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Double Winning St Johnstone FC Thread


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11 minutes ago, Kyle said:

Celtic must be their big team. They need one given our shite their own club has been since before most of them were born. 

It seems that way, we've been roundly humped by a few teams over the past few seasons, can only remember them making a fuss about Celtic results against us this year though.

Wonder why...

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Important not to overreact, as Celtic's dominance over the rest of Scottish football simply emphasises the futility of bothering to go along to games like today.  So f**k knows what I was thinking!

We've had a good season, but that doesn't mean the manager is above criticism.  He has been backed really well this season, and brought in just about every player he wanted.  But there's no real thought to the strongest starting team, or who will play where, it's just fill the squad with decent players and then shuffle them around.

We're probably averaging about one shot at goal per game since the winter break.

Liam Craig was our most consistent player sitting in front of the back 4, we bring in Goss as a short term option and play him in Craig's position. I would question this anyway as Goss is not as disciplined in there as Craig, despite his good range of passing, but then we try to force a place for Craig elsewhere in midfield.

Kennedy was one of the best attacking players in the league for a few months at the end of the year, then we punt him out wide to shuffle the pack a bit and he's been nowhere near as influential since the break.

McMillan was on 2 goals in 2 games then dropped and barely seen again up until getting farmed out to Hamilton.

Then one that maybe doesn't matter but has me completely scratching my head nonetheless...  Liam Gordon has played well for us whenever asked and patiently taken his place on the bench each week.  Then today we drop him out the squad and select a player who couldn't get in Partick Thistle's starting team. How is that a way to motivate one of our young players?

Pick a fucking team and if we play well and win stick with it, so that players know they have to perform to stay in.

Tommy did great in turning things around after our poor run in October, so I have no doubt he can sort it again, but stop trying to be so fucking clever and just work out our strongest eleven and pick it.

 

Yes it was a disappointing day. 

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Had to look at WAP. When @RandomGuy. is the voice of reason, you know the game is done.

I think @Kyle touched on a valid criticism and that's whether we have the midfielders to carry out the, in my opinion, only game plan that has a chance of yielding success against Celtic, keeping a good shape but using  the ball well.

But do you build a squad around games against Celtic? What we have has been doing the job up until a few weeks ago. Of course I want to compete with them but you have to look at what is suited for the league as a whole.

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11 minutes ago, PauloPerth said:

Liam Craig was our most consistent player sitting in front of the back 4, we bring in Goss as a short term option and play him in Craig's position. I would question this anyway as Goss is not as disciplined in there as Craig, despite his good range of passing, but then we try to force a place for Craig elsewhere in midfield.

Then one that maybe doesn't matter but has me completely scratching my head nonetheless...  Liam Gordon has played well for us whenever asked and patiently taken his place on the bench each week.  Then today we drop him out the squad and select a player who couldn't get in Partick Thistle's starting team. How is that a way to motivate one of our young players? 

Some fair points as always but was Goss not the type of player we were all saying we needed? Craig was the one that was filling that deep role (and doing it well) so was always potentially the one to drop out. The manager has definitely created a dilemma for himself in midfield now though.

On Radio Scotland, they apparently said Alston was a late addition to the bench, so assume Gordon was meant to be in there and pulled out. It probably made sense to give Keown some minutes and expect he'll play against Rangers tomorrow as well.

As I mentioned before, the manager says he's going to try and find some consistency of selection again now, although obviously the first problem could be picking the team to give a run to. Would he rather not have the options he does though? It's a new challenge for him no doubt.

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4 hours ago, Radford said:

Some fair points as always but was Goss not the type of player we were all saying we needed? Craig was the one that was filling that deep role (and doing it well) so was always potentially the one to drop out. The manager has definitely created a dilemma for himself in midfield now though.

On Radio Scotland, they apparently said Alston was a late addition to the bench, so assume Gordon was meant to be in there and pulled out. It probably made sense to give Keown some minutes and expect he'll play against Rangers tomorrow as well.

As I mentioned before, the manager says he's going to try and find some consistency of selection again now, although obviously the first problem could be picking the team to give a run to. Would he rather not have the options he does though? It's a new challenge for him no doubt.

I'm not sure Goss is. But then I have to be honest and admit I don't  know a lot about his style of play prior to him signing.  At the start of the season I definitely felt we needed a ball playing centre mid, but I had felt that was a lot less essential coming up to the winter break.  Our style had developed into central midfielders who protected the defence and essentially won the ball back and just played a simple pass. We had enough attacking talent in wide and forward areas for it to be less of an issue.   But you're right, there were quite a few calling for a more creative presence in there.

I personally felt our back 4 looked a lot more exposed without Liam Crig in front of them.  There were times Jason and Joe were pulled miles out of position when I feel usually they would have passed a player on.

Goss can obviously ping a few great passes, but is he a good enough all round central midfielder to play that role? He might well be, I genuinely don't know.

Not sure about the late inclusion of Alston, but Liam Gordon was definitely fit today.

 

As good a team as Celtic are, we went there and got 2 draws last season, with one of our starting line ups including Aaron Comrie and Paul Paton.  I watched Foster pull out of two challenges today, and saw a number of others lose tackles meekly that I felt they were favourites to win. Yet again we barely lay a glove on them, and the only robust challenge I can recall was Hayes on Watt at about 4-0.  

You're right about the consistency of selection, it's a catch 22 in a way, in that until you get that good performance, do you pick the same team that has underperformed?! 

Edited by PauloPerth
Typo
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Despite the opposition in two of his games, Goss is under pressure now and the decision to withdraw him at HT was interesting. It comes back to the same thing as mentioned before, we have the central midfielders to do the job against the poorer teams, it was against the top teams where we struggled for possession and didn't use the ball well. It was games like today where we needed Goss to make his mark and he was hooked after 45 minutes.

If it wasn't Gordon, not sure who was meant to be on the bench today but pulled out for Alston?

I enjoyed our performances at Celtic Park last season but Celtic had 31 shots, 66% possession and 12 corners in the 1-1 game, then we committed 23 fouls in the 0-0 game. At the end of the day, the results in these games are more down to Celtic than anything else.

I have no idea know what our strongest team is, that's a concern admittedly.

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