Ya Bezzer!

Shocking result. Not once but twice. To lose the lead three times is amateur. To give away three penalties is amateur. To not be able to win even a match never mind the tie over two legs is amateur. This whole European 'campaign' is amateur. Another shocking black mark on McCall's cup football record that reads like an absolute fucking catastrophe.

We are wide open to the counter attack. However you have to also remember than Stjarnan didn't score against us in open play, it was two poorly conceded penalties. I don't think we should be playing this in a gung-ho fashion. We need to just play and hope our 'quality' wins the match we score 1 more goal than them and we win the tie. They might be defensively tight and sit in but they are semi pro, inexperienced at this level and seem to be a naturally attacking side. We need to be sensible about how we approach the match, if we let them I suspect they would come out. Constantly pressing them might not be the ideal way to approach this game. It's counter intuitive but I reckon to win this game we need to let them get on the ball.

I don't think we have a terrible European record but I'm not sure if it's "exactly the European record we're meant to". We've beaten the minnows and lost to the big teams but what about the intermediate sides? MyPa we should have beaten, no doubts about that. GKS Katowice, not bad side but a team we could have beaten. Odense, again a decent side but not an impossible task. The only team in the intermediate section that we have beaten is Aalesund. So in overview we have beaten the minnows, lost to the big sides and then lost 3 out of 4 against teams where we probably had about a 50/50 chance of getting through. That's edging towards poor more than it is where we should be and if we lose tonight over two legs against a part time team then our European record takes a further turn for the worse. Like I said, it's not a terrible record but I think we should have done a bit better overall. Hopefully tonight is something on the plus side rather than the negative side.

Sadly burned into an adolescent memory.

I seem to remember he got a new contract at County. With Songo'o and McLean gone he might be further up the pecking order this season.

I bet on them in the first leg!

We are definitely falling behind our rivals in terms of bringing in new players. You need to keep the squad fresh and bring in new players and perhaps it wasn't a coincidence that one of the few players that really shone against Stjarnan was Josh Law. I think you still have to ask why when our turn over is probably higher than ever we are, not only not making any money, but generating large losses. I will say again though that Dundee Utd have brought in another 3 young players from the lower divisions - Callum Morris, Blair Spittal and Charlie Telfer to complement guys they have already brought in through that route like Gary Mackay-Steven, Andrew Robertson. Looking ahead you wouldn't be surprised if Dundee Utd made millions of pounds off these players (Robertson alone is likely to fetch that sort of price) and yet we don't seem to look at this market at all.

I suspect not much of that 100K actually goes into the clubs coffers after taxes and match day expenses. The Europa League prize money pays out in round progressions/participation rather than individual results and is as follows... First qualifying round: €120,000 Second qualifying round: €130,000 Third qualifying round: €140,000 Play-off round elimination: €150,000 Base fee for group stage: €1,300,000 Group match victory: €200,000 Group match draw: €100,000 Group winners: €400,000 Group runners-up: €200,000 Round of 32: €200,000 Round of 16: €350,000 Quarter-finals: €450,000 Semi-finals: €1,000,000 Losing finalist: €2,500,000 Winners: €5,000,000

That'll explain why James and Hart have been England's number 1s over the last decade or so? The fact that the two English goalkeepers that have come up here and done a job, Forster and Ruddy, are 2 of England's top 4 goalkeepers now suggests that the goalkeepers in England aren't exactly pulling up any trees. Randolph, remember, is also a current international. Twardzik deserves more time before being judged. He conceded two penalties for god sake.

Probably a Glypton Grasshopper.

I actually meant to cancel out the -1 and made an arse of it. Sorry.

I have some sympathy for Vigurs last night. Once Law faded out of the game, Sutton was completely isolated. We had nothing going down the right even before Ainsworth was taken off, never mind when Kerr came on, and our central midfield was disfunctional. That meant Vigurs was getting a lot of the out ball with very few options in front of him. He's the player in the squad with the greatest vision in my opinion but even so he can't conjure something out of nothing. You need something up front to play into, someone on the other side to switch the play to, someone to make a sideways pass to. There was no one there driving into those positions for Vigurs to exploit.

I agree mostly with you but the difference is LLanelli were absolutely dismal, the worst team I've ever seen. Stjarnan might not be a great team but they have some good players and are a danger on the break. If Llanelli were a very minor junior league team, Stjarnan are a Dumbarton or a QoS. Going there will be no easy task and the plastic pitch gives them a further advantage. Of course we can win the tie but I wouldn't exactly say I was bullish about it.

Maybe there is something in this. But last night I felt we just didn't have the gears to go through. The momentum of the game swung on the first penalty. At 2-0 down Stjarnan were getting a roasting, suddenly, partly because of a lucky deflection, they are back in the game and the energy of the match changes. When it did change we didn't have the level of game fitness to turn it round again.

Well maybe you think losing 20% of our goals is not a big deal but I do and as I said those players also contributed 9 assists meaning they were involved in closer to 30% of our goals. Any team that loses 20 or 30% of their goals is in trouble, especially a team like ours who aren't exactly rock solid at the back. Both McFadden and Anier need to be replaced ASAP.

Maybe if they had walked to the stadium they would have been a bit fitter! Or maybe they would have been exhausted even earlier....

Players can only keep themselves at a certain level of fitness during the close season. Otherwise we wouldn't need a pre-season. What we lacked was game fitness. Game fitness is a lot different from running round the Strathy or going on the bike in the gym. You need games to have game fitness and we had one proper friendly before this match and we strolled around and hardly got out of a canter. The number of friendly games and the attitude in those games is down to the manager.

They only scored 13 league goals out of 64, about 20% of our entire league goals tally last season or 1 in 3 of our goals outside of John Sutton. And that's excluding assists from both players - 9 in total. You are on a good run of baffling comments Weeyin.

We played Fulham last week and their first match isn't until the 9th of August. They will have a full month of pre-season before they kick off. Contrast with us.

This is the lead up to the second penalty. Two banks of four eh? No centre backs, three midfields within a yard of each other, and wide open spaces around all but one of the Stjarnan players.

He's playing just outside the 18 yard box line. I'm not saying he has to be out on the touchline but he has to be in the channel otherwise they have a free reign down the entire side of the pitch, that is what happened tonight.

Carswell was our best player over the 90 minutes. Josh Law did well to get 2 goals in the first half but wasn't in evidence much in the second half.

Both our full backs get completely exposed. Hammell recently has tended to play tucked in, he should be further out to cover the right sided mifielder. He's played left back his entire career so why he's started doing that I don't know, if it's an instruction or his choice. I thought he was decent enough in the tackle and on the ball but there is so much space down the left it was easy for Stjarnan to hurt us from that position.

Ramsden won just about every header against a bigger man. I thought he was very good in the first half but I didn't get a good view of what he was doing in the box in the in the second half when Stjarnan created a lot more chances so I won't comment on that.

You are right. Losing a 2 goal lead to a semi professional team from Iceland with a totally rotten second half performance is magic and deserves praise. Most of the guys complaining about tonights performance paid £25 to watch it by the way.