Kmcalpin

I would imagine its to raise funds. Surely income from any legal source is to be welcomed? A pound raised from a bucket collection is just as important as one raised from a donation/race night or whatever.

Great post. Most of the first team squad will be on at least £50,000 per year and some considerably more. I don't know how others feel but that's not a bad income in my book.

Offensively I cannot and will not disagree. He's done the business. His pace is badly needed. Defensively he's left a lot to be desired and has offered his full back little or no protection. If we stick with him and he with us then we have to make up for his defensive shortcomings by asking other players to take on additional responsibilities and try to coach him. We pays our money and we takes our choice.

Overall I agree, but with some detailed differences. Lee Hollis I suspect will move on and I'd look to replace him with a better calibre of keeper. Hutchinson will move on so that will leave one vacancy in defence. Given that I'd like us to sign Craig Reid as he can play full back, centre back and midfield - just the versatile kind of player we need. It will of course depend on Stuart McCall's view of our defence. We may come to an arrangement with Bob McHugh to allow him to move on. The other out of contract players? Faddy - I don't know - good on his day but not cheap and injury prone. McManus - not cheap / has he strengthened our defence? Ainsworth - blown hot and cold - good to have in your side if you're better than the opposition, but not so good if we're under pressure. Hammell - will probably resign. Keith Lasley - now 34 and young guys coming through - should we offer him a 2 year deal? A lot will of course depend on a decreasing budget and Stuart McCall's view on whether a very poor goals against record is a cause for concern or not. In this regard, does he look to bring in a better goalie? Is it the central defence to blame? Is central midfield defensively very weak? Offensively, we are in not too bad a position, but defensively we do need to strengthen.

Business as normal I'd guess. Leeann was not an office bearer of the organisation.

I'd like to see us start with a midfield of Ainsworth, Lasley, Reid and Vigurs with the latter playing on the left. ZFA and / or Leitch ready to come on if that proves a disaster.

I'm not especially bothered who manufactures our kit as long as its a good deal for the club and I trust MFC on that. As for the design......it has to be the traditional hoop in some shape or form for me and oh please drop that horrible black away kit.

Just forced myself to watch the highlights. I agree that McManus and Hutchy didn't cover themselves in glory but were probably only culpable for 2 of the 5 goals (thats more than enough). Central midfield and full backs too displayed comical defending. In fact did we have a central midfield?

I think its more the amount of set pieces, crosses from which we concede. If our goalie and centre backs could defend them better then there would be less of a problem, but they obviously can't. Given that, its probably better to minimise their capacity for making mistakes. Against Celtic for example Gunnar conceded a totally unnecessary corner as the ball was going past harmlessly. He did the right thing in palming it out as he didn't know where it was going but one of a number of our lads who could see perfectly well what was going on could have shouted but none did. In doing so we set ourselves up to make a mistake - on that occasion we didn't fortunately.

Very true. Our two full backs also withdraw into the centre when we're under attack making it easier for the opposition to fire in crosses. I would take issue with Weeyin (respectfully of course) in that our midfield is, in part, to blame for the amount the amount of set pieces and crosses from which we concede. They allow the opposition time and space on the edge of our box and on the wings to fire in accurate crosses or have pots at goal. The more the ball is in or around our box then the greater the chance of conceding corners or fouls or crosses. As others point out responsibility for defending runs throughout the team. In part too Stuart McCall's philosophy in not signing an out and out defensive midfielder causes problems. In the short term it may be worth deploying Craig Reid in a central midfield role (I think Shaka mentioned that) to shield the defence. He also possesses a bit of pace which is in short supply in our engine room. Maybe not the answer but worth a try.

I'll settle for 3rd spot Allan, hopefully a European spot, and no more silly beatings.

Pretty well sums up my view. The root cause of most of our onfield problems was the midfield. Fraser Kerr should not have been playing wide right and Iain Vigurs should have been on the left. Jack Leitch was all over the place. The team selection did not match our intended tactics. With a totally unbalanced and disorganised midfield the defence was always going to be under pressure and our attack starved of decent ammunition. Changes should have been effected early on but never were. All that said, the players were not up for it and just did not compete. Get our midfield right and the rest will fall into place. All is not lost and we shouldn't go over the top but lessons must be learned for next Saturday. A start would be an organised committed team able to compete. Bring on St Johnstone.

I stand corrected - it may indeed have hit off Faddy's hand. However to award a penalty for that would be ludicrous.

Are you sure? As I recall it was daisy cutter. In any event he fairly walloped the ball and if it had ricocheted off someone's hand it would have been a very harsh penalty indeed.

Who is blaming the fans? We are where we are. It seems to me that you're blaming our Directors. If we hadn't brought in players like McFadden and McManus we would still have incurred a significant loss. To have completely stemmed those losses would have resulted in a vastly poorer squad with a consequent loss of gate income and sponsorship money. In terms of investing in the youth system I agree - but this is a very long term solution. If we invested say an additional £400k per year in our youth set up this would take a good number of years to feed through to the first team. Any problems with our youth set up now and in the past couple of years stem from errors made 5/6/7/8/9 years ago. Running a football club requires a very fine balancing act and its not always easy to get it spot on.

In the last year or two we've been on the wrong end of some horrendous refereeing decisions at Tannadice and I hope our luck changes today. Part of the problem may be that United fans moan at the referee from start to finish - they are one of the few sets of fans in the country who can go home after a their side has won a match and played well with long faces moaning about the ref or unfair opposition. I would have no qualms about us winning today through shocking refereeing decisions - our luck there must surely take a turn for the better. In fact we're due a massive change of luck in our last 4 games.

For better or worse, many/most fans simply don't appreciate the financial position the club is in. Until they do membership won't increase significantly. That said some would never ever join for various reasons - "All I'm interested in is being entertained on a matchday/the club's finances are nothing to do with me etc". It will take scare tactics of a sort to change that position. God forbid, if the club was to announce that it may have to enter administration in a few weeks unless things improved, that would provide a fillip. Its not easy and I appreciate that some fans find money in short supply.

Don't forget Gavin Gunning taking out Iain Vigurs off the ball (no penalty) and Gunning's deflected free kick.

I see our club's women's team run through the Community Trust seems be very ambitious and is signing some decent players in an effort to climb up the leagues. Good luck to them I say. I'll support any MFC related team in C & A!

Just a warning folks - age concessions for Tannadice are 65 not 60.

A lot will depend on the referee, as United are currently a pretty physical and cynical outfit. If he's strong and gives us a fair hearing then we have a good chance of picking up a point or 3.

Agree 100%. Until our final league position is known we will not know the playing budget for next year and therefore how far we can push the boat out for individual players.

Nothing wrong with what we're doing. These are discussion boards and there's nought wrong with that, as long as debate is kept is kept courteous and respectful. Yes there's gossip and rumours with some facts thrown in, but that's what most football fans do. We often hear players' points of view, usually from agents or third parties, but rarely the club's on contract / transfer negotiations. Thats the way it should be unless a player's agent starts stirring it in which case the club has been to slow in the past to come forward to counter any spurious claims - not quite so bad these days. A few controversial / economical with the truth comments from a third party was usually sufficient to egg on many fans to start slagging off the club. However many fans are a wee bit wiser these days when an agent states the club hasn't been in contact or made a derisory offer to their client. We've all heard "reliable" rumours about transfer targets, some as recently as last Saturday, but a few are best kept quiet until the club and player conclude business.

We play the strongest team we can field until the end of the season. Very few players are going to be open or daft enough to come out and say I'm moving on. The club will pretty much know who wants to stay and who wants to move on. The trouble is that some players will want to hang off until they see what other offers are coming in. In such circumstances Stuart McCall has said recently that MFC will adopt a harder line this year. Offers will be made to the players the club wishes to retain and deadlines set. If they don't sign by the set date then replacements will be sourced. Fair enough in my book.

Sadly not. We all know its not going to happen. Even if a strong individual match commander was to take a more proactive approach it would not be supported by his / her superiors. Even if Police Scotland was to take a more robust approach that would be "frowned upon" by the Scottish establishment.