THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

I agree with a lot of what you said, but I don't quite agree with this. I understand the frustrations with recruitment and in hindsight we made a hell of a lot of mistakes. But I think it is slightly dishonest to make those direct comparisions.

The Twine replacement was a big miss, but that was always difficult having gone from Gilbey to Fraser to Twine. We hoped it would be Grant. Let's not forget Twine only had 6 months experience in L1 having previously been shipped out on loan to L2, hardly guaranteed success or a clear proven track record.

We replaced Darling with Tucker - somebody highly sought after with 100 games at this level and cost us a reported £300k
We replaced KKH with Oyegoke - one Premier League youth England international for another Premier League youth international
We replaced Parrott with Barry - one highly rated Premier League Ireland international for one highly rated Premier League, former Barcelona England youth international.

Now did the work? Hell no. But most of us felt at the time they were pretty good replacements

On paper (and with plenty of hindsight), Tucker replacing Darling felt the only "proper" replacement. I was excited when that happened.

I think most of us (myself included) expected much more from Oyegoke and Barry.

But we never replaced Twine, and Grant was an underwhelming signing from the start. We also never replaced Coventry who was a massive part of the second half of last season, nor Kasumu to some degree.

To Sweeting's credit though (or maybe Manning for convincing him?), bringing back Cumming was excellent work and probably saved us finishing bottom.

Well I backed you heavily ante-post each-way, to be promoted and to finish in the top-six. So I could only give a rueful smile when I heard the news on Sunday. The only other time I've backed you was ante-post 2017-18 when I hoped Robbie Neilson could repeat his success North of the border. So if you want to have a whip-round to pay me to leave you alone I won't be offended.

But actually I'm very interested to see who is the next manager/head coach. If it's the right man I could be boosting the turf-accountants' coffers again come July.

No no no. We're not having someone with talent writing the Meltdown.

Seriously, if you step back from it (which I could fully understand), I'd miss it. It combines passion, personal bitterness, good insight and batshit craziness, all in perfect proportions. It's one of the best things about this place, even when I disagree with every word (which ain't that often, he whispered).