St Mirren v ICT

[GAD]

Lex's best mate had a howler for ICT yesterday. I don't ever remember him being that bad when he played for us before.

To be honest, I don't think we played that well today, and I don't think ICT were that bad. Two of our goals would have been stopped by a half decent keeper, whilst our keeper made 3 or 4 really good saves during the game. Samson gets a lot of stick on here, but I haven't seen a goalie play against us yet that I'd rather have right now.

[Fony Titz]

Will to win is unbelievable, thought McShane, Morgan and Sammy were superb today. What a run we are on what a manager JR is, this us going to be some season.

I'd include Reilly in the superb category too. Smith was a wee bit quieter than usual but took his goal very well.

[Buddist Monk]

So is anyone going to comment on Robertson's post match comments...

Quote

"I'm hugely frustrated because our shape was excellent and we carved St Mirren open. I don't think many teams will come here and carve them open like we did today.

"For the disallowed goal in the first minute, John Baird just has to be a little bit more patient and it's those little things that count. Then Ricardo Calder had a great chance to pull the trigger and didn't.

"St Mirren didn't actually lay a glove on us in the first 30 minutes then they got a good break; getting the fortune with the deflected goal.

"To be 4-2 down was bizarre, given the way we played and the chances we created. We went toe-to-toe with the team that's top of the Championship, but didn't defend well enough."

These are taken from the BBC website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/41133567

From the way he's speaking it sounds like we got lucky with an odd goal late in the game after being pummelled - anyone at the game will know that is quite the opposite of what happened.

[Stu]

His interview for they ICT website is even worse. We weren't fantastic by any means yesterday but it's delusional, head's gone stuff from Robertson. His claim that "Ricky Calder has had a glorious chance to put us two up before St Mirren have even laid a glove on us" is nonsense on numerous levels.

 

 

[Buddist Monk]

1 minute ago, Stu said:

His interview for they ICT website is even worse. We weren't fantastic by any means yesterday but it's delusional, head's gone stuff from Robertson. His claim that "Ricky Calder has had a glorious chance to put us two up before St Mirren have even laid a glove on us" is nonsense on numerous levels.

Yeah, just been watching that vid. 

Not sure if he is trying mind games (either for his player, the media or his bosses) but his description of the game seems to come from one of those parallel universe doo-hickeys as it sure as f**k doesn't represent the game I saw.

 

[buddie06smfc]

Robertson doesn't say anything too controversial there. Obviously focusing on Inverness and we went through on goal probably just as much as they did us.

Second half time and again Polworth made straight runs from midfield and found himself through on the keeper. On another day it could've 4-4 or had Inverness a decent keeper we could've lost.

Second half we are all over the place defensively at times. Luckily Inverness' defence was easily torn apart in the second half. It was a pretty end-to-end game. We weren't particularly brilliant yesterday and I thought Inverness looked a decent team, keeper aside.

[GAD]

Who cares what Robertson thinks. His side have just been pumped. It's similar to the shite Houston was coming out with when we gubbed Falkirk as well. If they want to think their teams are just as good as St. Mirren right now then let them, it'll just make our job easier.

[Buddist Monk]

3 minutes ago, Stu said:

We weren't fantastic by any means yesterday...

I will not lie, I have seen us concede too many goals straight down the middle and yesterday they had about 4 of those, 1 they scored, 2 saved and iirc one went past the post. 

I like McShane and think he adds something to the team, check back in my previous comments I've been saying this since he signed, but there is clearly something that needs to be sorted out between him and McGinn as while the marking is bad to allow someone like Baird to waltz through the two CBs, there should be cover in front of them. 

[Buddist Monk]

Just now, GAD said:

Who cares what Robertson thinks.

 

2 minutes ago, buddie06smfc said:

Robertson doesn't say anything too controversial there. 

 

Listen, I'm far from getting the flaming pitch forks out, we're presumably all long enough in the tooth to have heard ridiculous post match comments; in fact Hendrie or Lennon was no stranger to stuff like that, just felt he was saying something that was obviously wrong, rather than just a different viewpoint.

[djchapsticks]

32 minutes ago, Stu said:

His interview for they ICT website is even worse. We weren't fantastic by any means yesterday but it's delusional, head's gone stuff from Robertson. His claim that "Ricky Calder has had a glorious chance to put us two up before St Mirren have even laid a glove on us" is nonsense on numerous levels.

 

 

"Controlled the match"

"Cut them open at will"

"Every bit as good as St. Mirren today, if not better"

"St. Mirren never laid a glove on us"

"Could have won 5-2 or 6-2 on another day"

 

Aye, Robbo. Think you've been drinking your own supply of bevvy from your boozer, matey....

[Worktheshaft]

Ridgers has cost us goals in every game so far. He needs dropped.

[RiG]

Ugh. I'm not even surprised by how we concede goals these days. Our defence and keeper are a collective shambles and are good for at least 1 if not 2 goals each week for the opposition. In an attacking sense we simply don't create enough chances to win most games either. The first three Saints goals were all so easily preventable as well but we just seem to have absolute no confidence across the back five even doing something simple like kicking the ball away seems too taxing for our guys just now.

The first Saints goal comes from an ICT throw in deep in your half. As is standard for Inverness we bottle the throw in and before you know it a long ball is humped forward, Warren loses the ball in the air (then bizarrely runs in the opposite direction ) and suddenly Morgan is belting towards our goal and up against a total carthouse in Mckay who defends as well as he has been for months i.e. not very good. I don't know if the shot takes a deflection off someone before it gets to Ridgers but it didn't look like he covered himself in glory trying to deal with it.

Unbelievable miss from Polworth after a neat flick from Bell, who had replaced the utterly ineffective and clearly couldn't be arsed Calder by this point, clean through on goal and fires the ball right at Samson. Martin Bavidge would have been proud of that one on one miss. Fortunately Baird got a chance a few minutes later to show him how to finish such a chance when he tucked the ball away with ease. Unfortunately we decided to have another defensive brain fart almost right away. after failing to properly clear a Buddies corner somehow we ended up with Trafford trying to defend against the tricky Morgan on the flank and he was left on his arse a couple of times before Morgan stood a cross up for Ridgers to fall about trying to deal with and left our defence looking like they were trying to clear a live grenade such was their lack of desire to get rid of the loose ball. In the end, with the ball crawling over the line Reilly powered through Raven to force it in.

A stroke of luck for our second equaliser. With Polworth standing in an offside position Bell (I think) was tackled by a Saints player and the ball bounced through to Polworth who rounded Samson this time to level up. Cue another ICT defensive horror show as Warren (twice), Mckay, Chalmers then all three of them failed to handle Reilly as he broke towards goal, had a shot which rebounded to Smith and he blasted the ball past Ridgers to put Saints ahead again. No fault on the keeper there for me but again our defenders failed to take charge of the situation and clear the ball instead falling over themselves like newborn gazelles taking their first steps. The game was finally killed off when McShane smashed in another long range strike ending any faint hopes of ICT getting back into the game for a third time.

There's no disgrace being beaten by Saint Mirren who are clearly a far better team than us. However, it's still massively concerning just how rotten we are at the back and how poor we are going forward. Vigurs, Polworth and Trafford all were decent yesterday but that's about it. Another pretty desperate day all round.

[Fony Titz]

Think it was McShane that put Trafford on his arse before crossing it.

[Demented Zebra]

1 hour ago, Buddist Monk said:

So is anyone going to comment on Robertson's post match comments...

These are taken from the BBC website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/41133567

From the way he's speaking it sounds like we got lucky with an odd goal late in the game after being pummelled - anyone at the game will know that is quite the opposite of what happened.

To be honest ICT impressed me they looked the best team we have played so far it wont be long before they climb the table. As for us especially the second half we looked like we could score every time we went forward. 

[RiG]

11 minutes ago, Fony Titz said:

Think it was McShane that put Trafford on his arse before crossing it.

Was it? Ah well, still not great defending against whoever it was and what followed the cross was even worse.

[McG]

What a keeper Ridgers is by the way, easily the worst keeper I have ever seen grace st.mirren park, garbage.

[alsy]

20 hours ago, Lex said:

ICT used to be one of those teams that used to be really stuffy and hard to break down. What's happened up there?

Looks like we've as good a chance as any of the top half of winning this league. When you have Lewis Morgan (motm for Scotland u21's during the week and motm again today) there's certainly no reason why we can't.

That's us gubbed Falkirk, Dundee Utd and ICT already. They were the experts favourites before the season so yeah... why not go and win it.

I'm sure you probably do know the broad outline of this, but just in case not, here's the 30-second summary:

• Between about 2012 and 2015 we develop a genuinely fine team that is a lot more than just stuffy and hard to break down and achieves three consecutive top-six top-flight finishes and a Scottish Cup;
• As happens to small clubs which build relatively successful sides, we lose a number of our best players (the Shinnies, Christie, Marley Watkins, etc) to bigger clubs and John Hughes does as John Hughes does and replaces them with jobbers;
• After a seventh-place finish, during which season he is denied the opportunity to talk to Dundee Utd, Hughes throws his toys out of his pram about the club's lack of ambition, and walks;
• As if to prove Hughes correct, the club makes the catastrophic decision to award club legend and management rookie Richie Foran a four-year contract to manage the club;
• Foran replaces Hughes' jobbers with bigger jobbers, makes an absolute c**t of everything, and his dreadful team is relegated from the Premiership with a deceptively flattering points total;
• Foran walks after apparently unproductive talks with the interim chairman, and John Robertson, despite not having applied for the job, is phoned and asks if he fancies it;
• More jobbers (and Josh Meekings and Greg Tansey) depart, and even bigger jobbers, apparently all taken unseen from two management agencies, arrive;
• Higher earners who have been unable to leave frozen out;
• Supporters collectively hold heads in hands;
• Championship season begins much as anyone who has watched the club (or has watched Mark Ridgers) over the past couple of years could have predicted.

Seriously, any pundit, or worse, ICT supporter, who had us among the favourites for the title before the season started needs their head examined. There's simply not a team in there at the moment, and that's not surprising given all the upheaval of the past three seasons. A lot of the departures were unavoidable, but there have also been a lot of terrible decision made at club and team management level. The 'stuffy' sides that you probably remember from the 00s were largely based on continuity of staff team spirit and on signing players who were already well known to the manager; obviously not every club can sustain that model completely successfully if it actually leads, as it did in our case, to being almost too successful, but it feels like everything we are doing now is the exact opposite of what the club built itself on. 

For a while yesterday, I thought there were signs that a team was starting to evolve out of the chaos: Charlie Trafford looks to have been a decent signing at the base of midfield and having him there frees Ian Vigurs and Liam Polworth to play in their best positions further forward in the middle of the park; Polworth in particular caused St Mirren a few problems playing behind Baird. Our wide players, Riccardo Calder and Alex Cooper, were largely ineffectual though, and unless the goalkeeping and defensive issues are addressed, then we're just going to keep throwing in goals whenever we come under the slightest pressure. Ridiculously, we have Owain Fon Williams, a goalkeeper, one of our highest earners and apparently fit, sitting at home because he 'isn't in Robertson's plans'; hopefully Carl Tremarco will soon be fit enough to replace the calamitous Joe Chalmers at left back; but we still badly need an imposing and positionally-aware centre half of the Josh Meekings type. At the moment, a bottom three or four finish is looking very likely for us.           

[NorthBank]

Robbo is talking shite.

We gave them too much space with a back 3 (not Irvine's strong point) in the first half and a chunk of the second half. We should have changed to a back 4 at half time but when we eventually did we totally bossed the game. We scored 4, hit the post, had 3  penalty claims turned down, missed a couple of sitters and gave you a goal. In what way are you better Robbo? (PS Robbo - you have a defence like a sieve).

[Shuggie_Murray7]

Ridgers aside, I didn't think ICT looked as bad as their early form suggests. They certainly weren't as bad as Dundee Utd.

Does Robertson actually believe the ICT fans feel that way abiut the game. "Carving us open at will" is exactly what ICT didnt do. Apart from the one where the they went through 2 on 1 with Samson and blasted it straight at him, I can't think of a time in the game where Caley "cut us open".

As for the Saints TV. Its a hard watch. The lead commentator is actualky pretty good. The co-commentator is an absolute ballbag. Fucking chronic. 

EDIT - Actually just watched the goals back and they've mistake Trafford and Calder.

[buddie06smfc]

What a keeper Ridgers is by the way, easily the worst keeper I have ever seen grace st.mirren park, garbage.

He wasn't very good at Saints. However as bad as he was yesterday, he is still better than Scott Gallacher.