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The Alex Rae Interviews


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Players need to develop a thick enough skin to deal with criticism. If they spit the dummy in response to a few comments by a frustrated gaffer, they need to take a long hard look at themselves.

We've needed a manager who isn't afraid to boot a few arses from time to time. Rae has already demonstrated that he'll credit players when it is warranted, so this shows he has an honest, balanced approach. I have absolutely no problem with that.

The comparison to Butcher's rant at Hibs is misplaced. 

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Rae comes across as a hard but fair manager. He's been open and honest about how he works, and what he expects from the players. I don't think we've performed especially well in any of the games so far, and, while it's still about getting up to speed before the league starts, he's obviously decided that some players need a wee bit of a kick up the *rse in public. They'll no doubt have been told about it behind the scenes beforehand. Farrell and Rae have been in the game long enough to know the relationship they have with the players, and will know what they can get away with in terms of public criticism. 

He's probably learned a fair bit as well. We aren't good enough to go to a Premiership club and play such an open game. Our defenders are pretty slow, our wide players need to provide more cover defensively, our central midfield two were played through consistently, and lumping aimless high balls up to the strikers is a bit of a lottery.   

 

  

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He's the boss.

We played like a pre season friendly.

We played like we were certs to go through even if we were beat.

If we had beat Hamilton, then Edinburgh City, if would have started to add a few hundred to the crowd.

Momentum (not Corbyn's lot) is very important.

Alex understands this.

On 11th September 1976 Falkirk beat us 2-0 at Brockville in our 2nd league game.

The previous Saturday we drew 1-1 with East Fife with the help of an own goal.

Not a good start.

We then went on a 28 game undefeated run that went a long way to us winning the league.

Alex Ferguson sorted them out. Alex Rae will do the same.

 

 

   

 

 

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4 minutes ago, E=Mc2 said:

He's the boss.

We played like a pre season friendly.

We played like we were certs to go through even if we were beat.

If we had beat Hamilton, then Edinburgh City, if would have started to add a few hundred to the crowd.

Momentum (not Corbyn's lot) is very important.

Alex understands this.

On 11th September 1976 Falkirk beat us 2-0 at Brockville in our 2nd league game.

The previous Saturday we drew 1-1 with East Fife with the help of an own goal.

Not a good start.

We then went on a 28 game undefeated run that went a long way to us winning the league.

Alex Ferguson sorted them out. Alex Rae will do the same.

 

 

   

 

 

He will. 

COSMFC 

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I wasn't at the game and I didn't hear the post match interviews but after a 0-3 defeat from Hamilton Accies, which is a pretty poor result, any manager is likely to say what the fans want to hear. You know, the old "need to work harder"  ,  "early in the season"  ,  "need time to gel" etc etc.  Same old hackneyed rubbish.

Saints are likely to win against Edinburgh and may well qualify from the section ( they ought to though) but having seen the performance last week its clear they will be making up the numbers unless they get a decent centre forward and a centre half pronto.

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1 hour ago, Froggie said:

I wasn't at the game and I didn't hear the post match interviews but after a 0-3 defeat from Hamilton Accies, which is a pretty poor result, any manager is likely to say what the fans want to hear. You know, the old "need to work harder"  ,  "early in the season"  ,  "need time to gel" etc etc.  Same old hackneyed rubbish.

Saints are likely to win against Edinburgh and may well qualify from the section ( they ought to though) but having seen the performance last week its clear they will be making up the numbers unless they get a decent centre forward and a centre half pronto.

What, exactly, should the manager say? 

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1 hour ago, Froggie said:

I wasn't at the game and I didn't hear the post match interviews but after a 0-3 defeat from Hamilton Accies, which is a pretty poor result, any manager is likely to say what the fans want to hear. You know, the old "need to work harder"  ,  "early in the season"  ,  "need time to gel" etc etc.  Same old hackneyed rubbish.

Saints are likely to win against Edinburgh and may well qualify from the section ( they ought to though) but having seen the performance last week its clear they will be making up the numbers unless they get a decent centre forward and a centre half pronto.

The point is that Rae didn't trot out those lines. He was pretty uncompromising, and didn't miss and hit the wall.

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Somewhat unfair on most of our managers is the Fergie benchmark.  Fergie's style was as much about what worked for him as a person as it was about what worked for his players, Alex Rae may well be like him in that respect, but probably no other.

 

We should cut out the "Fergie did it another way" routine, it is completely irrelevant to where we are now.

 

If the way AR does things is true to the man and consistently applied then he will do well enough.

 

That being said, we don't seem too much further ahead of where we were before he took over.

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Personally, I'm not too worried about the media side of things.
The main focus is what happens on the pitch and his involvement in that.

He could interview shockingly bad as long as he is good at the stuff that matters regarding the team.I believe he will be a great manager for us.

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Liked the interview, refreshing stuff to hear the manager giving the team richly deserved criticism, and he has a squad which enables him to make changes in most positions, so nobody is safe from being dropped. As one or two others have commented on, I'm not comfortable with the singling out of an individual player - no matter how mild or harsh the criticism. Individual assessments will be given behind closed doors, after doing the video analysis as Alex says - no need for picking a name to criticise in the interview.

 

In general though, very happy with the signings we've made, very happy with the feedback from Rae after games, and hoping for an enjoyable season, which is very possible with the players and manager at the club.

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4 hours ago, beyond our ken said:

That being said, we don't seem too much further ahead of where we were before he took over.

When he took over we were really at rock bottom, and he turned us into an organised team who were more difficult to beat than we were. Certainly the standard of football wasn't much better, and I think we'll be seeing a fair amount of aimless long balls this season, but he got the job done. That job was to finish above the likes of Livi, Alloa and Dumbarton.

He's under more pressure now; we've got to look to compete with Dundee Utd, Falkirk, Hibs.... Expectations are higher and his contract is up at the end of the season. He's built a good squad and if he can't get them to play, and secure a top 4 place then you have to wonder if he'll be worth keeping on.

Saturday was the first real test with his team, and it wasn't good. He blamed the players. Early days of course, but he's still got to prove himself as far as I'm concerned. Talk is cheap. 

 

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to play the same 11 two games in a row was a mistake, these games imo are all geared up to hitting the ground running when we play the 1st game in the league. there are players on the bench who deserve a chance before then, what is AR learning by doing this? we could potentially have guys playing against morton who haven't played in 3wks.

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As someone who moaned when Rae was appointed I have been pleased at the way Rae has turned results (if not performances) around and pleased about the way he conducts himself. Let's not forget that this time last year Iain Murray was getting plaudits for his pre-season interviews suggesting St Mirren would not be favourites for promotion but should be dark horses to beat Rangers and Hibs to the automatic promotion place... and our under 20s looked so good in pre-season that we wouldn't need to make as many signings as he first thought (and then he spent August and September making more panic buys after a dreadful start to the season and binned his own hand-picked assistant in October).

The only other time we went on a bit of an angry-ish rant that I can remember was when Livi thumped us in one of his first games and went on about how there had been worrying signs in training.

I quite enjoy Rae's interviews and think he is usually pretty honest in his assessments. Sometimes you did wonder if Tommy Craig and Ian Murray had watched the same game as the fans when they spoke to the press after the match.

Its quite possible that in hindsight he may regret some of his comments said in the heat of the moment straight after the game, but I would worry about the mentality of any player upset by one interview. He was harsh on Walsh but did say he had done well on the creative side so the criticism wasn't completely unbalanced. If Mallan was one of the targets about pulling out of tackles and not playing to the level reached last season then good, ditto Gallacher. Hopefully someone else will get a run out at right back unless Rae has decided Naismith needs game time to get match fitness back... it can't be easy for any right midfielder covering on defensive duties for Naismith when he is often out the TV picture completely any time we lose a goal and leaves his man in acres of space to fire in crosses or shots.

Edited by Dibbles old paperboy
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When he took over we were really at rock bottom, and he turned us into an organised team who were more difficult to beat than we were. Certainly the standard of football wasn't much better, and I think we'll be seeing a fair amount of aimless long balls this season, but he got the job done. That job was to finish above the likes of Livi, Alloa and Dumbarton.

He's under more pressure now; we've got to look to compete with Dundee Utd, Falkirk, Hibs.... Expectations are higher and his contract is up at the end of the season. He's built a good squad and if he can't get them to play, and secure a top 4 place then you have to wonder if he'll be worth keeping on.

Saturday was the first real test with his team, and it wasn't good. He blamed the players. Early days of course, but he's still got to prove himself as far as I'm concerned. Talk is cheap. 

 



If Rae doesn't finish top 4 I would be very surprised if he got a new contract. Guess it depends how the season plays out. This squad should 100% be top 4. Us, Dundee Utd, Hibs and Falkirk should be top 4 with a bit to spare. Anything less is failure.

FWIW I think we will be top 3
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20 hours ago, Julian Banjos said:

When he took over we were really at rock bottom, and he turned us into an organised team who were more difficult to beat than we were. Certainly the standard of football wasn't much better, and I think we'll be seeing a fair amount of aimless long balls this season, but he got the job done. That job was to finish above the likes of Livi, Alloa and Dumbarton.

He's under more pressure now; we've got to look to compete with Dundee Utd, Falkirk, Hibs.... Expectations are higher and his contract is up at the end of the season. He's built a good squad and if he can't get them to play, and secure a top 4 place then you have to wonder if he'll be worth keeping on.

Saturday was the first real test with his team, and it wasn't good. He blamed the players. Early days of course, but he's still got to prove himself as far as I'm concerned. Talk is cheap. 

 

I remember when we used to say the same (or some of us did) about Danny Lennon and his top 6 squad. We binned Lennon and since then only Kenny McLean has finished the season in a top 6 team.

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I remember when we used to say the same (or some of us did) about Danny Lennon and his top 6 squad. We binned Lennon and since then only Kenny McLean has finished the season in a top 6 team.


I'm not sure I get your point, but McGowan and Harkins have subsequently played for a top 6 team. Plus Magennis has done alright for himself.
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4 hours ago, ScotstounSaint said:


I'm not sure I get your point, but McGowan and Harkins have subsequently played for a top 6 team. Plus Magennis has done alright for himself.

I was replying to the suggestion that, before a ball has been kicked in the league this season, Alex Rae should automatically be fired or not have his contract renewed if we miss out on the promotion places this year. We have no idea, before a ball has been kicked in the league campaign this season, what our results will be like, what our performances will be like, how other teams will perform this season. One scenario I could foresee is that it will be very tight in the top half of the league, If we finished a few points from 1st or 2nd and missed out on the promotion places on goal difference or by a few points then I think that would represent a huge improvement on being 20 points behind 4th spot last year.

You're correct that 2 seasons ago Dundee did finish in 6th spot with both Harkins and McGowan playing for them, last year they finished 8th and Dundee are now encouraging Harkins to find another club and McGowan hasn't started many games for them so far this season. Since signing with Kilmarnock, Josh Magennis has been part of a team finishing 10th and 11th in the past 2 seasons and banged in a total of 18 goals in the league from 72 appearances with Killie - 9 goals a season is hardly earth shattering form for a striker. Fans said that with Craig Samson / Marian Kello, Darren McGregor, Jeroem Tesselaar, Graham Carey, John McGinn, Paul McGowan, Kenny McLean, Nigel Hasselbaink as well at Thommo and Teale we had a top 6 squad and Lennon was the one holding back the club. Hindsight has shown that only Kenny McLean and Paul McGowan have finished the season as a regular starting XI player in a top 6 team since leaving St Mirren (Hasselbaink was a hardly ever picked sub at St Johnstone when they finished in the top 6). My point with regards to Danny Lennon would be that he always found enough decent players each year on our budget to have us playing watchable football (most of the time) and bring through some of our own young players but the bulk of his team were really just good to OK bottom 6 SPL standard players, and we were never really stacked full of players who could walk into the Aberdeen team to quote a few posters (McGregor, McLean, and McGinn were all prime candidates for walking into the Aberdeen starting XI).

Getting back to Alex Rae and this season, whatever happens once the league starts he deserves a bit of credit for spending his budget more astutely than Tommy Craig or Ian Murray did.

Edited by Dibbles old paperboy
typos
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Ah, I get your point now. Fair enough Magennis hasn't set the world on fire at club level, but he has played for his country in the knockout stages of Euro 2016. I suppose you could also argue that McGregor and McGinn have won the Scottish Cup and McGinn has played for Scotland. Dummett, Isma, Thommohawk and Teale were also class players.

Personally I think we should have done better in the league with the players we had, especially in 2012/13. But yeah, Danny certainly wasn't the sole reason why we finished outwith the top 6, the players didn't consistently perform to the level they were capable of.

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