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lady-isobel-barnett

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Everything posted by lady-isobel-barnett

  1. I'm just guessing but his recurrent injury (knee?) may have made Gary difficult for a club to insure.
  2. In no way do I disagree. I would tho' like to know how potentially effective our current scouting system is likely to be. Dools has mentioned it on at least a couple of occasions. Ideally I'd like to see a squad comprising of more ex academy players and others sourced out of leftfield such as the Juniors and lower leagues down south. Players brought in on loan with an option to sign, as opposed to the usual wannabees at the OF.
  3. As others have said Robinson was a deserved MotM but I thought both McBeth & Muirhead (won so many headers) ran him close. What's extra pleasing was the centreback pairing worked well. Surprised we only scored the two goals but i suppose Morton are a stuffy side.
  4. Same starting XI but looks like McBeth playing centre back. Neilson in midfield
  5. Tho' it's got that six pointer look about it I don't think tomorrow's result will prove to be too pivotal. Put another way I'd neither get that ecstatic over a win nor feel it's all over if we lose. Just want to see us fight for a result and demonstrate some proper joiney up form.
  6. Morton are just the sort of outfit to rub salt into our wounds. I'd be tempted to take a draw. Changing my tune somewhat. I'd be happy now if we stumbled into the play offs and found ourselves with a fit squad that went on to play to their true potential. And, yes, I'm being optimistic with "true potential".
  7. Not sure if this is addressing your point but Doolan tried to get a defensive midfielder during the closed season but couldn't. He dropped back more advanced mids to play alongside Bannigan (in effect to replace Docherty). That as we know never worked out. Even so he still had to persist as he couldn't play Banzo as a ball winning midfielder. In turn that more or less dictated our formation. A line up that depended heavily on Lawless & Fitzpatrick in wide position. One option he had was to play Neilson as the defensive mid. Doolan said moving Neilson out of defence wasn't ideal as he was competent at centreback. I'm speculating here but I think bringing in McGinley (a left centreback) may have been primarily to explore the option of moving Neilson forward. Perhaps an interim measure till we signed O'Reilly. I imagine most would agree that the two positions we had to fill in January were defensive mid and left sided centreback. In effect McBeth & O'Reilly have now replaced Docherty & Holt. A third position we haven't filled is a back up for Wee Stevie and Fitz. We had of course a poor signing in McDonald for that very purpose. So not having wide cover means either a forced change of formation or playing one of our multitude of spare midfielders out of position. None of the above is meant as defence of Doolan's management. Just pointing out a few factors. Some mitigating.
  8. Rare game when we don't score. Thought just about everyone played poorly tonight. Don't know whether to make an exception for McBeth as he played for over an hour carrying a yellow. Thought he might have been hooked at half time. Looked a poor goal to lose even tho' we know how effective Turner can be. But it was at the other end of the pitch where we were more culpable. The starting formation was looking promising but was rightfully changed after Raith scored and sat back. Thereafter we were both lacklustre and too predictable going forward. Can't honestly say I'm too confident about Saturday.
  9. Hampden pitch is 1 metre wider than Firhill. Same length.
  10. Thought the two goals QP scored were well worked and not blatant defensive errors as we're used to. Ferrie's first two saves were impressive. Even the two you'd expect him to make were either parried away strongly or quickly dealt with. Feel we're in a glass half full/half empty situation at the moment. Maybe we should be satisfied with both our league position and current form. Back in June before a ball was kicked this season I'd have been chuffed enough with where we are. Draws at home to the league leaders and away to QP seem fair enough. The other side of the coin is we're showing form that's at a scraping into the play offs standard. Certainly well below potential play off winners level. I'm torn between those two viewpoints. Tuesday night could well help me pick one.
  11. Everything's relative. If Lesser Hampden was up an ready 40% of yesterday's crowd would've been locked out. 😃
  12. Often critical but I thought Doolan managed the game well today. Reacted quickly to their 2nd goal. Maybe if Adeloye had stayed on we might have scrambled a winner. Big question I ask is once we scored we won just about every first ball on the ground, made countless interceptions in midfield and were picking up more than our share of second balls. But why couldn't we play like that for more of the game? Regardless who you support I reckon you'd feel cheated by yon ref today. He should've booked himself for time wasting. Didn't think his decisions were that controversial. Just the time taken before restarts was ridiculous. Reckon we were cheated out of about 10 minutes of actual play. I hope he's very proud of his new whistle.
  13. Bit of a shame no Williams. Not sure if Ngwenya will play at back or midfield. May even drop to a back three but a bit negative for a game we should be going all out for a win. Only plus, and a minor one, is Muirhead will be played on his preferred side.
  14. A wee mention from Neilson in his 60 second interview. He says "Get the ball wide". Don't disagree. I think our best scoring options come from cross balls. Just slightly off kilter with a strengthened central midfield. Just hope he and McBeth can supply the ammo.
  15. What we don't really know is how the attack will fare under the dual defensive mids set up. Hopefully it means less tracking back for Lawless and Fitzpatrick who anyway aren't exactly the greatest defenders. Robinson I feel is key to the formation working. He should avoid being dragged too deep and can stay closer to Graham. Take Jagger's point about Diack but it's likely Lawless and to a lesser degree, Fitzpatrick, will run out of steam. We don't have ready made replacements so we have to make do with either a forced change of formation or play Ricco or Zander out wide. Of course that's not to say Diack shouldn't be a straight sub for Big Brian but Adeloye appears at the moment to be first choice.
  16. True. We played exceptionally well in the play offs, certainly continuing the momentum built up prior. The play offs are stacked (I believe rightly) against the 3rd/4th club gaining promotion. My point is that results between clubs below us should be largely academic if we've any chance of progressing.
  17. In a way other results don't matter that much. We have to qualify for the play offs under our own steam to have any chance of promotion. If just reaching the play offs is seen as an achievement in itself then of course results elsewhere can make a difference. if we only qualify for them by results from teams below us cancelling each other out, then realistically we're not got much of a chance progressing. Any club getting promoted thru the play offs, especially from 3rd or 4th place, will have needed to go into them on the back of good results and be on top of their game. If starting off from 3rd place we can't qualify off our own back from here on in, we'll more than likely be going nowhere.
  18. I'm sure I saw somewhere that after Saturday's draw we're now bottom of the "last six matches" table. Should normally be a serious cause for concern but I came away from Firhill relatively pleased with both result and performance. Renewed confidence even. I think the change to a more cautious line up won't affect our attacking play too much. It does tho' mean the four advanced players (and any forward replacements) will all have to be on their game. Doolan will have to be sharp in assessment re subbing forwards.
  19. Spot on. Fitzpatrick is a typical winger (wide player) whose form can peak and dip game to game. Even within a single game. My hero, Big Denis was anything but consistent. Anyone thinking otherwise has a very selective memory. It's Wee Stevie who is the freak. Lawless's consistency is surprisingly good for a widey.
  20. Throughout the league I don't think there'll be result from now until the end of the season that will be considered a complete surprise. Starts tomorrow for us. A Jags win wouldn't/shouldn't come as a shock. Having daft wee leagues of ten of course perpetuates the likelihood of result reversals, but even at that I think this season there's less between 1st and 10th as normal. We're (rightfully) going on about our concession of goals. Less said about how our opponents feel about losing 2 goal a game against us. Big reversal needed tomorrow given it's currently 0-8 against our opponents. However I honestly don't believe the gap is nearly that bad. I'd be surprised if there's much change in our starting XI tomorrow. I don't subscribe to the point of view that our faults lie with the personnel we play. Rephrased I don't think within those who regularly don't start there's any obvious cures.
  21. Sorry, late to the game as not that unusual. All the very best, robphil. 👍
  22. Take your point. I'll turn it on its head if only to try to be positive. These last three games we've scored 9 goals. The expected downside when bringing in a defensive mid is that we'd drop off attack wise. I doubt many of us are anything but pleased with our scoring rate and also very few didn't recognise that we were weak defensively in midfield. Doolan conceded that much. I wasn't at Inverness so I've only see McBeth start the last two games plus a couple of cameo appearances. I've actually thought he's been decent but that's of course ignoring the facts. I can't argue with that tho' I can point out that a weakness at losing goals from set pieces is a largely a collective failing and not any more or less the fault of a defensive midfielder. Just a feeling but I reckon basic teamwork is more the problem than individual failings if you exclude the goalkeeping. Gotta get that sorted before we can really judge McBeth, who I sense isn't going to be a major part of the problem.
  23. Doolan like most young managers won't be slow in asking advice from the experienced. I recollect he more or less said so. Also saying he's not got a shortage of appropriate contacts. That said both comments above are more than relevant. I'm thinking it's not just defensive coaching we need but also someone to play bad cop to Doolan's good cop. I look at some other relatively inexperienced managers in the division. Imrie, Scott Brown, Duncan F & McPake all have something in common Kris lacks. Throw in Jim Goodwin for good measure and there's five that I'm sure will be able to play the role of bad cop with ease. For balance we require some hard to please, greeting face bugger, who'll not be the least bit slow to get his message across from the dugout. As long as Mr Bad Cop knows his stuff from a defensive point of view.
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