laukat

The right wing is the main problem. I don't think it help Chalmers coming into a new team with Wasiri playing at rightback but now we have Megwa it really should allow him to show what he can do or we see what Smith can do. I can't agree on Bannigan though. Was yesterday's man 2 seasons ago and I just can't watch the way he slows any attack down by a sideways or backwards pass. He's ok to bring on to see a game out but not a starter. If there is an area in our squad that is lacking in depth its midfield. Turner and Robinson are more than capable with McBeth and Crawford able to do a job but the drop off to Stanway, Bannigan or Lyon is pretty big.

Now that Robinson is back our injuries are really not much of an excuse. MacKay and Lawless are a miss but we are well covered for wingers. Ablade looks a player but I don't think Doolan signed him to start. So I would assume the manager can now play his preferred formation which is probably still 4-2-3-1. It will require the manager to go with Chalmers or Smith and choose which of McBeth and Crawford doesn't start. Personally I like Crawford but I think he's more suited to 4-4-2. With that in mind I would have thought Doolan wanted the following: Roberts Megwa-Ashcroft-O'Reilly-Milne McBeth-Turner Chalmers-Robinson-Fitzpatrick Graham

That was better than last week but we are still playing some eye bleeding football. Roberts is an excellent shot stopper and commands his area but every week he launches the ball 3 or 4 times for no real gain and doesn't release the ball quick enough. McBeth played well today but he seems to have studied at the Aaron Muirhead school of long diagonal passes with 1 in every 4 being useful. The formation was better today but you can still see Doolan and McDonald overthinking it. If we're playing 4-4-2 put on 2 wide players don't force Turner or DIack into a unfamiliar role when you have 2 wingers sitting on the bench. The game was there to be won if Doolan has chosen to be more adventurous with his subs but instead he brings on Bannigan and Stanway who are both downgrades on Turner and Crawford bit also meant no real change in formation or tactics so was largely fresh legs to see out the draw. I'm already of the opinion that I don't think Doolan is the man to fix this. Fail to get 4 points from the next 2 and it has to be time up. On the plus side - back 4 was solid with Ashcroft having a decent game and his clearance of the line was as good as a goal. McBeth was good at breaking up play. Everyone else was probably 6/10 so not terrible just not good.

Brian Graham will score goals if chances are made. Our problem is we make almost no chances currently. From what I have seen this season there is only one game where we have created chances that I would have expected Graham to score and that was against an exceptionally poor Queens Park. His involvement with the Women's team is so unlikely to be a factor that I find it crazy to think its being mentioned. That being said if Ablade was fit I wouldn't be adverse to giving him a go as sole striker just to provide Graham a rest. Diack isn't ready to start and putting Diack in means we persevere with the same style of play. whereas Ablade means we need to change.

Looks like the loan window is closed and we still have everyone at Firhill. I'm not sure that's a great thing for the development of Mackenzie and Lyon or in trying to keep a large squad happy. In general there appears to be a lack of activity for loans and more players available as free agents that could do a job. Which makes me wonder if something has changed across Scottish Football that is causing the change in behaviour?

I thought the "Football Committee" was the bit at most games were Doolan and McDonald stand on the touchline discussing what change they should make, wait and watch until we go a goal behind, look at the attacking options available on the bench and then notice that Bannigan isn't there so both agree that the obvious sub is Stanway?

I get that others could do more but Roberts does take a long time to get the ball out and more often than not will usher away valid short options in the favour of launching it and even then will take a good 20/30 seconds before he's put the ball back in play. We used to be a team that moved the ball quickly up the park and that starts with the goalkeeper.

Anyone know when Mitchell is likely to be fit as I think we need him? Roberts is great shotstopper and also really good at crosses but his distribution is eye bleeding to watch. You could see and hear Turner shouting at him to get the ball back in play faster and every time he goes long it takes the pace out the game.

Milne is get asked to play 3 different positions today. Left midfield when we were play 3-4-1-2, left wingback when we went to 3-5-2 and then leftback when we went back to 4-2-3-1. Just for extra confusion the manager also went for a 4-4-2 when he threw on Diack at then end. If I was Milne I would be confused as f@ck and wish I reckon most of the team wish they were somewhere else as they have zero idea of what the plan is

That was a horrific watch. 3 centre-backs who launch the ball with a goalkeeper who also smacks it as far as the eye can see does not make for good football. Manager doesn't know what formation he wants to play or who his best 11 are. Players don't know what's being asked of them. I'm not sure what happened with Ablade. I hope he was taken off due to an injury and not because the manager made a mistake in the formation as that would do nothing for team morale. There are no excuses. Doolan has been well backed, they are all players he has signed or given a contract. Time for him to go

I think on those ticket prices there will be lot of folk self identifying as an under 16

Whilst we are on the subject of referee's. What happened to the rule that said only Captains could speak to the ref? Yesterday's Man City v Arsenal game was as bad as its been but there were elements of it in the Thistle game

Absolutely. At the 2022 World Cup they started putting lots of injury time onto games which if they had kept doing at all levels perhaps would have rid the game of constant deliberate interruptions. However it seems we are now back to only playing a small amount of the actual injury time. Worst part is all the kids see this and have already incorporated it into their youth games so we now have a generation of kids brought up to minimise the amount of time the ball is in play.

I didn't hear the crowd announced at the game however I read it was 4301 which is pretty decent. Dunfermline brough a reasonable amount but still looked like home attendance would be around 3700? Having now played 6 games I don't see any team that;s going to score loads of goals. I suspect the league will be won be the team conceding the fewest so could be dull fare for most of this season. Ayr seem to have some serious injuries and look to be struggling to maintain early performances and perhaps could slide closer to the pack in the next few weeks. The team I would keep an eye on is Livingston as they are just quietly racking up points and have probably the best manager in the division.

That was pretty poor today and in truth the game should have ended 0-0. However to get 3 points when you're not playing well is a good sign. Formation in my opinion looked like 3-4-3 however I have seen others suggest it was 3-4-2-1. Either way it just seems like the coaching team are trying to overthink it. Too many long balls in the hope that Graham could flick it on and when we did get the ball in the Dunfermline half we were in such a rush to give it back. There was no guile to our play, no attempt to keep possession or move the Dunfermline defence about just constant battering away with the same singular tactic. Megwa looked good and a massive improvement on our right back options however his delivery was poor. O'Reilly, McBeth and Muirhead were solid but all 3 love a long ball too much as does our keeper. Crawford has some work rate. We look like to a team struggling for confidence and fluency hopefully the win starts to bring the confidence back.

Was it 2-3-5 because it was 1887?

Hopefully we won't have the same selection problems as Morton Footballer Jay Emmanuel-Thomas in court after £600,000 of cannabis seized at UK airport - BBC News

I would assume we went 3-5-2 last week to counter Ayr's 2 strikers. I don't think Dunfermline have the same threat and as we are at home so the onus is on us to win so I hope we go with the following Roberts Megwa-McBeth-O'Reilly-Milne Chalmers-Turner-Crawford-Fitzpatrick Ablade-Graham However I suspect Doolan will drop Ablade and start Stanway and go back to 4-2-3-1

There are alternative ways forward for Doolan without bringing in another CDM. Clearly he could put McBeth in there but I think Doolan doesn't see McBeth as a CDM any more. I think McBeth struggles to organise like Docherty could and equally gets caught chasing players too high up the park to do the Osman role of just protecting the back 4 and only really getting in the opposition half for set pieces The other way is to change formation. 4-2-3-1 and 3-5-2 both demand 3 midfielders and usually one that's very defensive. 4-4-2 doesn't require 3 midfielders or a specialist CDM it requires 2 central ones that can get up and down the park. work as a pair and be proficient in most matters. That is pretty much what Crawford and Turner do. Personally I think we had our best performance in the game against Motherwell and it was a close to a 4-4-2 as we have been. Mackay played as a traditional winger, Robinson was in the main very close to Graham as to be a second striker. Crawford and Turner were very good and just kept the ball moving about. With addition of Ablade it surprises me we have not tried it. I don't see 3-5-2 lasting for long as we would have too many wingers sitting idle. So its either back to 4-2-3-1 minus CDM and not making the most of Ablade's pace or 4-4-2

I think you identify something that might be a bit of a change in approach this season. Under previous seasons with Doolan we were a very good attacking team who scored goals but unfortunately also conceded goals. In the last 2 seasons we scored the most goals in the league bar the team that won the league. However our defensive record was 4th best 2 seasons ago and only 7th best last season. This season we haven't played well and have had various personnel used in the small number of games played but so far we are joint 2nd best in terms of goals conceded. If we can avoid periods were we don't pick up points for a 4-6 week period like we have in the last 2 seasons and get points on the board when we are not playing well then that's usually a good sign. Everyone remembers from 12/13 how good we were in attack but the key stat was we lost less than 30 goals all season when usually conceding less than 40 gets you in contention for the title. Kilmarnock won the league a few years ago with only scoring 50 goals because they only conceded 27. Alex Ferguson was quoted as saying "attack wins you game, defence wins you titles" Maybe Doolan is changing tack slightly from the free flowing attacking football to a style that grinds out results when we aren't firing on all cylinders and maybe our criticism of the midfield is more about not liking that they are designed to be defensively better and less effective in attack ?

100%. He has been well backed and we now have 2 players in every position that arguably get into most other teams starting 11 in this league. We really need to let some go as its going to be difficult to keep them all happy. Lyon and Williams are obvious ones to let move out. Mackenzie needs a season starting somewhere for his own development. If the right midfielder became available perhaps Bannigan or Stanway might also go out on loan. Diack could probably do with a season on loan but with Robinson not fit I think we need him as cover.

I don't know what the idea is behind this but its not something I want to see happen again. Got horrible Sevco overtures Jamie Shedden on X: "Partick Thistle fans in Ayr today… Deary me 🤣🤣 https://t.co/XgBitUiHPJ" / X

We weren't at the races in the first half. Ayr were far faster and looked fitter however I suspect their growing injury list suggests their manager is demanding more than they can physically cope with. Second half we were much better and Milne's equaliser was completely justified. No idea when Graham is meant to have told folk to shut up. If it happened he must have done it from the edge of the 18 yard box because we just weren't that close the Ayr goal in the first half. O'Reilly, McBeth and Milne were very good. Stanway was miles off it and most of our moves broke down with him. Roberts made a few decent saves and the defence were throwing their bodies in front of things when required. No idea if Roberts was off his line for the 1st penalty take but its really harsh to have a retake when their is no VAR. Ref made some odd decisions and the worst was probably booking McBeth when Oakley rugby tackled McBeth. I think that was better point for us than Ayr. We'll be stronger next time we play and I'm not so sure they will be

I think you identify a key issue and one that eventually did for Archibald. By insisting in the same formation being played to ensure common understanding we end up limiting organic development, the ability to respond a situation and tactical awareness. Effectively we become predictable and stale. When I was a kid the standard formations were 4-4-2 or at a push 4-3-3. In my mind other formations were developed and showed value mainly because the traditional ones had become stale. I do however get the principle of having teams play the same way so we have ready made replacements. Perhaps though rather than insisting on playing 1 formation the club should be insisting that all teams bar the first team play more than 1 formation throughout the season. First team manager should always have the skill to vary formation to get a result

I'm only dipping in and out this thread but I think we initially thought we lost but it turn out we may have been dividing goals scored by goals conceded and forget to carry the two. Not sure who we have in the next round