Jabba's sending off was the softest ever but in all honesty I have no sympathy for him! Booked 5 mins earlier for mouthing at a completely incompetent ref & then gives him the opportunity to book him again by flying in! He was so late the guy was 5 yards away by thye time he got there! Even the Arbroath players thought it was a joke but hey ho!
Blackadder was lucky tho that he wasn't given a dtraight red for a stupid deliberate trip on Webster in the 2nd half
Arbroath fully deservered to win they were totally up for it & hit us on the break from the 2nd minute when a hopeful long ball caught our lumberous defence trying to hold a high line against someone with pace. Weatherston did it to us at Hampden earlier in the season & we obviously have learned sod all!
Every corner from Arbroath's left I was screaming that we had no one on the near post & after hitting his 3 previous long Watson pinged one in to the near post & our keeper could only help it into the net. From where I was I think it was already over before he touched it though!
It was amazing the transformation after Ritchie scored! Rennie, Raeside, & the other c.b from looking so arrogant & cocky suddenly looked like EF's defence! Totally panicked!
Bottom line our season's fukced!
I think we have so many players that Baikie doesn't know what his best team is! At the start of the season we played our game & let otheres worry about us, now we start every game worrying about how the opposition will play!
Out formations changed every week so much so that the players don't know where they're supposed to be playing!
Rant over I'm away to lie down in a darkened room!
Sorry one last point! When McMullen was booked what the fukc was Dobbins doing running 30 yards to get involved for? Even Raeside was shouting at the ref from 50 yards away! Pisses me off big time that!

Is that now 11 games without a win? If so then Baikie should walk.
Today was just a continuation of what we have been watching for too long.To me it looks like the players hardly know each other.
For a Manager who has the biggest budget by far in this league to put out week after week a team that looks like amateurs is a fucking disgrace.
Today for instance,why was Walker playing centre forward,why didn`t he replace Greg who was toiling and put on O`Reilly,why does he continue to be so negative in his approach to games?
As someone said in the crowd,our last manager was sacked for less!
Our season is well and truly over and the blame lies totally with Dave Baikie.

It's our eighth consecutive competitive match without a win. Not even near our sorry record of SIXTEEN consecutive defeats!
Still extremely depressing, though. Some strong drink will be taken this evening.

Angry and very pissed off. I said that we would never come back from 2 down but hoped to be proved wrong and we almost did but to salvage a point at home isn't god enough.The first goal was stoppable and the second we should have had someone on the near post for the corner. Ritchies goal was a cracker but it counts for nothing unfortunately. As for the referee, some of thew bookings were the softest I've ever seen and what was another bad game for us wasn't helped by the terrible way he ran the game. How many times did he fail to play advantage when he could have done and the stop start stop start made it very poor along with so many crap bookings and sending off.

I'm usually optomistic but after today I've lost that optimism, time is running out for us to turn things around, I fear it is too late this season.

First game for a while and to say I was disappointed is an understatement. My biggest complaint is about the Ref. Did you notice that after he sent off Jabba for a totally underserved 2nd yellow, he gave every single decision to us. This confirms he made the wrong call. Apparantly Jabba knew this would happen as the ref warned him he would do him after he heard Jabba taking the piss out of him earlier in the match.
I am one of the mosy optimistic people that pay money to watch The Fife but even my optimism is begining to disappear. Is our season over? I think it will be very dificult to come back to form now as it will take us to win every remaining match to achieve a play-off spot.

Liam - I said to people around about me today that i've hardly everseen you so wound up ( well not to todays extent and i do wonder if some of the posts about swearing are also directed at you although that i have to admit is not your normal - your comments are usually clean and witty). Look at the facts - we have not played well since December. Are the players to blame? In my mind opinion part time players deseve more respect than full time players as they not only have to train after they have attended their full time work, they often have to take time off to attend mid week games. i like most punters question the teams ability but if i was to be honest with myself i still admire most of the players commitment whether the performances are good or not.

Thanks again boys, another comedy result from East Fife, the laughing stock of football at the moment. Funnily enough that tag seems to follow any team associated with fat Wullie Gray.

Agree with many of the points made. I don't think Baikie knows what his best starting 11 is. It is not as if he only makes changes by bringing player A in to replace player B. He continually plays players in a variety of positions which ends up with the players not being fully aware of the roles they are expected to do. For example Smart was having a real go at Blackadder who was playing in an unacustomed central role today.
Why did the Arbroath players look more up for the game than us ? This is Baikies job to motivate players.
Graham Gibson has been brought in on loan from Thistle and has not produced the goods. He often doesn't look interested or committed, yet John Martin basically made way for him by going on loan to Kelty. Johns finishing and final ball is not brilliant but he gives you committment and electric pace which caused problems for opposition defenders. Why pay part of the wages of a player who is no better than what we have ?
I actually made the comment about Jim Moffat being sacked for a similar run of results and style of Football. Moffat at least had the excuse that he was working under the Brown regime with budgets cut to the bare minimum, whereas Baikie has had a huge budget by comparison and we are no better off. Time for change ?

Without doubt it is time for change. Game after game opposing teams seem to be more up for it than us.
I honestly don`t know that even Baikie knows what his best 11 is.
We are really struggling for a play off place and I have serious doubts that Baikie has the ability to remedy this.

Pretty bloody shocking today. No fight shown till Jablonski got sent off, and even then Arbroath took the piss for the last few minutes, knocking it about nicely - something which we were completely incapable of doing. Our current tactics seem to be based entirely on luck - getting the break of the ball after the trademark punt and moving it somewhere in the vicinity of the penalty box as quickly as possible. That's how we got the goal today anyway - nicely taken though it was. Thought about the only player who put in a shift today was Nicholas, though he got subbed, he ran his arse off trying to find something from our completely non-existent midfield. As for the keeper, and the defence... to score an own goal from a near post corner is quite a feat, put it that way. Blackadder seems to be losing his grip a bit too - earlier in the season he was making some nice passes, breaking it up a bit, whereas now all he seems to do is dither. Big changes need to be made - and fast - if we're to have a hope of hell of even making the play-offs. To be fair, I think we got played off the park today.

Okay so the ref had a bad game but you cant blame him for our performance. I know this is DB's team but even he must feel that some of his aquisitions are not pulling their weight.

Blackadder is an example, I saw the ref sprint past him to keep up with play, though Blackadder did eventually catch him up.

Nicholas is also not up to the task. In the first half he was clean through on goal then decided to lay it of the Jabba who was so slow he couldn't reach the ball.

McDonald should have been off-the-pace as it was his first game back in almost a year but in that side he is as good and quick as any of them.

The new signings have added nothing to the team, team, there's a laugh. They're a group of individuals. Its the wrong blend, individualy we may have better players than other teams but collectively we're crap.

Sorry we're not crap but we have no bottle, backbone of desire to compete and with attitude like this they shouldn't be on the park

"Okay so the ref had a bad game but you cant blame him for our performance."

True, but the bad performance from us was made a bad game full stop because of his very poor handling of the game.

"Nicholas is also not up to the task. In the first half he was clean through on goal then decided to lay it of the Jabba who was so slow he couldn't reach the ball."

Disagree partly with that, from what I saw Nicholas did the unselfish thing and saw Jabba had a better chance, if he was a bit quicker it should have been a goal.

Just to clarify - Arbroath weren't taking the piss late on when they were interpassing. They were running down the clock. What should have been a comfortable win ended up nervy. There's a positive for you.

When did EF last have a good FOOTBALLING team? Not now, not under Jim Moffat even in the promotion season. Perhaps we are going back as far as Steve Archibald who managed to get us playing some reasonably decent stuff with a squad of limited ability. He certainly instilled the basics of passing and movement, and this with players who were arguably less talented than the present bunch. What would Stevie have done with the current squad? Easy, we would have the title virtually wrapped up by now. Time for a change of manager then though it probably isn't worth doing until the end of the season.

BP we did have a good footballing side the last time we won promotion, Craig Robertson saw to that.

They were so good again after a fantastic start they nearly blew it.

It's about time that East Fife went back to basics - lumping long balls into the box, the percentage game.

Currently, they are trying to play football with players on the side who just can't.

The last time we won promotion we were up against stronger clubs. Peterhead and Morton had much better players than us. Albion Rovers brought in good players in that January transfer window. Stirling Albion had a big well matched group of players and QP were difficult to break down, the rest were all capable of taking points. What East Fife had was a good team and thats what you need, not individuals like we have at the moment but good team players. A good team will always come through in the end alas this season we dont have that and are doomed to failure.

After the last post I remembered that over the years EF had the same problem. They began the season well and were near the top or even top then fell away as the season progressed. This has happenned with many managers and players. So I have come to the conclusion the fault is not all with the manager or players. The constant factor has been the fans.

Now I know you pays your money and are entitled to slag the team etc but just think what that does for morale. I dont care what anyone says it must have a detrimental effect on performance and a constant barrage of ridicule by admitedly a small amount of fans is going to drag the team down.

I have over the years listened to these fans give a player stick for even honest mistakes and unfortunately their criticism is not drowned out by the majority who especially at home games seem sadly silent.

What all this ranting boils down to is that the fans get the team they deserve.

And that's just about the most sensible post I've seen on here in ages.

If the players etc had the same strength of character as many of the 'fans' we'd be below Wick Academy in the league.

Yeah, the way it's going right now is $hit. Tough, life's like that. Togetherness is the only way we'll turn it round.

If the ref hadn't broken up the flow of the game with his constant whistling then East Fife would have been humped instead of scraping a 2-1 defeat. Arbroath fans should be livid with his performance, East Fife fans should thank him, apart from the jabba decission.

Yer talking shite Sarge!