The Famous Aberdeen v St Johnstone

[BucksburnDandy]

No complaints at all. We never looked like scoring yesterday. Fair play to Tommy Wright, the shitfest was a thing of great shitfesting beauty.

It was a passback and both Jack and Lewis didn't cover themselves in glory either during the incident or the subsequent goal. Jack bombed out the wall and Lewis left too much of the goal open. As soon as it was given, everyone around us knew it was going in.

Further continuation of our terrible post split McInnes record.

Personally feel he got his tactics wrong yesterday. McLean playing up front first half was awful. When both Church and Rooney were out last season, McLean played up top and was wholly ineffective. Crazy choice there. Taking Shinnie out midfield after half time meant we lost a lot of our legs in there against Davidson and Paton. And why Ryan Christie keeps getting hooked is beyond me. McGinn was ineffective and would have been a better choice to take off. Pawlett really offers nothing against the better teams in the league sadly.

Seems McInnes has been spooked by the Rangers game a few weeks ago. Before then his changes were generally well timed, positive and the right ones. Since then, he's gone back into a conservative style which went against us at Hampden last week and again yesterday. Both in terms of timing and choice of substitutions.

Final word to Alan Muir - as per usual, horrendously inconsistent and pish for both teams. He can sprint though which counts more than actual ability these days.

[akuram]

Tackle on Paton looked a shocker. Ref let play go and we got second goal which was quality.

[perthsaint1977]

Love this post on an Aberdeen forum

Yesterday's game sums up everything that is wrong with Scottish Fitba.

St Johnstone are just horrible, really, really horrible to watch.
But they are what they are and it's up to us to beat them.
They've also finished top 4......Jaysus a rake of times now, but they canna get past coming and playing like a non-league team in a cup tie cos of their lack of resources.
As long as the league is this tight, that winna change, because for all their top 6/top 4 achievements, they know they're still just a 6 to 10 game bad run early doors from a relegation scrap.

Because they're our bogey team and we ALWAYS struggle to break them down, Del tried something different with the back 3.
The downside with that is that this invariably leads to Hayes and McGinn lying much deeper.

But the way St J play, that's maybe nae a bad thing, you try to draw a press then get them turning higher up leaving space in behind. (On a more general point, I think that is one of the main reasons behind Del having this love affair with Kenny MacLean sitting deeper in front of the back four.)

Didn't happen yesterday and he changed it at half time.
Second half......groundhog St Johnstone.
Though we kind of dominated the game, we never hurt them enough to win, but a defeat was a travesty.

Haven't seen Jacko's back pass yet, but whether it was or wasn't, I'm pretty confident it wouldn't have been given at the other end.
Alan Muir was disgusting yesterday, just dreadful.

Against a "streetwise/cheating" team like St Johnstone, you need an equally clued in Ref.
First half especially it was like we were watching two teams playing with two different sets of rules.

Logan and Hayes' bookings, in the context of what he let go from St J, were a joke.
Stockley? Whatever this laddy's ability, he needs to get the faaaark out of Scotland.
The word is out on him amongst the cabal that is Scottish refs.

The incident that best summed up the ref's ineptitude, however, was right at the death when the game was gone.

Young Wright was chasing a ball with the cavemen looking midfielder (is that Davidson?) right in front of me in the mainer.

Davidson manhandled him, wrestled himself in front of him, then dived to the ground....Muir gave them the free kick.

Call it streetwise, call it cheating....... if we did that it wouldn't work.

Finally.....the St Johnstone players.
Even aside from the vile Dick Fister, they're a horrid bunch.

Now, I've got nae issue with a player "giving some back" to the crowd when they've been getting it tight, but go to the section(s) of the fans/crowd that have been dishing it out, nae the wee kids at the front of the family section or the main stand, ya big brave boys that you are.

[Kyle]

Posts like the above are extremely satisfying to read from my point of view. The seethe we generate - particularly from some supporters of Hearts, Aberdeen and Dundee - is absolutely glorious. 

6th, 3rd, 6th, 4th, 4th and probably (although not definitely) 4th in consecutive seasons, coupled with the fact that we've won the Scottish cup in that time and winning regularly at the likes of Pittodrie and Tynecastle is just wonderful. 

[jmothecat]

I never get why St Johnstone fans get so riled up by being called difficult to play against. They stifle our creativity and make it difficult for us to play our game but that's precisely what works well for St Johnstone and is the reason you get so many good results against us. I'm not sure why it offends Saints fans so much when it's a compliment to the team and quite clearly effective.

[tree house tam]

9 minutes ago, Kyle said:

Posts like the above are extremely satisfying to read from my point of view. The seethe we generate - particularly from some supporters of Hearts, Aberdeen and Dundee - is absolutely glorious. 

6th, 3rd, 6th, 4th, 4th and probably (although not definitely) 4th in consecutive seasons, coupled with the fact that we've won the Scottish cup in that time and winning regularly at the likes of Pittodrie and Tynecastle is just wonderful. 

This. I fucking love when opposing fans moan about us.

Especially after games, when in the pub and they're still quite raw at getting pumped and my smile eventually turns into laughter. Fucking love it so I do.

[PauloPerth]

23 minutes ago, jmothecat said:

I never get why St Johnstone fans get so riled up by being called difficult to play against. They stifle our creativity and make it difficult for us to play our game but that's precisely what works well for St Johnstone and is the reason you get so many good results against us. I'm not sure why it offends Saints fans so much when it's a compliment to the team and quite clearly effective.

But do you ever flip that round?  I've yet to see a good game from Aberdeen against us (started out well for half an hour the game 2  weeks ago at McD to be fair). I think the Dons are every bit as brutal to watch as apparently we are.  We've had some really entertaining games in the past few seasons in amongst our shitfests, funnily enough it's just none of them are against an agricultural type side like Aberdeen.

 

Derek McInnes complaining it shouldn't have been given as a passback is up there with the most ridiculous managerial complaints about a refereeing decision I've ever heard!       

[Kyle]

50 minutes ago, jmothecat said:

I never get why St Johnstone fans get so riled up by being called difficult to play against. They stifle our creativity and make it difficult for us to play our game but that's precisely what works well for St Johnstone and is the reason you get so many good results against us. I'm not sure why it offends Saints fans so much when it's a compliment to the team and quite clearly effective.

That's not what the post above mine says. We get called streetwise, cheats, bullies and all manner of other shit from opposition supporters after more or less every match we win. We get the positive cliches too - well drilled/organised, difficult to play against, physical, direct but effective etc too which is a lot more well intentioned, but still doesn't tell the whole story. We've scored some magnificent team goals this season from passing moves, including an excellent counter attack for the second goal yesterday, and we play some very attractive football, particularly away from home. Our possession stats usually stack up well and our foul and card count are usually very low - indeed we committed less fouls than Aberdeen yesterday. We've had two players sent off this season - and that was for two of our players fighting amongst themselves. 

[jmothecat]

That's not what the post above mine says. We get called streetwise, cheats, bullies and all manner of other shit from opposition supporters after more or less every match we win. We get the positive cliches too - well drilled/organised, difficult to play against, physical, direct but effective etc too which is a lot more well intentioned, but still doesn't tell the whole story. We've scored some magnificent team goals this season from passing moves, including an excellent counter attack for the second goal yesterday, and we play some very attractive football, particularly away from home. Our possession stats usually stack up well and our foul and card count are usually very low - indeed we committed less fouls than Aberdeen yesterday. We've had two players sent off this season - and that was for two of our players fighting amongst themselves. 

I wouldn't really take the foul count yesterday as serious, some utterly bizarre decisions made by the ref yesterday. Not biased, just weird.

[RandomGuy.]

Aberdeen have now scored two goals against us at home, over the 90 minutes of the past six games at Pittodrie.

I struggle to understand what their fans are expecting from us, when we find them so easy to play against up there.

TBF the fans on here don't seem so bad about it all these days.

[Dons_1988]

I think it's fair to say the games being brutal to watch could be our own doing.

Mcinnes specifically tried to make us more physical against teams like saints as we kept getting beat off them. So it's not great to watch but at least now we're getting results.

Oh....

[10menwent2mow]

I've seen some cracking Saints Dons games at McDiarmid. Can't remember the last decent one at Pittodrie. Probably the 1-5.

It's not exactly enticing for next season at McDiarmid either with what Wright said after the game before the split, that they stood off and opened up too much. Sounds like they might try and shitfest it there next season too.

However, this is not a criticism of Saints or Wright. They've clearly found a way to frustrate McInnes' Aberdeen and it's up to us to find a way to win games against it.

[nelsjfc]

Saints' fans are not offended by the suggestion that the side is well organised or defensively sound; indeed it's true and has been the foundation of the teams success over the last decade.

 

It's the inference that that is all this side are capable of doing from some quarters that occasionally grates a little. We are lucky to have a pragmatic manager who is very good at choosing his approach based on the opposition and what he currently has available to him.

 

 

 

 

[jmothecat]

St Johnstone hardly play silky, easy on the eye, football but very few teams in the league do. Look at what has happened to Hearts since they've started trying to, they've gone from b*****ds who are difficult to play against to the side who are probably the easiest to get a result against in the top six. St Johnstone play to their strengths, and do so well. It can lead to a few eye-bleed games (for what it's worth I actually thought the game on Saturday was fairly enjoyable if ruined a little by the referee), but it's effective and outside the old firm St Johnstone are the team I am least confident of getting a result against and I would expect fans of every team aside from Celtic to probably feel apprehensive before games against you.

[Alex_14]

I've just watched the highlights, wtf was Joe Lewis doing for the indirect free kick? 

He was just even slightly prepared, he was just standing up straight, it was guaranteed to go in. His first glaring error I've seen all season, tbf to him.

[Fife Saint]

Have we actually got a player over 6 foot or 12 stone? Remarkable that Aberdeen consistently get done in by what is largely a generic bunch of boys who graft and work as a team.

[Fife Saint]

Craig Thomson looks a right bully too.

[shootingboots]

Glad I didn't bother with this one.

I saw Saints were 6/1, was very tempted but ultimately didn't want to bet against the Dons. Bloody should have. 

[kingjoey]

On 30/04/2017 at 22:19, Kyle said:

That's not what the post above mine says. We get called streetwise, cheats, bullies and all manner of other shit from opposition supporters after more or less every match we win. We get the positive cliches too - well drilled/organised, difficult to play against, physical, direct but effective etc too which is a lot more well intentioned, but still doesn't tell the whole story. We've scored some magnificent team goals this season from passing moves, including an excellent counter attack for the second goal yesterday, and we play some very attractive football, particularly away from home. Our possession stats usually stack up well and our foul and card count are usually very low - indeed we committed less fouls than Aberdeen yesterday. We've had two players sent off this season - and that was for two of our players fighting amongst themselves. 

Not less fouls committed, less fouls given by Mr Muir.

[tree house tam]

5 minutes ago, kingjoey said:

Not less fouls committed, less fouls given by Mr Muir.