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Motherwell V Kilmarnock Sat 29 Aug 15:00


Yabba's Turd
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I am normally an optimist and it was good walking out with 3 points but I'm concerned. We now have both pace and skill at the club. But today showed we have players but not a team. There was a lack of unity, cohesion, self belief and confidence. The longer the game went, the more the players shrunk into themselves. I think we won simply because Killie were the worst side to show up at Fir Park in ages. If they are this season's St Mirren, then Motherwell could easily be this season's Motherwell. So regardless of who we may sign over the next 3 days, Barra needs to step up and show he has the ability to manage and motivate players into a confident and tactically astute unit. For me, the jury is now out.

 

PS. Waldo should maybe do the team talks - sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, apart from when it's done well. Cheers Man

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One of the worst games of football I've had the pleasure of watching...utter, utter shite, but I'm absolutely delighted with the 3points. It looks like it's going to be a long, hard season, so it's essential that we take as many points off the other shite teams around about us as is physically possible.

 

 

Has Angry Killie fan recorded his latest edition...I'll not be impressed unless there are actual tears

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I thought the 1st half was quite entertaining. We didn't get the final ball all too often but a load of nice play.

 

Second half was not so nice.

 

The players seem to get nervous in the last 30 mins of games. For me that's maybe part manager but a lot to do with the experienced players like Skippy, Lasley, McManus pulling the team through. I saw Skippy moaning but not taking like he did with Erwin, a silent Lasley as fucking usual and a couple of shouts from McManus but not much. Not good enough from our senior pros. We look cohesive starting games, so it is there and the players n ow how to do it...what changes?

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First and foremost a very welcome, not to say critical 3 points. We deserved to win...just. Kilmarnock were devoid of creativity and a cutting edge but fought hard to gain the upper hand in terms of possession and their defence was far better than I had been led to believe - they shielded MacDonald very well indeed. Over the 93 minutes they had over twice the shots on target we could muster. I counted that we hit the target twice excluding the penalty.

 

Kennedy was the pick of the bunch for me, but Chalmers, Thomas and Moult all played their part. Thomas was the right choice to start and was certainly eyecatching with his trickery and wizardry. However more often than not his final ball was poor. We started off very brightly for the first 20/25 minutes but again lacked a cutting edge. After that Killie began to dominate as they did in the second half. Their midfield was powerful enough to steamroller our engine room but fortunately lacked creativity or flair.

 

Much as I expected, our central midfield was overrun for long spells unable to win the ball and when they did so unable to to do much with it. Killie though worked damned hard to close us down in the middle of the park. I thought Lasley was largely ineffective and disappeared in the second half. Leitch, in my view, had little or no impact on the proceedings. I won't criticise MacDonald because again he was played out of position and sat far too deep to help Moult.

 

The ref had a poor game but got the major decisions right - I've yet to scrutinise the penalty. He was very inconsistent to say the least.

 

I'm looking forward to finding out if we can strengthen central midfield in the next 2/3 days by acquiring more pace, power and steel there.

 

Not a great game but we seized the 3 points the SPFL had on offer.

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Even if we haven't impressed much we have now ground out two wins this week. Not a bad way to go into the international break, another massive game when we get back. If we win ugly again I'll be delighted as it'll mean we likely have a decent wee cushion on whoever is bottom and the pressure will be off for a few weeks.

 

I'd hope even just the wins this week builds a bit of confidence. For all we have had some technical and tactical flaws I still reckon the biggest problem has been fragile confidence and nothing builds it like wins, be they bitty and hard fought or won through nice football and handing out a papping.

 

Reckon we can comfortably get clear of the relegation battle this season, by how much remains to be seen I hope we can at least be looking at the top half.

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I thought that we played the better football throughout. Other than the save in the first half, Ripley was never seriously tested while we played some good one touch stuff throughout but the final ball was a bit disappointing which we didn't create the number of chances our better possession and territory should have.

 

Was just discussing the game with my dad who couldn't make it today and was saying that I thought they all played quite well as individuals today but the connectivity just didn't click which is a bit of a shame. Hopefully the win will give us a bit of a lift, I thought we did look a bit scared of winning last 20 minutes but have chucked away two 1-0 leads in the last fortnight that is only human nature. They now know they can do it.

 

The next two league games are really interesting against the two teams who are probably overachieving in this league - if we could take four points from that, I'd be really confident of fighting out about the middle of the league and if we can do that it would be a great indicator of progress.

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Ripley. Too tall for a goalie, shouts too much, and dives too often. Not in a shampoo advert either. Surely some sort of mind meld with Manuel Neuer is not asking too much.

Chalmers. If he keeps an injured Hammel out the team he must be rank.

McManus. Too old, too slow.

Kennedy Too young too fast. Was drawn out of position covering Law.

Law. Nepotism, coz his brother's, er something or other. Was drawn out of position covering Kennedy.

Lasley. At least six years past his sell by date. Never heard of a guy in his thirties play football, except for fives.

Taylor. Anonymous. Did he even touch the ball?

Thomas. Kept shooting! Far too young to be starting.More experience please!

Ainsworth. Lazy. Got pace but nothing else, couldn't cross the road. No wait, that was Humphries. England teir 7 IMO.

McDonald. Scored a last minute winner v Celtic. Illegal to criticise

Mould. Headless chicken. All that jumping and movement! What's that about? He's a No 9 Has he scored? NO. Well, apart from the times he has, obviously.

Laing. Came on at right back. Shocking, why replace Law?

Johnston. We paid money for him? Must have been a raffle ticket.Came on for a winger. Baffling substitution.

Some new striker guy. Came on for our striker. Baffling substitution.

 

Substitutions: Why does Baraclot insist on bringing a man on? next time you take one off put two on. Easy.

Baratit. Watched him at half time. Went up the tunnel a turned left. Clearly lost the dressing room.

Craigan. Why on Mars has he not produced more players. Five weeks into the season. Nothing. Sack him and free up a wage.

Supporters. Everyone who agreed with me was great. Others were happy clappy doom and gloom merchants. And what was all that noise about?

Crawford? Fitness? One of these players was panting after 85 minutes. Shocking.

Stadium. Falling apart piece of shite. Knock it down and build a superGreggs. We'll watch them doon The Calder. Hopefully they'll catch pleurisy getting the ball out the river.

Tactics. We should be playing the tried and tested 3-3-2-1-2 I perfected on my Amiga. I won the Ryder Cup with Luton Town FFS.

Quite simply the biggest pile of shite since the manure farm was hit by a jobby bomb. 3 points won, I'm raging

And the club haven't tried to sign Messi yet....

 

It's an outrage!!

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Just watched the highlights, looked like an absolutely minging game of football.

I've seen much worse than that, believe me! At least we tried to play something resembling football especially first half. Hopefully the win will give us a confidence boost and the Lasley testimonial a chance to try out a few things
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Even if we haven't impressed much we have now ground out two wins this week. Not a bad way to go into the international break, another massive game when we get back. If we win ugly again I'll be delighted as it'll mean we likely have a decent wee cushion on whoever is bottom and the pressure will be off for a few weeks.

 

I'd hope even just the wins this week builds a bit of confidence. For all we have had some technical and tactical flaws I still reckon the biggest problem has been fragile confidence and nothing builds it like wins, be they bitty and hard fought or won through nice football and handing out a papping.

 

Reckon we can comfortably get clear of the relegation battle this season, by how much remains to be seen I hope we can at least be looking at the top half.

 

 

The international break is either coming at a great or a terrible time. The two wins this week will hopefully have built up a bit of momentum, and given the squad a little bit of confidence ahead of two tricky games against County and Accies, so I just hope we can keep this up over the break. The positive spin is that it gives us a little bit more time to gel (especially with us hopefully getting a couple of new bodies in this week). No substitute for competitive games however so we'll see...

 

As a few others have said, we seem to be playing reasonably well as individuals (largely) but the team hasn't yet clicked. I've no doubt this will come, and we'll be fine this season, but I think top six is probably a bit out of our reach at the stage of the rebuilding process we're currently at.

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Mcdonald is absolutely wasted in the position he is being played in. That and we are lacking a player in centre mid to take the ball out of our half and into theirs to help create an offensive move is my only moans

 

Some of the players look scared to break forward or worried about taking on a player , thinking Jonson in particular, boy looks short of confidence at the moment.

 

Someone should sit with him and show him the Rangers game and remind him that he's capable of taking the game to his opponents

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Mcdonald is absolutely wasted in the position he is being played in. That and we are lacking a player in centre mid to take the ball out of our half and into theirs to help create an offensive move is my only moans

 

Some of the players look scared to break forward or worried about taking on a player , thinking Jonson in particular, boy looks short of confidence at the moment.

 

Someone should sit with him and show him the Rangers game and remind him that he's capable of taking the game to his opponents

MCDonald tried to play passes from midfield but just wasn't on the same wavelength as Thomas and Moult in front of him, needs work

Marv needs to watch Thomas and see a player champing at the bit to get on the ball and take players on, I suppose that's Baracloughs idea, have two guys competing for each position .

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Marv needs to watch Thomas and see a player champing at the bit to get on the ball and take players on, I suppose that's Baracloughs idea, have two guys competing for each position .

They're different kinds of players. Dom Thomas is very capable of beating 2/3 opponents at close quarters and squeezing past them - not so good at running at a defence at pace. Johnson is the opposite - not tricky but his stregnth lies in running at an open defence. Horses for courses.

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In fairness there was some decent link up play between McDonald, Thomas and Moult. Some of the through balls McDonald played between their full back and centre half early on were exactly the sort of thing we've been missing. The chance McDonald had later on in the second half was fashioned from good interplay between he & Thomas.

 

No doubt McDonald tired noticeably and his passing became much slacker. By no means was that a complete display of total football but given the context and our poor run of form and even taking into account it was a dire Killie team we were playing it was good to at least see us try and play the ball on the deck more.

 

Edit to add: I still agree that in playing Skippy deep we're not getting the best out of him however assuming it's a stop-gap measure until we get Pearson back or a new CM in then as a short term option it's not the worst plan B.

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Looking at the strikers now on our books, it appears that they are all quite different. The latest addition, Theo Robinson, looks to be extremely quick. However one thing they do have in common is that none of them is a big target man. None is particularly good in the air. Given that we need to cut out aimless punts or high crosses into the box. Maybe time to instruct our wingers to take a leaf out of Davie Cooper's book - nothing wrong in firing in hard crosses at ankle, knee or chest height.

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Looking at the strikers now on our books, it appears that they are all quite different. The latest addition, Theo Robinson, looks to be extremely quick. However one thing they do have in common is that none of them is a big target man. None is particularly good in the air. Given that we need to cut out aimless punts or high crosses into the box. Maybe time to instruct our wingers to take a leaf out of Davie Cooper's book - nothing wrong in firing in hard crosses at ankle, knee or chest height.

Thinking back to yesterday there were 3 or 4 occasions Thomas, Ainsworth and Johnson, latterly, did that. We just had no one up with the play and in the 6 yard box to quite connect with it.

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Thinking back to yesterday there were 3 or 4 occasions Thomas, Ainsworth and Johnson, latterly, did that. We just had no one up with the play and in the 6 yard box to quite connect with it.

Disagree we had no one up with play. The players were there but more often than not the final ball was poor. On one occasion when it was perfect Thomas completely missed it.

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Disagree we had no one up with play. The players were there but more often than not the final ball was poor. On one occasion when it was perfect Thomas completely missed it.

There was definitely 2 occasions. One Thomas and the other Johnson.

 

They played it directly across the 6 yard box at pace and 3/4 of our players were just arriving a bit late. At the time most around us said Sutton would likely have been there...not that I really wish we had kept him! I think Fletcher by the looks of it is the 6 yard box poacher of the strikers. McDonald probably would have been there but was playing too deep to be right up with play.

 

You could argue that the right ball maybe wasn't played as well. Maybe a bit of both.

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