How To Beat Thistle 101

[uberteeb]

Organise yourself into 2 banks of 4 during the first half, the classic defensive line up that allows no space through the middle. Don’t worry if we get the ball out to our wide players, their delivery is terrible and when they do put in a good cross you needn’t fear as the players we have in the box are tiny, your defenders can be assured of an easy headed clearance.

 

Sit deep, the only threat we have is the ball in behind for someone to run onto. Don’t let us get in behind and we are snookered. We can’t pass through your 2 banks of 4 and see above for our hopelessness on the wings when it comes to putting in crosses. Don’t be afraid to give us corners either. Oh and don’t worry about anyone attempting to shoot from distance, we won’t bother, we will make 3 or 4 passes before misplacing one right to your feet.

 

Never worry that we have more of the ball than you, as you will soon find out we can play lovely passes sideways and backwards on the halfway line as you sit off us, when it comes to doing anything useful with it we simply can’t. Not that anyone does keep these kind of stats in our pathetic league but if they did don’t be disheartened to see us with 60-65% possession, its all smoke and mirrors.

 

Make sure your defenders are tall, invariably they will be and they will tower over our forwards. Believe it or not after about 30 minutes of failure on the deck we will invariably end up lofting floated high balls to our tiny forwards who have their backs right up against your big defenders, I know it doesn’t make any sense and 99 times out of 100 you will win the ball in the air but that is the only other thing we will attempt.

 

Play someone with pace. Our full backs are young and aren’t very good, not only that they are slow at getting back when they do venture forward. This leaves you up against a bombscare who will chop you down through on goal or, more likely, up against dinosaurs who your pacy frontman/winger will breeze by.

 

Put high balls into the box, you, unlike us, will have practised this as you will your corners. Not only are we hopeless at putting the high ball in but we are almost equally inadequate at defending it. If you don’t win the header our attempted clearance will barely get outside the box, feel free to shoot from here.

 

Score first, you will be able to contain us, once you go a goal up our heads go down. As with any team we become more vulnerable than most when chasing the game, the dinosaurs at the back make us more susceptible than most.

 

It’s really not hard to figure this out, this pattern plays out more often than not, everyone in this league knows what to do against us and to nullify what little threat we actually have. We can’t play any other way and I really think we might go down this year.

[Jagsman]

how to beat thistle, play them at your own ground

[Auld Jag]

How to beat us score first

[Ma Ba']

 

...........all what Uberteeb says, just leave us with 2/3 of the park, keep us 20 yards away from goal, nobody will shoot from further out than 6 yards, don't worry if we get a corner (we never score from them) and we do not practice free kicks either. and make sure your 2 centre backs take a paracetamol before the game cos they will be goin home with sore heads headin the high balls out all afternoon.

 

the bottom line is we are one of the better 'footballing' sides in the division but also one of the most ineffectual in the last third.