2026/27 Ins & Outs Discussion

[texanwellfan]

15 minutes ago, weeyin said:

Sounds like Curtis Main or Ryan Bowman.

I don't really consider Just to be a forward. more of an attacking midfielder. I suppose that's the modern game, though.

Not only is Just a great attacking midfielder but his work rate off the ball, in winning back possession high up the park is phenomenal. 

[David]

3 minutes ago, wellfan said:

With Ward and Welsh gone, McGinn injured, Watt, Just and JT all likely to leave, and Slattery already gone, that’s virtually the entire spine of JBA’s team dismantled. Anyone expecting Alfred to simply pick up where JBA left off is kidding themselves. That’s not to say he can’t be just as successful with the players who remain and whoever else comes in, but it won’t be the same. Last season may well prove to be an anomaly, although I hope I’m wrong.

I think the style and approach to the game will be quite similar, but the end results maybe not, which I'm sure will see the obligatory pile-on from the Scottish media and talking heads who grudgingly had to admit that there's another way of playing the game last season. 

If we're pushing for top six and hopefully get a decent cup run it should be considered a successful season. 

[Mad Dog]

5 minutes ago, David said:

I think the style and approach to the game will be quite similar, but the end results maybe not, which I'm sure will see the obligatory pile-on from the Scottish media and talking heads who grudgingly had to admit that there's another way of playing the game last season.

They'll likely think that last season was a Once in a Lifetime for us.

[El Grew]

21 hours ago, 0Neils40yarder said:

Be amazed if he was that wet behind the lugs

Agreed but…

[David]

7 minutes ago, Mad Dog said:

They'll likely think that last season was a Once in a Lifetime for us.

More than likely. There will be certain segments of the media and Scottish football community that will be itching to see if the way we play blows up in our face, so they can say last season was a fluke, you can't play football that way, and we should have hired one of the usual suspects as manager instead of trying to be different.

[weeyin]

15 minutes ago, Mad Dog said:

They'll likely think that last season was a Once in a Lifetime for us.

The second album is always the most difficult.

[wellsince75]

30 minutes ago, wellfan said:

With Ward and Welsh gone, McGinn injured, Watt, Just and JT all likely to leave, and Slattery already gone, that’s virtually the entire spine of JBA’s team dismantled. Anyone expecting Alfred to simply pick up where JBA left off is kidding themselves. That’s not to say he can’t be just as successful with the players who remain and whoever else comes in, but it won’t be the same. Last season may well prove to be an anomaly, although I hope I’m wrong.

That’s generally my view.  Even just replacing Jen’s would have made it difficult  to repeat . 
 

now the spine of the team are leaving or left and replacements have been thin on the ground . 
 

May just be that I can’t cope in the heat but i don’t have high expectations at the moment . 

[brainier]

27 minutes ago, Mad Dog said:

They'll likely think that last season was a Once in a Lifetime for us.

Same as it ever was.

[El Grew]

I can understand MJCs concerns. To use an analogy - after you’ve tasted caviar and champagne, going back to soggy toast and cold tea would be let down.
However, that’s a hazard all clubs of our size face. We had a progressive thinking manager (Bobby Ancell) and a fantastic young team in the early 1960’s (Ancell Babes) but again due to the draw of bigger clubs and bigger wages, it was broken-up. The most high profile players who left being, Ian St John to Liverpool, Pat Quinn to Blackpool and Bobby Roberts to Leicester City.

Shortly thereafter Bobby Ancell left and that ushered in the Bobby Howitt era which for me looking back now was probably one of the poorest in our history. I didn’t think so at the time but barring our exploits in the Texaco Cup it was a pretty poor time made worse by seeing clubs of a similar size to us getting a chance to play European football - Dunfermline and Kilmarnock to name two.

I just hope history doesn’t repeat itself but we need to give the new manager time to put his own stamp on things. COYW.

[Kmcalpin]

2 hours ago, David said:

I don't think Jens used a system that required an out & out striker, and depending on your definition of an out & out striker, the new manager likely won't either. It's just not how we're set up to play these days.

Thats true to a certain extent. As Weeyin says, I'd categorise the likes of Just as being an attacking midfielder. I think Jens brought in that specific  style of play as he didn't consider that we had any suitable strikers available. If we had had then I assume he'd have selected one week in week out. 

Although we amassed a healthy goals for tally, on quite a few occasions, we failed to convert good leading up work into actual goals due to being toothless in the box and having no focal point there. 

 

 

[weeyin]

11 minutes ago, Kmcalpin said:

Although we amassed a healthy goals for tally, on quite a few occasions, we failed to convert good leading up work into actual goals due to being toothless in the box and having no focal point there. 

It would interesting to see the percentage of converting chances to goals compared with previous seasons.

I think it becomes more obvious when you have so much possession and miss chances, but if you look teams like Man City, who have world class players and playing this way for years, they still have many games per season where they only scored one or two goals. And that's with Cherki, Doku and Haaland in their starting 11.

[David]

26 minutes ago, Kmcalpin said:

Thats true to a certain extent. As Weeyin says, I'd categorise the likes of Just as being an attacking midfielder. I think Jens brought in that specific  style of play as he didn't consider that we had any suitable strikers available. If we had had then I assume he'd have selected one week in week out. 

Although we amassed a healthy goals for tally, on quite a few occasions, we failed to convert good leading up work into actual goals due to being toothless in the box and having no focal point there. 

I think that's probably fair to a point but I'm not all that convinced it was simply a case of Jens looking at the squad and deciding he had no strikers available.

A lot of what we did structurally pointed towards that being a deliberate choice rather than any kind of compromise. The front player was asked to press aggressively, pull centre-backs out of position, run channels and create space for runners from deeper areas rather than act as a traditional penalty-box focal point. The fact that goals came from all over the pitch rather than through one player feels more like design than necessity to me.

That said, I do agree with the argument that we occasionally lacked somebody to turn good attacking play into goals. There were definitely games where we'd get into excellent positions, deliver dangerous balls into the box and simply not have that natural six-yard predator attacking the right spaces at the right time.

The question for me isn't so much if we need a striker, because every team can make use of a striker. It's whether we need a traditional focal-point number nine. Looking at modern Scandinavian football and the sort of systems both Askou and Johansson favour, I'm not all that convinced that's the direction we'll go.

My suspicion is that Johansson's version of the role probably sits somewhere in the middle. Maybe more of a recognised central striker than Askou used at times, but still somebody expected to press, run, link play and contribute to the overall structure rather than simply stand between the posts waiting for service.