dunning1874

Murray talking about how he carries the can for Saturday and will take responsibility is all well and good, but we'll know if he's just saying that or actually means it as soon as the starting XI is announced. Taking responsibility and reflecting on how he's contrived to put us in this position would mean not repeating the same stubborm mistakes, so if he puts out another 4-2-3-1 and/or Wilson is at centre back again then you can dismiss it all as empty words. There are some straws to clutch at here, as our home form under Murray isn't actually that bad with St Johnstone & Partick the only defeats, and shitfesting a draw would be enough to survive. There's little doubt that this team will capitulate if they go behind though, and our continued disasters defending set-pieces don't bode well for a clean sheet.

Murray has made the results worse. That's the inescapable issue.

I'll pay good money to attend the player of the year awards if pelting Murray with rotten fruit and veg is added to the agenda. Starting with 4-2-3-1 was obviously wrong, persisting with it at 1-0 was madness, keeping it up for the full 90 minutes when a change even at 3-0 (2-0 was the latest it should have happened) could still have made the difference in keeping us up was just pigheaded stupidity. Everyone has been saying for weeks that we obviously need to shore up the midfield but he's persisted with his overly attacking nonsense, he's a dogmatic imbecile.

Murray's an absolute charlatan. He can't remain at the club next season no matter what division we're in.

2-0 absolutely flattering us here. This is the Stenhousemuir game all over again, Murray has learned nothing. We're still completely hopeless at defending set-pieces and we still have no midfield to speak of. The defensive mess for both goals, and the other free header from a corner, don't get as far as the sitters we're coughing up for them if we actually had a midfield in the first place to stop them waltzing into positions where they win corners or cut it back for tap ins. If we lose this by four then Ross County finishing above us is entirely realistic and they look like scoring every time they're within 30 yards of the goal. This is an unmitigated shambles.

True, but his points per game record is only 0.02 better than Imrie's this season despite the much better win ratio, because where Imrie was drawing games that we should have won Murray is losing many more games that we should have drawn. It's why he has a worse points per game record than Johansson and the same as McElhone. Imrie assembled a shite squad in the first place and Murray to his credit improved on it in January, but both of them are to blame for where we are.

Surely the whole point of due diligence is that the parties to it go through the whole process then provide an update when it's done? The time period being 60 days means we'll get an update after the 60 days is complete, it would not only be pointless but a breach of trust to provide an update now. If Estrella were to post a public update on the process after 40 of 60 days saying they have X, Y & Z concerns about GMFC or MCT but hope they'll be addressed in the next 20 days, we'd all be rightly angry at their betrayal of confidence in speaking out about what's supposed to be a confidential ongoing process. The exact same would be true of MCT providing an update to their members now, there's no reason to expect an update until it's done.

Player of the season. I do actually think Murray got it wrong at 11 v 10. One of things he's changed that's seen both Moffat & Shaw look better through his time in charge is consistently playing them on their natural side letting them get outside full backs, whereas both of them had far more bad games than good under Imrie with his insistence on inverting them so they could cut inside and shoot, usually very badly. Yesterday both of them were having poor games - primarily because the shape of the team was obviously wrong with the lack of a central midfield making every other part of the team worse as well - so he tried switching Moffat and Shaw over in the first half. Fine, we did get more creative in the first half after the switch then they were chopping and changing in the second half at 11 v 11, but then we spent most of the time at 11 v 10 with Shaw on the right & Moffat on the left. The sheer amount of the ball we had with Queen's Park camped 25 yards out meant they both did put some good deliveries in, but for both of them the bad ones that haven't made it to the highlights outnumbered them and at a time we needed urgency, they both slowed us down so much cutting inside. We needed to move the ball quickly to stretch Queen's Park a bit and draw them out which we couldn't do because both wingers were inverted. It's why we actually got better with Delaney as a winger, we at least had one who could go outside a full back. You can point to the number of chances we created from firing the ball into the box so often as meaning a manager can't really do more as he can't go on the park and score on their behalf, but we were playing 10 men who had accepted that they just had to camp in their box and try to defend what we sent in. It's inevitable that you create some chances when you're given that much of the ball for 35 minutes, I think we'd have had a chance of more and better deliveries with the wingers back on their natural side.

He's had two poor games, but he's also been played out of position for no reason when he's been our player of the season by a distance in his natural position.

Yeah, the keep list of those out of contract at this point should consist of Wilson, with Ballantyne, Blues & Owens as maybes. We need a ruthless clearout.

We've taken 7 points from 9 games. An absolutely disgraceful run of form.

Nothing positive to be said about a single one of them. Absolutely fucking hopeless.

Owens for Lopata-White. He was atrocious, but it's not fixing the glaring problem.

There are no pass marks here but Garrity, Main and Lopata-White have all been exceptionally fucking dreadful, with Garrity the worst by a mile. It's the same problem every week. We have no midfield and Murray refuses to see what's staring him in the face because he's determined to accomodate three wingers. We were actually better when we had no fit centre forward just because Murray was actually forced by the lack of options further forward to play a proper midfield rather than deliberately abandoning it. We need a centre back on for Garrity now and Wilson in midfield to have any chance of not being hopeless. Despite how bad it's been we should actually be 1-0 up, but Shaw finds new and fascinating ways to be useless. Took about 18 touches to set up his sitter 10 yards out with no Queen's Park player within 5 yards him, still managed to roll it towards the bottom corner which was by far the easiest place for the keeper to save it. Was genuinely expecting him to rocket it into the top corner with the number of touches he had to set himself.

So one of Wilson or Longridge at left back and continuing with 4-2-3-1.