GTF Please

[Parcbara]

I would have thought that the first priority has to be to get a midfield, all four of five, capable of   defending and attacking. That will need possibly three to four replacements. We need a striker  to play with Kenny Miller. We also need a central defender. If we could get one we should allow Boyle and Inniss to go back toothier clubs. Long term, we need to look at another full back and another goal keeper. I assume  that Kamara is leaving.

[Prince Buster]

2 minutes ago, Parcbara said:

I would have thought that the first priority has to be to get a midfield, all four of five, capable of   defending and attacking. That will need possibly three to four replacements. We need a striker  to play with Kenny Miller. We also need a central defender. If we could get one we should allow Boyle and Inniss to go back toothier clubs. Long term, we need to look at another full back and another goal keeper.

Can almost agree 100% with that however the way our right flank is targeted every game suggests we need to get a right back in urgently as well as what you're suggesting.

[Spiritof62]

It looked to me that the game was lost before we left the dressing room, everything was flat from the off.

Only Ralph looked like a player yesterday.

[Cobra]

I had a very bad feeling about the game in the first minute when Kamara and Boyle stood like statues on the edge of our box with the ball in between them until a St Johnstone player came along and nicked the ball away. 30 seconds later there's a half-arsed attempt by Curran to prevent the ball coming in and that's us a goal down.

[McSkimmeroo]

Terrifying to think that NM brought Inniss and Boyle in on loan at the last minute. If that hadnt happened we would only have Kusunga as a recognised CH after Meekings injury and Caulker leaving. O'dea was being frozen out and he tried to punt him off to Falkirk on the same day. Jesus

[bjs]

2 hours ago, Parcbara said:

I would have thought that the first priority has to be to get a midfield, all four of five, capable of   defending and attacking. That will need possibly three to four replacements. We need a striker  to play with Kenny Miller. We also need a central defender. If we could get one we should allow Boyle and Inniss to go back toothier clubs. Long term, we need to look at another full back and another goal keeper. I assume  that Kamara is leaving.

This is the crux for me. There’s a possibility that Miller and Kallman might score goals if they get support and service from the midfield, at the moment they get none. Likewise the defence might get better if they were getting decent support and help from the midfield, apart from Woods they again get nothing. Are our defenders and strikers great players, well no there not, but there having to work doublely hard and cover more than they should because the midfield is so inept and poor. Getting two box to box central midfielders to play with Woods and getting two wide midfielders who know how to defend and help there full backs as well as get forward would make a huge difference to the team as a whole. It would make us harder to break down, it would give us more of an attacking threat and it would mean opposition mangers would have to think about how they play against us (as just now it’s target both flanks because the full backs are fecked because the wide midfielders offer no support and get there midfielders to make good third man runs into the forward areas to support the striker as they won’t have anyone tracking them centrally).

As much as Kamara is a good player, he needs to go, Miller needs sent back to Celtic and McGowan and Curren should become squad players at best who start games on the bench. 

The midfield is key, if we don’t change it and bring in key players right across it then it doesn’t matter what defenders or strikers we bring in, we will never dominate or compete in games properly and the end results in games will still be the same, defeats.

Edited 30 December 2018 by Bjs

[Reverend Lovejoy]

11 hours ago, Edin_Dee said:

Fans will only be on side if there are results on the park. When the players don’t perform the off field stuff gets criticised too. If we were sitting top 6 I doubt the questions re FPS motives would be so intense right now. 

I’ve always been very sceptical of FPS plans are. I wasn’t convinced the fans should have been handing over their shares to them. To their credit though they have put their hands in their pocket and unless there is evidence that they are running our club into the ground, I’ll back them. 

The new stadium was always going to take much much longer than FPS stated. It’s the nature of it. I do think it will eventually happen but if it doesn’t then we are not going to be in a worse position than we were when FPS took over. 

I've always been sceptical of FPS motives and critical of John Nelms decision making. They're only putting their hand in their own pockets because they can't get cash from the normal sources. The banks have long since washed their hands with us. Whilst FPS are covering our annual shortfall with their own money it's not free cash. We'll be due them when the time is right. We've nothing to sell and aren't making our own money so they've no real option, if they want at least break even, but to bide their time.

[chomp my root]

2 minutes ago, Reverend Lovejoy said:

I've always been sceptical of FPS motives and critical of John Nelms decision making. They're only putting their hand in their own pockets because they can't get cash from the normal sources. The banks have long since washed their hands with us. Whilst FPS are covering our annual shortfall with their own money it's not free cash. We'll be due them when the time is right. We've nothing to sell and aren't making our own money so they've no real option, if they want at least break even, but to bide their time.

Maybe hoping for another Hendry or two to refund their investment. Once the development is done and dusted, that's when I think they'll lose interest in us.

[barkblue]

3 hours ago, Travellingdee said:

For me your probably right in the first half. In the second half PB would have found it hard to find adjectives to describe it.

The thing that has become apparent to me is that McIntyre can sometimes motivate the team to compete with the poorer teams in the league. We looked OK against an off form Hibs, St Mirren and Motherwell in spells. We hammered Hamilton and handled Livi, who can only really play on plastic, pretty well. We also did well when we decided to fight for a point against Rangers with a backs to the wall performance.

Beyond that and while we competed with Killie for 45 minutes, once they stepped up we couldn't live with it. Hearts, Livi St. Johnstone and Aberdeen on form have despatched us like we weren't there, while Celtic on their day do that to anyone, so that was no shock whatsoever. 

Any team with a good, solid defensive shape is beyond us in terms of breaking them down (yesterday and Livi being cases in point), while if a team can add good movement and quick sharp play against us, we can't live with that either. 

Is that down to the poor standard of player? Undoubtedly yes. Kerr and Curran, for example, two of the better performers in recent times were made to look like wee laddies yesterday. Neither knew who to mark, where to position themselves, or even for Curran, how to get goal side. And yet in some of our better games they've both looked excellent. A serious lack of central midfield certainly doesn't help either.

That said, McIntyre's tactics were awful yesterday as well. We were exposed by over committing players when we attacked, a poor shape in midfield that gave neither FB any cover at all and an inability to to link with the frontmen in any shape or form. To be fair to them though, a lot of that was down to Saints being well drilled and organised (and folk call Wright a dinosaur...).

Once McIntyre has his own players in is when we can judge his ideas, because these players are as incapable of giving consistent performances for his tactics as they were for McCann's and that in itself tells us something about how good or bad they are. The small nature of the group of players McIntyre trusts is also hamstringing him, as a few managers in their post match comments yesterday mentioned how inadvisable it is to ask the same 11 to play every game in a fixture pile up like December brings and we've started (from memory?) 13 in that time with sub appearance from another couple, and that simply isn't enough.

If McIntyre can get enough out of the squad from January on that sees us kick and scrape to 10th he'll have done an amazing job, but I'm not convinced he will to be honest.  

[barkblue]

10 minutes ago, Reverend Lovejoy said:

I've always been sceptical of FPS motives and critical of John Nelms decision making. They're only putting their hand in their own pockets because they can't get cash from the normal sources. The banks have long since washed their hands with us. Whilst FPS are covering our annual shortfall with their own money it's not free cash. We'll be due them when the time is right. We've nothing to sell and aren't making our own money so they've no real option, if they want at least break even, but to bide their time.

They knew all of that when they came in, so they obviously believed there was a long game to play that would reap rewards. If they can't get the stadium over the line I genuinely worry they'll simply wind us up. 

I think the amount of business McIntyre is, or isn't, allowed to do over the next few weeks will reveal a fair amount about what they feel about the football side, which to be fair they've backed time and again since they've come in.

[chomp my root]

1 minute ago, Barkblue said:

They knew all of that when they came in, so they obviously believed there was a long game to play that would reap rewards. If they can't get the stadium over the line I genuinely worry they'll simply wind us up. 

I think the amount of business McIntyre is, or isn't, allowed to do over the next few weeks will reveal a fair amount about what they feel about the football side, which to be fair they've backed time and again since they've come in.

I'm not sure it would be to their advantage to wind is up, much better if they can move the club on, preferably to someone who will pay but if not then to DFCSS or anyone who will have us so they can get a rent out of us. If they can get 2 teams to pay rent then even better. We just have to hope that they want to keep us on as a vanity project. 

[Mr Sensible]

3 minutes ago, Barkblue said:

They knew all of that when they came in, so they obviously believed there was a long game to play that would reap rewards. If they can't get the stadium over the line I genuinely worry they'll simply wind us up. 

I think the amount of business McIntyre is, or isn't, allowed to do over the next few weeks will reveal a fair amount about what they feel about the football side, which to be fair they've backed time and again since they've come in.

Stadium wont happen unless its a shared plan with United.