St Johnstone v Motherwell Sat 28th Sept 3pm

[Costanza]

Surely Clark has to be coming for that ball in the first place?

[RandomGuy.]

5 minutes ago, tree house tam said:

There is no reason at all why Zander should not come for that ball. Tommy may blame a succession of outfield players for not picking up or being out muscled by their men but Zander has a 2 foot height advantage on all of those players and it's in his 6 yard box, just because Tommy and Mathers were limited keepers it doesn't mean they have to force their insecurities on Zander.

 

3 minutes ago, Costanza said:

Surely Clark has to be coming for that ball in the first place?

Probably. That doesnt excuse the pathetic defending though, especially considering Clark hasnt been coming for those for a while now.

[Valentino Bolognese]

7 hours ago, PauloPerth said:

The whole thing about Gordon having difficulty in possession.. we had exactly the same issue last season with Joe after a game v Celtic when they squeezed up on Kerr and left Joe open. From thereon loads of teams copied it and we struggled.

Close off the ball to Kerr, get up on Tanser and we're struggling with a right footed centre back forced onto his left foot with no simple options on. It's going to be a struggle whether it's Kerr or Gordon on that side, and Tommy needs to start coming up with a few options for us to cope with teams doing it.

And Anderson. His distribution with his wrong foot was brutal at times. 

I agree with you but, as before, I honestly didn't think Motherwell pressed Kerr to force the ball to Gordon. I'll have to watch it back but to me there was little in the way of pressure and generally Zander had choices. 

[thisGRAEME]

9 hours ago, MP_MFC said:

10 hours ago, ropy said:

I thought Illic got caught with his own follow through onto the boot of the defender, sair wan.

He does need to stop the rolling around clutching his shins routine that he's done since he arrived.

False.

More. Do it more.

[tree house tam]

54 minutes ago, Valentino Bolognese said:

And Anderson. His distribution with his wrong foot was brutal at times. 

I agree with you but, as before, I honestly didn't think Motherwell pressed Kerr to force the ball to Gordon. I'll have to watch it back but to me there was little in the way of pressure and generally Zander had choices. 

They did, left Liam spare then pressed him to hit long.

[The Saintee]

Clark is definitely going backwards under the coaching from Mathers.

When he first came in he was dominating the box and now he rarely comes for anything.

[RandomGuy.]

6 minutes ago, tree house tam said:

They did, left Liam spare then pressed him to hit long.

Exact same as we done with Hartley, as I said. The only difference was Hartley had a target to hit, while we didnt.

I wouldnt blame Gordon at all for it, it's unfair to be expecting him to be delivering 30 yard passes to a tiny player who wont win a physical battle against stronger defenders.

The midfield need to step up in games like that, take the ball and start attacks themselves. Holt was willing to do that, when it was too late, but that was it. The wingers just hid until Swanson came on.

Edited September 29, 2019 by RandomGuy.

[perthsaint1977]

It's all about the confidence.
Confidence low throughout the squad and every single player trying to make the safe option rather than being braver.
The risk of having so many younger inexperienced players now.... Older heads in the squad need to start upping their games and younger players need to learn from their mistakes fast.
TW also has to have a look this 451 at home formation. Ideal away from home but not at home. Negative from the off.
Not panicking and every faith we will turn it round but it's going to be a long season

[akuram]

[mention=10303]akuram[/mention] never said that Chris Kane would be the match winner, his point was that our strikers continue to be isolated with how we have set up this season, and that having somebody closer to May would be extremely beneficial. 
Chris Kane is nowhere near as bad as you make out, unless you are one of those narrow minded people who think that a strikers job is ‘tO SCoRe GoALs.’ A strikers job is to help the team win games, and Chris Kane has a knack of making us look a better side when he plays
He does a power of intelligent running and stretches defences and I don’t think it’s ridiculous at all to suggest him and May would forge a decent partnership. 
That’s clearly not just screaming 4 4 fucking 2 for the sake of it. 

Thank you. My point being we need two up front as it clearly doesn't work with one. We don't have a Morelos

[Casagolda]

14 hours ago, Swello said:

Most of us walking out the ground today felt that we didn't deserve to win that (but were happy that we did obv.). We were a couple of levels below the performance from last week's loss but somehow came out with 3 points and a clean sheet.

I couldn’t make it yesterday but I’m strangely pleased to hear that.

We’ve already shown this season that when we play well, we have the ability to cause teams problems, score goals and win games. However we’ve also looked worryingly naive at times and defensively, I worry about our ability to see games out. Last week against County being the perfect example of both.

So not playing well but shitfesting our way to three points and a clean sheet away from home is absolutely fine by me. In many ways, it’s the perfect response to a lot of last weeks criticisms.

[Swello]

11 minutes ago, Casagolda said:

I couldn’t make it yesterday but I’m strangely pleased to hear that.

We’ve already shown this season that when we play well, we have the ability to cause teams problems, score goals and win games. However we’ve also looked worryingly naive at times and defensively, I worry about our ability to see games out. Last week against County being the perfect example of both.

So not playing well but shitfesting our way to three points and a clean sheet away from home is absolutely fine by me. In many ways, it’s the perfect response to a lot of last weeks criticisms.

By our standards, we were actually pretty cynical yesterday - we didn't do our normal thing of letting teams waltz through us - lots of deliberate fouls to stop St Johnstone in promising positions....I approve

[Desp]

I genuinely didn't realise there were as many St. Johnstone fans on P&B as this. 

Still, I like Tommy Wright. I think he deserves the chance to get the team out of a bad run. He's had enough good ones to deserve it, IMO. 

[capt_oats]

Like @Casagolda it's kind of reassuring to hear both Robinson and Gillespie recognise (and I'm paraphrasing) that we didn't play well. Hartley put up a Tweet post-match talking about it being a "streetwise" second half. Granted, on another day Tanser scores that (soft) penalty or the ref buys Stevie May chucking himself to the deck or Murray Davidson buries that header but equally it's not like we didn't have clear scoring opportunities ourselves.

Having spent my Saturday evening whining about not seeing out a 1-0 against County last week I'm not so much of a hypocrite to complain about an attritional 1-0 win at a ground where prior to kick off yesterday we'd only won 1 in the last 11. Also, I wasn't there so I didn't pay cash money to endure the grind so I'm 100% that bitch.

Watching the full game back on Alba it looked like it was largely about breaking up the play and matching St Johnstone; "winning the battle" so to speak. It felt quite fixture specific. After the Hearts LC game Robinson was talking about us having to add different "strings to our bow" in terms of how to win games so seeing how effective the set pieces seem to be at the moment then if #SexyMotherwell isn't working we've at least got an alternative means of creating chances.

Given recent seasons where we've been heavily reliant on specific players carrying us; Turnbull last season, Moult prior to that even Sutton and Higdon it's encouraging to feel like we don't necessarily need to be pinging passes about to create opportunities.

I'll not lie, when we signed him I had Polworth down as potentially being Vigurs v2.0 however he looks like he's getting better every week and is turning into a key player. Last season you heard Turnbull talking about Robinson having been on at him about the "dirty" side of his game and it feels like it's the same with Polworth. Maybe not putting in tackles but he seemed to win us a fair number of free kicks in the middle of the park simply by getting his body in between the ball and his opponent and the majority of our chances came from his deliveries. For someone who was saying he viewed himself as a #10 he seems to be developing quite well as an #8.

We're clearly very much a work in progress and are still trying to get the best out players but given the turnover of players in the summer we're miles ahead of where I thought we'd be when the fixture list came out. Right now we're the third highest scorers in the league and there are only 3 teams in the league with a + goal difference Celtic, Rangers and us...that's not something I saw coming after the Celtic game.

Edited September 29, 2019 by capt_oats

[Busta Nut]

I don't think Donnelly meant to jump on that wee guys leg, he tries to hurdle him and fucked it.

[Radford]

Neil Simpson was going for the ball. 

[capt_oats]

13 hours ago, RandomGuy. said:

Just seen the highlights 

The corner the goal comes from is delivered into the area where both our centre halves are. One crumples to the ground for absolutely no reason, while the other is like a kid trying to out muscle a man, just flails against Gallgher who dominates.

For the second ball, which bounces in the six yard box, you have Murray Davidson so determined to bear hug his player to the ground he ends up facing, and running, the opposite way from the ball as it heads towards him, while Ralston is standing five yards away from his man and just staring. Clark is doing some weird dance along his line. 

Dearie me.

This is quite a good angle of the goal and the points you've made there...

 

[RandomGuy.]

5 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

This is quite a good angle of the goal and the points you've made there...

 

Sums it all up.

Particularly enjoy the three players, all to blame, standing with their arms spread apart desperately looking at each other trying to figure out who they can pin it on.

[Casagolda]

Gallagher is an absolute colossus in the box to be fair, he genuinely seems to win it every time it comes near him. I can see why Livi loaded the box at every opportunity, you always feel like you’re going to get a chance. As @capt_oats said, it’s something we’ve used very effectively this season. 

Have had a chance to flick through the game, some miss my Cole. Glad he atoned for it or I fear it could have been his Alex Fisher moment. Robinson seems to see him as his main striker and he’s certainly showed flashes of his ability so far, his first goal should hopefully do him the world of good. 

Penalty looked incredibly soft. Compare that and Gallagher’s disallowed goal last week, to Ikpeazu’s goal against us a few weeks back and we can definitely feel aggrieved. Another save by Gillespie but, his record for penalty saves must be ridiculous. 

Daft by Donnelly getting involved at the end and there’s no way that’s getting overturned. Still, despite the media hype surrounding him if I had to choose a midfielder to lose for 3 games it’d be Donnelly. Imagine it’ll be O’Hara in for next week which will surely open up a place on the bench for the lesser spotted Sloth. 

[Steve McQueen]

Anyone know the attendance? doesnt seem t be listed anywhere.

[perthsaint1977]

2772 from memory. Nearly 800 away fans