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2018'19 Game 8: Livingston (H) Saturday 6th October 2018


Andy_P
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A tough one to call.  Given Livingston's great start to the season, and our poor form, you'd expect them to come out on top if only narrowly.  However, we need the win and badly, very badly.  Injuries will no doubt play a part on who starts but it'll be interesting to see who Robbo drops.  Despite our collective need I'd be tempted to rest both Cadden and Campbell or bench them.  Gorrin and Turnbull must be hoping for a start.  I'd like to see us revert to a 4-4-2 formation, with McHugh returning to the midfield.  

My greatest fear is that Livi score first, maybe through a blunder, and then sit back safe in the knowledge that we can't breach their defence.  Frear to start when the game is more open.  I'm not in the least concerned about "hoofball" as long as we win. 

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I would like too see us go 4-4-2 for this,get down the wings and get balls into the box for our strikers too go and attack rather than have them constantly battling with centre half outside the box by punting high balls all the time.for as poor as we have been lately,I actually think we will win this by a couple provided we shake things up on our approach to the game,if we don't and we want to get ourselves involved in a scrap then I can see a similar outcome to the accies game.

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5 hours ago, Kmcalpin said:

Despite our collective need I'd be tempted to rest both Cadden and Campbell or bench them.  Gorrin and Turnbull must be hoping for a start. 

 

Campbell was an unused sub at Kilmarnock so will won't have played for 10 days - hopefully that's the break he needs. 

Cadden - I'd agree. While he had his best game in months against Hearts, he looked tired again against Killie.  

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15 hours ago, DEWELL said:

Im glad everyone is seeing what a disaster 3-5-2 is. Here hoping our manager does.

IMO Its not 3-5-2 that is a disaster (look at last season) it is the fact we don't have the key players available at the moment (Dunne and Kipre) to play it properly. A good manager would recognise this and change the formation to suit the players he does have at his disposal.

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6 hours ago, GazzyB said:

Just landed in America for a few weeks. Can I get MotherwellTV to work on my iPad or Android phone?

Can a separate thread be created for mfc TV/ media feeds,  streams queries /problems etc? This thread should be for match discussion only. 

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I can only assume as there are no proposed line up for Saturday being posted on here that like me apart from changing formation there is no way anybody can predict the line up for Saturday .The manager is putting his job on the line  so it should be an interesting team selection and i for one look forward to seeing the players he picks and how many actual changes he makes from his last selection 

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6 minutes ago, Yodo said:

I can only assume as there are no proposed line up for Saturday being posted on here that like me apart from changing formation there is no way anybody can predict the line up for Saturday .The manager is putting his job on the line  so it should be an interesting team selection and i for one look forward to seeing the players he picks and how many actual changes he makes from his last selection 

Not convinced his job is on the line just yet...........Hamilton & Rangers apart, we've lost the games we would have been expected to (by the bookies) and won the ones we have been favourites in, so maybe 2 points below where people would have expected by looking at predicting individual games. That being said, the 2nd half last week was the worst for a long long time...........

I'd ditch the 3-5-2 and go with 4-4-2 with Carson, Tait, ATS, Aldred & McHugh, Cadden, Campbell, Rose, Frear, Main, Johnson.

Subs, Gillespie, Hartley, Bigi, Bowman, Turnbull, Rodriguez, Maguire

Not convinced at all by ATS, however options at LB are thin on the ground. Far from perfect, but gets us back to Tait & Cadden together on the right and Frear playing further up the pitch.

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Saturday is vital for obvious reasons but the impact a result would have on fan opinion and player confidence cannot be understated.

Let's be honest here. If we lose a lot of the fans that were on the fence will start calling for Robinson's head. Conversely if we win it will keep detractors at bay for the moment and should breed some confidence in the players going into some winnable fixtures. The table and general outlook will look entirely different if we win our next 4 games. It's a big if yes but we could easily be sitting here in a month wondering what all the fuss was about.

At the moment I'm still behind Robinson. We have 4 games coming up, Livi, St Johnstone, St Mirren and Dundee.  All are winnable. If we don't come out of these games with a fair number of victories I think it's very fair to say my opinion might change. As much as it has been an overused excuse by the manager our start to the season has been a tough run of fixtures.

My main concern:  the system we are using doesn't seem to work well for the group of players we have at the moment. I suspect with Dunne back and a couple of other additions that might change but for the moment it simply doesn't work with the players we have at our disposal. Every manager has their preferred system and style of play but could it be Robinson is a bit one dimensional in this regard? His first game I remember was against Killie at Rugby Park and it was evident that day that he shoe horned a system to a team that didn't really fit. As time went on that changed and he got the right personal for the system but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.  I might be wrong but it looks to me more than just the players under performing. I'm really hopeful Robinson can prove us wrong here and change things up for the better. To me though any team should have 2 or 3 systems which they are able to consistently implement. We've seen the diamond in midfield used a few times with mixed results but nothing really for a prolonged period of time.

Injury wise I don't know where a lot of the guys stand at the moment but my suggestion would be not to try to 'out-livi' Livingston. Revert to a simple shape try and play some decent passing football, get the ball wide and use our wingers as wingers to get balls in the box. Sounds really simplistic aye but we've not been doing any of that effectively as of late. If we are going to beat Livi we are going to have to actually compete as well i.e actually win aerial battles and most importantly the inevitable second balls.

Guesswork but I'd go for something like:

Carson
Tait Aldred Hartley ATS
Cadden Rodriguez Campbell Frear
Bowman Johnson

I've been very unimpressed by ATS thus far but I'm not sure we have any other left sided options. In midfield if Rodriguez is fit I think he deserves a chance from the start. To me , he looks like  more than  just a 'fancy footballer' and can put in a decent tackle. He's been given very little opportunity since coming in and looked a decent player. I'd also like to see Turnbull given a more prominent role.

If Robinson says he's going to ring the changes then make some. Both the team and system hasn't been working so let's change a bit of both and see how it goes.

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Really split on this one. My pal said the penalty miss against Killie was a big moment, but I think this game has much bigger ramifications. This sets us up for a run of winnable games that you would be forgiven for earmarking 3 points for when the fixtures got announced. With Livi having such a good defensive record and us not firing on all cylinders up top, I'm a bit concerned. Think Bowman coming back should be a big help. I'd pair him up with Johnson and try and get them buzzing off each other. Our midfield were a bit anonymous against Killie and I think Campbell was a big miss. Having him back should hopefully make a difference. 
Not confident but got my free ticket for a mate and looking forward to it. 

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I'm anticipating the kind of reaction we got after the opening losses to Hibs and Hamilton where the performance we got against Rangers was much improved.  Whether that materialises and produces a win remains to be seen.

And whilst I fully accept that I'm getting ahead of myself a bit if we did happen to win it's a right pain in the arse that we'll have to wait a fortnight to build on it with the international break, which came at exactly the wrong time last month.

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7 hours ago, Yodo said:

I can only assume as there are no proposed line up for Saturday being posted on here that like me apart from changing formation there is no way anybody can predict the line up for Saturday .

True. 

I'm hoping last weeks front 4 of Sammon, Bowman, Main and Johnson wasn't the first sign of an under pressure managers descent into madness. 

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15 hours ago, GazzyB said:

Just landed in America for a few weeks. Can I get MotherwellTV to work on my iPad or Android phone?

I've been running it on my Android device (plugged into my telly), and it works fine. Chrome browser has caused me the least issues.

I haven't actually tried it on my iPad, but it does run OK under Safari on my Macbook.

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46 minutes ago, CoF said:

True. 

I'm hoping last weeks front 4 of Sammon, Bowman, Main and Johnson wasn't the first sign of an under pressure managers descent into madness. 

1st sign? we have regularly finished games with 4 or 5 man frontline , having sacrificed those that provide the most assists.....I had assumed that was plan B  1-5-5

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17 minutes ago, Brazilian said:

1st sign? we have regularly finished games with 4 or 5 man frontline , having sacrificed those that provide the most assists.....I had assumed that was plan B  1-5-5

True. Although, I'd say there's usually a wee bit of creativity still on the pitch when we've went for the front 3 combo of Bowman / Main / Johnstone or Sammon. I'm fine with that.

Saturday was taking the piss having all 4 on when we were needing a player to actually create something. It left us with one creative player (Cadden) who was having a nightmare. 

Reminded me of the desperate decisions McCall made in his last few months here. 

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