Post Mortem - Where it went wrong and what next?

[That thing you do]

Ill start by saying I think the beginning of the unravelling was after Alkmaar at home when the back stabbing of Ross began and certain players thought they bigger than the club. - Mulgrew and Watt step up.

Should Ross have honoured Mulgrews coaching agreement? Personally given his age etc Id say yes he should. That doesnt excuse Mulgrew and Watt but it does mean Ross is not out of this Scot free either- Jack Ross shoulders some of the blame

Asghar- where to start on him? His iron fist (ham fisted) running of the club led to us having one first team striker (with another on loan ), pretty sure he oversaw Carson being dumped, he didnt get the gk , cdm, st the team badly needed in a disaster of a window. He appointed "Foxy" who was well out of his depth and "Foxy" himself takes some responsibility here too. He seems to have pulled the wool over Ogrens eyes (more on him later). He is primarily responsible.

Birighitti- Simply the worst GK weve ever had. Seems after the outrage over his Celtic tweets early in the season he checked out. Responsible for several goals in our demise and is hopefully already on a plane home.

Ogren- Im not completely against the Ogrens remaining owners. They have pumped money into the club. They have trusted a snake in Asghar and lost the fans in the process. If Mark Ogren apologised to the fan base and put a different structure in place, he would be welcome to stay. If the group of investors waiting to buy in put an offer in, Id expect he would sell.

Rest of the Squad- Id keep McGrath, Middleton, Levitt, Rory McLeod and potentially Scott McMann. For the rest i want to hear the words "by mutual consent" for as many as possible.
Id keep Behich but cant see him staying.

Goodwin- He will be away and if he wants to stay I personally would be a no. He tried. He got us out of the drop zone and the players dumped us back in. We need a manager with a proven record of getting teams out of the championship and who can create a fighting mentality.

So, about 11 new players, 2 new gks, a manager and potentially an owner to find in a what? 6-7 week close season? Shortest in a long time.

Going forward- Getting a new team in can happen, Motherwell all but did that one year. However, I feel coming up straight away is, sadly, not going to happen.

We need to get rid of the deadwood and some stability. Id take a benchmark next season on which to improve from, be that 8th 6th 4th or 2nd etc. The last trip to the league of fun was not short lived. I expect the same again.

Next season I will not be renewing my DUTV International Subscription, until I see what is going on behind the scenes and Im satisfied with the rebuild. If Im not, I wont renew until I am.

I will however contribute to DUSF.

Thats about it....

[Chick A Saw]

TTYD,
You were doing so well with most of that, then you mentioned a player to keep!

I agree to keep Middleton, Levitt and McGrath if he can be persuaded to move, and i would also keep Graham, Sibbald and make a move for Ayina. Most kids and loaned players are exempt, bar Chalmers and Glass who should be binned, unless a new manager thinks they can improve them.

However, i liked McMann when he came to us, but i dont think we seen enough of him to start with due to injury. Now i think his time is up as he has given too many rank rotten performances, and tonight was probably the worst.

[JUSTaway]

Where did it go wrong - losing another manager in the summer before the season started, not replacing Butcher/Fuchs and ending up with the most leightweight team i have ever seen, catastrophic keepers, not so much sacking Ross but replacing him with Fox, and January window. Totally self inflicted. I am convinced a competent keeper alone could have kept us up, that is how poorly I rate our keepers. Mismanagement from Chairman and Sporting director totally to blame, more than sh1tey managers and players.

As much as you might want to punt every player, it is almost impossible on our budget to replace an entire squad. Plus, do want to have to be committing 2 years deals to guys who are good enough to get you out the championship but you are stuck with in Premiership if you get up but aren't good enough. Some of our players in a decent balanced squad can probably do a job in championship, then you can get rid after a year. Pretty hard to prepare for championship when you don't know what is going on with the ownership of club.

[That thing you do]

TTYD,
You were doing so well with most of that, then you mentioned a player to keep!

I agree to keep Middleton, Levitt and McGrath if he can be persuaded to move, and i would also keep Graham, Sibbald and make a move for Ayina. Most kids and loaned players are exempt, bar Chalmers and Glass who should be binned, unless a new manager thinks they can improve them.

However, i liked McMann when he came to us, but i dont think we seen enough of him to start with due to injury. Now i think his time is up as he has given too many rank rotten performances, and tonight was probably the worst.

I carefully used *potentially there as there is a player in there, he was very good early on. But, certainly not sold on it.

Sibbald is too much of a headless chicken. Theres a player there too though. All depends who else is in midfield and supporting him if he stayed.

He is a bit mental so that gritty player you need in the fundesliga could be him.

I just want 7 to 8 / 11 starting next year to be different. Sick of Harkes. Immi Niskanen tries hard but not good enough. Fletcher is done but tried his heart out. Anyone in defence or gk can go. The lot of them.

Ayina in - maybe. Solid enough bar last two games, but doubt hed swap Huddersfield for Ochil View on a wet wednesday in December though.

[geofoxposse]

The whole operation and process has to turn itself back 30 years to a tight knit siege mentality where imposters are easily identified and punted.

All these extra staff members, trainers, tampon whirlers, hangers on etc etc should be punted as they have brought nothing to the set up and there is no evidence of any production.

A manager, a trainer a doctor, use an outside medic if needed or ninewells emergency dept (if one still exists)

Contracts should all be results driven. This year would see several tangerine home repossessions based on that shyte.

Back to basics, manager in the faces, play for the shirt or fear.

Maybe a well trained psycho like Dunc .

[arab777]

I don't think Ogren can be blamed for anything up until January. He put a lot of money in to the club. The problem is he is no football expert and needed to trust others on footballing decisions.

I was even prepared to give TA a pass for the poor start of the season. Bringing Levitt back seemed like a coup, an experienced striker in Fletcher and international keeper who had just won goalkeeper of the year in Australia 2 years on the trot.

January was the chance to put things right. It was salvageable but we were a team sitting bottom of the league who were weaker after the window shut. No new goalkeeper, no new striker. You don't need to be a football man to understand that is a problem.

I get MA probably felt he had backed the club and couldn't keep throwing money and was probably also being told we will get out of this, that we had players like Pawlett coming back from injury (don't start me on this on this one who was given a new contract when he did virtually nothing to deserve it). It would not have broken the bank though to bring in a semi reliable keeper say on loan. The inadequacy of what happened with the January transfer window is on TA and MA's head.

[LSArab]

Asghar has to take the blame imo

The January window was the moment we relegated ourselves

Persisting with Birighitti

Would only have taken a couple more points and we’d have been ok.

Utter disgrace

[pertharab]

Our problems go further back than this season possibly 10 years or so. I was, along with many of the support, fooled and given false hope last season where realistically we could have finished up anywhere from 4th to 10th and that ' false' high finish made me think the good times were back. European football, 'exciting' new signings, a good 'sugar daddy' owner, Jack Ross installed to almost universal approval, Ashgar still looking like he was a good thing for the club etc. How wrong can you be? How the hell we have gotten to here from the feeling after the home AZ game I cannot fathom. A late goal lost taking away from a positive first game at Killie and that, let's be honest and remember, stunning performance against AZ and the love and pure delight from the stands, made me think top six again, at least , a possibility of group stage European football, a possible cup run, stability on and off the park, ambition anything but what has just happened. It is beyond belief, a ridiculous turn around in fortunes and such a fall from grace that it will take a long time for the support, or at least many of them like me, to forgive Ogren, Ashgar, Ross, Fox and those imposters of a team on the park. The club will live on, recover (hopefully) and again hopefully I will be there to back them but I have never felt so low as a United fan as now even compared to the last relegation. The reason for feeling like I do is surely down to the hope I (we) felt in early August before the roof fell in. Whoever said " it is the hope that kills you" never said a truer word. Devastated!!!

[the_arab]

The problem imho is quite simple

1. They signed players for high wages that wiped out the budget. On paper, they looked ok. I don't think any of us had an issue with the quality we thought we were getting at that point, however:

2. Wiping out the budget left us so short that it meant we literally had no combination of a starting 11/formation that didn't completely expose us somewhere.

3. The club decided they knew better than the fans. JR and others came out with ridiculous statements like you don't need defensive midfielders. And "none" of you complained about the signings when we made them. The reality is none of us thought we signed bad players but all of us were very vocal that we were so badly covered in some areas that a disaster was imminent.

4. January, the worst transfer window in all my years. Worse than ST selling players to Celtic. A complete and utter disgrace that set the tone for relegation. Even if we had signed sh1te it might have helped, why.. because it would have looked like we were trying to rectify it, fans would have given more slack but no, a rip started between club and fans, spilled over to the pitch just like in the latter ST years and I called it in January that it would ultimately cost us because our players were all sh1te bags who would not stand up and be counted for and would hide. Instead of sorting it we got "you need to back the club as im putting no more money in"

5. Protests etc in the stands... was always the beginning of the end and so here we are. An owner who has made unforgivable mistakes. A fan base who wants to see the back of almost every player at the club, no permanent manager, and a complete rebuild needed


Worst of all. All of us, bar 1 person on here saw this coming, not weeks ago, not months ago but at the very start of the season, and its an absolute disgrace

[tHeArAb]

Maybe a well trained psycho like Dunc .

Funnily enough he's been a guest at the last two home games.