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If he has I'm backing Clement, get rid of the players.

Have they changed your medication?

Got to hand it to the lads. Staved off defeat. Plucky.

It is quite the conundrum. We need to make changes but it is not obvious who would make a difference. If the manager made changes to key players he would be taking a massive risk under these circumstances. I can't see it happening at this stage.

Robbie Fraser is 21 and has not been able to force his way into our first team under Gerrard, Gio, Beale or Clement. His contract is up next month and I think we can assume he'll be leaving the club.

The overriding narrative tonight is that the “old guard” are at fault. It is simplistic nonsense to pin a collapse like this on Tav, Goldson and Lundstram. Fans love a simple answer to a complex problem and that's what they've gone for. The sudden turn in our form since Hearts has been utterly mind boggling and I have no idea what has caused it, but I do know that the simplistic narrative being peddled tonight is not the answer.

I have no idea why people take pressers at face value. No manager tells the absolute truth when facing the press.

Apologies for adding a stat to compound our current state of mind-fuckery. If you compare Clements first 25 league games to Beales, the latter comes out on top with 61 points to Clements 60 points. Considering Beale was up against a Celtic team that didn't drop many points under Ange, it somewhat dispels the idea that Clement has worked "miracles". Don't get me wrong, I like Clement but starting Silva, Lawrence and Goldson tonight baffles me.

There's definitely something not working with certain members of this playing squad. It's been a never ending cycle of let downs with a few of them, 55 excepted. Clement has my full backing.

Every manager since Gerrard has lost the dressing room maybe we have some insidious individuals in that dressing room who turn when shit hits the fan.

There have been bright periods under Clement but those have completely disappeared in recent weeks. Whether it's fatigue or a lack of belief, the quality just isn't there. It's disappointing after clawing our way back into a challenge but, ultimately, we're just not good enough. Barring a miracle, the title has gone so we can only hope the preparation has already begun to revamp our squad for 2024/25. Many new players required and that won't be cheap. But we must build a squad that can meet both the physical and mental demands that this one can't.

Whilst I hope for a great performance and a decent victory, I'd snap your hand off for a 1-0 win right now.

Surname wasn't El-Nakla, was it?

I got a prescription from someone in Dundee

Barca had 2 in the starting line up, one who is 16 and has started nearly 50 games now, with 6 caps for Spain, and one who's 17 and has played over 100 games, with 20 odd caps - We in this country still think that a 21 year old is young. Barasic, please no.

Beale more or less did this last summer. Got shot off players. Problem is the replacements mostly weren’t as good as those he let go. we will no doubt spend another summer looking for Bosmans & poundshop bargain signings hoping they improve us but probably won’t

And even if we win all our remaining league games this season we'll not reach the same total us we managed last season. We were only ever in a title race as Celtic have regressed dramatically. That's what makes our capitulation even worse.

Funny how most people want us to stick with this garbage 4-2-3-1 or laugh at suggestions of utilizing the squad properly ...

That's us another £60M behind that lot. Destined to be 2nd best for a while.

We've been terrible for a few weeks. I don't fancy us on Sunday.

Utter dross. Gutted.

Dire. Has PC "lost the dressing room"?

We might if Dundee took off 3 or 4 players and we gave all our players a ball each.

Dundee is playing rather open, which should suit us. But, aside from Butland, Goldson, Souttar, Sima and Roofe, you have to guess where anyone is playing. What we end up is no cohesion as anyone else is running about (has Tavernier actually been on his wing for more than 5 mins?) and we wait for something coming off somehow. Dundee's players going down like flies and Robertson playing a Robertson blinder ain't helping either. I'm pretty sure we will only change in position ... hoping for the best.

Roofe!

Make sure you pay him. Oh, and stay away from open windows, just in case.

It’s been a grand day weather wise so the pitch should be in perfect condition for our players to show their superb footballing skills and putting Dundee to the sword no excuses I’m looking for a scintillating performance tonight.

It is Dundee, away or not, we should stop being conservative, not least if players chosen do not contribute to the team (like Dowell and Lundstram) in a way you would expect. We're stuck with Goldson and Souttar for tonight, Tavernier is seemingly undroppable, and the left flank will be Borna's again - as we will have a 4-man defence. I'd send Sterling out as DM (and nothing else, unless opportunity arrives. Raskin in front of him, so we have some creative player in a deeper role. One who is forward thinking, and willing to have a shot. Cantwell, Silva and Sima behind Dessers, to complete the typical 4-2-3-1. I'd rather test a more attack-minded line up, with a sort of three-man main defence. Sterling playing the cleaner in front of the centre-halfs, covering either side if necessary. Wright instead of Borna, as a left midfielder with the job to track back (which he does anyway), Tavernier (for lack of options and his status) doing the same on the right. Raskin and Cantwell the creative department (with order to track back if need be), Silva, Dessers and Sima as a front three. Butland Goldson - Souttar Sterling Tavernier - Raskin - Cantwell - Wright Sima - Dessers - Silva

Prefer this picture of the maestro Compo!!!

Just humour Db. I'm impressed you remember Prodan - he was set to be a great signing.

This romantic notion that things will magically change for the better if / when we get rid of "certain individuals" is pie in the sky or wishful thinking. Unless those certain individuals are the vast majority of our squad. Struggling to think of any reason to keep any of them.

Pretty gobsmacked to be honest. Had to endure the entire game via BBC Scotland as I was driving for 2 hours. Do you think there is more to this than bad form and few injuries? Soon as I heard Silva was playing I knew we wouldn't win. He offers nothing in a key area for us.

We're never scoring tonight.

Don't understand the Dowell for Cantwell sub either. Had to be Lawrence that came off.

I can't explain the lack of tempo throughout our play. Not sure if it's physical or mental fatigue or just a general lack of belief but we're back to moving the ball between central defenders and asking them to creative whilst attacking players drift around doing nothing.

They appear to have more appetite for the match.

It's kind of irrelevant why a player isn't playing. We need players who can play regularly - It's that simple.

Might have been Morton at home in the League cup last August where we played very poorly.

Sleeves rolled up and anyone wearing gloves or a vest is definitely a pansy

Here's Gideon Haigh on Underwood. (Haigh is always worth reading, even with typos, which are several in this piece). Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more Derek Underwood 1945-2024 GH on England's one-of-a-kind spinner. APR 16 READ IN APP Artwork by Fisher Classics There was no reason for Derek Underwood to bowl left arm. He batted right-handed. He wrote right-handed. Everyone else on both sides of his family was right-handed. It was just that when he first stooped to pick up a cricket ball while watching his father Leslie bowl medium pace for Farnborough in Kent that it was with his left hand. Nor was there any reason for him to bowl as he did, as a spinner operating at just below medium pace with a low arm from round the wicket. Nobody told him to. Nobody affirmed him. Tony Lock was so dismissive of Underwood as a colt he took him for a batter. The technique proved an advantage when he was picked by Kent as a seventeen-year-old because English county pitches, dressed in Surrey loam, had grown so slow: he was the youngest man to take 100 first-class wickets in a season. As Underwood described in his autobiography Beating the Bat, however, he was constantly counselled by captains, coaches, selectors and critics to change, to adjust his speeds, angles and attitudes, to conform to the stereotype of the left-arm orthodox - something closer to a Bishop Bedi or, in his own country, Don Wilson. What people didn’t realise, Underwood recalled, was that he had usually tried all these ideas first and found them wanting. He professed not to be fussed by the difficulty of classifying him; his preferred self-designation was ‘mean’ bowler: ‘I hate every run that is scored off me. I don’t like trying to buy my wickets. That is just not the way I play the game.’ He was nicknamed ‘Deadly’. It was perfect in its way. Nobody could have looked less lethal, with his clean chin, receding hairline, ten-to-two feet and more-or-less constant dishevelment; but ‘Deadly’ went with his remorseless control, his menacing fuller length, his inhibiting stump-to-stump line, and that refusal to barter wickets for runs. Geoff Boycott referred to him as having ‘the demeanour of a civil servant and the mentality of a rat catcher.’ Alan Knott, his great confrere, noted Underwood’s ‘supreme cricket fitness’: so grooved was his action, he was a stranger to injury. Doing what came naturally did not always come easily. While wet pitches made his name, Underwood saw these as a mixed blessing. The trouble was he so often went out and confirmed these suppositions, starting with the afternoon the twenty-three-year-old routed Australia at the Oval in 1968 by taking seven for 50, including four for 6 in his last twenty-seven deliveries. ‘I was shattered by the end of it, and felt no particular elation at the time,’ he recalled. ‘My first desire was to get back to the dressing room, and I remember thinking to myself how peaceful it looked as I entered the deserted room.’ He claimed not to have watched footage of the day. But for a decade and more, he was English cricket’s go-to guy on anything other than a green seamer, and even he could be handy. At Adelaide in 1975, he claimed the first seven wickets of the Test match. Underwood’s other great service for England was as a nightwatchman, which was a decidedly dangerous occupation in the days before helmets, and which he perhaps rendered more perilous by a technique that involved playing everything, even bouncers. ‘Whenever I see a bouncer coming I automatically get into line, body behind the bat and ball,’ he explained. ‘That is what I was brought up to do. Nobody ever told me what I should do next and I never learned.’ Tony Greig called him ‘one of the bravest tailed batsmen I have ever seen’ and recalled greeting him at the Gabba in 1974 with Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson in their pomp. Any advice? asked Underwood. ‘Yes,’ said Greig grimly. ‘Fight for your life.’ After an over of bouncers from Thomson, Underwood came down the pitch and said simply: ‘I see what you mean.’ It’s funny, but Thomson was a bowler I often put in the same bracket as Underwood - not of course for pace or danger, but because of their sheer untutored uniqueness. That 1974-5 summer was my first as a cricket watcher, so I took them both at face value: why should they not bowl the way they did? I’ve waited my whole lifetime and seen nobody like either of them. The same thought occurred to Knott: But, then, the game no longer makes any pretence of balance. As Underwood’s death was announced, an Indian Premier League match was underway in which runs were scored at fourteen an over and thirty-eight sixes were hit. A ‘mean’ bowler now seems almost unthinkable: the ball might as well be struck from stationary tees. In the circumstances, one might as well do what comes naturally.

This is the first stadium I ever seen the Rangers playing in Cathkin park home of Third Lanark