ascender

Blow for us too I reckon. I'd much rather face them with Broon playing tbh.

Still not convinced by Edu, he's putting in a power of work, but his passing still seems very suspect.

For a home match against Motherwell I'd be tempted to rest him as we should be able to re-jig things (no pun intended) in the midfield. He's been one of our most important players this season so the Valencia game should be more of a priority for us.

TBH I'm just wondering when the "Walter Smith for Scotland" campaign will start again if he does retire from The Gers after this season.

Not seen the papers yet, but I'm assuming they're raving about the goal by Naismith made by Miller and the contribution of the other Gers players, McGregor in particular?

Berra is the obvious choice, but he hasn't exactly covered himself in glory when playing for Scotland in the past.

Tanner was just trying to get an answer to the questions that the fans have been asking, that's his job and I wish more reporters in Scotland would take that stance. Levein shouldn't have acted like that, its going to do him no good at all, especially after some of his arrogant responses after the Czech game. I thought it was a penalty. If it had been at the other end we'd have been shouting for it. He seemed to be turning while jumping to block the cross, but had his arms way up for some reason. I wonder if McGregor's recent performances will tempt an English club to come in for him? Really surprised no-one's been interested in him given his form. I guess the thing is, we could have won the first game and got at least a point from the Czechs. That's what people are going to be most angry about should we fail to get second, which is looking more unlikely. As for McManus, who else could come in? With the way some others have played for Scotland, I think Webster is as good a bet as anyone for the CB slot alongside Weir.

Whittaker was struggling from the start tonight, i think we all know defending isn't his strong point, silly mistake to make imo with his arms up like that. McGregor has had another great game and i thought Naismith did some really good stuff, he's a completely different player this season. Still baffled as to how anonymous Fletcher is for Scotland time after time when he's so influential for Man Yoo. What's more frustrating for me tbh is that tonight we've had a couple of good chances against the world champions yet played without a striker against the Czechs. The outcome of the games against Spain I don't think will matter that much, whereas we could have taken 3 points off the Czechs if we'd been more positive. McCulloch off with an injury which isn't good for us.

I've no idea who he is, I just found the tone of the article a bit off. Thanks for sharing it though, its good when people do that as I'm sure there's a lot of relevant stuff out there we would miss otherwise.

My thoughts exactly.

Putting aside the question of how the incident got to be reviewed in the first place, McGregor had an excellent game for Scotland and then decided near the end to bundle over Bednar after making a routine catch. I realise I've not seen the incident replayed and that Bednar made a meal of it, but I remember thinking at the time that he just can't help himself and wondering if he'll ever learn?

I'm not so sure of that. A 4-5-1 would be more familiar to the players, give the team someone to aim for up front and also be more flexible when it came to becoming more attack-minded and getting the wide midfielders in to the game. We over-rated the Czechs, that's the only explanation imo. But it seems to be a common theme in this campaign. Levein set us out to be defensive, but to do that, you have to be incredibly well organised if you're going to hold out for 90 minutes. Its another little piece of evidence that Smith doesn't get the credit he deserves for just how well we played in the CL this season. Its not that simple to defend well for 90 minutes and also have the ability to snatch something at the other end.

Ffs. The goal was coming for a while, but now he's changed to a more positive formation, the Czechs don't look half as good. Really frustrating.

That's the spirit Davie, don't take any shite!

Don't understand the thinking behind the formation at all, seems all over the place just now and when we do get the ball there's not even the lone target man to hit.

This was a fairly big story on the web a few years back.

A panel could be convened every Monday morning to review the weekend's games. I'm not talking about going over every single decision, just those unsavoury things that have gone on and were either missed by the ref or perhaps he's not seen them fully and only booked someone when they could have gone off. Things like this, bad tackles (Black and Stokes) and blatant dives could be quickly dealt with. The only way you're going to cut these things out of the game is by banning players imo. But unless you do it quickly after an incident, it only adds to the feeling of resentment against officials and the sfa, not to mention fuelling the conspiracy stories. McGregor is another one who should have learned by now, how many times is he going to go stupid stuff, I can't believe no-one on our management team hasn't spoken to him before about his carry on.

I remember seeing Black play a few times for Caley when I was up that way. He's one of those players who doesn't have the ability to channel his aggression positively a la Souness or even the fitness & ability to be a "terrier" type like McCall. He just went around kicking people up in the air and striding around the pitch as if he was the new Souness. All he's done since then is carry on doing the same thing for Hearts, so this shouldn't really come as much of a surprise and its incredible to see how naive his comments have been. There's clearly not much going on up top in his case.

Jambos hate Naismith (apart from that time they were linked with signing him obviously) and were on his back all game. I don't think his celebrations were too inflammatory considering the abuse he'd taken? But then this is Hearts who believe the whole world is out to get them in a massive conspiracy theory designed to stop them ever beating Rangers or Celtic. Or Motherwell. Or Falkirk......

Yes, but the difference is that these other forums who are apparently part of a concerted smear campaign are a collection of individuals with differing views and backgrounds. On the other side is the RST who are supposed to represent the view of their members.

Regarding that post from FF: Its kind of off-topic, but how can they be surprised that there are threads devoted to the RST when many of us here are current or former members? Its difficult to offer anything positive to the trust when the only way to do so appears to be by posting on FF. Even if we do that, there's no guarantee we'll get an answer or it won't just get lost in amongst the rest of the traffic. There have been lots of positive suggestions made regarding the trust on this forum over this last week and before that. The attitude shown in that post and many others like it over the last week typifies many of the problems that the trust currently have. Yet they don't appear to want to do anything positive about it, just highlight what they see as a problem, have a laugh about it and indulge in some "mutual back-slapping". bizarre.

Damned if we do, damned if we don't. I want what's best for the club, don't really care what anyone else thinks, so I think we should keep it tight and try to get as many points as possible. Valencia are a quality side remember. There's still good options in our squad to get forward a bit more with the full backs and maybe even playing someone like Weiss in the home game to give us something different.

OK..........

It shouldn't give them any sort of excuse. Any professional organisation knows that there will be some stuff in the public domain that they don't give credence to by acknowledging it. Its just nonsense, it won't harm them as such and they rise above it. Instead, they devote their time to maintaining dialogue and communication with their membership and interested parties in a professional manner. Meanwhile, we have lots of new posters cropping up here, posting information, rumours, gossip, the "truth", asking for advice on how the RST should go forward, but in many cases we've no idea who these people are and if they're connected to the trust or not. Sorry, I know its a point I keep going on about, but it appears no-one at the trust has learned anything in the last couple of weeks and is just taking counsel from like-minded individuals on FF. Say what you will about the tone or content of some of the posts on this thread, but surely you can see the very valid question at the heart of it? Your point about MD not wanting to step down in case his detractors see it as a victory is again, a moot one. If he resigns, what do these people behind the various "smear campaigns" actually get? Some time to gloat on the internet? Meanwhile, the trust can honestly claim to have made a fresh start and move forward. We keep saying that no man is bigger than the club in the football world and this is true in the business world as well. There's been a lot of sense spoken on this forum and others, often from new posters who may or may not be officially linked to the trust over the course of this week. I've seen more than one acknowledging mistakes were made and the fall-out wasn't handled properly. But every time I checked out the reaction back on FF from people who also appear to be linked to the trust, its as if they're still living in their world where nothing's happened and its business as usual. Its just been a very confusing week and like I've also said before, I feel like all this has done is given me confirmation that i've pissed my lifetime membership up against the wall.

Much of these problems have come about because the trust don't even want to debate with their own members or anyone who doesn't share their view of the world. It appears that if you post on any message board other than FF, they don't want to know about you. All very perplexing.