dunning1874

We've been in this position several seasons and sprung the unbeaten run that keeps us safe before, but we can't just shrug our shoulders expecting it to come every time and also we should at some point reasonably expect to avoid a disastrous first quarter for once. We now have an Arbroath team away who've won half their games so far and a Ross County side who are inevitably going to pick up at some point in our next two... there's little chance of winning either of those. We're in serious trouble. It's not uncommon for managers to see something in a player that fans don't get, but the persistence with Shaw is just baffling at this point. He's an absolute wage thief whose attitude is even worse than his complete lack of ability. Get him shipped to Port Juniors today, there's never a Championship footballer in there.

Solid contest between this 'stadium', Morton's recruitment and Shaw's performance for the most offensive thing I've seen today but Shaw is clinging to the lead right now. We haven't remotely looked like scoring. Queen's Park did a couple of times, but only through our mistakes rather than doing anything good off their own backs. This is just dreadful.

Adding a seventh central midfielder to the squad only looks weirder when you then revert to only playing two of them rather than three, to keep wingers who've been consistently poor in the team after being (rightly) singled out by the manager for their performances last week.

Yeah, there's an important distinction between sharing something about Yaxley-Lennon and sharing something by him. This goes beyond a daft young footballer oversharing their political views people might happen to disagree with, we're talking about his support for a genuine white supremacist here.

Hope not. A dreadful person and even worse footballer, who shouldn't be near a fan owned club and even if that wasn't the case would be behind all six of our current central midfielders in the pecking order anyway.

Assuming Taylor and Crawford are still out, I'd start all four of Gillespie, Wilson, Blues and Robertson. A narrow midfield with those four will be a bit stodgy and maybe lacking creativity without Crawford, but passing out from the back isn't working as it is with wingers hugging the touchline so if we don't do any better at passing through the middle of the park with that many bodies there we're no worse off, while we might actually have the ability to scrap for second balls when the defence are inevitably forced to go long at times. Some of the wingers have also been passengers defensively which isn't going to be levelled at any of those four. Don't particularly care what formation you put them in; whether it's a diamond 4-4-2, 4-1-3-2, 4-3-1-2, 4-3-2-1 or so on the four of them should largely work the same way together, with the questions of how attacking you push Robertson and how much you let Blues off the leash to go box to box being the same with any shape. The bigger debate is what you do to support Brophy, whether you put Adeloye back in beside him or have one of the wingers playing off him with freedom to drift rather than on the wing. Garrity did improve us last week by doing what Moffat and Shaw never dream of doing, running at a full-back to try and get outside them which carried the team up the park, but I wonder how much we're damning him with faint praise. Being far better than those two on Saturday was not an achievement with how poor they were, and while he's not started a game yet this season there's still been no open play end product in his sub appearances. He should be higher in the pecking order than the likes of Shaw stinking the team out every week who have done nothing to justify their place, but taking this season so far in isolation it's more by default through being the only winger who hasn't been given a start while the others fail to perform rather than how impressive he's been off the bench. The flipside is that he was our top scorer last season and shouldn't have to wait much longer for his chance when we're struggling to score. If you're going for a winger in behind rather than Adeloye then I think it needs to be him or McKay, the latter to see if running off Brophy with his pace can get us in behind defences when that's not something we ever do.

Winless with two away games coming up and showing very little sign of creating chances from open play. The fixture list is kinder in the second quarter and you'd hope for our usual rally that gives us comfort, but barring some really excellent results over the next few games we're looking at yet another poor first quarter after that result and performance. This team should be far more concerned with their ability to avoid 9th than challenge for 4th at the moment. A big thank you to whoever was selecting man of the match for providing some comic relief. Uproarious laughter travelled across the Cowshed when Longridge was announced, he was the frontrunner for the worst player on the park on a day with no shortage of contenders.

My concern is that if we have that much money coming in as a one off, a significant chunk of it should be going on infrastructure that can generate revenue rather than entirely on the first team budget. I get that Laird did speak at length about needing to improve other revenue so they're not constantly returning to the Dalrada well, while money going to the first team is Dalrada's stipulation rather than the club's choice, but it's worrying all the same. No one will begrudge Imrie being happy with having a more competitive budget and if that gets us over the line to the playoffs then that's brilliant, but if this is a one time thing and the budget has to be reduced again next summer if the playoffs don't happen then it's built on sand. If you instead take some of that money to complete eg a fanzone that can then make a profit for the club and allow more to be sustainably added to the budget for years to come rather than being wholly dependent on a sponsor, you've got a healthier club for it and it's a step towards being able to give the manager a consistently higher budget that isn't dependent on an outside benefactor.

Ross County appoint Tony Docherty.

Very happy with that, having two right backs of that calibre is great. Does raise the question of what happens when they're both fully fit as neither of them will be expecting to sit on the bench for a lengthy spell, but great competition in their natural position and you've got the prospect of Ballantyne at left back or Comrie at centre back.

The last thing the squad needs is another winger. With injuries already hitting us in the middle of the park and other injury prone players in there, which impacts our ability to use midfielders to cover full back where we're also short on bodies, any signings should be addressing those areas of the park.

That's a great point, disappointing as it is to concede late. The win needs to come but the next three games are a bit kinder and we can hopefully look up the table from there.

Very early days, but has Imrie done it again with a striker everyone else had written off?

While we naturally focus on shape or individual players who are missing, I think regardless of what the formation is we need another defensive body in there to give the team a bit more balance. Against both Aberdeen & Ayr we've effectively had four attacking players who make little defensive contribution on the park. That's not a comment on effort but just the reality of the types of player they are. Shaw and O'Halloran don't have the mobility to press, Moffat will run himself into the ground but it's more of a headless chicken press rather than sound defensive positional sense and Brophy is not George Oakley. Pressing from the front therefore doesn't really work, but with so many players there who don't contribute much defensively you're then looking to the players behind them, and Blues & Robertson were just left with too much to do last week. Ayr consistently found room in midfield and won the vast majority of second balls because there was too much ground for two of them to cover while not getting much help from the four in front of them. Imrie's tactical flexibility is one of his great strengths as a manager, but generally throughout his time here you can trace the good runs of form to when we've had more of a defensive balance in personnel regardless of whether that was with a back three, back four, 4-4-2, 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3. The great run that put us in playoff contention in 22/23 usually had a midfield three of Gillespie, Blues and Robbie Crawford who were all solid defensively and could press along with wingers who could do the same, the following season the lengthy unbeaten run generally saw us sacrifice a winger to have Blues on the right. Changing things up to try and get more attacking players on the park was often where we lost our way over those seasons - you can definitely get away with 2 players who don't do much of a defensive shift and maybe 3, but very rarely 4. There's been focus on Wilson not being in the team, and if Gillespie, Taylor and Crawford are all missing then it does have to be him, but whether it's Wilson or not we need another body alongside Blues & Robertson to give us more players who can scrap for second balls and do the defensive running. We're already really lacking in physicality compared to most teams in the division, we exacerbate that if we try to accommodate more wingers. Particularly against a team who've been on fire and scoring freely like St Johnstone, we need to be hard to play against first and foremost. Give them the amount of space in midfield Ayr had and we'll have serious problems.

I think the timing of the announcement it is what makes it look unfair on the players involved on the surface, as only being informed in late August would leave them scrambling to find new clubs when most clubs have already got full squads at their age group. However as I understand it the players who are listed there as being let go are all the ones who were already told weeks ago there weren't professional contracts on the table and were only getting amateur contracts offered to pad out the squad if they wanted to take one, so they'd all already have been looking for contracts elsewhere, some may have found them already and we're just announcing they've departed now for completeness along with the decision not to run a team. If so, that's absolutely fine.