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SPFL Table Prediction


GazzyB
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Unfortunately, I cannot see us finishing above 10th.

We’re kicking off a season without the centre halves we badly needed and a creative midfielder that we’ve been crying out for since Turnbull left.

 I fear the first round of fixtures will Be a complete write off for us. 
 

Another turgid, shite season incoming I fear. 

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21 minutes ago, Kmac said:

Unfortunately, I cannot see us finishing above 10th.

We’re kicking off a season without  a creative midfielder that we’ve been crying out for since Turnbull left.

You do realise that since around 1988, we've maybe have 4 or 5 creative midfielders, meaning someone who can thread a killer pass. Often we have favoured ball carriers who create by breaking the lines (Pearson, Law, O'Donnell are all prime examples of this) . These are more common.

Basically don't expect a replacement for Turnbull. We don't have that type of player that often...

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25 minutes ago, MelvinBragg said:

You do realise that since around 1988, we've maybe have 4 or 5 creative midfielders, meaning someone who can thread a killer pass. Often we have favoured ball carriers who create by breaking the lines (Pearson, Law, O'Donnell are all prime examples of this) . These are more common.

Basically don't expect a replacement for Turnbull. We don't have that type of player that often...

Correct however you can clearly see that we are hugely disjointed in our movements with large gaps between defense, midfield and attack. Hopefully the return of Donnelly can in someway ease back to middle however moving the ball middle to front requires players that we simply do not have. 

My bigger concern than that lies at center half. Both Lamie and Mugabe have too many mistakes in them and whilst I haven’t seen enough of O’Connor, physically, he’s going to be bodied by most of the strikers in the league.   

We’ve never replaced Hartley and added to that, Gallagher, who whilst I wasn’t crying about leaving, was clearly our best central defender last season has also gone with no replacement. 

If you cannot create and score goals, at least be hard to beat, my fear is that we have neither attribute. 

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1 hour ago, Kmac said:

Unfortunately, I cannot see us finishing above 10th.

We’re kicking off a season without the centre halves we badly needed and a creative midfielder that we’ve been crying out for since Turnbull left.

 I fear the first round of fixtures will Be a complete write off for us. 
 

Another turgid, shite season incoming I fear. 

We're just about to sign a Finnish international centre half. 

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34 minutes ago, superward said:

We're just about to sign a Finnish international centre half. 

We haven't done so yet and even if he does sign, it will take time to settle and most likely he'll be playing alongside Ricki Lamie which automatically will make him worse. 

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51 minutes ago, Kmac said:

Correct however you can clearly see that we are hugely disjointed in our movements with large gaps between defense, midfield and attack. Hopefully the return of Donnelly can in someway ease back to middle however moving the ball middle to front requires players that we simply do not have. 

My bigger concern than that lies at center half. Both Lamie and Mugabe have too many mistakes in them and whilst I haven’t seen enough of O’Connor, physically, he’s going to be bodied by most of the strikers in the league.   

We’ve never replaced Hartley and added to that, Gallagher, who whilst I wasn’t crying about leaving, was clearly our best central defender last season has also gone with no replacement. 

If you cannot create and score goals, at least be hard to beat, my fear is that we have neither attribute. 

Gallagher is definitely going to be the latest players that took a lot of abuse while with us  but be praised for his attributes after leaving. Move over Richard Tait and cart horse Hartley.

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Gallagher was never a bad player but the way he conducted himself was awful. 

I never understood the abuse of Tait and especially Hartley - two guys who clearly gave everything on the park and who's attitude was never in doubt. 

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1 minute ago, underboyleheating said:

Rangers will walk it again as I don’t see any real challengers to them. As long as we can protect our proud  top flight status for another year it will be job done.

Is protecting our top flight status, the "Welcome to our great we club" patter for the over 30's?

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Just now, Kmac said:

Is protecting our top flight status, the "Welcome to our great we club" patter for the over 30's?

No it’s nothing cryptic. It’s pride in that we are one of the few to say that we’ve been in the top flight since the mid 80s. It’s quite remarkable for a club working on a shoestring budget.  I know we’ve had a few lucky escapes over the years and I’m not blind to the fact that it will happen at some point. However, until that day comes I will still feel some pride that only Celtic, Aberdeen and us share that record. 

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With absolutely nothing to back it up whatsoever, Im gonna continue the habit of a lifetime by looking forward to the season with excitement and anticipation and predict a top 6 finish....

Rangers

Celtic

Aberdeen

Hibs

St Johnstone

Motherwell

Hearts

Dundee

Dundee United

St Mirren

Ross County

Livingston

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1 hour ago, underboyleheating said:

No it’s nothing cryptic. It’s pride in that we are one of the few to say that we’ve been in the top flight since the mid 80s. It’s quite remarkable for a club working on a shoestring budget.  I know we’ve had a few lucky escapes over the years and I’m not blind to the fact that it will happen at some point. However, until that day comes I will still feel some pride that only Celtic, Aberdeen and us share that record. 

It's not really remarkable that we've been in the top flight all this time. We have the 7th/8th largest support in the country and a budget that goes along with that.  Out of a league of 10/12, it makes sense. Dundee United/Hearts/Hibs yo-yoing is down to very bad management rather than the law of averages. 

What's more remarkable than us not being relegated is that we haven't won a trophy for 30 years despite 90 available opportunities being available. 

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7 hours ago, Kmac said:

My bigger concern than that lies at center half. Both Lamie and Mugabe have too many mistakes in them and whilst I haven’t seen enough of O’Connor, physically, he’s going to be bodied by most of the strikers in the league.   

We’ve never replaced Hartley and added to that, Gallagher, who whilst I wasn’t crying about leaving, was clearly our best central defender last season has also gone with no replacement. 

If you cannot create and score goals, at least be hard to beat, my fear is that we have neither attribute. 

I concur with most of this. Whatever system we seem to play we play very narrowly defensively allowing the opposition time and space to bombard us with crosses into our box. Now thats fine if you have a keeper in the Sieb Dykstra mould and two huge central defenders. We have neither.  Agree we need to build from the back and that starts with 2 new central defenders as a top priority. Seems that one may well be incoming shortly but we still need one more first pick to partner him. Lamie and Mugabi are just too erratic. We also need a leader on the park. In short, build from the back.

Midfield has been discussed at length and I won't add much that particular debate. I assume that, as things stand, Donnelly will be our defensive midfielder with Slattery taking up a "Gorrin" style all rounder role??

GA has now outlines his long term strategy and that explains things to a large extent. If he brings in more decent quality players on medium or long term deals then thats fine with me. It will avoid huge annual upheavals.  However that may well mean a very hard time on the pitch for the first 4/5/6 games. We may have to accept a few losses. Short term pain long term gain.

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Obviously pretty much impossible to predict until our business is done and our preferred starting 11 becomes apparent. But I wouldn't be surprised to see us finish one place either side of the split, and would be pretty happy with that given the major rebuild we've had to do.

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I'm not going to predict the league but I think Celtic might struggle for 2nd if Aberdeen and Hibs can get their finger out. I still have faith in GA so 7/8th potentially top 6 for us. 

Dundee Utd, Livi and County in the mix for relegation. 

Also don't see hearts doing as well as everyone expects. 

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3 hours ago, TvTotherwell said:

I'm not going to predict the league but I think Celtic might struggle for 2nd if Aberdeen and Hibs can get their finger out. I still have faith in GA so 7/8th potentially top 6 for us. 

Dundee Utd, Livi and County in the mix for relegation. 

Also don't see hearts doing as well as everyone expects. 

I think for Hearts it will depend how they get thru the first half dozen games or so. Either give them lots of confidence or knock it out of them. For the rest of the season. Based on tinted specs and an optimistic outlook I’m going for a top six placing for super well. 

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Obviously Rangers and Celtic will take the top two berths as per.

Hibernian haven't really brought anyone in or lost anyone of note apart from the keeper, Marciano.  They done well last season and expect them to be third again. So with that in mind I think its anyone's guess for the last nine places it just boils down to however can maintain some semblance of consistency.

I'm optimistic that we can do well under Alexander, if we can get a few more quality additions and avoid that ludicrous amount of injuries I'm confident we can enjoy some mid table mediocrity at the very least. Under Robinson, each and every season in the league we started slowly with last year being the worst, it would be most welcome to get the three points on Sunday.

Aberdeen were very poor from January until the end of the season, but I can see them start to decline now. They have added Brown who was very poor with Celtic last season and the likes of McGinn and Hayes seemed to be winding their careers down as they're now 34. On paper they have a quality squad but I think they'll struggle to match what they have done in recent times.

I think the relegation candidates will likely be Livingston, Ross County and Dundee perhaps. 

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I have to admit to having mixed feelings on Alexamder. Results in the second half of last season were apparently good (I kept seeing form tables posted that had us top four since his arrival) but there's something about him that I'm not convinced by. I had the same feeling about McGhee first time round (second time round, I already knew he was a fraud). Nothing I can put my finger on, just something makes me sceptical about him. 

Having said this, I find it interesting that people are concerned about the defence. The manager did manage to pick up results with a back four of O'Donnell Mugabi Lamie McGinlay last season. And even when Gallagher came back, he was seldom the best defender on the day. That was with Crawford protecting the back four. Surely Donnelly will offer more. I'm aware we've looked a bit open in the league cup but that's a new young centre half and Donnelly returning slowly to fitness in front of him. 

My concern would be scoring goals. I like the look of Woolery but his choice not to cut back to Watt on Saturday when he had no angle to score concerned me. Decision making questionable. Van Veen? Unconvincing in front of goal no matter how good his link play is. A lot riding on Shields coming back and making an impact. I fear we're all going to be muttering  "Big Devante would have put that away.."

Just need to wait and see. I'm not all doom and gloom as some are. Would just feel better if I could see where the goals were coming from...

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I can see Aberdeen struggling, not convinced by Glass but they still have enough in the squad to be finished 4th. I can see it being a bit of a mini league between 4th and 8th, with Aberdeen, Hearts, St Johnstone and hopefully us in and about there. 

Can see the gap between Rangers and Celtic being bigger than the gap between Celtic and Hibs but still Hibs nowhere near Celtic. 

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10 hours ago, Kmac said:

Is protecting our top flight status, the "Welcome to our great we club" patter for the over 30's?

I absolutely despise that patter that so many our fans like to hit out with all too often. You see it on social media every time we sign a player “welcome to our great wee club”. It’s pathetic and so small time. 
 

For the record I am under no illusions that we are a ‘big’ club or anything like that, but I honestly do not get the obsession so many have with describing us as a “wee club/team” and “punching waaay above our weight.

As for this season I don’t think we will be relegated but I don’t think we’re anywhere near good enough for top six either so expect a season similar to the last few. That’s nothing to do with how big or wee a club we are or how big our support or potential support is, it’s simply down to the quality of players we are going to be able to put on the park. As ever we will do nothing of note in either Cup, a Quarter Final in one of them will be our best hope.

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