vikingTON

They have Partick next week - the Iran-Iraq war of the Championship - but unfortunately Hamilton at home on the final day. If we hadn't folded in such an abject manner across the four games, it would still be a live title race. A good result from the team that played today but pretty inconsequential in the league context. At least the downed tools suspicion has been stopped and we can aim to get at least one result to finish the campaign on a high. I expect we'll be seeing Airdrie again next season assuming Hamilton's suspension holds.

We can't compel clubs to play our loaned out players though. If O'Boy is anywhere near as ready in terms of talent and attitude as some hoped, he should be forcing regular game time at 5th tier level. It can take more than one loan move to work out, but it's not a great starting point.

I'm not sure where you're getting the half million extra cash - at the very least - that would make a "serious promotion push" in any way a realistic benchmark. The reason why we have too many 'projects' is because our budget is simply not high enough to both keep hold of and sign proven performers at the same time. We can reduce the squad by a few next season but it stull won't deliver guaranteed quality signings and will leave us exposed to the same issues we faced last season with players missing. This season's policy has not been too convincing in my view - though it has at least got the job done after a woeful start - but there's no clearly better alternative being overlooked.

If by recently you mean 'since he signed for the club' then I agree. I've said before that I think Imrie views Shaw as a replacement for Muirhead (very similar role in the team; similar relative technical skill too). The question is how much game time we should invest in trying to turn this into an effective option, because the negatives right now are just as apparent as all of the previous Robbie Muirhead seasons put together. No coaching team can turn around the career of 100% of their signings; my view is that the special protection should have been ditched long ago. Certainly after last week's result for everyone involved.

Shaw has been gubbins and stayed on the pitch regardless just about every week.

Can't agree that we have a good set of attacking options. We have some and different options aye - so progress on the start of the season- but no opposition manager is losing sleep about facing our swashbuckling forward play. We need to refocus on defending from the front properly and not defending the penalty box like clowns (last week, specifically) to pick up league points.

Making unfounded accusations and/or speculation (claiming to know) about the ethnicity of those accused is unhinged. Accusations (again, claimed knowledge) of police and/or political complicity are equally unhinged. Brass Eye was supposed to be satire when aired 30 years ago - now it would be viewed as a documentary.

On reflection it's probably better in the grand scheme of things for denizens of Greenock to be peddling relatively harmless pish like this; as opposed to the absolutely unhinged, xenophobic/ peado conspiracies that are currently flooding social media - see any Greenock Telegraph story with comments turned on. I'd give us a 50-50 chance of seeing serious violent unrest (like last summer in England) in the near future, sparked by this worryingly large subsection of the local population. 'Is toon's getting wurse etc.

If it comes from your definitely legit 'within the family' then why did you state that it was a rumour in the first place?

I didn't attend the game so am commenting purely on the result. To lose one game in such a manner could be written off as an aberration - to do so twice in the exact same circumstances is unacceptable. How would this team have coped with any significant cup tie this season, at Pittodrie, Tynecastle or indeed against the Spoon Burners? A: They'd have diagraced the club in its 150th anniversary year just as badly as they've done it against Grangemouth across the board this season. By our own CEO's metrics, clearly they do not have the 'minerals' for the task. So the usual bullshit Tele cycle of mawkish apology (Mon/Tue), resolution to do better (Wed/Thu) and confident declarations (Fri/Sat) simply won't cut it. There should be direct and immediate consequences. 1) Anyone involved in yesterday's game who is out of contract at the end of the season should have any existing offer taken off the table, and be told that they can expect to leave. They should be given the last 4 games to make a case to stay, if they are fortunate enough to get any further involvement at all. Otherwise, clear the fucking decks. 2) At least one player under contract should also be told to either find a new club in the summer or be prepared to guard the corner flag for the entirety of next season.

FTFY Can't say I have a shred of sympathy for anyone caught up in this tale. Terrible, wee-est of shames all round.

How many bench appearances were necessary for Keay first, in order to be capable of just bodying some Hamilton jobber on the park anyway? The management team have responded directly to this claim in the past and clearly see little merit in this 'experience of match days' argument. It's hardly spending a month sequestered at an international tournament camp.

The same place(s) where all our other rumours come from - the febrile imaginations of the resident sweetie wives/'in the know' merchants even loosely affiliated to the club. I'm sure that the 'club doesn't actually want promotion because they can't afford it' classic was being brought out in the aftermath of Saturday's result too.

It happened, and it was utter shite for weeks on end. Was this part of the plan? So if we're having an inquest as to why we won't finish in the top 4, that decision is a major part of the answer. Signing a contract in the summer does not give you a divine right to start from the beginning of a season. If you need to adjust because of player departures further forward in the team, then you need the spine of the team to do the basics right. Imrie tried to enact too much change at once - he's a young manager, it happens. That he learned and avoided just stubbornly insisting on the same failing setup explains why we ended up doing fine.

Whereas playing 4-1-4-1 with Wilson tasked with covering the entire defensive midfield area by himself - and magically staying fit - was a realistic approach? It was only after reverting to a more back to basics approach - in the manager's own description - after the Falkirk debacle that the issues were solved. We have developed our playing style to some degree this season - Boyes in particular offers a more effective way of moving the ball forward - but the decision to embark on wholesale change at the beginning was not just imposed by squad departures.

1) We chose however to replace them with a string of 'skill players' (doubtful), despite already knowing from January the similar profiles of Davies and Reynolds who were arriving. We also chose to integrate Lyall immediately rather than having a more 'pragmatic' midfield combination (e.g. Gillespie, Wilson and Blues) to balance any problems in the attacking area. As the last couple of months have shown, we don't need a target man to be effective - we do however need pressing from the front which was missing and/or ineffective for too long in the campaign. 2) And let's not forget that the total waste of space pre-season - in our supposed 150th anniversary year - was touted as a 'minerals' based strategy to ensure that the new squad would be up to the task. Instead we got bodied by a League Two team straight away and were out of one cup before the Glasgow Fair was over - limiting our financial scope to strengthen the team. It has been a transition season for sure and we got there with a surprising degree of comfort due to the inherent strengths of our coaching. But the first team and club level management made their own errors of judgment that explain why a play-off run was never seriously in the cards.

Would like to highlight that today's game demonstrated yet again that the current stewarding company are not fit for purpose, given that all their ludicrously inflated resources present today were used to, err, turn a blind eye to an away fanbase breaching their designated sections yet again and hoping for the polis to give them hauners. Get shot of them ASAP.

Said as if this is a disgrace with a crap budget and having been gunning it out with Airdrie over the first third of the campaign. A 5th/6th finish is clear overperformance, bring on five meaningless games and give Keay the run out instead. It is the cups where we should have done better, although missing out on a Challenge Cup final this weekend was mostly down to getting a crap draw. Boyes' header in the second half was essentially unchallenged at point blank range - he tries to glance it hut doesn't get enough on it, when just planting the fucking thing would be a 90% chance of scoring. After that, we ran out of ideas while also becoming more exposed to the break. Mullen tried an equally stupid punch in the first half and got away with it (while wrongly whinging to the linesman) - that was the warning which he failed to heed.

Hopefully those tramps will both be placed in the WDE and obliged to stay there for a change, by the police presence that we're paying for due to some maw. As for the game, I'd expect another couple of changes - think Adeloye might drop back to the bench. With genuine options off the bench we need to stay in the game regardless of how we're playing. The team did not do a very good job of that on Tuesday (very unusual as it normally our strength). The Cowshed not having rolling meltdowns wouldn't go amiss either tbh.

The voice of Robbie Muirhead's maw there, being sock puppeted through her weirdo, anti-vax son, at the indignity of them not being fêted as God's gift to this once proud football club. There's a reason why the likes of Mark Pickering are welcomed back as club, while the likes of Muirhead will assuredly vanish without trace. Good luck carving out any such legacy among the three Livingston fans who care about your performance now.

I'd go with this, and find the sudden clamour to get 4th (a huge bonus - not a realistic target) as once again detrimental to any rational assessment of how the team is performing. Not least because you'd have set 7 points this week and a win against Partick as the realistic benchmarks to have any sort of chance - so nothing of significance has changed. We could miss out by a point or two in the end, but being dung and/or ridiculously wasteful in the early stages of the campaign (see the first Hamilton game) is where any such damage has been done.

Those average attendances being a work of fiction from the Inverness school of record keeping btw.

The main conclusion I'm drawing is that our fanbase - reflective of the wider Greater Greenock catchment area - have an unhealthy fixation with rumour mongering and 'ITK' pish. It might not be the main reason why we can't have nice things but it does make those lean times seem inevitable.

I think it's similar to Muirhead in his earlier seasons, which is why the management team are persisting with it. But he has no divine right to start games and should have been taken off earlier yesterday for fresher legs too.

Top 3 of our most convincing performances this season, the scoreline massively flattered an away outfit that scored one of their two chances in the entire game. Rudden's goal should have been a mere footnote when at least 3 goals up already, but they created nothing afterwards either. No failures today and a lot of very good performances, but I'd like to highlight the defensive unit as a whole. Boyes and Delaney have had some stick recently but both were excellent today, with Boyes even creating good chances with his distribution. While we've had some better individual defenders, I think our current back four, with Mullen as well as Wilson to come back too is the most balanced and effective defence I've seen. The credit also has to go to the overall standard of coaching. For us to be hitting the 40 point mark and being arithmetically secure from 10th with 7 fucking games to play is yet another outrageous turnaround given the losses and difficult transition we experienced in the summer. The tactical organisation of this squad is superb and three straight wins without a fit striker couldn't demonstrate that more clearly.