The Weekly Jagscast Debate

[jagscast]

We all love talking about Thistle, so at the Jagscast we've come up with a weekly debate to tide us over on a Monday morning.

 

This week's question is:

 

Is Thistle's style of play more suited for playing away from home?

 

YES

 

Thistle’s style of play is to pass and move, something that works best when we have space in the midfield to forward areas. When we’re playing away, there is more of an onus on the home team to make the running in an attacking sense, leaving space behind for the likes of Bannigan. Higginbotham, Lawless and Craigen to exploit. Looking at our results this seems to be evident given our only two league wins are away from home. With our ability to counter-attack this is also a key element which is evident away from home, an opponent pressing hard against us may be more susceptible for Thistle to break away and pounce on sloppy mistakes, Ross County away(second half) is a prime example of this.

 

NO

Thistle play a possession based game. We generally win the midfield battles, and thus earn more possession than our opponents. We’ve dominated 2 of our home games, Hearts and Kilmarnock, and been extremely unlucky not to have 6 points from those two games. With a bit of luck with refereeing decisions(Butcher of Dundee United in particular) we could have snuck a win there too. There is the case to argue that we could have, feasibly won 3 of our 4 home league games had we gotten a little bit of luck in front of goal. There’s nothing to worry about as we are creating the chances, hitting the woodwork in both our last two home games, and the goals will come. At the end of the season we’ll see that we have recorded more home wins than away and show that our style of play is suited on every pitch.

 

Vote in the poll and let us know what you think!

[ThickAsThieves]

We've got the same style of play as last season, by and large, and the stats [in the league] show:

 

Home: 15 wins, 2 draws, 1 loss.

Away: 8 wins, 7 draws, 3 losses.

 

So it's probably a bit presumptuous to say our style of play is suited more to away matches, based on a small sample of results:

 

Home: 0 wins, 3 draws, 1 loss.

Away: 2 wins, 0 draws, 1 loss.

 

We've just not been able to kill off teams at home. Our opponents all have much more experience at this level and so are effective at shutting us down and stifling our attacks. We need to learn to adapt to this, specifically avoiding going down the wing all the time and start to kill teams off through the middle. I think sometimes there's an over-reliance on going down the sides, because it worked to great effect last season. My own personal opinion is that Forbes should get a chance playing behind the striker, as he's always willing to have a shot and can beat a man (not by using pace - but he's a great dribbler of the ball). It could be the solution to our lack of goals.

 

In those four home matches, Aberdeen made us look out of our depth, but I think we've shaded the other three matches (particularly Hearts - where we really should've seen that match out). So there's plenty of optimism.

[lady-isobel-barnett]

I'm genuinely a don't know. I'm of the opinion that the bigger the pitch the better. Firhill is supposedly the biggest pitch in Scotland so following that theory we should be most comfortable at home. Last season we did struggle on the tighter pitches like Central Pk & Cappielow.

On the other hand what makes me think we'll do OK playing away is that the home team will always be expected to win and will have to open up. That may suit us.

[David Stevenson]

Have you stopped doing the podcast?

[jagscast]

Have you stopped doing the podcast?

 

Nope. Been hit with a few technical grelims the last few weeks.

 

The latest podcast(which is a bit noisy!), entitled "I missed it", is available on iTunes, SoundCloud and on the blog by following the link in my signature.

[David Stevenson]

Nope. Been hit with a few technical grelims the last few weeks.

 

The latest podcast(which is a bit noisy!), entitled "I missed it", is available on iTunes, SoundCloud and on the blog by following the link in my signature.

Thanks. Will download it to my phone and listen to it while walking the devil dog tomorrow morning!