BigManTam

I hope I'm wrong, but I think our blunt play in the final 3rd is starting to catch up with us. We've had some breaks in the past couple of months with pens and other decisions which have went our way - reckon our luck might be up though. 0 - 0.

Is that the Scottish version of a cold, rainy Wednesday night in Stoke? 😁

10939 at the game. If we go with 4800 hearts fans thats just over 6k home crowd. Something special happening down Fir Park way.

I should say though that Hearts may well beat us today. Hoofball does have its day every now and then. As much as it pains me to say it, just look at Scotland-Denmark game.

This. Think it's been a bit of a wake up call (especially for Hearts, Hibs fans who probs thought they were doing alright) to see in such an obvious way how redundant hoofball is. The Scottish league doesn't need to be all hoofball merchants. I think the likes of McInnes, Robinson and Gray (and some pundits) are realising this (perhaps even subconsciously), which explains their defensive reaction when questioned on it.

Attendance tonight was approx. 6500 with 1500 hibs fans. Not bad for a mid-week game.

Needs rested? It's only just coming up to December and we just had an international break... JBA seems to be perfect in almost every way, but are we beginning to see his Achilles heel? Resting our top players/taking them off early for no good reason?

I'm starting to go the other way on Said. It is amazing how well he can keep the ball, but he very rarely delivers anything meaningful and often makes bad decisions.

Did anyone see the replay of the League cup semi on BBC Scotland last night? Wild stuff.

But they are though. They can barely string a few passes together. Hit long and chase type football. As others say, it only gets you so far. Any mid table Norwegian or Danish team would pump them. This has been the whole revelation of the JBA regime so far - we (in Scotland) can play the continental way as well. The soil here is not cursed. Yes, there will be ups and downs (yesterday) along the way, but you can basically take a hoofball style team and make them actually play football. The big Q is - can we take it to the next level? Not only play tidy stuff, but make it consistently effective? I think we can get there by next season with this season as more of a development year (but could still clinch top 6). I'm probably getting ahead of myself now, but if JBA is able to really pull this off and get us either a cup win, playing well in Europe etc. it could really change things in Scottish football long term. Other teams will look at it and think - why can't we have that?

One thing I'd like to pull you up on - unless my memory is failing me, we were utter dug meat in last year's semi final. Our goal came from a big hopeful boot into the box and we could barely string two passes together the entire game. Last night was poor - poorer than we've become accustomed to this season. We still scored a goal and missed another couple of well-worked chances. We were miles better yesterday than the semi last year.

Dundee Utd on Wednesday??

Let's no go over the top here gents. A disappointing performance no doubt, but their first 2 goals - what can you say really? First one awful defending - thats nothing to do with our style. Second one they get a break and their forward scores probably his best goal of the season. After we got our goal back, St. Mirren did dominate and we crumbled at the back - but we were chasing the game and desperate at that point. What needs to change for us? It's been said a million times but Ap Stam won't cut the mustard. Hopefully Hendry can fill that gap but it's 50/50 right now whether he can, although I personally think he's much better than Ap at least. Crossing diabolical and what's even the point when we have nobody with any real threat from headers? JBA will be aware of this - we've made great progress so far this season but don't forget JBA has been here less than 6 months. He will need some windows to identify weaknesses and plug gaps. Robinson has been with St. Mirren and good while and has optimised his team (and they're still shite). A perhaps necessary lesson today.

Another thing I love about Askou is he doesn't hang around with subs when it's not working.

Our delivery is consistently terrible. Time for Hendry and Slattery.