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KA9Killie

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Everything posted by KA9Killie

  1. Alessio had coached elite players with Juventus, Italy and Chelsea. Bringing him to Killie was like hiring a university professor to teach bottom sets in a comprehensive school. His previous experience had no relevance to the guys he was working with and he could only have succeeded if he had been given time and support. Steve Clarke had a similar coaching background, but he knew the club; had grown up locally and had started his playing career at a club of similar stature. He also has the demeanour of a guy that you don't mess with. Dyer was just dire, and the idiot who sent a racist letter to the club delayed his sacking by a few crucial weeks during a transfer window that his successor could have done with.
  2. That's about £435,000. Would happily take it!
  3. To be fair, it doesn't actually say that Alessio doesn't know why he was sacked. It just says that it came as a surprise to him.
  4. The team then was garbage, but they were our garbage. Local guys who played with us for years and had a connection with the fans. Now we have journeymen coming in and out; constant short-term signings and there is no real continuity or identity. At least that's how an old guy sees it
  5. As a 60 year old coach, Billy still looked fit enough to play. I started watching Killie as an 11 year old in 1981 and it is frightening to think of the number of players from that era who have passed away already. RIP Billy.
  6. Am I the only one to be surprised that anyone remembers his Celtic career, and even more surprised that Pat apparently claims to remember it??? Pat Nevin played for Celtic in the era that Gordon Ramsay played for Rangers and I won the Champions League with Killie. Utter lies and a made-up quote from what used to be a newspaper. .
  7. I neither know nor care what his religious or political views are, nor where he lives. The problem is whether he can be a successful Killie manager. That's a huge one, so let's focus on it.
  8. KA9Killie

    VAR

    And this is what I dislike about VAR. There will always be decisions you could look at forever and still have disagreements. As well as the nitpicking marginal offsides (which could be solved by a simple tweak to the rule which says that if any part of the attacker is in line with any part of the defender it is onside), it also undermines the referee and cheats the fans who have paid to attend the match and deserve to see decisions being made in real time by the guy in the middle, not anonymous figures in a room somewhere. Goal-line technology is a different thing. Whether the ball crossed the line is an absolute. It either did or didn't and it is essential to know. Everything else involves some level of interpretation and the main thing is that it is honest.
  9. That's not my point, though. I'm talking about being very selective and signing a very small number of freed players at 16-18, giving them a professional contract and telling them that they can earn the chance of playing in the first team within 1-2 years max. They don't get to play in an "elite" youth team (there really is no such thing - even in the best of them, most players are not going to make it.), but they get a chance to train with experienced professionals and be part of first team planning. Is that a worse deal than paying for whole teams of 'elite' players who never actually make it, which has been our experience in recent years? Truly elite clubs use every piece of biometric and other data they can to monitor the development of youth players, and begin harvesting them, from the age of 8. The chance of a superstar starting his career with us is less than it ever was, no matter what we do. Ditto our chance of hanging on to talented youngsters for any length of time. The club has been badly managed for a long, long time. Failure to plan appropriately means replacing almost the whole first team squad at a time. When I was young, we had Allan McCulloch, Stuart McLean, Alan Robertson, Paul Clarke, Derrick McDicken, George Maxwell and Ally Mauchlen who had all come through the youth system, which no one pretended was 'elite'. Between them, they played well over 2000 matches for us and youngsters coming through had a stable squad to nurture them. For years, we have not had that. We have had journeymen trying to win their next year's contract and no opportunities for youngsters progressing from our "elite" youth system. Until we have a coherent and stable strategy for the whole playing staff, that will never change.
  10. Do they, though? Or do they want a viable pathway to playing in the first team? Something the club has utterly failed to provide in recent years. Right now, we are one point above a part time club with 17 players in their squad plus four guys on loan. We are already massively under-achieving in terms of the resources we are putting in, and there is no evidence that throwing money at the youth system would do anything for us. In recent years (and not terribly recent now), the only really big "youth success" has been Greg Taylor, who was 16 when he joined us, with Rangers having paid for his development until then. We don't need a youth system at all to pick up guys who have been discarded by bigger clubs and offer them a chance to make the first team within a year or two.
  11. In some ways it is similar to the Mixu season, in that the new manager had to completely rebuild. Mixu had us bottom of the league at one point, but I wasn't worried, partly because of Mixu's positivity changing the mood around RP and partly because Mixu clearly had a plan for where he was taking us. TW is more of a Jim Jefferies type - you'll never faint with excitement listening to him or watching his team, but he arrived with a reputation for competence. However, although TW would have been my choice at the time, I am fast losing confidence in him. Irrespective of how good the squad is, a manager is successful in my book if he gets the best out of the players. Mixu and SSC did that in spades; Kenny Shiels did it inconsistently; the other managers we have had in the last 11 years have been 'meh' at best. That can be good enough to avoid relegation, but it is not sure to get us promotion. And certainty of promotion, or as close as anyone can get to it, is what we desperately need.
  12. Any time I heard him on the radio, Provan only seemed interested in talking about Celtic and Rangers. At least Gordon Smith generally talked quite affectionately about Killie even though he was a Rangers fan and there seemed to be some devious shenanigans about his transfer when he left us. By contrast, it doesn't sound like the board or the legendary Davie Sneddon were too bothered to lose Provan, accepting a bid before the player even knew about it, then offering him a lift to Glasgow ?
  13. I'm getting really depressed about this. Last season, it was obvious to everyone who was not on the club payroll that we desperately needed a goalkeeper. This season it was obvious, and has been ever since it was confirmed that Lafferty was leaving, that at least one experienced striker had to be a priority. Although TW has acknowledged the need and has done a brilliant job rebuilding the squad the club has failed miserably in this one key area.
  14. Morton jersey looks like ours of 40 years ago. Not everyone has liked all of our strips in the last 30 years or so, but I don't remember anyone ever suggesting that we go back to hoops.
  15. Could be a situation where the player doesn't want to leave NI again, but both he and Ballymena are prepared to use the offer they have had from Killie to squeeze a better deal out of Glentoran. Kind of thing that players do all the time, but it is unusual for Killie to be the "big" club in the mix.
  16. Despite our lack of a striker, we have players capable of parking the bus, getting a draw and then maintaining our recent (this season) 100% record in penalty shoot outs.
  17. You beat me to it, but it was actually 2001. https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/8035073.former-soccer-stars-asbestos-death/
  18. Kris Boyd was prolific all the way through his development from the youth team. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't recall Innes Cameron ever showing any particular promise. A reasonable squad player, but no more than that.
  19. Decent player; scored a few goals despite not being a regular starter. I have heard that he would be happy to stay in Scotland for at least another year if the money is right.
  20. Completely agree about Alan Power. Been a good player for Killie, but we have signed several midfielders and the timing suggests that there may have been a gentleman's agreement that he would be allowed to leave as soon as we had a replacement sorted. As far as the PCA is concerned, it gives security on both sides and Brophy could have sued St Mirren if they ripped it up. I think St Mirren are making mistakes which will be costly to them, but not our problem...
  21. Is Harry Broun a goalkeeper? Don't know how good he is.
  22. I wouldn't have a problem with us hiring Doyle as a coach if we had signed at least one experienced goalkeeper who was clearly going to be ahead of him for a place in the first team. We don't want to be in a position where Doyle ends up in the team again.
  23. I like it! An experienced player who is saying the right things. I think we've got a decent team taking shape.
  24. Last night, I posted that I was disappointed by the club and said they had to make a statement. This morning, they have made a more detailed statement than anyone could have hoped for. Really delighted by the transparency and desire to communicate with fans that the club is showing. Arguably even better than the Fleeting era, and certainly better than anything before or since. Treating the agent's demands as no more than a starting point and attempting to negotiate something is exactly what I wanted, and I am happy to accept the club's statement that they tried it. KL playing for Killie was exciting and very productive in terms of goals, but a 4x pay rise was never going to happen, even if we hadn't been relegated. I suspect that his next club won't pay him much more money, and maybe even less, than Killie would have offered. It reminds me of Andy McLaren walking out because he was too thick to understand that we had to cut costs at the time and thought the club was trying to rip him off. He eventually went back to Dundee United for reportedly less money than he could have got from us.
  25. I'm not aware of Sergio Ramos finishing a season as Killie's top scorer and stating that he wants to do a deal to stay at the club. That is the position Lafferty is in, and we should certainly have made him our best offer. Not stupid money, or money we can't afford, but some kind of offer.
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