fizoxy

O'Donnell was unlucky with the miss, he did well to sneak in at the back, but the ball just didn't bounce. He might get his place back if Sol and Ojala are still injured on Saturday, and I see O'Connor is out too. Otherwise Mugabi should keep his place out there. It was a shame that Maguire got sent off, as he was starting to build up a run of games again, but it was a pointless challenge to get the yellow. Others have spent a lengthy period on the bench after a red, so Maguire may have to wait a while. It looks like it's going to take an injury or a suspension for Carroll to get back in, and McGinley is on 5 yellows, so that may not be far away. Woolery looks to be growing in confidence, and tonight was definitely his best game. Like others, he's not going to be on it all the time, but he has the potential to be unplayable on his day. Lamie is just plain solid now. Didn't miss a thing. Alexander has some record of improving the players he inherited. Our pitch held up well considering, but it was getting dangerous near the end, and I was more worried about a ridiculous late abandonment than Utd scoring. The Dundee match was a clever ruse to avoid winning manager of the month. Alexander is a clever guy.

Didn't see the Maguire sending off, was it a straight red?

Dundee unlocking our defence by playing the ball forward aimlessly and often was a tactical masterclass. Lamie was the least shite of the bunch, but we did conceed three easy goals, so that's not saying much. I didn't think Shields deserved to be hooked over anyone else, but the two subs looked dangerous for five mins. Out inability/refusal to make tactical changes when things clearly aren't working is why we are going to be up and down like this. It was clear 5 minutes in that we were up against it. Fair play to Slattery for playing chicken with the ref, he just kept on fouling away after that yellow. I now believe he will go the season without a red.

We clearly screwed up their game plan and hurt their feelings because we dared to try and beat them. The way they played and their reaction afterwards suggested they expected to just turn up, get the three points, and go home and celebrate moving up to second. For a team that just got promoted, and are now only 3 points above us with the same number of wins, that's a bit rich. They were whining about time wasting as soon as we scored, and once they were 2-0 down and realized they were toast, they started throwing the dummy when the real game management started. I think their league position has got to their head, which won't be a problem if they keep that attitude when playing the so called smaller teams.

Went for lamie due to the goal on top of his excellent defensive performance. Both he and Mugabi are benefitting from not being asked to do anything silly, like play passes, and the movement and workrate from the forwards helped them greatly as the ball wasn't coming right back to them. Hopefully this will allow us to get Ojala fully fit and not rush him in to get injured again.

There's a decent shout for man of the match for all the outfield players. The back four were all excellent, and handled the few times hearts broke with ease. Lamie picking Ginelly's pocket when he was clean through was something else, and he won everything in the air along with Solholm. Our second goal was similar to that at Aberdeen, with another excellent ball in from Goss to Lamie. McGinley was solid and cut out the nonsense, and matches Slattery in being snide as fuck. We need to find ways to accommodate Bevis in every game, he is box office value. The key to the press working was the front three, especially shields and Woolery, who both had their best games for us. Shields is rapid and ran himself into the ground. We suddenly have a great set of options across the front three. Also, that's two games without short corners, nice.

Hopefully if she goes, it's in the next couple of weeks or she holds off until January. I'm going to be back for some games in December, and I'm still pissed about the Killie game getting called off the day Diana died. I'd already turned up for the supporters bus as well. Alexander tends to stick with a winning team, but I'd be surprised if Slattery wasn't back in. That midfield against Hearts would be a disaster. Roberts will also drop out, so I assume Woolery will be back in to body a guy, run past another guy, then take the rest of the game off.

It looked like the groin strain by the way he walked off. Hopefully the international break gives him time to recover.

Lamie was brilliant when he came on, threw himself at everything. I've moved on from thinking he's a bombscare, he's a solid center back. I thought McGinley was fine too, he got overrun when they switched to a back 4, but bringing on Carroll nullified that. Once mugabi realizes he can just run through people up the right wing he's going to be a fun right back to watch. Solholm was really shaky in the first half, and almost cost us a couple of times. He was better in the second half, and Ojala was solid until he had to go off The midfield was awful. One day I'll understand the tactics around it. The win column suggests it works, bit it is not fun at all to watch. Slattery willost likely be back for the next game. Those finishes from VV were excellent, and Goss played his part in both goals. If we can get decent deliveries into the box Watt and VV will score plenty. Kelly is the man.

Tempted to go with Van Veen for the obvious reason, two sublime finishes out of nowhere, but we don't get anything out of that game without Kelly. That fingertip save near the end was something else.

Tough going. I don't think it's fair that were this bad when I'm already feeling shite. The universe shouldn't work that way.

He will inspire them to glory with his stories of playing for rangers.

Hopefully our media team have a Halloween party to go to, radio silence would be best I think. We are totally one dimensional tactically, and our inability to adjust to situations in the game is going to kill us. We have enough in the squad to eke out points here and there, but I feel we should be doing a whole lot better with who we have. O'Donnell deciding he didn't want to play the last 20 minutes hung us out to dry, and Rangers took the opportunity to boost their goal difference, when other teams may have coasted We panicked on the ball the rare times we had it, and we looked like we were more concerned with standing in nice neat lines as opposed to doing anything useful. O'Hara made a forward pass, so he beat grimshaw there, but he also just stood and watched folk run by him multiple times. Goss and Slattery were wasteful when they had the ball, and our full backs were left horribly exposed. The system only works if they are an attacking threat. Overall, you don't expect much against rangers, but to throw away a lead like that then completely chuck it at the end is piss poor.

I don't like VAR at all, but I know it is inevitable that we're going to end up with it. What is also inevitable is that Scottish Football will find a way to make an absolute shit show of it, since the officials managing VAR are the same ones who are hopeless on the pitch. I also agree with the above, this will lead to even more decisions going the way of the Glasgow two. I like the way it's implemented in cricket, and baseball to a lesser extent, where challenges can be made, and you lose your challenge if you're wrong, but is suits those games because they have frequent breaks in play anyway.

Terrible refereeing, are they held to account at all? VAR can still fuck off though. The result was probably fair, on the balance of play, but it's not up to the officials to even these things out.

Was he threatened with a contract extension?

Oh man, I should have just went back to bed instead of watching GA gaslighting us in his after match interview. What the fuck? I can take that it may not have been as horrible as I'm making it out, but it wasn't our best first half performance of the season. Jeez.

Somehow, even though we were terrible, their keeper had to make a few excellent saves to keep us out, and we had the disallowed goal as well, while Utd had two chances. Weird one, maybe this is how the teams we beat felt. McGinley and Slattery were especially poor today, although they had plenty of competition. Turning a promising break for us into a goal for them just summed us up. We need to ditch the front three, we have our best striker playing out wide, displaced by a once again piss poor Van Veen. Woolery shows flashes then hides, which is frustrating as he's shown he can go past his man when he's not competing with grimshaw in the backpass Olympics. He inexplicably seems to be one of the first names on the team sheet, I don't get it. We're going to be up and down like this, so not worrying, just like I wasn't looking out the passport after a couple of decent wins. Now I'm taking my covid booster generated 103 fever back to bed and going to pretend the game didn't happen.

It was Slattery who was beaten by mulgrew. It was a good cross that took out the keeper, and the attacker is always going to have the advantage running onto that ball, the criminal part was Slattery getting beaten so easily after giving away the dumb foul that led up to the goal.

Watching grimshaw manufacture ways to pass the ball backwards is getting old. Disappointed in the disallowed goal, you see players climbing like that all the time. Overall we've been poor and don't have any cohesion, but we're still in the game at least. Hopefully we can make some adjustments at half time, as we're not going to create much against them the way we are set up.

Not scoring against that defence was criminal. We were robbed of a stonewall penalty, but we were so tentative in attack. There were a good number of good balls put across the box that no one gambled to get on the end of, and there were so many occasions we get the ball in wide areas and shat it, opting for a backwards pass. I don't think anyone in particular had a bad game, but we did give them too much respect. I thought we'd try to noise them up, but we were tame. They looked dangerous on the counter but only had one other chance I can think of.

This pretty much confirms that his signing was agreed before Alexander came in. At the time I thought it was a good bit of business based on what he did for Livi and how he played against us, but he doesn't fit into our system at all. He was involved in our goal at St Johnstone and played a part in almost turning that game around. That doesn't cancel out the penalty miss at hibs though. He needed to be a far better player to overcome the unlikeablility factor. Weird timing though.

Having a striker that gets a nosebleed in front of goal, or in attacking situations in general, is problematic. Woolery needs a spell on the bench. O'Hara needs to be taken off set pieces. We have so many threats from those, and he's nullifying them. If he does play then he needs a plan b if he doesn't get himself fouled. Thought Bevis and McGinley we're fine defensively today, and the latter can be snide when he needs to be, but if he can't put in a half decent cross he needs to make way. Similar to O'Hara, we are leaving attacking opportunities on the table with him out there. We need to weigh that against the risk of Carroll murdering someone, but I like living on the edge.

"we're getting Celtic at a good time, they're the worst they've ever been."

We had so many chances to get back into that game, but I guess our conversion rate was unsustainable. Amazingly that must have been the fewest chances we've conceded from open play. That miss before the half time whistle was criminal. The penalties looked soft, but the shite effort for the second gave us a glimmer, then Woolery shat himself when he had a chance to score. I'm just surprised he didn't find a way to pass that one backwards. Van Veen looked hungover. That was the first time I've saw Beni, some player. Gordon could probably play another ten years. He had one excellent save, the others were pretty routine.