DoofersDad

I find it hard to believe anyone actually thinks we are not already in a relegation fight. There are only 8 points between 4th and 11th position and all those clubs are capable of beating each other and all of those clubs will have good runs and bad runs from time to time. The truth of the matter is that we are both in a relegation battle and in the mix for a possible European place. Partick and Motherwell may have got thumped at the weekend but both were on a good run before that. Fortunes can change quickly and we are one of several teams who could become a little isolated in 11th place with a bad run of form. Similarly, if Dundee Utd go on a little run like Partick did recently, they could be well and truly back in the mix as well. Personally I think we will be safe enough but nobody should take anything for granted at this stage of the season.

It will be interesting to see how the Hospice and the club deal with this. For a number of reasons the Hospice has a clear duty to ensure they can use the shares to generate as much money as possible. It may be that one wealthy individual or a consortium would wish to buy the lot, or a large proportion, at a price well over the face value but then again, maybe not. At the other end of the spectrum, there are people who regularly donate to the hospice and who might well be persuaded to "donate" a little more in return for a few shares. For instance, the hospice could give a donor 1 share for every £5 donated. There may be a lot of people who would be happy to "donate" in this way as they would support a good cause and get a shareholding in the club as well. Good marketing might make this an attractive proposition. But many people who regularly donate or who make occasional larger donations make use of the gift aid scheme. Presumably if the Hospice sells the shares, the money used to buy the shares would not be considered as a donation by the tax man and the Hospice would not be able to claim the tax back. However, there might be a way around this if , for instance, the hospice offered to sell a share at face value for every £4 donated. Presumably the hospice will have expert tax advice available to them to ensure they don't lose out on gift aid income. The other problem area is the admin costs. If the hospice felt that it could best maximise its income from these shares by selling small quantities to a large number of people, then there will be a lot of admin involved in completing the documentation of change of share ownership. Who would bear the cost of that? The seller, the buyer or the club? Regardless of who bears the transfer costs, a large number of new shareholders would result in increased admin costs for the club on an on-going basis. There is a risk, therefore, that this generous gesture might create extra expense for the club whilst providing no new money for the club. The ideal scenario for all concerned might be that the Hospice sells to a small number of investors who are prepared both to buy at well above face value in order to ensure the hospice maximises it's income, and to put some level of investment into the club. The question is whether or not there are folk who would be prepared to cough up in that way. My guess is that if folk wanted to shell out a considerable sum in order to get a significant shareholding, they would have already made an investment into the club.

I just hope at least 2 of the 3 will accept contracts if offered. We are very lucky to have 3 such fine keepers on the books at the moment. None of them are contracted beyond the end of the season so we may actually be needing to search for a new keeper at the end of the season.

Stokes has had success under Yogi twice before and I reckon he would have been best served by spending a short while with Yogi again. It might be that the idea appealed to him but that his agent wasn't so keen. Anyhow, we've scored at least 2 goals in each of our last 5 league games so do we really need a striker?

Another interesting statistic is the results when Ryan Christie has been in the team compared to when he hasn't. In the 13 games he was involved in we got 14 points and scored 13 goals. In fact, 2 of those goals were scored after he went off injured in the Motherwell game. In the 8 league games he has not been involved in we have also got 14 points and have scored 16 goals. Are we a better team without him in the side?

Not in themselves in a strictly statistical sense, but in the context of other stats I think it would be a mistake to ignore the implications. Bottom line is that if you want to score goals, you have to risk losing possession.

Very interesting! The most interesting thing must be the inverse relation between possession and goals scored, together with the number of shots and corners per game. On the face of it, this would seem to reflect what many of us have been saying about the emphasis on possession that the manager has focussed on. The fact is that trying to play the ball out of defence whenever possible and patiently retaining possession in midfield until some opportunity emerges, simply allows the opposition to get players behind the ball and makes it harder to create chances. It can also be very boring to watch. The other interesting thing is that despite the emphasis on possession football, the stats would suggest we're not actually that good at keeping the ball. The lesson from all this would appear to be a need to move the ball out of defence quicker and to take a few more chances with possession further up the field in an attempt to create chances. In other words we need to look to play a few more through balls and we need to have players running at defenders more. If we do that we will inevitably lose possession pretty often, but if we lose possession in our opponent's half, it is far less dangerous than messing about at the back and losing possession in our own half. And if we take the risks and we don't lose possession, well, that is when we create the goal scoring chances. To be fair, it is now beginning to look as though the lessons are being learnt. We are unbeaten in the last 5 league games but have conceded 8 goals in that period (despite not having played Celtic!) At the start of the season, we only conceded 5 goals in the first 5 games against opposition other than Celtic, but failed to win. However, we have scored 12 goals in the last 5 games compared to only 2 in the earlier games. Significantly, we averaged 52% possession in those 5 early games but this has dropped to a shade under 50% in our recent unbeaten run. Clearly it is not keeping the ball that matters, it is what you do with it that counts.

I'm really not sure what Lopez, Sho Silva and Mutombo have brought to the side. Just the one goal between them and precious little else in the way of significant contributions to games. Mutombo certainly looks to be the best of the 3 but seems to lack a bit of awareness of what's around him and he ends up making the wrong choices. If only he could stick one or two away soon he could be a player for us but I can't see him being good enough to be a regular starter. The next few months are going to be a testing time for the manager. The outfield players he has brought in have been no great shakes. Wedderburn also looks like he is struggling at this level and it remains to be seen what Fisher and a hopefully fit again Roberts bring to the team. With so many players with contracts up at the end of the season it seems likely that there will be a significant number of replacements to be brought in at some point and I worry that Yogi has yet to demonstrate the ability to find the kind of players his predecessors were able to attract. It is, of course, very difficult on the kind of budget available but that has always been the case. To my mind, the key signings to make are extended contracts of most of the current squad. The sooner players can be tied into new contracts, the sooner we will be able to identify what kind of players we will be looking for next year.

It'll make a change on a cup day to carry further on the M73 rather than taking the turn to Hampden

That lads obviously wanted to score the 1500th goal at home. At least we are still in the competition and have not suffered the kind of humiliation that Hamilton have. I am sure we will take care of business in the replay.

No need to do that. There would be a standard clause in any agreement to prevent him playing against Celtic. In any case, Celtic would probably want us to be as strong as possible to knock out other sides like Aberdeen before any possibility of us meeting them again. It would not be in their interest to have Stokes cup-tied before sending him out on loan.

I think you are being a tad harsh on young Horner. He's come into the side in difficult circumstances and has done pretty well on the whole. There is no reason why he can't develop into a good squad player. He certainly doesn't lack for effort and that was rewarded with a late goal in his last game. And he does have a better strike rate than Lopez!

Brilliant news!

And, as a result of those games and a postponement, it was the only game played between 2 teams who are now sitting in the top six.

That really would be "unforgettable".

I thought Vincent was superb. He kept chasing and harrying the County back four and the keeper and pressurising them into hurried passes and mistakes. He kept running and changing direction up front and making more space for Storey. Storey certainly caught the eye more and was far more effective on the ball but Vincent also made a massive contribution to our win.

What a scoreline! Having secured a victory after again conceding a 2 goal lead should be a boost to the players and a reminder to the manager that we have midfielders capable of scoring if only they are allowed to press forward. That's 4 excellent points and 6 goals in very poor weather conditions and to my mind, an excellent advert for winter football. The thing is, the worse the weather gets the more difficult it gets to pass the ball prettily out of defence and play tippy tappy stuff in the middle of the park. Instead, the players get back to the basic fact that the team that scores the most goals wins the game. Get the ball up the park and pressure the opposing defence into making errors and the chances will come. Its a good strategy at the best of times and provides for a lot more excitement to warm the cockles on a cold wet winter's day.

In my day if you ended a match with so much of the shirt colour still visible you would have been criticised for not getting stuck in enough

It wasn't great but Polworth and Vincent provided a little bit more forward movement than usual with the result that we did get a few more chances at goal and a few more corners. Tansey's delivery at the corners was excellent but we weren't able to to take advantage of that. However, defensively we were poor. Several have singled Horner out for criticism but we were poor defensively in general. Billy Mckay at his best would have had a hat trick before half time. It was a relief to get the draw at the end. Utd looked far more threatening than us going forward in the first half and had they converted more of their chances we could have been seriously embarrassed. We need Raven back and for Meekings to be back in his central role. But the real problem is up front. We either move forward with tippy tappy passing allowing the opposition to get men behind the ball, or we punt a long ball forward more in hope than expectation. Storey cuts a lonely figure up front and seems to have lost some of his initial spark. We rarely look threatening and unless that changes we are going to seriously struggle this season. We urgently need Doran fit again and hope that a fit Roberts can contribute some positivity to our play. Is there any word on how close they may be to a return?

Never mind the weather - May offers the last few games of the season and perhaps a cup final.

Actually, the truth is that he was recruited by the FBI at an early age as part of their master plan to discredit the game in Western Europe through shocking refereeing decisions. This was in the vain hope that we would all stop watching football and would spend our money watching American "football" instead.

You may have a point regarding Assad's democratic mandate but the problems in Syria are totally separate from the global terrorism scare other than the fact that the conflict in Syria has allowed ISIS to get a foothold in Syrian territory. Assad is just as much an enemy of ISIS as we infidels in the West are. I very much doubt that the security services are straight with us but that does not mean the threat is not very real. You'll be telling us next that the holocaust never happened.

Hmm. From the report it doesn't sound too good at all.

Put the ball into the box from a free kick? Don't be silly - we might lose possession!

Why do we make it so difficult for ourselves? It's great to get the 3 points. of course, but Kilmarnock were so poor that we could and should have taken them to the cleaners. The BBC report, referring to a period when we were 1 up, summed things up well when it said "The home fans began to voice their frustration as their side seemed to develop a tendency to play the ball backwards when an attack looked possible." In the 2nd half Kilmarnock had to score and pushed forward more. Instead of exploiting the space created and trying to kill the game off we continued with the passing at the back and generally trying to play it narrow through the middle. This allowed the opposition to regroup and cover. It allowed them to keep pressure on us in our own half and gave them hope. Generally we passed the ball about crisply and tidily but there was rarely any end product. Polworth played well and was looking to get forward and both Mutombo and Sho-Silva showed some ambition to get forward when they came on and the game was more stretched. But at the end of the day, I think their keeper (who had no chance with either goal) only had one save to make. It should have been a comfortable win but in the end it was a nervy one. Unless we can have a bit more urgency getting forward and create more chances, we are going to struggle to keep out of the relegation zone this season.