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Kmcalpin

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Everything posted by Kmcalpin

  1. Presumably the SPFL are also under that mistaken impression. Has anyone actually seen the full SPFL report yet?
  2. I'd be tempted to drop Law but the only other realistic alternative to him is Luke Watt, who for some reason hasn't seen first team action under MMcG. Kennedy is a makeshift right back at best. Right back is a problem in my view. Again the question of midfield balance comes up. If you swap Ainsworth for Johnson where does that Cadden who is right sided and favours playing wide? Decisions decisions!
  3. Absolutely. More often than not it means that our striker is isolated and / or he has to come very deep with the result that the opposition defence and midfield is encouraged to push up the park.
  4. Some good points there. However sometimes you make tactical changes that suit the opposition and thats just what happened on Saturday. I don't think our midfield competed that well especially in the closing stages. Age wise Pearson and Lasley are over 30, Gomis is 30 and Cadden is a teenager I think. Draper simply steamrollered Lasley. Stevie Hammell has got a great first touch but his passing and positioning was awful against Inverness. I agree 100% about Marvin Johnson. Great point about the 15 X 15 box and its costing us goals and games.
  5. Absolutely. The statement, and thats all it is, is ludicrous. We can't condone the actions of the fans who invaded the pitch and knew no good would come of it so fair enough. Thats said we don't know what was in the full report, all we have is a statement, a summary. As Toxteth suggests above you'd think the findings will have wide ranging implications for almost every club in the land. How do you prevent Celtic/Sevco fans from gaining access to "home areas"? Should the club have opened ticket sales for Sevco fans only before home fans? Allocate them the South Stand, and wings of the POD Stand. If that wasn't enough what about allocating the Cooper to them too? Once away demand had been satisfied home fans could buy what was left in the East Stand or POD centre stand. It seems the SPFL didn't like the Sevco allocation and the way the sale of tickets was implemented. Surely then this idea/suggestion/decision should apply to all other clubs from now on? The pitch invasion - granted it should not happened and was stupid but what more could the club have done to prevent it? Identification of supporters: is the SPFL suggesting that the club identifies all the supporters who ran onto the pitch? How many would that be exactly? 1,000? If the Police can't do it is it reasonable for the club with its much more limited resources to do it? What if they do achieve this - is the SPFL expecting the club to ban 25% of its support? What did the SPFL say about the Celtic fans who damaged seats in the South Stand? Were Celtic asked to identify them? If large numbers of fans are no problem why haven't Celtic and Sevco been asked to identify thousands of their fans for sectarian chanting? There was no mention made in the statement about Sevco fans throwing missiles, including seats at the pitch invaders. Was that acceptable behaviour? An investigation was justified and it appears to be a suspended sentence if you like but it does appear to be a witch hunt against an easy target; but also more significantly, appears to have ramifications for every club. Has the SPFL made a rod to beat its back with?
  6. I can't recall any previous manager building up a provincial team as much as Mark McGhee did with Inverness on Saturday. From his comments he's left me, never mind his players, s**t scared of playing them ever again. They have a very good midfield granted but are they really that good? Did we treat the likes of Ross County, Aberdeen and Hearts in the same way at Fir Park - from memory I don't think so. In fairness he may have told the players something entirely different but actions spoke louder than words at the weekend in terms of team selection and tactics. In short I think it was a tactical disaster. Was the defeat all down to tactics? Of course it wasn't. It was also down to rank bad play at both goals. Shocking defending played a major part as did some players just not playing well throughout the game. However, is it not up to the manager to factor in his players' weaknesses and also leave room for error? If a team plays as we do ie defend very deeply and narrowly then any error at all can be very costly. By defending this way we have lost 3 costly late goals in just over a week to: a refereeing error; a wicked deflection and a speculative wonder goal. All we missed was an individual blunder. I believe in defending higher up the pitch - if you make mistakes there then you can recover. If McGhee says that we don't have the players to do that then fine, but damn well bring them in at the first opportunity. Other provincial clubs on a limited budget can source them why can't we? In fairness Stuart McCall and Ian Baraclough also played this way.
  7. I'm more concerned when folk don't get sucked into the emotion of it all. As long as we show respect to each other a bit of argument and discussion is no bad thing. Its healthy to get matters off your chest when things go wrong, or even sometimes when they go right.
  8. I don't think there is one but if thats the case set up your own one. That way you would be able to put in place car sharing arrangements.
  9. Yes, at the moment he is the better option of the two but I think his deal at Tynecastle runs out in the summer of 2017. I don't see a future for him there though. Big decisions at the end of this season for us. It would be totally wrong to blame Keith Lasley for yesterday's defeat and I'm not. In his defence he was playing in an unfamiliar midfield where players weren't comfortable with what they were being asked to do. However he was bullied by the much bigger and faster Ross Draper but you can't fault him for that - it was simply an unequal contest. He did though hold up our attacks by dithering on the ball and as I said earlier repeatedly passed to colleagues who were being closely marked, Marvin Johnson being a perfect example. Others' off the ball movement didn't help him to be fair.
  10. You raise a good point. If you look at our squad on paper we seem to have a lot of options but that isn't really the case. I still haven't fully sussed out Cadden yet but he seems to a right sided version of Pearson, but with more of a tendency to play wide. IF thats the case then you couldn't really accommodate Ainsworth and Cadden together. Ainsworth is the better attacker although he can't defend. Cadden is probably the better defender, although a bit raw - I'd like to see him play more in the centre to test him out there. Likewise I don't think Lasley and Gomis can play together and if they are picked again in the same team then the alarm bells should be ringing.
  11. To some extent you're right but the real fault lies with Law and/or Cadden. The Inverness No 3 runs up our right flank unchallenged and neither player picks him up. Law cottons on belatedly probably because he was watching another Inverness player but Cadden just stops and ends up covering no-one. The No 3 is given time and space to fire across a Davy Cooper type cross into the 6 yard box. For the second goal Law doesn't look too clever. He makes a poor, half hearted attempt to close Roberts down and allows him space and time to showcase his shooting skills. Had it been the other way around, we would have seen 2 Inverness players harrying, hassling and bodychecking our forward to deny him the chance to shoot. Both very poor goals to lose and totally preventable.
  12. Thats true although the trick is to play these players together in a way that they complement each other; in fairness to McGhee maybe not easy. That said, we also have players like Hammell, Lasley, and McManus who are all past their sell by date. Add to that players like Josh Law and Joe Chalmers who are out of depth at this level and you can understand why McGhee is experiencing problems. What I find especially frustrating at the moment is that we're repeating the same mistakes week after week. As I wrote earlier, you didn't have to be a nuclear physicist to foresee the problems that yesterday's line up and tactics was going to cause us. We'd been there before.
  13. Gomis gets my vote for being a solid presence in a packed midfield. He also lasted 90 minutes. Cadden almost won my vote but disappeared after the break.
  14. That struck me too. I've very very rarely seen us play well with 1 out and out striker. To do so you have to have wingers who link well with the striker and midfielders who can bomb up and down to support him. When we play with 1 striker you tend to find that invariably he has no support and/or drops back to a deeper position - which is exactly what happened today. I looked at our line up today and asked where exactly is our attacking threat going to come from?
  15. Yes, I accept that to an extent. The problem is that Johnson is best suited to an open game where he can run onto balls and attack the defence. Today's game just wasn't like that. In short it became clear by half time that he was not the answer. I quite accept that Thomas has his faults (not big enough and his poor final ball). However whilst we know that Johnson was not the answer, we know that Thomas might have been the answer. In short try something that might work as opposed to sticking with something that isn't working.
  16. We have to address late goals - the number we are losing cannot be coincidence. An important game as I can't see us taking anything at Tannadice.
  17. When I heard the line up I feared the worst. You didn't have to be a nuclear physicist to predict: MacDonald would be isolated - Tick MacDonald would receive short high balls - Tick Midfield would be dogs dinner - Tick Johnson would receive shocking service and be double marked - Tick We'd defend too deep and pay the price - Tick The formation was designed to nullify Inverness nothing more nothing less and it failed. At the back Hammell and Law had very poor games and McManus wasn't at all impressive. the midfield was all over the place and it was clear that Gomis and Lasley can't play in the same set up. Gomis had an ok game but no more. Lasley had a poor game and kept putting colleagues in trouble with poor passes. Pearson was played out of position. Cadden had a good first half but largely disappeared in the second. Johnson received shocking service - Steve Hammell's first 2 passes to him were 3/4 yards behind him. MacDonald all too often was isolated and at times played in 6 man midfield - a home cup tie I ask you! The changes made were far too late. A number of sub options were available to McGhee - Lasley could have been subbed at half time; Johnson could have been taken off at half time replaced by Dom Thomas (someone who can open up tight defences); and Cadden ought to have been hooked early in the second 45. Overall our defending was poor with both full backs having an off day and we conceded far too many avoidable free kicks and corners. Inverness's winning goal was a shocker - the lad advanced and advanced as we backed off looked up and saw a virtually empty goal (as we all did) and picked his spot. A typical Motherwell goal. Inverness worked far harder and defended better and deserved their win. Some bright spots though - no points lost today; Cadden had a great first half and is progressing and our goal came straight off the training ground.
  18. I don't know if you listened to Mark McGhee's interview, but he mentioned that Gomis had been brought in as replacement/cover for Lasley.
  19. The STV evening news sport bulletin's football coverage comprised solely the East Kilbride V Celtic game. That is one reason why Scots football is in the state its in.
  20. I think we're being overly hard on Louis Moult. In a lot of the gametime I've seen recently he has received little or no service and what he has received has been scraps. He's suffered in part because Pearo has been asked to play deeper, and he's missed that support. I'm confident if he's given the correct ammunition he'll fire it and hit the target.
  21. If Pearson isn't fit, as some reports suggest, then leave him out. Otherwise Cadden or Lasley - a bit of a toss up but would probably retain Cadden for his fitness against a fit physical team. I'd play Moult as he's suffered from appalling service these last few games - not his fault.
  22. No point in bringing Gomis in on loan and then not playing him (unless he isn't fit). We've been lacking a defensive midfielder for some years now so,other things being equal, he'd be one of the first names on my team sheet.
  23. Ross County fans told me that they were surprised that we signed him because of his back problem. It was well known up north and was a factor in his move to Barnsley breaking down.
  24. I think folk have been just too quick to jump to conclusions and it suited the anti Mark McGhee brigade. Its one of those situations where you need to know the facts first.
  25. Absolutely. This is the kind of goal we routinely lose and its not all down to one player, who comes on as a sub now and again.
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