That means Ojamaa would have to play wide left, where he played really well combining with Nicky Law last time round, so I think he could play there no problem. He's no worse than Ainsworth, or Vigurs for that matter, is at tracking back.

Perhaps not every match but it would be inexcusable in my opinion if he didn't attend most of them.

There were quite a few managers came and went in that time, most of them from outside Scottish football so obviously they would all want to evaluate the squad themselves and come to their own conclusions. Problem was few of them lasted long enough to build a team. Eric Black and Harri Kampman came and went in quick smart time. He was never a first choice under Billy Davies, mostly wasn't under Alex McLeish and was forced on Butcher by administration and shown the door as soon as was possible under the circumstances. In fact apart from his first season when he came in for Dykstra, he only spent 1 season at the club out of 8 as first choice and that season we finished a dismal second bottom that term, one of the worst seasons to follow Motherwell in my memory. Woods was rather fortuitous. Howie basically walked out on the club opening up a berth. Goram was injury prone. Mikko Kaven came and went with Kampmann. Dubourdeau wasn't very good and Mark Brown was a victim of the administration. During and immediately after administration we had to make do with what we had. After Motherwell he made a further 9 professional career appearances for St. Mirren and never made a first team for Livingston.

Funnily enough the last time Hollis was at a Hearts game they lost 4-1 as well.....Vigurs, Ainsworth, Sutton and McFadden if I remember correctly...

Nothing against Carswell but I think our central midfield two should be Lasley and Vigurs. I'd play Ojamma on the left and play Erwin up front with Sutton. It's not ideal and doesn't accentuate everyone's strong points but in an unbalanced squad I think its the best we can do.

O'Brien has played quite a few games at a high level. He'll go straight into the team when fit, I'd imagine. At the end of the day you put out the best team you possibly can to try and win and you'd have to suspect that O'Brien is better than most of the guys we have. Kerr won't have done himself any harm over the last couple of matches, I think he's undoubtedly moved himself up the pecking order for centre half if there is an injury or suspension.

Kilmarnock have lost 100% of their competitive matches on the astroturf.....albeit it was only 1 match....still didn't stop Aberdeen winning there.

Last time I was down at Rugby Park it was 0-0 where did fuck all but hang on to a clean sheet but I'm planning to head down for this one. It's disappointing if true that none of the injured players will be ready to come back in for this one, for some reason I thought we had a free weekend coming up which we could have done with, but apparently not. We have Celtic coming up at Parkhead soon so I think we really need to start picking up points or we could find ourselves stuck in the bottom six as other teams are likely to go through the 10 point barrier in the next 2 to 3 weeks. We should be looking for at 6 points out the next 9 before we roll up to Celtic Park. If we fail to get a decent points tally together before then it could set the tone for the season.

You can't blame McCall for playing Ferguson. It's obvious that he only played him because there was no real choice but what you can blame him for is from deviating from our normal tactical set up and putting out a formation where we played a narrow three in midfield and left a huge wide open space in from of a young player making his debut in an unfamiliar position on his wrong foot; and what protection he did get was from another young player, making only his 3rd league start, again in an unfamiliar position of wide left attacker. To compound that even further the central midfielder furtherest left, was Josh Law, another player out of position! And Law was, in my opinion, the worst performer out of the midfield 3. If we had played our normal 4-4-2 at least Lasley and Carswell are both used to that set up and playing in those areas of the pitch, something Josh Law clearly wasn't. And even if Law had had to play at left midfield due to no one else being available, at least he would have given Ferguson a bit more protection. We played as follows .........................Twardzik........................ Reid...........Kerr..................McManus.......Ferguson ........................Carswell........................... ...............Lasley...............Law.................... Ainsworth.............................................Erwin .........................Sutton......................... You can see the gaps down the side above but, believe me, it was much more apparent on a 100 yard football pitch. Ferguson often had about 40/50 yards of wide open space in front of him. No wonder he was clearly shiteing himself!

Stevie Woods was a great survivor but any time we had a good goalkeeper in the squad he found himself on the bench. Sieb Dykstra and Scott Howie, his predecessor and (first) replacement, were streets ahead of Woods as goalkeepers. It goes without saying that even a reduced Andy Goram was far better. Mikko Kaven was a better goalkeeper than is remembered. Go back and watch the highlights if you don't believe me. Francois Dubourdeau was a poor to average keeper, similar in standard to Woods, which is probably why they switched places a couple of times. Mark Brown was also much better than Woods but wasn't incumbent for very long due to administration. When Gordon Marshall came in it was like night and day after Dubourdeau and Woods. Someone that could actually organise a defence and catch crosses. No coincidence we started to improve as a side after a period in the doldrums that more or less coincided with Woods periods of first team action. He was a good penalty saver and a decent shot stopper but I always say those are the easiest part of goalkeeping. His handling, competency at cross balls, ability to command and organise the penalty box and, infamously, his distribution were all poor and often very poor.

If Carswell and Lasley are to blame for our dearth of creativity and goals then perhaps the critics need to ask themselves how we managed to score so many goals last season. The creative players in our squad are Ainsworth, Vigurs and Ojamaa. Vigurs didn't start and has been injured. Ainsworth has been terribly off form and Ojamaa didn't start and isn't match fit. How the above facts can be laid at Carswell and Lasley's door I'm not sure. I also said at the start of the season that we'd miss McFadden and I think that's proven to be the case so far. Our creative players aren't there right now and that's why we aren't creating, blaming other players is a nothing but a deflection.

I think it's nonsense to say our player of the year last season isn't good enough after watching him 3 times this season. Lasley's performances have been poor but they have to be put into a team context and the facts are the entire team haven't performed in 5 out of 6 halves of football. Our defence is out of sorts with the injury situation, we are missing experienced players like Ramsden and Hammell, the one player in the squad with a bit of vision, Vigurs, has also been missing, we don't have a wide left player at all and Ainsworth hasn't kicked a ball. We need to get our strongest XI out as soon as possible in our favoured 4-4-2 formation and after half a dozen games then we can make judgement calls but now is far too early to be writing players off, no matter how they have performed up till now.

Lasley was very poor against Stjarnan and mediocre in the two league matches but I don't think he's been the worse offender. Josh Law has been dire since he got those two early goals against Stjarnan and far and away our worst two players so far this season have been Lionel Ainsworth and John Sutton.

This is how we lined up today ...................Twardzik........................ Reid........Kerr..............McManus......Ferguson ...................Carswell........................ ............Lasley............Law.................. Ainsworth..................................Erwin... ....................Sutton......................... We had 5 in midfield and it did not work.

People are talkng about our lack of fitness. Is it lack of fitness or is it because we are chasing the game from the first minute of the match to the last?

The two centre backs and the goalkeeper were the only ones that could be satisfied with their performances. Twardzik made a couple of good stops and had no chance with either goal. Kerr was the pick of the outfield players and I've given him the nod.

I agree mostly but as far as I could see we had three central midfielders today. Law and Lasley were the central midfielders, Carswell was playing behind them and Ainsworth and Erwin were out wide.

The first half was an absolutely woeful. The worst I've seen us in a long, long time. It reminded me of the Kevin Christie era performances where we didn't even look like a professional football team. Our positional awareness was terrible, we could not keep the ball, the movement was poor, everyone had their head down and no one was trying to take the game by the scruff of the neck. The second half we improved slightly but not enough to ever look likely to score a goal. There are two points I want to make about the game today. 1 - Our formation was all wrong today. I didn't see how we lined up against Dundee Utd but against St. Mirren we played our standard 4-4-2 and St. Mirren dominated the midfield by having 5 in there. Today we played a sort of 4-3-3/4-5-1 style formation, presumably to stop us being dominated in the middle of the field and it was a complete disaster. The poor young lad Ferguson isn't good enough for this level right now but he was hung out to dry by not having a midfielder in front of him. 2 - I've seen us three times now this season and every game we've been technically poorer than the opposition. St. Mirren and Inverness have passed us off the park in the space of a week, while we constantly give the ball away. Even Stjarnan were better than us. People are talking about our fitness, well our basic technique is well below where it should be. A big improvement against Kilmarnock is essential our else it might well set the pattern for the season.

Chat like this gives me the fear. Considering we still have an injury crisis, we've not really played well this season and our two new loanee signings are probably miles off the pace I don't think we can afford to be that confident. I'm hoping we will win but at this stage that'll do me.

Well, he is now!

He wasn't even the worse goalkeeper at the club last season!

We shouldn't be playing guys in the wrong position. Ferguson should play if Angol and Hammell aren't fit.

He'll be hoping his centre backs don't malky him like the last guy!

Didn't surprise me that he went off injured on Wednesday because I thought he was really struggling on Saturday. He could hardly move. Fair play to him for going out there but it was a shame for the guy.