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Stenhousemuir FC - The Warriors - The 2023/24 Thread


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Another defeat & a dreadful one at that. Team just looks lost, no ideas & no cohesion.

Walker & Orr get special mentions today. Awful. Forbes brought on again for another sh*te cameo.

The manager is under severe pressure & the chairman has publicly put the boot in on the start we have made on Twitter tonight.

There are zero excuses for us to be this bad. His prematch interview about heart to hearts with the squad and how good the analysis this week has been & we turn in that garbage. Turning into a bit of a joker.

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3 minutes ago, Vimto90 said:

The manager is under severe pressure & the chairman has publicly put the boot in on the start we have made on Twitter tonight.

McMenemy along with another Director we’re looked absolutely fizzing for most of the match last Saturday, and appear to be baffled at various team decisions, so I’m not surprised to read this. 

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There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that the manager has worked as hard as he possibly could at Ochilview but this can't go on. I like him, I like the way he conducts himself and seems a good guy who wants it bad but unfortunately this just isn't working.

We are clueless in possession, lack any sort of identity as a football team and are getting worse by the week in every facet of the game. We have three more points than we deserve if we are being truthful.

The narrative after the lucky Albion Rovers victory after week one was how far we were off Kelty last season early doors, how we had to improve that drastically and here we are four games in even worse off with a squad that  doesn't have the excuse it was thrown together in one summer.

We are nine points off top of the league , it was eight at this stage last season, in a league where teams are much of a muchness with no money side like Kelty were last season. It's unacceptable and shows our immediate short term goals are already in tatters with absolutely no sign or evidence it can be turned around under the current set up.

The players have a lot to answer for as well to be honest, as they have been collectively garbage, but the buck stops with the manager who assembled this supposed higher quality of squad and doesn't remotely look like getting a tune out of them.

 

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It's not looking good for Stephen Swift. Three consecutive defeats from has left us in a precarious position, even at this early stage, and we might need to recalibrate our expectations already. I think this was the first season since 2005/06 that I thought we could mount a title challenge but that's looking increasingly unlikely on the evidence we've seen so far this season. I've said it before in numerous posts but our defenders are being asked to do things they're uncomfortable with, our midfield is unbalanced and lacks creativity, and our forward line lacks presence. We've only performed well in short spells, most notably the games against Annan Athletic and Dumbarton, most notably when we were already two goals down. Given the obvious outlay on the playing staff, it's not really good enough.

Last season was undoubtedly a disappointment but Swift could perhaps be given the benefit of the doubt after having to assemble a virtually brand new group of players (and even then, it's still a bit of a stretch given the number of opportunities we had to overtake Edinburgh City in the final play-off place). This time around, he retained the core of last term's squad and apparently added quality, including a former Scotland international and someone who'd scored 41 goals in his previous campaign; on paper, we had done the best business in the division. For the first time in three years there was no monied, obvious favourites for the title, and we looked the most promising out of an uninspiring bunch. There really were no excuses.

While Swift has been able to attract good players, squad building seems to be a perennial problem, with too much of some things and not enough of others. This means our team lacks balance and we're compromising in certain areas to accommodate players. I thought he might have learned after last year's struggle but this time around we have too many players who liked to operate through the middle, and we haven't brought in a specialist right-winger. And, just like last season, as the manager tries to find a successful combination, personnel and systems are being chopped and changed on a week-by-week basis in the hope that something might work. We've already used three different players at right-back in four matches! I don't think he knows what his best starting XI is - but then, who does? What's our best formation? It's hard to believe that, 12 months on, little has changed and we're all still scratching our heads at how we can make this work.

And Neilly's right, some (most?) of the players require a period of introspection after the kind of performances they've turned in over the past month. In today's post-match interview, Swift said the players are lacking in confidence, but these are largely experienced SPFL campaigners who have enjoyed varying degrees of success elsewhere. Just what is going on? As bad as some of them have been, however, the buck stops with the manager - he's the one who brought them together, he's the one who's encouraging them to play the ball out from the back, he's the one who signed Ross Forbes on a two-year contract and still hasn't figured out how best to use him, and he's the one who deploys Tam Orr as a back-to-goal striker, despite him having a chaotic first touch.

Iain McMenamy's tweet early tonight is ominous but Swift will know this current run is nowhere near acceptable and that his position is under threat. I don't know what the tipping point will be - I suspect we'll see a fringe side fielded in the SPFL Trust Trophy against Elgin City on Tuesday night, with the outcome being pretty inconsequential, but a loss and another poor performance against Forfar Athletic might finish him.

I hope this isn't the case and we can use today's defeat as a turning point. I just want to enjoy watching my football team!

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4 hours ago, Francesc Fabregas said:

It's not looking good for Stephen Swift. Three consecutive defeats from has left us in a precarious position, even at this early stage, and we might need to recalibrate our expectations already. I think this was the first season since 2005/06 that I thought we could mount a title challenge but that's looking increasingly unlikely on the evidence we've seen so far this season. I've said it before in numerous posts but our defenders are being asked to do things they're uncomfortable with, our midfield is unbalanced and lacks creativity, and our forward line lacks presence. We've only performed well in short spells, most notably the games against Annan Athletic and Dumbarton, most notably when we were already two goals down. Given the obvious outlay on the playing staff, it's not really good enough.

Last season was undoubtedly a disappointment but Swift could perhaps be given the benefit of the doubt after having to assemble a virtually brand new group of players (and even then, it's still a bit of a stretch given the number of opportunities we had to overtake Edinburgh City in the final play-off place). This time around, he retained the core of last term's squad and apparently added quality, including a former Scotland international and someone who'd scored 41 goals in his previous campaign; on paper, we had done the best business in the division. For the first time in three years there was no monied, obvious favourites for the title, and we looked the most promising out of an uninspiring bunch. There really were no excuses.

While Swift has been able to attract good players, squad building seems to be a perennial problem, with too much of some things and not enough of others. This means our team lacks balance and we're compromising in certain areas to accommodate players. I thought he might have learned after last year's struggle but this time around we have too many players who liked to operate through the middle, and we haven't brought in a specialist right-winger. And, just like last season, as the manager tries to find a successful combination, personnel and systems are being chopped and changed on a week-by-week basis in the hope that something might work. We've already used three different players at right-back in four matches! I don't think he knows what his best starting XI is - but then, who does? What's our best formation? It's hard to believe that, 12 months on, little has changed and we're all still scratching our heads at how we can make this work.

And Neilly's right, some (most?) of the players require a period of introspection after the kind of performances they've turned in over the past month. In today's post-match interview, Swift said the players are lacking in confidence, but these are largely experienced SPFL campaigners who have enjoyed varying degrees of success elsewhere. Just what is going on? As bad as some of them have been, however, the buck stops with the manager - he's the one who brought them together, he's the one who's encouraging them to play the ball out from the back, he's the one who signed Ross Forbes on a two-year contract and still hasn't figured out how best to use him, and he's the one who deploys Tam Orr as a back-to-goal striker, despite him having a chaotic first touch.

Iain McMenamy's tweet early tonight is ominous but Swift will know this current run is nowhere near acceptable and that his position is under threat. I don't know what the tipping point will be - I suspect we'll see a fringe side fielded in the SPFL Trust Trophy against Elgin City on Tuesday night, with the outcome being pretty inconsequential, but a loss and another poor performance against Forfar Athletic might finish him.

I hope this isn't the case and we can use today's defeat as a turning point. I just want to enjoy watching my football team!

Has the Craig Bryson signing turned out as most teams feared,  his legs are completely gone....

 

Scott Walker is a very limited full back, but a surprisingly effective centre back,

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4 hours ago, Passionate said:

Has the Craig Bryson signing turned out as most teams feared,  his legs are completely gone....

 

Scott Walker is a very limited full back, but a surprisingly effective centre back,

Bryson has added nothing and very little sign that will change.

Walker has had limited chances but doesn't look up to it. I've seen better full backs in the Lowland League and below this season.

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Hard to see any way out of this for Swift.  Post match he says players are lacking confidence, what is he doing to raise their confidence? 

The team chops and changes every week.  Friendlies plus four cup and four league games and he still does not know what his best team is, that I am afraid is totally unacceptable.  He should have seen in the cup games that playing it out from the back was never an option, that our players are totally unsuited to it and that once the opposition closes us down we cannot change it. Instead of building our team's confidence up and letting the opposition worry about us I think he does the opposite and has our team more worried about who they are facing and as such heads are down from the off.  That perhaps is why so many would appear to be lacking in confidence.

At the start of his tenure he promised us high intensity football.  We are still waiting to see when this will happen. We seldom make substitutes at the right time and he appears to have no plan B when things are not working out.  Out play is tedious and slow, okay we are retaining the ball but we are so slow the opposition are back in formation before we can do anything and then we fail to break them down.

The midweek game at Elgin is a nothing game for the team. Next week against Forfar will be the crux of the matter. Another defeat and the board have a decision to make. Time is running out.

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3 hours ago, Neilly said:

Bryson has added nothing and very little sign that will change.

Walker has had limited chances but doesn't look up to it. I've seen better full backs in the Lowland League and below this season.

He was the same in his limited appearances in league 1, constantly needing told What to do, stand at set pieces, raw as they come...Played CH and he was a different player

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They highlights are quite something. Scott Walker an absolute disgrace at that third goal & that sums his day up yesterday. Jamieson at one point screamed at him "Look f*cking interested" he's barely had a sniff so far and this is his idea of breaking into the team. Awful.

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As bad as Scott Walker was, let’s not forget he wasn’t alone.

Brennan isn’t our biggest problem but again looking at the 1st goal he was doing his best Superman impression.

But Sean Crichton has to take his share of the blame particularly as captain of a team that is so low on confidence. He missed his header at the 2nd goal yesterday and last week it was his mistake that lead to Higgins red card with another missed header. His performances are reminiscent of that game at Stranraer last season, which yesterday didn’t reach in terms of awfulness, but it wasn’t far off it.

Jamieson isn’t the same player he was last season so you end up wondering if Dan Higgins is our best centre half at the moment!

No idea where we go from here, but Swift needs to get a performance next Saturday for everyone’s sake.

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It's perhaps worth pointing out the calibre of the goals we're losing this season. We've conceded eight so far and aside from Stirling Albion's first and third goals last weekend, they've been embarrassing. If we're not letting the opposition help themselves, it's patently clear there are big issues in dealing with set-pieces, with three coming against Annan Athletic and Dumbarton from dead-ball situations.

I've just watched back the highlights from yesterday and I can't believe what I've seen. The Go Pro cameras behind the goals (an excellent addition, by the way) sum up how rotten they were from our perspective. Who's taking charge here? Who's making sure this isn't happening?

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13 minutes ago, Nigel Blackwell said:

As bad as Scott Walker was, let’s not forget he wasn’t alone.

Brennan isn’t our biggest problem but again looking at the 1st goal he was doing his best Superman impression.

But Sean Crichton has to take his share of the blame particularly as captain of a team that is so low on confidence. He missed his header at the 2nd goal yesterday and last week it was his mistake that lead to Higgins red card with another missed header. His performances are reminiscent of that game at Stranraer last season, which yesterday didn’t reach in terms of awfulness, but it wasn’t far off it.

Jamieson isn’t the same player he was last season so you end up wondering if Dan Higgins is our best centre half at the moment!

No idea where we go from here, but Swift needs to get a performance next Saturday for everyone’s sake.

Mistakes are one thing, and there's been plenty of them to this point already in the season, but you can't compare errors from Crighton, Brennan etc to simply not chasing a player and emptying the tank. It's the absolute minimum I expect off every player who plays for us. 

Poor play and poor players well you are going to get that at this level. No one goes on the park to make mistakes but that lack of basic effort yesterday from Walker is absolutely criminal and far worse than any 'mistake' we have made this season. 

 

 

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19 minutes ago, Neilly said:

Poor play and poor players well you are going to get that at this level. No one goes on the park to make mistakes but that lack of basic effort yesterday from Walker is absolutely criminal and far worse than any 'mistake' we have made this season. 

 

 

And yet Swift decided the best option was to substitute Yeats and leave Walker on the park.

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I'm not sure Swift could foresee Walker giving up a chase in the future to be fair to him.

Yeats was as bad as the rest. Unwilling to go forward when we were 2-0 down, constantly playing safe and back to Jamieson.

Our goal came from Walker actually being positive down the left, feeding a good ball into Brown and then O'Reilly playing off him.

For what it's worth I thought Brown and O'Reilly were the only two to get out with any real credit. Not that they had particular great games but they always looked for the ball and tried to be positive and get us attacking.

 

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As bad as Scott Walker was, let’s not forget he wasn’t alone.

Brennan isn’t our biggest problem but again looking at the 1st goal he was doing his best Superman impression.

But Sean Crichton has to take his share of the blame particularly as captain of a team that is so low on confidence. He missed his header at the 2nd goal yesterday and last week it was his mistake that lead to Higgins red card with another missed header. His performances are reminiscent of that game at Stranraer last season, which yesterday didn’t reach in terms of awfulness, but it wasn’t far off it.

Jamieson isn’t the same player he was last season so you end up wondering if Dan Higgins is our best centre half at the moment!

No idea where we go from here, but Swift needs to get a performance next Saturday for everyone’s sake.
No idea who Sean Crichton is to be honest
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Looking back on Saturday, would it be so bad to just get back to the basics and start from there? The more I think about it as well, the more I'd like to see the captaincy removed from Crighton. I'd like to see him play without the 'pressures' of the arm band.

I'm interested to see if our unforced errors would go down and if our passing percentages would increase, when Crighton isn't playing. He is very frustrating and invites so much pressure onto himself and the rest of the back 4, then looks to blame the midfield or forwards for not remedying his errors. 

 As FF said previously, this season just parallels last season and we don't seem to have learnt from any outcomes. Cantley will probably be getting some more minutes soon enough; not like he's been a safe pair of hands either, and I can hear the circus music whenever Brennan comes near the ball just as I did with Marshall. I'm expecting howler after howler from Brennan. This may be unfair, since the season has barely started but those two goals on Saturday were two of the worst goals I've ever seen us concede and he should be dropped. Brennan doesn't have much of a presence or command of his own box but loves a theatrical diving save, something Marshall detested.

The tidy possession based strategy, with constant little short passes moving the ball from one side of the pitch to other, then back again, focussing on exploiting the oppositions shape and fitness. We don't move the ball quick enough and we aren't Arsenal. I'm not a coach but I think everyone can see that we need a more direct approach and use our players strengths. O'Reilly, Sewell, Yates and even Joesph all like running with the ball or exploiting space. Hunt the ball down and maintain the press. Let those key players play to their abilities and let Orr patrol the box, he's no link-up or target man striker that likes bringing others into play, he wants to score goals and that's it. No wonder Buchanan and Carswell bossed him with balls being played high up to him or straight into his feet. He wants to move off the defenders shoulder and in behind, how many of those probing passes did we see on Saturday? Ironically, we have a player that is good at doing that. His name is Ross Forbes and he is probably our best player at making those intricate and probing passes yet has the work rate and motivation of a depressed slug.

Swift does have good ideas. You can tell he is properly into his coaching and loves his football. He needs more time but find myself, like others, worrying about our season already. 

 

 

Edited by Old Fashioned Stramash
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