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so whats the team going to be tomorrow then? welsh suspended so do we just bring in shuggy murray in his place and leave lawless and erskine on the bench? We're going to need a bit of creativity in the team because this mob will have everyone behind the ball tomorrow. I can't see Jackie dropping doolan or craig after them both scoring last week. my team would probably be:

 

fox

 

muirhead

balatoni

archie

sinclair

 

erskine

paton

forbes

bannigan

 

doolan

craig

 

subs:scully,shuggy,lawless,mcguigan,craigen

 

 

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so whats the team going to be tomorrow then? welsh suspended so do we just bring in shuggy murray in his place and leave lawless and erskine on the bench? We're going to need a bit of creativity in the team because this mob will have everyone behind the ball tomorrow. I can't see Jackie dropping doolan or craig after them both scoring last week. my team would probably be:

 

fox

 

muirhead

balatoni

archie

sinclair

 

erskine

paton

forbes

bannigan

 

doolan

craig

 

subs:scully,shuggy,lawless,mcguigan,craigen

 

Fox

Muirhead Balatoni Archie Sinclair

Paton Murray

Lawless Forbes Erskine

Doolan

 

Didn't necessarily want to drop Criag but it's a toss up between him and Doolan. There is no need to switch to a 4-4-2 and we've had most success with the above midfield formation. I also don't see the merit in dropping Doolan back into the midfield as others have suggested in the past.

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I've been worried by a couple of things in recent weeks particularly our apparent inferiority at picking up second balls and how we can be overrun in midfield at times. People are very quick to jump on Forbes' back despite the fact he's been one of our better performers in recent weeks and I don't think the problem I've described will be eradicated with his withdrawal.

 

When we play Craig alone up front, we lose the excellent movement of Doolan which, in turn, creates the space for Erskine and Lawless to operate effectively; it's no coincidence that the form of those two has tailed off somewhat in Doolan's absence. Our forward players can sometimes be isolated, meaning we have to go long to Craig which can result in the ball coming back on top of us quite quickly.

 

Again, like Forbes, the solution isn't to remove Craig from the team and, hey presto, we're back to our early season form. I think we need to adapt our formation slightly to accomodate Craig's different style whilst maintaining our overall approach to the game. The diamond formation leaves us far too exposed in the wide areas and, considering we rely quite heavily on our full backs attacking, would be a recipe for disaster (see the Livi game last week for evidence).

 

Instead of having a wide front three - i.e. Craig with Erskine and Lawless playing almost as wingers who cut inside - if we switched to positioning them as inside forwards, it should make us more compact and will complement Craig's style more effectively. Additionally, I think this would be a decent tactic to adopt for away games due to the slightly increased solidity through the middle of the pitch. This would also allow us to fit Forbes in a more advanced position where he is more comfortable and his defensive shortcomings aren't as exposed.

 

I also think it's time that we re-introduced Shug to sit just in front of the defence, especially in away games, which would help with the problem of winning second balls in our own half.

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............................Fox

 

Muirhead.....Balatoni.....Archibald…. Sinclair

 

......................Bannigan.....................

 

.......…Paton………......…...Forbes

 

........Erskine........................Lawless

 

....................... Craig

 

Subs

Scully

Murray

Mcguigan

Craigen

Doolan

Edited by Alan Murray
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I'd revert to Lawless, Doolan and Erskine in a front 3, go right at this mob and if after an hour we are really struggling to break them down keep those 3 on and shove Craig on to mix it up in essentially a 4 up top. I don't think it will come to that though.

 

As Armand2 says, it was Doolan's movement that was creating the space for Erskine and Lawless to pick up the ball in advance areas and run at defenders with the ball. Lawless sometimes gets lost without space, Erskine is more willing to drop deep to create space for himself but both become less effective. Erskine and Lawless in space was the reason for our great start to the season, if teams are adapting to counter that then we need to find other ways to get them the ball. I'd be bricking it if we were playing against teams with Lawless and Erskine in them, we need to use them to our advantage.

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..............................Fox

 

Paton.........Muirhead........Archie..........Sinclair

 

Erskine.......Forbes..........Bannigan.......Lawless

 

..................Craig............Doolan

 

We need to get AM back into central defence; as others have pointed out, Dumbarton are capable of scoring against the best in this division. If Conrad has to be sacrificed for this reason then so be it. Also we will benefit for having both Doolan and SoJ up front; they are as good as any front pairing in this division and we should flaunt that, and so that necessitates a 4-4-2. I don't have any difficulty with that. There is an argument for having Shug back in, especially if Paton is moved to RB to replace Aaron, but my problem with that is he's not in our top 11 players imo. But I'd have him on the bench in the event that we're losing the midfield, which I wouldn't expect to happen.

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..............................Fox

 

Paton.........Muirhead........Archie..........Sinclair

 

Erskine.......Forbes..........Bannigan.......Lawless

 

..................Craig............Doolan

 

We need to get AM back into central defence; as others have pointed out, Dumbarton are capable of scoring against the best in this division. If Conrad has to be sacrificed for this reason then so be it. Also we will benefit for having both Doolan and SoJ up front; they are as good as any front pairing in this division and we should flaunt that, and so that necessitates a 4-4-2. I don't have any difficulty with that. There is an argument for having Shug back in, especially if Paton is moved to RB to replace Aaron, but my problem with that is he's not in our top 11 players imo. But I'd have him on the bench in the event that we're losing the midfield, which I wouldn't expect to happen.

Looks good. Not able to go, but the one thing I don't want to hear when following the match on radio is that we've incurred yet another red card. Please boys, keep the heid!

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Heading up the Rock for a pre-match dauner. Also scouting for viewing platform for the season closer ;)

With this being our closest league opponents hopefully the travel sickness will be light and we can claim a much needed win. Should be a great away support, I just hope we can create a bit of atmosphere to make it feel like a home game for the players. A lot of away games have been flat this season despite good numbers taking to the road. I appreciate not everyone likes chanting but some boisterous cheering even polite clapping would be better than rustling the toffee wrappers.

Lets rock the Sons :D

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When I started following Scottish football, there wes a player called Roddie Manley who scored two og in the same afternoon. Let´s hope Balatoni does not equal that record.

 

 

Over the last weeks, Thistle do not seem to start playing some football until they are one down.

 

 

C´mon Thistle!

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