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Agreed. No-one is pretending it ain't shit at the moment but as far as I'm concerned this is the time to hold our nerve and stand tall behind Thelin. There is more than enough evidence from his time at Aberdeen and how things went in his first two seasons at Elfsborg to warrant giving him the two seasons we were told we needed to give him by those in Sweden when we appointed him.

A run of matches? He’s had three windows with significant squad change, and over 20 new players. Add nisbet Armstrong and karlsson, key players, plus lazetic and gyamfi who were injured, these guys have hardly been with us a month. I think giving him to Xmas is fair before we can fealty make comment, but I also think he’s here three years minimum and has been given assurances. Pretty sure we’re not sacking another manager without him being given the chance to completely overhaul the squad, and try to develop a full new group over time.

We tried to keep McGrath and Mackenzie. Morris wanted to go. I doubt we could have offered Gueye* the wages he'll have been offered to go to Turkey. You're talking about being given chances - Sokler and Rubezic were both given more than enough time to show if they were good enough. *Would Gueye not be classed as a success of Thelin's reign? Got the best out of a guy a lot of people had written off. Same with Morris too.

You're right. It gets harder and harder for players to shoulder charge since they had to slice off their unnatural arms a few years back.

Yeah I will go mate Know my way around the city as was there several years ago to celebrate my wife's 40th birthday although now more remembered as the day Madeline McCann disappeared. You are right to say it is a fabulous city and we will explore it, visit the Xmas market and hopefully have a fan zone to visit for beers and the game

He was responding to the point where you suggested Thelin was inept, and giving examples to show otherwise. We haven't progressed, nobody is suggesting that, just that it might not be down to ineptitude. Similarly, the massive financial advantage isn't necessarily of benefit to the manager though. Nor a source of criticism either. How that budget is being spent is of far greater concern to me than the current performances for example. Of our new signings, none really look capable of coming into the current team and performing well (maybe Armstrong, and probably Karlsson?). Milanovic, Aouchiche, Nisbet, Gyamfi, Yengi, Lazetic, Bilalovic (the last two maybe have something) all look like distinctly average players that would need a lot of work. They're toiling a bit, through lack of confidence, but I haven't looked at any of the summer signings and thought we'd signed a player. They all look like squad filler players who might have a good run at some point, but we'd likely be trying to offload next summer, or shortly thereafter. For me, the biggest issues surround recruitment and squad building. We've got old players and young players, with little in-between. Project players and more project players. Zero balance. That is a hindrance on any budget. That is on the club, not the manager. Or at least it should be.

Go. It's a cracking city and you never know, you might end up up finding someone with a spare

Yeah, cracks which were there long before Thelin arrived, and that no-one expected Thelin to fix in one season. That he won a cup regardless of that was pretty good management. Okay we're just ignoring Celtic's fortunate goal, that Celtic had shown what they were capable of at Hampden when they blew St Johnstone away in the semis, they hadn't lost a Scottish Cup game at Hampden under Rodgers, that mere months before that game that same Celtic team went very close to knocking Bayern Munich out of the Champions League, that after our goal we actually had four very good chances to win the game before penalties, and are just describing a very good defensive performance as "barely got a kick" because it doesn't suit the agenda? We beat a treble chasing Celtic team at Hampden. That we didn't dominate the game doesn't make it any less of an achievement. Since you know so much about last season, can you post how many times Celtic:- a) conceded at home in the Premiership b) dropped points at home in the Premiership? It won't take you long, it's a short list. I wasn't celebrating it. You asked for reasons why I didn't agree Thelin was "inept". Going and achieving things very few managers did last season, or even in previous seasons, is a strong argument against that. We also were not the only team to lose heavily to them last season. Is going out of the Europa League seemed a failure? We lost to the Romanian champions, who last week won away from home against the Dutch Cup winners. Are we just finding every single negative we can think of here, while dismissing any positives? I didn't actually say that. Perhaps a better example of being mental would be seeing and replying to things that aren't actually there...

The cup win was great but it papered over the cracks. We parked the bus and barely got a kick in that game, Schmeichel threw in the equalising goal and we took some great penalties. The rest has been incredibly underwhelming. We beat Rangers, great, we also lost to them 3-0 and 4-0. Things have become so shit that you are celebrating a 2-2 draw with Celtic yet they also humped us 6(six)-0, 5-1 and then their reserves beat us 5-1 again at the end of the season. We even lost 4-0 to Kilmarnock last season! Moving on to this season, we are 2 months in, out of 2 cups, and not scored a league goal. I guess we will agree to disagree but I think you are mental to suggest this guy is making any kind of progress. On to Thursday night and it is likely to just be another case of how many we will lose by.

The Scottish Cup win. The eleven league games without defeat and sitting top of the table, having beaten Rangers, and coming back from 2-0 down to draw at Parkhead. Surely though you didn't need me to remind you of that? Or are we just saying everything good he did was a fluke? I'd say calling a guy who took a team that finished seventh in the previous season to the brink of third place is clearly not inept. He's made mistakes, by fuck is he getting punished for them, but this is where we'll see what he's really made of.

I'm trying to remember, there was something we did, but it escapes me. It's not about whether the manager can cut it or not, it's about creating the conditions in which they can do the best possible job. Frustratingly, everyone seems to equate that with "amount of money given in a transfer window", which means we'll be in this situation again in 12-18 months.

I totally agree. The most frustrating thing is that we could have said this about all of our managers since McInnes left. I just don't get all the "the manager has been backed" crap to be honest, it doesn't make any sense. Backing doesn't come in the form of money, it comes in the form of time (well, both, but I think you get what I mean!). If we're having to overhaul our squad every year, then it's inconceivable that we should also be replacing the manager every year too. Every manager is going to have a season where at least half of the recruits aren't up to it. If that's on top of having a limited squad already, then time can be the only solution. I think our back line mostly had the workings of a decent set of options, with two players in each role that would work (when we inexplicably decided to bring back Dorrington and not ship out Molloy - do one or the other), left back aside. In the midfield, we were going into this season on a hiding to nothing, with Clarkson probably the only player going through a period of improvement, and several players going into regression, or just maybe not being good enough at all (perhaps Palaversa and Polvara). Similarly, the forward line really only had Keskinen as a young player that you might think would kick on. What we're seeing, then, is absolutely inevitable. If you factor in the 50% of signings that turn out to be gash, and the near zero players in the building that would mitigate that, we were always going to be a poorer side than last year without a huge slice of luck. To date, it seems that we haven't got that luck. How much of that do you apportion to the manager? Well, it seems like a huge portion, because it appears that we've handed Thelin the keys to the club in lieu of us making the right hires, whilst simultaneously forcing him to play entertaining football and have a single "identity", which we saw failing in Robson, Goodwin and Glass in prior years. So he'll get the full blame, and the sack, inevitably. But who is actually at fault here? It's no coincidence that every manager since McInnes (and even McInnes with his 3-4-3 in the final season) has adopted a "style", which they've persevered with to near the bitter end (Robson still playing like Ramadani was there, months after he'd left? Goodwin playing Ramadani as a holding midfielder for months despite him being terrible at it? Glass passing his way into trouble in an attempt to entertain?), changing it up in the final few games when the writing was on the wall. This is being forced upon managers by the "strategy". They must adopt a playing style, and must implement it up until the point they get sacked because it doesn't actually work. No room for pragmatism. No room for adapting to the actual players in the building. All the while, getting no backing from an experienced tecnical/football director, who can question their decisions, make sure the correct balance of player is coming through the door, and act as a buffer between manager and chairman to ensure that we divert to pragmatism when things don't go to plan in the transfer window. We'll never manage to spend our way to success. Our budget is nowhere near high enough to implement a style, because if we get two or three signings wrong, we're down to a level of budget of a Motherwell or St Mirren if they get things right. We have to allow the manager time to be pragmatic, and see if he can adopt that and get himself out of the hole that the club has allowed him to dig for himself.

Still raging I didn't get into the arm slicing off business when it was in it's infancy.

I'm just bewildered that we're talking about the shoulder charge in this way. An integral part of the game forever, and something I thought that we all learned to do as kids. My daughter can't even kick the ball properly, but she definitely knows what a shoulder charge is. The best thing about it is that it applies to attacker and defender equally, and by nature of the challenge, they both have to be roughly the same distance from the ball. Imagine Aouchiche had barged the big lad out the way, and smashed it in, because the defender was a fanny? That'd be amazing. Odds are always stacked in favour of the defender, but that's okay. Removing the shoulder charge would be up there with installing VAR. You should all be ashamed.

I dunno, I'd say someone being in control of the ball then being put on their arse by someone just blatantly knocking them over isn't an equal battle or a fair attempt to win the ball. Especially if he was to use his foot to knock him over it's a foul. It might be in the rules. But if it is, I'm saying it's a shite rule.

What gives you the impression palaversa and aouchiche think they are playing a league beneath? I don’t see that. I think they are two players who excelled early in their careers and have not kicked on to a higher level. We’re giving them that opportunity of playing time in a competitive league that gives them good exposure. Whether aouchiche is good enough, time will tell, but he’s still a relatively new player learning Scottish football, teammates, and demands of a new manager. And he’s a young player. I think he works hard and tries.