steelboy

ben gordon back on loan as well. are they not meant to be skint?

he was hardly the only one who was poor that night. not one outfield player played well. you can just as easily point to his performance in the win over celtic were jeffers was nowhere to be seen

they didn't look too clever when we were down there during the summer. it's a really good draw for us. all the other ties look to be a lot closer especially if celtic have to go inverness.

there's no chance of him getting a new deal.

agreed. we should be lining up exactly as we did back in july with daley in for the humph to begin with. if mccall sets out for another 4-5-1 borefest questions will have to be asked.

is that not due to the reduced squad sizes around the league more than anything else? there aren't many experienced players that aren't playing regular first team football. what experienced players are twiddling their thumbs rather than playing a bounce game?

what's the difference between a bounce game and a reserve game?

he needs to go back out wide. he's been murder recently.

where did you hear that? james forrest is from prestwick and has been with celtic since he was 12. dylan mcgeouch was with celtic as well then went to rangers for three years because celtic released his brother then went back to celtic. youth development is a bit of a lottery. faddy was with hearts and they let him go, james mccarthy was knocked back by celtic. if tommy burns hadn't of snuffed it paul slane and liam gormley could have been big players for us.

to all that prefer higdon.... what games has he actually performed in for us?

that was a strange 4-0 win. we pretty much didn't have a midfield today. 4 at the back with clancy doing his best mouatkil impression, hateley sitting in front of them, law and forbes mincing around doing nothing and 3 up top. from halftime until our subs we were a shambles and then we improved after we moved to 4-4-2. out of the three young ones that came in forbes was dire, i'd say he's finished at fir park now. page was shaky on a day he probably had to show some form and mchugh wasn't great but at least troubled their defence a bit. muprhy was decent, daley not bad and ojamma looks like he'll add something to the squad. i thought nicky law was terrible again, we signed a player who was exciting and dangerous and seem to be intent into a non tackling lasley. we need to get him into areas where he can hurt teams.

sutton markedly upped his work rate after gannon's 'traffic cone' comments and seemed to be spurred on by jutkiewicz's performances. if higdon ups his contribution in a similar manner he'll get a positive response as well.

i don't think blackman, fitzpatrick and gow were contributing much to our defensive record.

you get more chances to score playing through the middle. i agree about the tactics but i'm not sure it would make much difference to higdon. he's always been the same since he came up to the spl, long periods of inaction with clusters of heavy scoring. i don't think he is neccesarily a bad player to have in the squad but his game is too limited to be the only traditional centre forward we have. i think there is more to us being third than the relative merits of higdon and sutton. we've earned it but luck has been on our side on a few occasions and in comparison to last year hearts, united and killie are much weaker.

when have i ever said that? there are a couple of players i don't think contribute enough and a couple i feel we could do better than but i rate (and like) the vast majority of our squad. my post about people getting moved on in the summer was realism rather than my own opinion. i'm disapointed that the youngsters haven't had more of a chance, particularly page and pollock.

frazzle talks pish. in his last 12 months at the club he played every game and we kept 20 clean sheets in 46 games. when he left our defensive solidity went out the window and we started shipping goals all over the place. we are much more likely to concede goals now than when mark was playing every week. saying 'i wouldn't take him back because hutchy is better' is retarded because i'm yet to see us start a game with only one centre half, reynolds is always fit unlike hutchy and because hutchy won't be here forever.

sutton. he may have only had five goals at this point last year but he was playing mainly out wide and was dropped a fair bit compared to higdon who has played all but 90 mins of our games this season. the fact that we've failed to score in 8 out of 20 league games may be linked to the fact that our only centre forward is the slowest player in the league, can't win a header and has generally shite link up play.

or they're waiting to see if we both get through this round of the cup at the first attempt and then they'll play it on the replay date?

i see where you're coming from but looking at our rivals i think we should be able to keep our noses in front of them. hearts look dangerous just now but that's probably just due to the window being open. we just need to add a bit of variety to our game, playing teams for the 3rd time they tend to have a better idea of how to cope with each other. mccall needs to give our opponents something different to think about.

i'm big fan of craigan but i think this is his last season, at least in the spl. he has performed well this year but he's prone to being caught out by his lack of pace now if he misjudges his position by the slightest margin.

one or both of the reserve keepers (hollis is apparently on 800 a week so we might look for cheaper cover) craigan, page, halsman, mckinnon forbes, pollock smith, lawless, howarth that's 10 definites and i also thought daley was out of contract but it seems we gave him a two year deal for some reason. clancy is out of contract and could well be moved on and the club will be looking to cash in on anyone they can out of hutchy, murphy, hateley and humphrey.

i think we still need some midfield cover. jenno and lasley will probably both pick up another couple of suspensions each before the season is out. i'd like to see carswell given a chance but i think we're more likely to see hateley in there with clancy at right back. mixed feelings about hughes. i would have liked to see him given more time if he wasn't costing us much but he wasn't very impressive in his appearances even though i thought he was much better than law and hateley have been in the past two games. whatever resources we have should be spent on getting a striker in (hopefully one with a slightly better goalscoring record than the estonian). hopefully our luck with injuries continues until the summer then we can move 12 - 15 players out and get a few more in that can contribute to the first team.

i thought we were better in the first half when we had hughes and murphy on than in the second when they went off and i thought the same at tynecastle. law and hateley were useless in the first half and although hateley got a bit better law was anonymous for the entire 90 but he seems to be mccall fave so he'll always play. i see where lobey is coming from regarding craggs, lasley and hammell but big hutchy seems to suffer the most at ibrox. he cost us the first two goals today with terrible attempts to win 50/50s with edu and has had a mare every time he has played there. we've failed to score in 8 of our 20 league games which is piss poor. higdon up front alone isn't working, he offers nothing and constantly commits pointless fouls. you've got to wonder what mccall is thinking about with his halftime changes, humphrey hasn't a kick of the ball any time he has ever been up against papac but we put him on anyway. hopefully we can get him moved on during this window and bring in someone competent. mccall needs to do something to freshen things up. if we keep this 4-5-1 shite up we'll be bottom six before long.

it's mainly been hutchy that has been abused jelavic. he got skinned by him in the semi for their winner, got roasted in the 6-0 game and lost him for the opener back in august.