Our fifth choice striker ....

[calscot 0]

I like Boyd and I like 4-4-2 but I'm still find the clamour for both a bit strange. Our present system and team picks seem to be the most successful for years and in December we were playing the best football we have for a long while.

 

But what you can't deny is that with the current strategy we can play well and win and we can play badly and still win which suggest the current set up is pretty adaptable.

 

We still need improvement as we're 4 points behind where Celtic were last year and I thought they were one of the worse championship teams I've seen.

 

We definitely need more creativity in the middle of the park, some better finishing and ironically the defence is far too prone to lapses with the left back position particularly weak.

 

I think some of our lack of penetration in the last game and a half could partly be down to the absence of Hutton, which makes you wonder if we really should sell him at this crucial point in the season. With him reinstated and Smith back from injury, we might start looking like a decent team.

 

I'm still not sure why Naismith and Burke swapped sides as that just didn't pay off at all and before hooking Naismith at half time surely they should have swapped around half way through the first half?

 

With the game in the balance, it also confusing that Boyd didn't replace Cousin for the last 10 minutes as the latter hardly looked like scoring. There must be behind the scenes reasons as to why Boyd can't even get a few minutes with a substitution left.

 

Our problem with the central midfield is that unless Fergie and/or Hemdani have a good game, we are easily overrun by lesser players. Both of these two were pretty poor against ICT in my opinion, and when you add that to the ineffectiveness of our wingers playing on the wrong side, means it was down to Adam to provide all the attacking options.

 

He seems to have the infuriating character where he can't trap a ball one minute and puts in a great shot the next. He goes from the sublime to the ridiculous in the blink of an eye with a lot of mediocrity in between.

 

We basically had a five man midfield in the first half, none of whom did themselves credit, and as they were playing against another determined and organised five man midfield, it's not surprising we watched a turgid game which was short on chances.

 

The ball was stuck in midfield and the game couldn't flow at all. Fair play to Walter for changing to a 4-4-2 in the second half which changed the game in our favour, but with most of the team off form, it still wasn't pretty or comfortable viewing.

 

The two subs were the standouts for me - Novo and Darcheville, both of whom seemed to put a lot more effort into the game than anyone in front of the back five. Perhaps they should get a start in the next SPL game as they deserve it.

 

The defence looked reasonably solid but still have terrible lapses and apart from a couple of forays forward by Whittaker, offered almost nothing in attack.

 

MacGregor was pretty blameless in this regard and almost had an assist himself.

 

So a dire underperformed game where we got the points, not too bad. Hopefully a couple of midfielders will turn up for the next SPL game and it will be a different story; however, other teams will have watched ICT and maybe guess that a 4-5-1 formation is the ideal solution to our 4-3-3...

[Super_Ally 0]

Talking sense as always mate. A concise and eloquent review of the ICT game.

 

Despite the fact that we were poor, ICT came away with a lot of credit. I don't go along with this as they were worse than us and only mustered two serious attacks with a few pot shots from outisde the box.

 

I actually picked McGregor motm which may seem a contradiction of the above, but to me it summed up how poor the outfield players were. McGregor had little to do. The two serious attacks I mention above are the chargedown in the first half agaisnt Patalaainen (sp) and the Tokely shot at the death.

 

Add a tv save from Yantorno and that was the sum of his real work. That save looking good for the cameras, but in reality a perfect height for the keeper. Held everything else that came at him and never troubled.

 

As I sya though, when you look at how easy an afternoon it was for teh keeper and he was still arguably our best performer, it just shows how poor the likes of Fergie, Hemdnai and Cousin were.