CaleyD

As the lady said to the gingerbread man!!! It was a fair skelp he took to the napper, just hope it's not a concussion as I think that means he has to take a minimum 2 week break from competitive matches....I could be wrong though.

Maybe it as the gloves that were causing Blacks attitude issues....stroke of genius that he left them at home yesterday. I think Niculae having the gloves on made him a little top heavy as he seemed to be on his erse a fair few times :015: Seriously though...I noticed a couple of our players sliding about early on yesterday and it brought back memories of that spell under Robbo when it appeared that our whole squad had gone out with no studs on at all and seemed to spend more time slipping on their butts than anything else.

Perhaps not Kencar and I share your reservations...however "every cloud has a silver lining" as they say, and if this is the case then the absence of Wyness has proved to be a blessing in disguise.

Thanks, I've saved the article for when next years accounts are distributed :023:

Why is everyone so certain that Niculae's wages (or a portion thereof) are being met by Orion (Alan Savage)?

You can't screw the nut too tight or you risk killing his spirit. All he needs to control is the petulance and I think he'd doing a decent job of that.

A much improved performance compared to what we have seen in the last 2 or 3 games. When Brewster arrived back at first he seemed to have an immediate impact and our performance away to Hibs was top drawer despite the result. Today we proved again that we can get results when we choose to keep the ball on the ground and play football....add to that the fact that Brewster has found a way to utilise the best we have available in the squad with the setup he put out there. I'm not convinced we had a "solid" formation on the park today as it seemed to drift from 4-1-4-1 to 4-2-3-1 to 4-4-2 to 4-3-3, the players seemed to be reading the game and each other pretty well and adapted to suit the play....I think this gave Dundee Utd huge headaches as they were finding it difficult to man-mark or even play any kind of zonal positioning. Having that extra man sitting in front of the defence paid dividends as he was able to drop back and cover when Hastings or Proctor were pushing forward. The game plan today didn't suit Niculae at all, he doesn't have the speed to play the lone striker role and despite turning defenders he didn't have the pace to play the ball and chase it....however, you could see he was trying and I would not question his commitment. Not sure if his shaking the refs hand was time-wasting or getting at the Utd fans who were going ape over not having got any of the dozens of handballs we apparently committed in the box....a bit of gamesmanship and if nothing else it got a laugh. Rossco.....better start bringing a cushion with you on match days as your going to be spending a bit of time on the bench if Proctor keeps performing the way he has been. Don't think the lad put a foot wrong today and it would be hard for him to take if Tokely were to get straight back in to the squad. I'd go as far as to say that Proctor out there today reminded me very much of a younger Rossco....long may it continue. Hope Hastings is ok as that was a nasty knock he took...I heard the "clonk" from the stand as he was caught....Wouldn't be surprised if he had a serious concussion and he looked white as a sheet as he was carried from the pitch. His departure saw McBain move into the left back role (which I think should be his new position on a permanent basis) and the arrival of Wilson looked to be causing the Utd Defense problems. Rankin and Black....if these guys didn't prove today that they are worthy of a regular start then I have no idea what it will take. The two of them were out there giving it everything. If a discipline issue exists with Black then Brewster has to find some way of dealing with it that does not result in him missing games. As to the opposition..... Wilkie...all the footballing ability of a Hippo in high heels. He spent more of the game on his erse than anything else and his endless attempts to run through players instead of around them should have seen him on at least 2 yellows. Not since Viduka in "that game" have I seen any player so entirely owned by the ICT defence Dods...We talk about missing him from our squad this season, but I tell you something, based on todays performance I wouldn't have him anywhere near the current ICT team...he was largely ineffective and seemed more intent on fouling our guys than playing any kind of football.

At game and have to say i agree with commentators, it's a different team out there today

When Brewster said he was taking the team for Spin lessons...I automatically assumed it was to the gym :029:

Championship Manager, or whatever they call it these days, I suspect :015:

Quality :015:

I think Clacher has a point there, and it's one that's been raised by a few people. The treatment of Rory may not have been a direct result of what's happening elsewhere, but a definite undercurrent of dissatisfaction and frustration exists among many of the fans and the results seems to be that people are going that bit further in all reactions to things they don't like or disagree with. It's all about "the mood" - and it's a fact that people who are already in a bad mood about things will snap at others, even when they may have done little to warrant such treatment. I don't think people's thoughts on Rory have changed any of late (for the better or worse), so it's the only thing I can think of to explain the treatment he received last week.

Them's the risks you take I guess. But it would be a waste to just jeep him out of the squad on the basis of "what if's" and going for the op just now would be an almost certain end to his season...since this could well be his last season then it makes sense to get the most out of himself....even at the risk of being injured again.

On mine you can burn a physical CD/DVD to D, E, G, H, J, K, L or M or save the Image File to C, F or N...unless of course your sending it over to the unit I use as a server which has another CD/DVD and 2 hard drives or to the other PC in the house which has 2 CD/DVD's and 1 hard drive. Although technically when it comes to G, H, J, K, L, M they are really called A, B, C, D, E & F...the other letters are just nicknames used by the PC to tell the supervisor what it should burn where and it saves confusion when you already have an A, B, C, D & E elsewhere. Hope that clears it all up.

Think the BBC and Sky both get a chance to televise matches in the cup, so we'll probably see more than one game on the box. We were unlucky on our trip to Easter Road earlier in the season and if we can get back to playing as we did then I would fancy our chances.

The shoulder thing has already been discussed somewhere, but in short I believe that another knock will not make the injury any more serious in itself. The risk at present is that it could simply go at any time without much needed to help it on it's way (a bit like most of best players really!!!). Any operation to fix it would see him out for most of the rest of the season (in terms of playing)....so he has decided to delay the op and take the risk with the shoulder as is.

Some people get all the luck!!!

The biggest ever loss to this club was David Sutherland. Some people disliked him for various reasons, but you at least knew where you stood and we never witnessed any of the BS we're seeing now

I'd far rather those responsible just took notice of the reaction of those around them and let the whole idea of booing players during warm-up etc drop than it become necessary for the club/stewards to get involved.

Not at the last couple of games, but if people keep behaving like idiots then the rest of us will know where to point the finger.

Ground regulations actually do state that any noise likely to cause confusion, annoyance or a nuisance is not permitted.....so technically there is a rule against it if you wanted to be pedantic.

I hope you like Cherries :015:

I think "played well" is pushing things a little, but we certainly showed the determination to dig in and grind out a result once we got our nose in front. I'll take the same again if it means another result. Agreed...he will have a point to prove after the way he was treated there. Probably more likely to see him make an appearance in this one....even though he was kitted for the match against St Mirren he was never going to take himself on (unless things were looking desperate) given the fact he would still have been suffering the effects of being under anesthetic a couple of days before the game.

All valid comments...but as I just said on your other thread, it's all about communication. If the club keep tripping themselves up with half truths then they have to accept, or at least understand that conspiracies will arise and people will view it as if the club are trying to hide or cover-up something.

You may very well be on the right track, but if it was all as straight forward as that then why have the club created such a web of lies and half truths to cover up what has been going on. It's at the stage where the lies don't even fit with what we have been told previously. Everyone makes mistakes...that's life, but some people at the club need to realise that the club is bigger than them and if they have fecked up then they would respected far more for holding their hands up and admitting it than telling lie after lie after lie in an effort to cover their own butt and create even bigger problems. I do know that despite my early fears about Niculae becoming an outcast due to his wages is not the case. He gets on well with the whole team and the whole team get on well with each other....the only problems that exist are between players and management/club officials - partly because of the money thing, but mostly because none of them can get a straight answer from Brewster with regards to their futures. I found myself having a wee laugh last night when lying in bed thinking about what's happening with the club and some people might think I have just gone mad when I say what I am about to say, but.....I was at a meeting last week with Mike Smith (and DJS) following some issues I had raised about how certain things were being communicated (or not) to the fans and I came away from it feeling pretty positive that he had listened to what had to be said, taken on board the fact that everyone had a part to play in changing things and moving it forward to prevent future animosity between fans and the club in regards to the non-footballing side of things. Cards were laid on the table and I got a better understanding of the problems and frustrations he faced as well. We all agreed that things could have been done differently by everyone to prevent certain events and the important thing was to learn and move to prevent it in future instead of continuing a war of finger pointing. Between us we came up with a couple of ideas to change and hopefully improve matters. Some things have already been done by Mike/The Club and I think everyone has witnessed that in terms of Stewarding etc the Matchday experience is a bit more relaxed and we (the fans) don't feel like we have Stewards breathing down our necks every 2 seconds...it's less intimidating for all concerned....hopefully we can work together to improve things further and get better communication on what's what for the fans. Anyway, to cut a long story short....what made me laugh was that here we were, getting plans in place to sort what we all perceived as one of the biggest issues between club and fans and no sooner were we getting that sorted when the club were busy shooting themselves in the foot on the footballing side and almost recreating the issue in another area. When you put the personalities aside....be that Mike Smith, Craig Brewster, Alan Savage or any of the Players or Fans....it comes down to one thing.....Communication. As the song goes "Aint what you do, its the way that you do it...that's what gets results"