vikingTON

Let's start with the positives: the way that we played both with and without the ball with ten men today was highly commendable. Unfortunately at no point did I really think we were going to score (which makes conceding the 2nd goal just after half time so risible), but there was clearly a generally well-coached side out there, quite a few very good individual performaces in vain - and some pretty decent football played too. We are not some Jonatan Johansson level mess, and I expect us to pick up more than enough points at home to ensure our usual 7th place finish. But while the referee certainly restricted our chances of winning today's gane, he was not responsible for any of the three ludicrously soft goals that confirmed that we would lose it. Two increasingly persistent problems explain this: 1) The 2nd and 3rd goals come yet again from set pieces - when Murray started the job, we shipped even more and even more risible set piece goals at Ochilview. So why the fuck are we not at the very least playing two actual centre backs, whose training and skill set is to deal with that type of situation? With Wilson at centre back rather than having Owens there and Wilson in front of him, our midfield before the red card looked like this: McPherson Gillespie Moffat Lyall Garrity This selection partly explains why we are so soft as shite. None of the players above are chucking it, but they simply don't have the required physicality or tactical discipline to stop us from coughing up big chances - particularly at set pieces. To have that failure exposed at Ochilview is one thing: to field a similar team lacking in the required physicality at Airdrie today shows no serious attempt to resolve the problem. Organisation at set pieces is an issue too, but to not even have the physicality is inexplicable. 2) The first goal has been boiling my piss since the final whistle, and now I finally know why: it exposes the failure of our formation. 4-2-3-1 is gubbins. Leaving aside the reality that it is so dated and predictable a setup at this level that you should be writing the team sheet in cuneiform, it is opposed to any possible strengths that we have in our current squad. The whole point of a 4-2-3-1 is to sacrifice a player in the middle of the park to have an extra, silky attacker linking up with the forward to produce liquid goals - we have nothing of the required quality in the opposition half to justify this. Whatever 3 attacking midfielders we field each week will be lucky to get 5 goals and assists each for the season - as a trade off, the end product is nowhere near good enough to risk losing control of the central midfield. And since the Lindsay-Murdoch partnership - the only time we have made a 4-2-3-1 work at this level - we also don't have the quality, legs and tactical awareness to run a game with a central midfield two. We tried this with Wilson and Lyall at the start of last season under Imrie - it failed. The switch that stabilised our results last season was dropping Blues back, to make a central midfield three. This season (and I may be excluding some other combinations), we have tried Wilson and Blues in a central midfield two - it failed. We have tried Wilson and McPherson there - it failed. Now we are for some reason trying McPherson and Gillespie (4th game in 14 days) there - and it is failing. The equaliser today is a carbon copy of the type of soft as shite goal we were conceding at the start of last season, in the same formation. An acre of space is presented in the central area just outside our box, for the opponent to take an unpressured pot shot at the corner of our goal. And oh look, it goes in. The league leaders are coming to town next Saturday. We need something that Imrie was usually very good at producing, which is a 'back to basics' reset of the team. Actual defenders back in logical defensive roles, packing out the middie of the park first, no stupid errors or soft goals. Saint Johnstone may well still win the game, but I want to see Murray respond to the reality that 6 goals conceded in 2 games to mediocre opposition requires action.

A draw would be absolutely fine for us, but given Airdrie played midweek, I'd like to see us take advantage of that to get a win. Airdrie were unfortunate to lose against St Johnstone a fortnight ago, so there are threats we need to deal with.

Tirana it is then.

What, specifically, is the 'future risk' involved in MCT owning ~61 or 62% of the business, as opposed to >98% of it?

What special resolutions (like changing the company name, or winding it up...) are relevant, and why would MCT need the ability to push them through at all? Let's not forget that MCT already has those rights - what real world purpose did they serve in addressing last summer's dealings with Dalrada, who were a sponsor and not a shareholder? For me, this thinking is a legacy of Golden Casket's obsession with sole control. It's not a spoiler or a block on anything that MCT would realistically want to do at GMFC, and if partnering with outside investors then they should become significant minority shareholders with clearly defined rights within the business, rather than trying to pull the strings every few months as external sponsors.

We may be able to keep GMFC solvent and viable, but it's unrealistic to expect Championship status to be part of that alternative scenario every single year (as opposed to, say Arbroath or Queen of the South). If you were investing, you'd be wanting a significant discount on that notional status.

We don't know who the player he punched was.

It's £1.2 million for 35%, as the value of services provided is also being counted (by both sides) towards the offer valuation. Two questions for me: 1) How will future (long term and ongoing) capital investment by MCT be treated going forward. If the deal proceeds and ends up happening, then it's entirely reasonable that for the next 3 years, both parties' proposed investments and shareholding should be taken as read. The total investment sum proposed also (IMO) would justify a period of goodwill in terms of keeping the same shareholding split beyond those 3 years too. But in say, 10 years' time, 15 years' time... at what point would annual funds that MCT raises to put in the club start to be reflected by a gradual increase in its share of control? Using the same valuation methods agreed to in this proposal, to value each ongoing contribution (£150k, or £200k) of capital investment with extra shares issued. My intention is not to nitpick the split of sums raised in the near future - but there should be a long-term mechanism for future funds raised by MCT to be treated as the new capital investment that it is. I genuinely do not know whether there is provision for that within GMFC's articles of association. 2) Less TL:Dr - the Dalrada partnership both incentivised MCT funds and IIRC obliged its own capital to be used on the first team budget. Are there any provisions or restrictions on how the GMFC board - including its proposed Estrella representatives - may choose to allocate any funds invested (MCT and/or Estrella sourced)? What are the specific rights or 'control' that would be jeapordised?

Shaw is another option up front, and Moffat can bé played through the middle too. That Murray doesn't seem to like those options really isn't grounds to throw bad money after bad money. The squad that we have is plenty to work with, until the manager gets his chance to build a different one in the summer.

Still better than last season, when we got de facto knocked out of the League Cup on Glasgow Fair Saturday, and then papped out of the other two cups before the Advent calendars were cracked open. An unsurpassed nadir of interest in GMFC. To get our frankly inevitable 45 points in the league and ending up with Murray to replace Imrie are pretty good outcomes for GMFC as a club given all the turnover this season- we could easily have got another Johansson level clown instead - but I agree that we could have done with a cup campaign to build enthusiasm too. Which is why I once again return to that truly risible day at Ochilview, when we simply failed to perform the basics of a professional football team, as dealt with in every game since. With one further win after Ochilview, there would be a wide-open quarter and semi final path that we could have been involved in. One plus though is that the team under Murray is playing football to attack and score goals at the moment, as opposed to the possession for possession sake nonsense that Imrie adopted too often in his last 18 months.

That can all be the case, yet we still chose to start Gillespie for the third game in a row - which we wouldn't have considered even two years ago - rather than just moving Wilson into his natural position and giving Owens a game at the back instead. It is equally unsurprising that giving three starts to the wide players results in a perfectly hit and miss (W1 D1 L1) return. We have done very well to deal with the Storer and Moore absences in particular - given how key they have been to defensive solidity all season long - but the combination of the last half hour's team management on Tuesday and today's starting lineup was self inflicted and almost guaranteed a stinker today.

There is no football team in the country that has close to a fully fit and/or eligible squad in late February, and our most recent Dalrada investment seems to have been largely spent on padding out the squad depth. So we can have no excuse about a handful of absences right now - we're only as much affected as nine other teams in the division.

The very little squad rotation is key. We were always going to be at a disadvantage for this game (though at an advantage next week), and were 2-0 up against ten men on Tuesday night. Yet we ran the first picks into the ground, played like dogshit for the last half hour on Tuesday night anyway, and somehow expect that prior 180 minutes not to have consequences. Our failure to manage the game properly on Tuesday set this result up. Despite the tears and snotters from some though, this result only underlines the reality of an utterly predictable, humdrum 7th place finish.

More positives than negatives, but there were a couple of those too. 1) Our performance for the first hour was very good - aggressive in getting the ball and in using to attack Dunfermline with purpose and not a little bit of good skill and link up play too, including for the first goal. 2) The full-backs were excellent and have been the stand out performers since Murray's arrival. We made Dunfermline look very, very poor - which off the back of a similar gulf in performance shown against Ross County (as well as a draw in between) is the sign of an effective team. 3) A further positive is that both the new keeper and new centre back have settled in very well - two potential problem areas with absence, that we have covered very effectively. Thank fuck we won't be seeing Dylan fucking Corr haunting the terraces of Cappielow any time soon. The final 25 minutes or so showed an amateurish level of game management though, that will come back to bite us if it is not addressed. But for a very soft second penalty award (of course we could and should have been a few goals further ahead before that...). we would have been hanging on for grim life - and played like we actually were against ten men. 1) The lack of composure with the ball was an issue that could have been sorted by the players on the park. Gillespie and McPherson have several hundred games of experience between them - one of them has to come short and demand the ball gets played to them, instead of some ludicrously ambitious defence-splitting pass, or aimless punt towards a double marked Main) coughing up possession instead. I thought Gillespie did very well in marshalling our use of the ball in the Ross County game - perhaps the penalty miss spooked him last night, but the same task was required. 2) I would also liked to have seen more from Murray in bringing fresh legs off the bench - not least with an eye on Saturday's game too. Shaw is clearly not first choice under the new regime which is fullly justified, but he doesn't need to be in order to do a job for 25 minutes last night - bringing fresh legs to an attack/wide areas where the energy predictably diminished after the hour. Comrie could have been brought on simply to cover the right wing in front of Ballantyne - or (fitness allowing), I'd like to have seen Crawford given time as well. O'Halloran made the team worse last night quite frankly.

Quite why we shouldn't play Brophy and Main, yet can shoehorn O'Halloran into the team instead is a mystery. It's much more logical to ditch the latter in order to provide a shape that suits a front two partnership instead.