I have seen us play some fantastic football this season, at Falkirk and Aberdeen. We were pretty poor at Tynecastle and Cappielow though but got through in the cup and only lost narrowly to Hearts.
You often see teams hitting long, high balls to forwards when they are lacking in confidence and ideas. Certainly when we are playing poorly you see this, however as I said above when we won at Falkirk and Pittodrie we played excellent football. With the players we have we aren't going to perform excellently all the time - everyone realises that but I think we are capable of performing well regularly and have showed that this season.
What players are played out of position? The only ones I could think of are swapping the wide midfielders around, taht's a tactic that is very common and can yield results. Again, against Aberdeen Imrie had a great game on the right and against Falkirk Vigurs and Cowie did well on the right and left respectively.
The only player who you could say was driven away was Wyness, which was handled very poorly by the club. However, last season Denzil was not up to it in the SPL and the last few times I saw him, he was a shadow of his former slef. He just didn't have the strength or the pace to make it in the SPL, he was too easily shrugged off the ball and he wasn't offering anything to the team.
Regarding offering up contracts to current players, that is just rumours, although regarding Ian Black, Brewster gave him his first start for the club, he tried to sign him when he went to Dundee utd and he has started him in every game this season. That suggests that he sees him as an important part of the side. Obviously Blackie is a player with a temper and Brewster has tried to deal with that, I think that is absolutely correct. Having tantrums when substituted, getting booked every other game and getting sent off for kicking the ball away is unacceptable and had to be dealt with. So far this season Blackie has been booked once and performed superbly, perhaps Brewster's approach should be given some credit?
I remember when we were in the lower leagues, we used to get fans of SPL clubs coming onto the rivals site when we drew them in the cup and assuring us that we were in for a doing, that they were far superior to us. One Hearts fan in particular gave it big licks over his clubs seven internationals, only to come crawling back humbled when we stuffed them at Tynie. Away cup games against lower league clubs in midweek are potentially big hurdles and we have got over them so far this season. The important thing in cup games is to get into the draw for the next round. Dundee Utd, Hibs, Killie and Rangers have all got to cup finals in the last few seasons after having neede extra-time, replays or penalties to beat lower league sides in previous rounds.
You are right to say we're one game from 2nd bottom but what's equally true is that we are one game from third. The only important statistic is that we are where we are. Incidentally, this is the best position we have ever been in at this point in an SPL season in terms of points on the board, goals scored and goals conceded.
I don't think things are perfect, far from it - I have big concerns about our forward line and think we could do with an experienced centre-half. However, credit has to be given where it's due and we have had a better start to the season than anyone could have predicted.