Dundee United 2019/2020

[stumigoo]

I'm being deadly serious. I hope that it comes across that way. 

It does.

[mishtergrolsch]

I wouldnt be opposed to a midfield pairing of Butcher and Bouhenna tbh.

Ive really not seen enough from Harkes to suggest hes the player people seem to suggest he is. But in fairness its a learning curve coming from the USA where they teach players how to control the ball, look up and pick a pass rather than this league where its get the ball, expect to get blootered, if not, you will soon.

It will be 4231. Its RNs fetish. Either that or maaaaybe 4411. He'll never play an out and out 442 of old. Its rare any teams do now, they all get trained by the same beige coaches at Largs or wherever.

Sow is our main forward. As much as he looks like a shite, pirouetting Bambi on ice he may be less shite after a good pre season.

Id love to see a 433 formation. With the squad we have, id go with Sow, Clark and McMullan. Mcmullan is better through the middle where he dosent need to cross but can pull players about and get in behind. Clark also has movement and is a good finisher and Sow would hopefully bring them into play. Just go balls out, score more goals than the opposition type stuff. 

           Seigrist 

Smith CH Reynolds Sporle

 Butcher Harkes Bouhenna

   McMullan Sow Clark

 

The new CH must be a 6 ft 8 Eastern European covered from head to toe in tatoos and the blood of the conquered opposition.

[ArabianKnight]

25 minutes ago, mishtergrolsch said:

I wouldnt be opposed to a midfield pairing of Butcher and Bouhenna tbh.

Ive really not seen enough from Harkes to suggest hes the player people seem to suggest he is. But in fairness its a learning curve coming from the USA where they teach players how to control the ball, look up and pick a pass rather than this league where its get the ball, expect to get blootered, if not, you will soon.

It will be 4231. Its RNs fetish. Either that or maaaaybe 4411. He'll never play an out and out 442 of old. Its rare any teams do now, they all get trained by the same beige coaches at Largs or wherever.

Sow is our main forward. As much as he looks like a shite, pirouetting Bambi on ice he may be less shite after a good pre season.

Id love to see a 433 formation. With the squad we have, id go with Sow, Clark and McMullan. Mcmullan is better through the middle where he dosent need to cross but can pull players about and get in behind. Clark also has movement and is a good finisher and Sow would hopefully bring them into play. Just go balls out, score more goals than the opposition type stuff. 

           Seigrist 

Smith CH Reynolds Sporle

 Butcher Harkes Bouhenna

   McMullan Sow Clark

 

The new CH must be a 6 ft 8 Eastern European covered from head to toe in tatoos and the blood of the conquered opposition.

I wouldn't be opposed to that actually. Think Harkes could play the Armstrong link up midfield to strikers role if he wanted to. 

[Granny Danger]

1 hour ago, mishtergrolsch said:

 

           Seigrist 

Smith CH Reynolds Sporle

 Butcher Harkes Bouhenna

   McMullan Sow Clark

 

Let me preface my remarks by saying that these discussions are all about opinions.

That said I think that if we played that team in that formation I wouldn’t even bother going to games.  These players do not have the ability to play 4-3-3; it would end up not being a 4-3-3 and whilst you have qualified you’re inclusion of Sow I have seen nothing to suggest he’s a footballer let alone one who could work with the limited service that that team/formation would provide and the effort that he would personally need to put in.

Also Clark would be wasted for yet another season.

[NEFarab]

1 hour ago, Granny Danger said:

Let me preface my remarks by saying that these discussions are all about opinions.

That said I think that if we played that team in that formation I wouldn’t even bother going to games.  These players do not have the ability to play 4-3-3; it would end up not being a 4-3-3 and whilst you have qualified you’re inclusion of Sow I have seen nothing to suggest he’s a footballer let alone one who could work with the limited service that that team/formation would provide and the effort that he would personally need to put in.

Also Clark would be wasted for yet another season.

faf, I hate when people say Clark has been “wasted.” 

He’s simply just bang average at best and the top of the championship is the very limit of his ability as a footballer. 

[Granny Danger]

4 hours ago, NEFarab said:

faf, I hate when people say Clark has been “wasted.” 

He’s simply just bang average at best and the top of the championship is the very limit of his ability as a footballer. 

What I meant is that Clark is the sort of striker best suited in a two; play him in any other formation and you won’t get the most from him.

[NEFarab]

5 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

What I meant is that Clark is the sort of striker best suited in a two; play him in any other formation and you won’t get the most from him.

I get what you mean and agree with the point in principle but I think we don’t get that much out of Clark because he just isn’t very good rather than being misused.

[Granny Danger]

5 minutes ago, NEFarab said:

I get what you mean and agree with the point in principle but I think we don’t get that much out of Clark because he just isn’t very good rather than being misused.

Fair enough.  If he was getting utilised in his best position and not scoring goals it would be far easier to judge how good or bad he is.

[mishtergrolsch]

8 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

Let me preface my remarks by saying that these discussions are all about opinions.

That said I think that if we played that team in that formation I wouldn’t even bother going to games.  These players do not have the ability to play 4-3-3; it would end up not being a 4-3-3 and whilst you have qualified you’re inclusion of Sow I have seen nothing to suggest he’s a footballer let alone one who could work with the limited service that that team/formation would provide and the effort that he would personally need to put in.

Also Clark would be wasted for yet another season.

Read my post again - i said using the squad we have.

Ive said multiple times through last season that our squad is pretty guff. The team ive picked is using the players we have. 

I know most of those players dont have the ability to play 433. They dont have the ability to play 451, or 4231, whatever people want to dress it up as, either. Yet Levien's apprentice sticks to it. I just want to see a bunch of goals, excitement and attacking football. Id rather see a 4-3 than a 1-0. 

Again, its not something im seriously expecting, demanding or even suggesting we do ever with a squad like we have, but im piss bored of the sterile, formulaic and out of date 4231 which has done nothing but bring pain to my eyes almost every game for the past 4 or 5 years so im venting out of desperation, Granny. Sheer sheer fucking desperation for something different and maybe...see us score more than one goal a game...

[Granny Danger]

17 minutes ago, mishtergrolsch said:

Read my post again - i said using the squad we have.

Ive said multiple times through last season that our squad is pretty guff. The team ive picked is using the players we have. 

I know most of those players dont have the ability to play 433. They dont have the ability to play 451, or 4231, whatever people want to dress it up as, either. Yet Levien's apprentice sticks to it. I just want to see a bunch of goals, excitement and attacking football. Id rather see a 4-3 than a 1-0. 

Again, its not something im seriously expecting, demanding or even suggesting we do ever with a squad like we have, but im piss bored of the sterile, formulaic and out of date 4231 which has done nothing but bring pain to my eyes almost every game for the past 4 or 5 years so im venting out of desperation, Granny. Sheer sheer fucking desperation for something different and maybe...see us score more than one goal a game...

Venting noted and empathised with.  Like you I don’t hold out any hope for a change to the formula.

Those highlighting United’s points tally in the second half of last season will argue we don’t need to alter things but I think that view will change as this season progresses.

[mishtergrolsch]

13 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

Venting noted and empathised with.  Like you I don’t hold out any hope for a change to the formula.

Those highlighting United’s points tally in the second half of last season will argue we don’t need to alter things but I think that view will change as this season progresses.

I agree.

We need to change the attitude from "lets concentrate on not losing goals" to "lets score some fucking goals".

It will still be a tough league. ICT, Dundee and Plastic Whistle will all be gunning for the league along side us. Those games will be important but we usually shit the bed against the smaller teams that sit in and our single forward and 3 poor attacking midfielders cant break them down due to poor service. 

Id agree with those people who said the second half of last season was better. Obviously. It couldnt get worse. But it was still,  for the most part, rubbish.

Look at the way Ayr United played. Fast, attacking football, get the ball down and into the opposition half quickly and have players that run at defences and in behind. They were very effective till they ran out of steam. We should be able to emulate that kind of style and with the money we're chucking about, we should have a big enough squad to do that all season.

However im looking forward to watching the ball go from Reynolds, to Connoly, to Smith, to Connoly, to Harkes, to Reynolds, to the Jim McClean stand. Lets all clap when Butcher wins the ball back and passes to Reynolds...

[dregs 83]

I agree.
We need to change the attitude from "lets concentrate on not losing goals" to "lets score some fucking goals".
It will still be a tough league. ICT, Dundee and Plastic Whistle will all be gunning for the league along side us. Those games will be important but we usually shit the bed against the smaller teams that sit in and our single forward and 3 poor attacking midfielders cant break them down due to poor service. 
Id agree with those people who said the second half of last season was better. Obviously. It couldnt get worse. But it was still,  for the most part, rubbish.
Look at the way Ayr United played. Fast, attacking football, get the ball down and into the opposition half quickly and have players that run at defences and in behind. They were very effective till they ran out of steam. We should be able to emulate that kind of style and with the money we're chucking about, we should have a big enough squad to do that all season.
However im looking forward to watching the ball go from Reynolds, to Connoly, to Smith, to Connoly, to Harkes, to Reynolds, to the Jim McClean stand. Lets all clap when Butcher wins the ball back and passes to Reynolds...

We shouldn’t be looking to switch from ‘concentrating on not losing goals’ as you put it. We should be looking to consolidate our relative defensive strength in the last half of last season, whilst bolstering our attack and trying to make it more clinical.
I can totally understand why people are against the formation, and I completely agree that at times last season under Neilson it was brutal to watch.
However, I firmly believe the most important thing in this league is to stop the opposition scoring.
Although there we didn’t score 2+ goals in many games last season, I think you could count on one hand the number of times we didn’t score, despite our attack having obvious deficiencies and injury problems.
That’s why we climbed the league last season after Neilson came in- because we stopped shipping goals.
The ‘balls out’ approach that Ayr used, which you are advocating, has far more deficiencies than the approach that Neilson uses, in this league at least.
That was evidenced by the fact that Ayr finished comfortably below us in the league and crashed our in the first round of the playoffs despite having the most prolific scorer in the division.

[Sarto Mutiny]

30 minutes ago, dregs 83 said:

We shouldn’t be looking to switch from ‘concentrating on not losing goals’ as you put it. We should be looking to consolidate our relative defensive strength in the last half of last season, whilst bolstering our attack and trying to make it more clinical.
I can totally understand why people are against the formation, and I completely agree that at times last season under Neilson it was brutal to watch.
However, I firmly believe the most important thing in this league is to stop the opposition scoring.
Although there we didn’t score 2+ goals in many games last season, I think you could count on one hand the number of times we didn’t score, despite our attack having obvious deficiencies and injury problems.
That’s why we climbed the league last season after Neilson came in- because we stopped shipping goals.
The ‘balls out’ approach that Ayr used, which you are advocating, has far more deficiencies than the approach that Neilson uses, in this league at least.
That was evidenced by the fact that Ayr finished comfortably below us in the league and crashed our in the first round of the playoffs despite having the most prolific scorer in the division.

We failed to score in four league games last season. Weirdly, three of those were against Ayr United. The other occasion was the final game against Morton when we played a reserve team. So, although we weren't exactly prolific, goals were not as much of a problem as they may have appeared. Lies, damned lies, etc...

[dregs 83]

We failed to score in four league games last season. Weirdly, three of those were against Ayr United. The other occasion was the final game against Morton when we played a reserve team. So, although we weren't exactly prolific, goals were not as much of a problem as they may have appeared. Lies, damned lies, etc...

Exactly my point, if we stop teams scoring, we win all but 4 games last season.
We do need more goals in the team however, in order to kill off games, which was a major problem we had last season.

[Pull My Strings]

Also worth noting that we made plenty of chances in most games last season. The problem was that our conversion rate was terrible. I don't know what the solution is necessarily but I suspect it lies more in incremental improvement than radical overhaul.

[Jock Tamson]

Can't believe the amount of Utd fans who are willing to accept Robson being shoehorned into the left mid position. If that's Utd's standard nowadays, they are fucked.

He's a left back who really isn't a good enough left back, hence why the Argie's been brought in. Trying to "find" another position for him is desperate.

I would suggest he'll find his level soon enough though.

[stumigoo]

Can't believe the amount of Utd fans who are willing to accept Robson being shoehorned into the left mid position. If that's Utd's standard nowadays, they are fucked.

He's a left back who really isn't a good enough left back, hence why the Argie's been brought in. Trying to "find" another position for him is desperate.

I would suggest he'll find his level soon enough though.

Sporle is here to challenge Booth, not Robson. Neilson has shown that he sees Robson playing further forward and having seen Robson on every occasion that he did play left midfield I think that he did more than enough to be considered a backup in that position rather than at left-back.

[Pull My Strings]

2 minutes ago, Jock Tamson said:

Can't believe the amount of Utd fans who are willing to accept Robson being shoehorned into the left mid position. If that's Utd's standard nowadays, they are fucked.

He's a left back who really isn't a good enough left back, hence why the Argie's been brought in. Trying to "find" another position for him is desperate.

I would suggest he'll find his level soon enough though.

I haven't seen anyone suggesting that Robson should be first choice in either position. What exactly has been said that has prompted you to express your disbelief?

[Pull My Strings]

1 minute ago, stumigoo said:

 

Sporle is here to challenge Booth, not Robson. Neilson has shown that he sees Robson playing further forward and having seen Robson on every occasion that he did play left midfield I think that he did more than enough to be considered a backup in that position rather than at left-back.

 

I suspect Booth will be away if anyone shows an interest and Robson will be used as cover for a couple of positions.

[Granny Danger]

37 minutes ago, Pull My Strings said:

Also worth noting that we made plenty of chances in most games last season. The problem was that our conversion rate was terrible. I don't know what the solution is necessarily but I suspect it lies more in incremental improvement than radical overhaul.

It will be interesting to see if that philosophy, if followed, gets us promoted in the coming season.