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St Johnstone V Motherwell Sat 20 Feb 15:00


Yabba's Turd
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We were very poor today. The pitch didnt help. Ball bobbling all over the place, but some of our players look as if they'd never seen a football before. The long ball hoof from the centre halfs is also brutal to watch. We started very slowly but as the first half wore on started to get more of a grip of the game and after we scored we looked on the ascendency. Then we switch off defensively leave Cadden exposed, dont close Wotherspoon down he has all the time in the world to pick his spot and Ripley not paying attention beat at front post. Terrible goal to concede on stroke of half time. As for second half, less said the better. Our decision making in the opposition half is atrocious and our inabilty to close games out laughable. One parting shot for Bobby Madden. Terrible terrible performance. Murray Davidson allowed to foul with impunity all afternoon and his general inconsistency over what was a foul and not a foul was so frustrating. That said, we did more damage to ourselves than he did.

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people need to get a grip ffs yes we keep throwing away late goals and losing points but look at the table any team from 5th to 11th could be in that playoff spot its going to go right to the split so we are no more favourites to end up 11th than Ross county or St J are.

Not 1 of the 8 teams involved is stringing together any sort of a run just now so we need to pick up points where we can

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That's 3 games where we have conceded while the 4th official was actually holding the board aloft indicating injury time

I keep coming back to this, Partick, ICT and today the guy raises the board and the ball hits the back of the net, it's become a thing.

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We sat back all second half and played for a point against a team who haven't won since the 5th of December. We got exactly what we deserved.

 

 

Absolutely. Just home from the match. We got what we deserved - forget the late goal if Saints had scored earlier it would have been 3 or 4. We matched them for skill but couldn't match them for attitude or work rate. The team played badly but we were beaten at 3.00. Tuesday's formation was never going to work today. I felt sorry for young Cadden and the 2 strikers + Johnson who had a thankless task on poor or non existent service.

 

The entire first half Saints exposed our virtually non existent right hand side and Cadden was left cruelly exposed. When Wotherspoon hit their first goal it was the 4th time one of their players was able to stroll into the right hand side of our box without hassle - we failed to heed the first 3 warnings and paid the price.

 

The second half we fell into our customary defensive shell and Saints were able to fire over cross after cross with the inevitable result. In short our entire midfield was woeful - little creativity, second to most balls and struggling to compete and failing to protect the defence. Their passing was awful and Johnson and the 2 strikers suffered accordingly. That said Fletcher struggled to compete and looks more like a 6 yard box player.

 

Our big problem was that due to the starting formation requiring substantial changes to transform it into a 4-4-2 set up it simply couldn't be done mid game. Gomis didn't have a great game but his defensive presence was missed when he was hooked as we simply don't have suitable replacement. Faddy was a big letdown - didn't do much apart from take 4 corners, 2 of which were very poor, one very good and one leading to the goal.

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Play off spot is between Motherwell, Hamilton and Killie. St Johnstone have had a really bad run but are 6pts ahead of us. We won't catch them. ICT are 3pts ahead with 2 games in hand. We won't catch them. Patrick are a point behind, but with 4 games in hand. They'll get enough points to stay clear. Dundee 5pts clear of us with a game in hand. We won't catch them either. So, our realistic aim is to stay ahead of Hamilton or Killie,and hope that Dundee Utd don't perform some kind of miracle.

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What's with the header tennis? Far too often aimless attempts to clear the ball with a panicy header that goes nowhere near safety and only recreates the opponent's threat. This was business as usual after Tuesday surprise result. Still waiting for the manager's assessment of his team's abject failure

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Absolutely. Just home from the match. We got what we deserved - forget the late goal if Saints had scored earlier it would have been 3 or 4. We matched them for skill but couldn't match them for attitude or work rate. The team played badly but we were beaten at 3.00. Tuesday's formation was never going to work today. I felt sorry for young Cadden and the 2 strikers + Johnson who had a thankless task on poor or non existent service.

 

The entire first half Saints exposed our virtually non existent right hand side and Cadden was left cruelly exposed. When Wotherspoon hit their first goal it was the 4th time one of their players was able to stroll into the right hand side of our box without hassle - we failed to heed the first 3 warnings and paid the price.

 

The second half we fell into our customary defensive shell and Saints were able to fire over cross after cross with the inevitable result. In short our entire midfield was woeful - little creativity, second to most balls and struggling to compete and failing to protect the defence. Their passing was awful and Johnson and the 2 strikers suffered accordingly. That said Fletcher struggled to compete and looks more like a 6 yard box player.

 

Our big problem was that due to the starting formation requiring substantial changes to transform it into a 4-4-2 set up it simply couldn't be done mid game. Gomis didn't have a great game but his defensive presence was missed when he was hooked as we simply don't have suitable replacement. Faddy was a big letdown - didn't do much apart from take 4 corners, 2 of which were very poor, one very good and one leading to the goal.

 

Agree with a lot of that, but big Ripley didn't exactly cover himself in glory at their equaliser - should never have been beaten where he was - near post.

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Play off spot is between Motherwell, Hamilton and Killie. St Johnstone have had a really bad run but are 6pts ahead of us. We won't catch them. ICT are 3pts ahead with 2 games in hand. We won't catch them. Patrick are a point behind, but with 4 games in hand. They'll get enough points to stay clear. Dundee 5pts clear of us with a game in hand. We won't catch them either. So, our realistic aim is to stay ahead of Hamilton or Killie,and hope that Dundee Utd don't perform some kind of miracle.

Pish we have 11 games left 33 points up for grabs we can still catch anybody in the league above us up to and including Hearts. From 3rd to 11th none of the 9 teams have been able to string 2 or 3 decent results together recently so its far from over for any of them, well naybe Hearts but you can perm any 1 from 8 for finishing 11th.

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Not long in. A dire game in general with little skill on show from either team.

 

-1st half, I thought we edged it. Did not show too much but for a good 35 mins had most of the forward play. Lovely corner from Faddy and finish.

-2nd half, we changed to 4-4-2. Not sure if Faddy was injured as he took a couple of heavy knocks or if McGhee decided he had to deal with the threat on the left from Craig and Wotherspoon, which was where the goal game from and was really their only outlet. It did quieten them down but we lost control of midfield and were second to every ball and tackle. Lots of effort from Cadden, Johnson, Moult and Fletcher but no real quality. Would have taken a draw at 80 mins on the clock. The last minute goal.....a poor throw from Ripley which he should not have made, a rash challenge by Hall which he should not have made and Hammel out jumped. Simple as that and off we went home.

 

Dont think there was much in it at all again...very frustrating.

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Pish we have 11 games left 33 points up for grabs we can still catch anybody in the league above us up to and including Hearts. From 3rd to 11th none of the 9 teams have been able to string 2 or 3 decent results together recently so its far from over for any of them, well naybe Hearts but you can perm any 1 from 8 for finishing 11th.

I'll be absolutely astonished if we take more than 10 points the rest of the season.

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Just back in. The manager went for a draw from the 46 minute.He thinks he is a tactical genius but really just over thinks everything.Pearson should have been dropped from the squad for a rest, he's either injured or doesn't give a shit iv still to work that one out.

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Not long in. A dire game in general with little skill on show from either team.

 

-1st half, I thought we edged it. Did not show too much but for a good 35 mins had most of the forward play. Lovely corner from Faddy and finish.

-2nd half, we changed to 4-4-2. Not sure if Faddy was injured as he took a couple of heavy knocks or if McGhee decided he had to deal with the threat on the left from Craig and Wotherspoon, which was where the goal game from and was really their only outlet. It did quieten them down but we lost control of midfield and were second to every ball and tackle. Lots of effort from Cadden, Johnson, Moult and Fletcher but no real quality. Would have taken a draw at 80 mins on the clock. The last minute goal.....a poor throw from Ripley which he should not have made, a rash challenge by Hall which he should not have made and Hammel out jumped. Simple as that and off we went home.

 

Dont think there was much in it at all again...very frustrating.

A throw that the crowd were screaming for, poor execution though.

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What's with the header tennis? Far too often aimless attempts to clear the ball with a panicy header that goes nowhere near safety and only recreates the opponent's threat.

Agree with that but who do you head the ball to when your midfield is sitting about 2 yards in front of you?

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Disappointed that Ainsworth made no impression at all. Wasn't impressed by Laing. Fletcher showed good endeavour early in the second half but was largely ineffective. Cadden was caught out at the first goal but he had no support, I don't have an excuse for the keeper losing that goal. Needless free kick for the second, or taking one for the team? Didn't make out what happened when the free kick was put in but it ended in the net. No real high spots but I deluded myself into thinking we were going to secure a point which would have been a reasonable return for the day's efforts.

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I'll be absolutely astonished if we take more than 10 points the rest of the season.

 

Sometimes you only have to see a poster's name to know what's coming...

 

a statistically realistic, almost optmistic points estmation from Milo?

 

we are on target to hit about 39-40 points this season, based on results to date.

 

add in more variables - like points vs likley opponents for the run in and it could look slightly worse, plenty of other routes it could take,

 

but we need a fix and we need it pretty quick,

 

a hell of a lot of posters (not yourself) who had been slating the doom mongers for reacting to 4 or 5 bad results (with some jaw dropping formations) were very quick to clamour over one very shakey victory as a measure of improvement, the reality seems to have been we got quite/very lucky at tannadice, with some grit from a few players , a touch of class to get us going and a serious slice of luck to keep us in it , which seemed to break them and open up space for skippy to make it look like a comfortable victory.

 

there seems to some signs of improvement in very limited areas, the set pieces, seem to be delivering more frequently, fitness definately improved, but the reality of not having having/selecting enough decent players in a regular first team cannot be ignored.

 

I'll not pretend to even like McGhee, his formation tinkering was maybe required to shake things up, but it has been an unmitigated disaster , that said he needs to re-focus on whats going wrong, and start winning back players support

 

not enough quality in the squad to cope with his tactical changes week to week let alone during a game, he needs to get old skool and stop being so fanciful

 

oh and a proper out ball for all off the 90 minutes might actually relieve the pressure on a pretty ropey defence

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Not a pitch that was conducive to good football however I wasn't really sure why we stopped even trying to play at times.

 

The game was pretty even I felt, they started better but we grew into it and although we didn't really look like scoring we were the better team when we went ahead. It is nice to see us beginning to look like a threat from set plays.

 

Sadly the equaliser was very slack defending. Cadden was succoured to the ball and left Wotherspoon all by himself - a known risk of playing very attacking players as wing backs, especially ones that are quite inexperienced. But for all that I think Ripley was perhaps more culpable.

 

I'm pretty sure that goal was the reason we sacrificed McFadden and reverted to a 4-4-2. Again we started the better in the second half but never really felt we were going to score and as they grew into it and we receded I didn't particularly feel under mass threat. However when the free kick was given, there was an air of inevitability that it was going to nestle in our net and so it proved.

 

I thought Scobbie was very lucky that the card he was shown for that raking tackle on Cadden was only yellow. But would be churlish to moan, we should still have marked him.

 

Next three games are big and we must try and get 6 points as an absolute minimum as the last three before the split are tough but perform like we did today and on a better pitch where we could pass more I think we won't be that far away. I agree with McManus in that they seem fit but I think we do subconsciously drop off late in games and invite pressure on and if we do that we will continue to lose late goals. Really need to snap out of it, the four points it has cost us since end of January could prove oh so costly.

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We were at least in contention during a dreadful first half. McGhee then at half time changes it , brings on Hammy and changes our formation. Guess what, we simply weren't in contention in an equally dreadful second half.

 

 

You need to tell me everything is going to be ok.....

 

 

a statistically realistic, almost optmistic points estmation from Milo?

 

No, actually the remark was aimed at the Stevie Hammell Fan Club member above, whose eagerness in apportioning blame in Hammell's direction, deserved or otherwise, is becoming even more regular than shipping 90th minute goals.

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