GG Riva

On the contary, Ross, not so much optimism but realism in that 8th is probably out of reach now. Give me 9th and another shot at safety as opposed to straight relegation. I think our chances of survival would be quite good. If we can't beat 2 league 1 teams over 2 legs, we certainly deserve to go down. Rovers losing that final to Brechin was a total aberration.

I don't think we've ever won a play off final, but that unenviable record has to end some time. Even England eventually won a penalty shoot out. 😃

Looking at the fixture SP kindly put up, makes me very hopeful we can finish above QOS. I believe they survived these play offs last season. They're weighted in favour of the highest ranking team.1st legs are 4th league 1 v 9th championship 3rd league 1 v 2nd league 1. In the final, the winner of the all league 1 semi-final is at home in the first leg. Would obviously like us to finish higher than 9th but that's looking like a big ask after yesterday. 🙁

Back on topic. We're fast running out of games, so if we're going to avoid the drop, we really have to carve out some wins. Tomorrow is massive. I hope we approach the game in the same positive manner we did at Palmerston last month. Even a win still leaves us with a lot to do, but it would be a start. Draws are no use if we are to secure our status. I would take 9th right now if it was offered and take our chance in the play offs. Quite frankly, if we can't see off the likes of Airdrie, Montrose or Falkirk in two legged ties, with home advantage in the return, we deserve to be relegated.

True. It was a light hearted comment I've repeated on here after making it to my Geordie pal. He said most Toon fans don't care about their new owners background - they're just so happy that Mike Ashley is finally away.

This has aged well, Raymie. Still, 1 out of 2 ain't bad. The Toon have bought their way out of relegation. Maybe in future years, they'll be able to buy their way to an EPL and CL double. I wonder if they might be interested in making us their feeder club, given we play in black and white, too? 🤔

I've read the articles Piracy linked and I didn't find anything to get too het up about. Maybe the frustration of other posters is more to do with our league position? Football managers know that the press need "news" to fill their newspapers, so they keep journalists sweet by giving them interviews. It saves them from too much criticism when results and performances are poor. Still and all, I agree we all want to see our team doing their talking on the pitch and it's Yogi's job to ensure they do that in the remaining games.

Are you thinking he might be Kenny's boy, Raymie? If he is, he must have inherited his footballing talent from his mum.... 🙂

That's true, but don't you think any right minded footballer would rather be somewhere other than Starks Park at this time? It must be a horrible time to be a Raith player, through no fault of their own.

I wonder if he isn't regretting his decision now, given the recent shambles at Starks Park?

You're joking, mate. She'd have kicked me in the nuts!

Your frustration is understandable, but the logic is flawed, in my humble one. You knew the price of the ST and decided to buy it. As a loyal fan, it helps the club bring in much needed revenue during the close season. The fact that some other folk may now be able to purchase a ticket for one game at a bargain price is no skin off your nose, is it? Some years ago, my wife bought a nice outfit, to wear to a family wedding. A few weeks later, the shop put on a summer sale. She ignored my advice not to go in and check if the outfit was included and came out with smoke coming out of her ears. The outfit was on sale at 50% off. 😃 She couldn't understand the fact that I was neither up nor down about it.

Were you feeling particularly sanguine when you posted this, Big Yin? If you're going to make a habit of spreading doom and gloom, you may want to consider changing your username to Private Frazer Par. 😀 A sublime example of strawclutchery, Ross. ❤️ Forecasting football results is a notoriously difficult pastime. I honestly can't call this one, but I'm probably somewhere between Ross and Sanguine. I'd take yet another draw, but fear Arbroath may be too physical for us and eke out a narrow win. I'd like to think if we score first we won't capitulate like we did on our last visit and take something from the game. Not confident if they open the scoring.

I don't want to go all religious on you, KP, but you sound like some of the workers in the vineyards parable Jesus told his followers. For those who are not familiar with it :- "A landowner goes out early in the morning and hires men, agreeing to pay them the daily rate - a silver coin for a day’s work. He hires them at various times throughout the day - 6am, 9am, 12pm, 3pm and 5pm and promises all of the workers a fair wage. When the end of the day came, the landowner said to his manager to pay the workers, starting with those who had been hired last. Those who began working at 5pm were given the daily rate - one silver coin. When it came to those who had been hired first (early in the morning) they thought that they were going to receive more. When they too were given the standard daily wage they began to grumble. They were angry because they had done a lot more work than those who had started later in the day. The landowner did not listen to their complaints and reminded them that they had agreed to the daily rate of pay when they were hired. He said, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

The only other time I can remember the club charging a flat rate of £5 was for our first ever live match on SKY. He who pays the fiddler calls the tune, so the game v Dundee Utd was switched from the Saturday to Sunday at 6.05 pm. Fearful that the satellite channel would show lots of empty seats around the stadium, the Pars opted for £5 a head. The Board needn`t have worried, not ony was the game a sellout, an estimated 3,000 people were locked out, many of them ST holders who arrived just before kick-off. Needless to say, there were a lot of unhappy fans that night. Not much chance of a sellout v Morton. 🙁

Well, he has over a year to find himself a new career. The Rovers will be paying his wages until the end of season 22/23. During this time, he can find and train up for a new job. His playing career is over and it's down to Raith. Had they not made such a bizarre decision to bring him to Starks Park, he'd still be plying his trade at Broadwood.

I`m not in the slightest bit defending Goodwillie for his reprehensible behaviour but aren`t a lot of people jumping on a bandwagon now? He played for Clyde for 4/5 seasons and was their captain and top goalscorer and other than some protests when the club signed him in 2017, we hadn`t heard a cheep. I`m convinced that if Raith hadn`t signed him, he`d still be playing and scoring for Clyde in blissful anonymity.

Hear, hear, DD. I said yesterday there was no chance of this happening, but wtf do I know? 😂 I was thinking it through logically.

😂 What's the thinking behind that? Do they think that everyone will have forgotten all about this by the beginning of next season and he can start playing for them then, or are they just trying to reduce the wage bill? No chance Clyde were going to take them back after all that negative publicity. Somebody at Starks Park must have thought they would. Astounding.

I meant to address the other point you made, S'Ally. I'd love to see him in a Pars shirt almost as much as David Goodwillie. I don't think the comparison with Andy Smith is valid. We only hated him because he played for Airdrie. He was a rummelthemup centre forward whereas Lafferty is just a complete f@nny, who thinks he can do what he likes because he once played for Sevco.

Well Donaldson might have had a red card and since he was already on a ridiculous yellow, it's not exactly a quantum leap to suggest that Lafferty was trying to achieve exactly that. He himself should have been yellow carded at least once in the first half for the two handed push on Donaldson on the touchline in front of the NW and for his repeated moaning at the ref. I can't imagine Pier Luigi Collina indulging him like the feckless Mr Duncan did, can you? I wasn't at the game at Rugby Park but from the highlights, he might have been red carded then, too.

How that Pee Arr Eye Sea Kay managed to avoid a couple of yellow cards today is completely baffling. Consistently remonstrating with the ref, moaning about almost every decision that went against his team, a chase after Donaldson followed by a two handed push in the back and then some aggressive behaviour towards the same player, right under that feckless ref`s nose. Does he merit special consideration because he once played for Rangers?

There's been a recent trend in which some of the teams in the bottom half of this league have been beating those in the top half to inch themselves towards safety. Morton, Ayr and Hamilton most noticeably, which has made our progress look poor, but we have made some nevertheless. A win today against the joint league leaders is not impossible, as other teams have shown they're far from unbeatable, indeed we should have taken something from our last game against them on their own patch. Agree with posters who say that draws are of little use at this stage of the season for a club in our position, so I hope Yogi's tactics from now on reflect that - win or bust. If we don't make any silly mistakes at the back, I think we can eke out a narrow win today. 1-0 will be just fine.

It's called wishful thinking, DD. Why the last 6 games? I'll hazard a guess that Morton have done rather well in these. I can't see them making the top 4. There's bound to be a dip in form between now and the end I'd the season. I agree that the current table doesn't make good reading. I think I'd settle for avoiding automatic relegation if offered right now. I'd feel reasonably confident we could beat any League 1 team over two legs and I haven't forgotten about Keith's experience with Brechin a few seasons ago. Although the play offs are potential banana skins, 2 games v Falkirk in the semi-final and Airdrie in the final if both came through, might be quite perversely enjoyable, as long as we won through, of course. Still and all, I'd rather we finished higher than 9th and happily forgo all that angst. 🙂

Anytime the cameras pan on the Leeds manager, he can be seen squatting. I`m not sure if he prefers a worm`s eye view or he`s just pining for the original dugouts which really were dug below ground level. I don`t think he`s ever been asked about his bizarre habit. Even more amazing is the fact that he can get up from that position unaided. I reckon most of us more senior Pars fans would need the intervention of a small crane. 😃