Queens Park Game 2nd January

[laukat]

I think most of our players get into most other teams with the exception of maybe Dundee and Queens Park.

When you compare us to Dundee and Queens Park we have similar levels of attacking threat and arguably better fullbacks than both. If Tiffoney was fully fit I would say we were stronger in attack.

Sneddon has arguably proven himself to be one of the better if not the best championship keeper this season.

Where we are weaker than the top teams is in central defence and midfield.

Queens have Fox & Kilday and Dundee have Sweeney and Ashcroft. All of those are better and more reliable than any 2 of Muirhead, Brownlie and Holt.

Boateng at Queens would walk into our team. Dundee don't have a stand out midfielder but having Williamson, McGhee and McGowan is a stronger more combative midfield with better cover for injuries than we have.

Usually teams that win Championships have a strong spine to the team. That arguably the weakest part of our team. In McCall's current tenure its been the area he's struggled to properly address. Even our league 1 winning team only really came together when he stumbled across a centre-half pairing of Brownlie and Bell. 

 

 

[jaggy]

3 hours ago, Auld Jag said:

I wasn't at the game , but having watched highlights i am surprised more has not been said about the goals we conceded. The first one Brownlie does not react to the ball into the box, he just lets the ball go past him. For the second one thru ball splits our defence and i feel Sneddon should have done better as well.

I've not seen the highlights, but prior to and including the first goal QP ran right through our defence 3 times and we were lucky to only lose 1 goal.

For the 2nd goal from our view it's just too far away to have a clear view of what happened, but Doc seemed to get upset about McPake (I think) falling over too easily before the ball was played through. Can't really comment on Sneddon again due to the distance and view.

One thing I have noticed many times this season though is that McMillan seems to get left exposed very often, especially in the 2nd half of matches. He seems to get little or no help from the midfield or fellow defenders. I think its partly as we set up our midfield too narrow.

Another point from yesterday, while we had them under some pressure in the 2nd half Turner was more or less playing alongside Graham. I wonder if it would have been smarter to bring on another striker alongside Graham at that time? 

[Lenziejag]

13 hours ago, 1876 said:

Thanks for all the nice comments regarding my grandson  he's fine and will be at firhill on Sat      regarding the game itself  i now believe we are fighting for 4th place.    As much as I would like promotion  I feel we have plenty to do off the park and  with a new board   finding their feet I'm looking forward to see what they believe is the way forward                    

At the same date last season, we were 5th with 1 point more and 7 off top. The main difference was that there was a much bigger gap to 6th than there is this season. We have also played 2 games more this season. All in all, I would say we are in a pretty similar situation.

[lady-isobel-barnett]

10 hours ago, jaggy said:

I've not seen the highlights, but prior to and including the first goal QP ran right through our defence 3 times and we were lucky to only lose 1 goal.

For the 2nd goal from our view it's just too far away to have a clear view of what happened, but Doc seemed to get upset about McPake (I think) falling over too easily before the ball was played through. Can't really comment on Sneddon again due to the distance and view.

One thing I have noticed many times this season though is that McMillan seems to get left exposed very often, especially in the 2nd half of matches. He seems to get little or no help from the midfield or fellow defenders. I think its partly as we set up our midfield too narrow.

Another point from yesterday, while we had them under some pressure in the 2nd half Turner was more or less playing alongside Graham. I wonder if it would have been smarter to bring on another striker alongside Graham at that time? 

Not that I disagree with the rest of your post, it's just that the highlighted bits especially hit the nail with me. And again puts me back on my high horse re the need for a ball winning defensive midfielder. QP wouldn't have cut thru the middle of our defence if we had an Abdul Osman, Paul Paton, David Rowson type of player in front of the defence. Turning that on its head I'm sure we've dropped points to teams that have maybe not matched us player for player, simply because they have had a ball winning midfielder to break up our attack.

When the full back, be it SOD, Elliott, Booth, ATS or whoever, got caught upfield the defensive mid would either cover the full back slot or slip back into covering the centreback position and let the defender move over to full back.

Having a no nonsense defensive midfielder is of twofold benefit. As described above and also allows the other attack minded/creative midfielders to concentrate on what they're better at. For instance during our promotion season a decade ago I doubt we'd have got the best out of Welsh, Forbes, Bannigan (of then) even Jimmy Craigen, if they constantly had to perform defensive midfield duties. 

Edited January 4, 2023 by lady-isobel-barnett

[jaggy]

We’ve never replaced Abdul and have been crying out for someone like him since he left

[Jaggernaut]

1 hour ago, jaggy said:

We’ve never replaced Abdul and have been crying out for someone like him since he left

For around the first half of his time with us he was great. But by the time he left Osman was just as hopeless as many of the other chancers in the team. It might be more accurate to say that we never got an adequate replacement for the Abdul we originally got, not the one we had at the end.

[fenski]

13 hours ago, jaggy said:

I've not seen the highlights, but prior to and including the first goal QP ran right through our defence 3 times and we were lucky to only lose 1 goal.

For the 2nd goal from our view it's just too far away to have a clear view of what happened, but Doc seemed to get upset about McPake (I think) falling over too easily before the ball was played through. Can't really comment on Sneddon again due to the distance and view.

One thing I have noticed many times this season though is that McMillan seems to get left exposed very often, especially in the 2nd half of matches. He seems to get little or no help from the midfield or fellow defenders. I think its partly as we set up our midfield too narrow.

Another point from yesterday, while we had them under some pressure in the 2nd half Turner was more or less playing alongside Graham. I wonder if it would have been smarter to bring on another striker alongside Graham at that time? 

I noticed this against Queens and thought McKinnon was the main culprit. He tracked back very half-heartedly at their first goal.

[jaggy]

3 hours ago, Jaggernaut said:

For around the first half of his time with us he was great. But by the time he left Osman was just as hopeless as many of the other chancers in the team. It might be more accurate to say that we never got an adequate replacement for the Abdul we originally got, not the one we had at the end.

There’s truth in that but I think it was only in his last season with us after he was out injured for a while that his form dropped. Most of the team were culpable that season

[lady-isobel-barnett]

6 hours ago, Jaggernaut said:

For around the first half of his time with us he was great. But by the time he left Osman was just as hopeless as many of the other chancers in the team. It might be more accurate to say that we never got an adequate replacement for the Abdul we originally got, not the one we had at the end.

Osman played over 120 games for us. True he may have ended up "hopeless" after his injury. That was half a season and roughly represented a mere 10% of his game time as a Jags player. 

[Barney Rubble]

4 hours ago, jaggy said:

There’s truth in that but I think it was only in his last season with us after he was out injured for a while that his form dropped. Most of the team were culpable that season

They may well have been.

But not as much as Alan Archibald was.

Before anyone asks, I'll start with the failure to go for a win v Hamilton at NDP when they had lost six on the bounce, compounded with losing 0-2 at home to Kilmarnock when they were rudderless before Steve Clarke took over.

The writing was already on the wall by then

[exiledjag]

On 1/3/2023 at 3:01 PM, Dick Dastardly said:

Why would you reward failure ?

It's not a question of rewarding failure its a question of making the best use of talents or abilities.

Contributors on this thread have said repeatedly that IMC knows avplsyer when he sees one it's knowing what to fo with the player that's his problem!

I don't necessarily agree with this but if there is a concensus that thisvis in fact the case then let's put him into a position where the club can benefit from his strongest abilities - identifying Hood or potentially good players.

As far as needing a Director of Footbsll (DoF) I think that with a men's and ladies team plus an academy that is now beginning to develop young players sought after by the biggest clubs in Scotland and PL clubs in England a DoF is exactly what we need.

If we have a men's team manager plus the same for the ladies and the academy a DoF is needed to pull all this together to make sure the various parts are run and developed effectively and to the values of PTFC.