fizoxy

Staple of the pre-match music in the 90s

Surprised at the level of doubt remaining on the disallowed goal. Their player was actively involved in play, he was challenging Dom for the ball. You don't need to touch the ball for that to be considered active, and whether he distracted the goalie is moot, he came back from an offside positi9n to be involved in play. This is from the FA "player in an offside position at the moment the ball is played or touched* by a team-mate is only penalised on becoming involved in active play by: ...usual stuff, then: challenging an opponent for the ball or clearly attempting to play a ball which is close when this action impacts on an opponent or making an obvious action which clearly impacts on the ability of an opponent to play the ball" You see similar given when a guy comes back to challenge for a header from a kick out or a long ball, just jumping to challenge with no chance of winning it.

We can pick apart the dundee goal all we want, but it was a cracking finish. I thought overall we defended well, and restricted them to set pieces and a couple of breaks. Outside of the 2 long throws, we were first to everything that came into our box. Crazy considering how makeshift that defense is. Not having the the Thompson hate today. At worst he was perfectly serviceable at LB and put in a shift, as did all the players. Dundee got no joy down the flanks at all, while we got a goal and assist from Sparrow and Thompson. Johnny K didn't need to do that, and I hope we don't waste money on an appeal. We're probably going to have to play Sparrow at RB in the 4 next week, or we could see Seddon come in and Dom switch over. Paton was fine, he played a great pass to slattery for his chance, and was involved in some good passages of playbwith slattery and Miller, but in general he doesn't have the cutting edge needed to play in a front 3 with no real striker in it. JT coming on allowed is to stretch them, and they had to be aware of his threat in behind. He did a great job of ghosting in front of the defender for the goal. He does that a lot.

Us fans will always get excited with new signings over keeping known quantities, despite the fact that we could end up signing the Austrian Harry Paton or German Tony Watt. We need squad players, and those two are just that, and ideally we can have a couple of our young players supplement the squad rather than bringing in the likes of Davor and Moses. I'm fine with keeping a core of players from this season for continuity, and also manage the risk of brining in too many unknown quantities. There's no player outside of Miller that I'd care about losing, but none that I'd be furious about keeping either. I doubt we will mutual any injured player, unless we're generous with the payoff.

Did he break his arm to spend more time with the baby? I don't know how unsettled he is, but I also don't see this as an Ian Vigurs "sore back" situation.

I'm not a balcombe fan, but it was absolutely clear that poor defending caused both goals. For the first, Sparrow got caught and mcpake had the freedom of fir park to play a ball back to Kirk, who got in front of his man. The second was just as bad, we left them with acres of space in the midfield and on the left, then it was played into the St J player who had all the time in the world to pick his spot. Maybe balcombe could have saved those, but the shots should never have happened. He is very shaky from high balls, and that drop in the 2nd half was almost as bad as Ox's v hearts.

Paton tried to take some initiative, while the rest looked like they couldn't be any less fucked. His play for the assist was pretty much the only good thing in the game.

Well, they're 40% of the defense, so that seems fair 😄

SODs is fine, we need a squad. We are about to go through another significant rebuild with a manager thats new to the country, so having an experienced player thar can cover multiple positions is valuable. He may make mistakes, but we have a squad full of players that make mistakes, it just happens to be that we all notice more when SOD is involved. I'll preface my next comment with the fact that every goal in every game could probably be tracked down to a defender doing something wrong, and sometimes you just have to accept that making defenders make mistakes is kind of the point of attacking, but Casey has been culpable for a bunch of goals this season too.

I just assume everyone thinks they're a big deal, and forget that they might be pretty obscure to most folk. I'd love to see them live, not sure how they could fit this rig into fir park though.

Not a terrible point considering St mirren wanted to make it a bloodbath. I didn't see how their player got injured, but it looked like it was one of the St mirren players that caused it, which is apt. If we come out of that game with no injuries, we must be using weapons in training. Armstrong makes that system better, hope he's back soon.

I've not been Daws' biggest fan, but I'm as guilty as most at focusing on the duds he signed, rather than comparing his "hit rate" to other clubs, all of whom churn through their fair share of shite each season as well. You have to give him KVV, Spittal, Bair, Slattery, and maswanhise, and maybe AP and some very good loans with Biereth and Gent, and decent good-if-not-world-beating additions such as Spencer, Ox, woolery and Casey. I don't think he gets a bye for signing permacrocks though. Slattery's injury was horrible luck, but Ojala, Callachan and Nicholson all had a poor injury history before joining us, and there's no surprises as to what happened next. I also don't think his scouring of the globe has been successful, unless the likes of Sol, Davor, Moses, and Efford were significantly cheaper than their local alternatives. Overall he's probably done a decent job in the circumstances (budget, multiple managers, injuries, etc) but I wouldn't say he has such a golden touch that we'd fall apart if we switched him for someone else. He's also as responsible for us signing Josh Morris as KVV, so there's that

Burned 1000 calories during that second half, going to grab some burgers.

Andy Halliday thought the staunchfest was for him. He consumed all the staunch air and had his best game for us, while the Rangers players were running on fumes.

The problem with the high press is that teams practice how to beat it, and when it comes off, the pressing team looks silly. That's the risk you take with the style of play. You also risk everyone being gassed by 80 mins. Contrast that with the risk of whatever SK ended up doing, and I'm fine with it. I doubt we will approach Rangers exactly the same as Dundee. I don't think the manager is that naieve.

If you haven't noticed his skippy running gait, my advice is to not think about it, because once you see it, it's all you can see.

We are struggling to score goals this season, so for me bagging 2 of them gets MotM for Casey. There were a few other good options for man of the match, with Armstrong a standout due to the sheer power of work he put in.

Based on his first two lineups, I expect some changes for Saturday as part of wimmer assessing the squad. I wouldn't be surprised to see us rotate wingbacks over the next few games considering how much they're asked to do. It is a total free hit though, so hopefully we treat it like that and try to cause them problems.

Forest are doing a good job of employing those tactics in the English Premier league right now, and that's pretty much Robinsons philosophy at St Mirren as well. Possession isn't the be all and end all. It can be exciting to watch if it's employed properly with the right players. The difference is having the players that can make it work for the 30% of the time when you do have the ball. The last couple of seasons we had the right kind of striker and wing back combo to hit teams quickly on the counter attack. This year we don't, and we didn't really sign players of that profile this season for some reason, so we should have adapted our tactics accordingly. It's funny that when each new manager comes in, players will rave about how the new guy has simplified the message. Hammell and SK both got that, then they seemed to over complicate things. Wimmer is getting the same treatment, so hopefully he doesn't go down that road.

"Why does he not do better when I shout bad things at him? It works with my dog."

I might still owe my folks some money for those bills. Here's an austria vienna game from 2023 if you want to see his tactics in effect, or scout potential signings. https://youtu.be/S8TxRyGVOXk

This is kind of where I am. It's an interesting appointment, and I'd prefer we thought outside of the box, because that's our best chance of improving or finding value where orhers haven't. In an ideal world he's good enough that he gets poached by a bigger club after a couple of successful years. It has its risks too, but most of us would have been very underwhelmed with a scottish football stalwart, and any known quantity would have been divisive based on all of the shouts in the new manager thread. My preference was someone like Ryan Lowe, who reportedly priced himself out, but even then there's just as much risk with English managers. I don't know what is so unique about scottish football that causes foreign managers to fail. Progressive managers seem to struggle too, is the standard of player just that bad? I hope this works out, but I dont expect us to immediately be world beaters. There's gains to be made in the short term just through building confidence and freshening things up, but he can't change the squad or fix injuries, or make SOD not shite, etc.

He went off inhured about 20 mins into last nights game, and was apparently stretchered off.

They meant "balance" not "bellend" * * hopefully someone else caught that in the presser or this joke won't make sense 😄

Yep, classy from Frail. Shame he got caught up in the whole SK thing. He mentioned that he didn't want to get back into coaching until we reached out, so wonder what he will do next.