Kmcalpin

All 7 young lads [Wells, Ross, Ferrie, Connelly etc] have had their loans extended to the end of the season.

That was an interesting one. I've seen lines drawn on the image which shows the Killie player a very few centimetres offside. I've also seen another image (presumably not used by VAR) showing a couple of players offside, one by maybe 30 -40 cms off.

Good post. Pretty much how I feel as well. I wasn't there tonight but accept that it was a rotten performance. I've seen many such ones over the years going back to the 60s. In those days fans just accepted it for what it was and were just glad to avoid the shops. We had very modest expectations. We might read about teams like Manchester United or Liverpool in magazines and knew little about them. If we wanted to watch the likes of Eusebio or Albert Shesternev then we did so when they visited Hampden Park for an international. Nowadays of course, the English Premier League is afforded wall to wall coverage on the box and the same is true of European football. Last Sunday coming home from the game I reluctantly listened to BBC SCOTLAND Sportsound hoping to catch a quick interview with Stuart Kettlewell, which never came. However we were treated to constant updates of the Liverpool V Manchester United game. A right turn off. Expectations these days are far higher and the English Premier League is the yardstick - everything else gets compared to that and thats just unrealistic.

Definitely a factor Ally. A lot of our lads will be running on empty, quite apart from having to deal with injuries. I'm quite happy to play hoofball but please let us sign a big target man this month to allow us to do it effectively.

Any quick initial impressions of Andrews? What kind of midfielder is he? I know there's not much to go on.

A good summing up. An important point for us. If Killie fans were booing then they should aim that at their own team. At the end of the day their team simply wasn't good enough to earn the win. Yes we were poor but I don't, in any way, feel remorseful or guilty that Killie were robbed by us. If the tables were turned they wouldn't ask the SPFL to give us the 3 points would they. They've done a Dick Turpin to us in the past. Thanks for the point Derek, bring on Hibs.

I'll settle for winning the ball never mind keeping it.

Is anyone surprised at our performance tonight?

We've got a fairly attack minded team but we've got to win the ball first and the team isn't set up to compete or to do that. A midfield 2 is fine if we have possession, but not if the opposition are in ascendancy. Change in formation required.

Killie have a problem tonight. Who to target in Lennon Miller's absence. My money is on Manwhanise.

Every cloud has a silver lining. At least the sub zero temperatures will kill the weeds on the pitch.

Although we have a plethora of midfielders, most are injured, ill, or returning from long term injury so another midfielder will help , even if only to reduce the amount of gametime for those running on empty. No idea what kind of player Andrews is though. Welcome Kai.

Paton? Callachan: training on his own??

Killie don't like 65+ aged fans do they? £22 seems a wee bit steep.

Doubtful I'd think. More likely he's on the way out. We badly need to sign a big targetman, if only on loan.

He's a midfielder, but apart from that I know nothing about him. We're certainly short in that area of the team.

My take exactly. There were several worse tackles that went unpunished. I was shocked when a VAR review was announced.

So St Johnstone will be forced to open up their North Stand, seat by seat. Also noticed their insurance wheeze. They're following Dundee's example. Do we do this to PATG fans? I didn't manage to find out if it also applies to home fans in Perth. Seems this is becoming more common. A nice little earner.

How many does "our" section of their Main Stand hold?

Whilst I get the need to slow things down, I understand the shouts about Ox not releasing the ball early. On a couple of occasions when 10 man Aberdeen were fully committed to attack, we outnumbered them 2 to 1 on the halfway line and quick punt up the park to the likes of the expectant Maswhanise or Vale or indeed almost anywhere would have caused all sorts of problems for them. That's why some fans became animated.

I wonder what stand we'll be allocated at McDiarmid Park for the cup game on the 18th? Hopefully the North Stand. Tickets are meant to go on sale today and I used the link on the official site but this only directed me to the league game scheduled for the 25th, despite being labelled otherwise. Hopefully this is fixed this morning.

I asked around yesterday but no-one seemed to know whay Harry Paton was missing. Someone though did see him outside the ground. Given his "lights on but no one at home" performance against Hearts; his absence yesterday; and management comments about illness, I assumed it was due to a bug. Maybe I'm putting 2 and 2 together to get 6 who knows. Certainly a fit Paton was badly missed yesterday. Long balls worked up to a point but aerial bombardments proved totally fruitless, as we soon sussed before kick off. We lacked energy in the engine room and coped ok as long as we were on the ball; however when Aberdeen chose to attack through the midlde we had little answer and thats one reason why we struggled after the break.

Over the piece, we deserved our win. When the teams took the field, it became clear that we needed to keep the ball on the ground. Each team that visits us seems to be bigger than the last and Aberdeen had 3 lads 6-3 or over. Our line up seemed a bit weird but was no doubt influenced by injury and I suspect illness. We began slowly but after 1 or 2 scares, gradually carved out chances for ourselves and it was a great to see Ewan Wilson score his first goal with a rocket finish. Rubezic rightly saw red. He butted the annoying Watt and probably made contact. If that wasn't enough he feigned to butt him again and then shoved him to the ground. If that isn't a red I don't know what is. MOTM Manwhanise then scored a well taken second. He was a thorn in the Dons' flesh until he was retired. Unbeknown to most of us, Peter Leven and Richard Foster had a slight disagreement in the tunnell at half time and were red carded for their sins. Somewhat predictably, the second half was an anti climax as we sought to see out our lead. At the time I thought it was overly negative but in hindsight, SK likely had an eye on next week's game and told his charges to go easy until full time. Still it was disappointing to see a 10 man team create several chances for themselves, find space around our box and smack the woodwork. Aberdeen look to be a decent side albeit they can handle themselves physically and won't be bullied by anyone. It was encouraging to see the likes of Nicholson, Slattery, Vale and McGinn, but not Koutroumbis, get some game time. Tony Watt worked hard, made a goal but not much came off for him. The gamble of playing with only midfielders worked up to a point. It was ok when we were in possession but not when we were out of it. Halliday had a decent game doing some unglamorous work, but I thought Davor looked a like a wee boy lost. That said he was on a hiding to nothing. He picked up an early yellow card (?) and faced much bigger and heavier opponents. All in all a good result with some good football in short spells, but a few weaknesses as well. I've watched worse games at Fir Park and those who couldn't make it or chose not to, lost out unfortunately.

That was a red card all day long. It occurred right in front of us. At first I thought that Watt had actually been nutted. I've seen several such incidents over the years and the culprit has always been red carded. The culprit's comments to match officials in the aftermath wouldn't have helped his cause either. I suspect though that TW wound him up in some way. You simply can't behave like that and expect to stay on the pitch. Jimmy Teleen's comment afterwards that he didn't see it was nothing short of bizarre as it happened about 2 feet in front of him.

Safe journey back up.