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Raith Rovers v Ayr United


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You’re ignoring the fact Duffy completely rewrote his own team selection and tactics at half time.  He gets credit for the change, but has questions to answer on how he set us up in the first place. 

If he set us up in the first half like he did in the second with 3 strikers on then I think we’d have been more that 2-0 down at half time.

We are absolutely capable of being set up in a more positive manner but we don’t have the defensive players to adequately cover them nor do we have the quality up front to make it count when we get into good areas.
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Made Ayr look like a League 2 side the first half, the second half it was us that looked very much like that. Funny game football. But will take it. Plenty games we’ve seen where it’s us chasing an equaliser and couldn’t quite get it, so a solid win. Roll on next week. 

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Just now, Saltire said:

I agree, it's very concerning that he sees that as the best starting tactics. Perhaps he doesn't see where the goals come from and believes focusing on not losing goals is our best option. The evidence though seems to suggest he's very wrong as we lose more goals when we play a defensive formation, probably because we have very little out ball, when everyone's sitting so deep and have to face wave after wave of attack.

Queens game was the exact same.  70 minutes of passive pish, had a go in the last 20 minutes and won the game 2-1.  Could easily have salvaged a point today after the change in approach.  Duffy has been around a long time, so maybe he just doesn’t know how to adapt his thinking.

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Thought we were worthy of a point in the end there. First half was atrocious all over, but in the second we showed a bit of fight and played some nice football at points. 

We sat off Raith and let them play the ball around and they punished us. As soon as we started pressing them they looked weak and if it weren't for some decent defending we would have got something from that.

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3 minutes ago, D'Jaffo said:


If he set us up in the first half like he did in the second with 3 strikers on then I think we’d have been more that 2-0 down at half time.

We are absolutely capable of being set up in a more positive manner but we don’t have the defensive players to adequately cover them nor do we have the quality up front to make it count when we get into good areas.

That’s a counterfactual argument that doesn’t really help move us forward.  The simple fact is that there is a clear pattern emerging - Duffy prefers to go defensive, and when we do, we lose goals and create nothing.

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3 minutes ago, D'Jaffo said:


If he set us up in the first half like he did in the second with 3 strikers on then I think we’d have been more that 2-0 down at half time.

We are absolutely capable of being set up in a more positive manner but we don’t have the defensive players to adequately cover them nor do we have the quality up front to make it count when we get into good areas.

We definitely have the players to set up with more than one attacking player on the pitch though. There is a balance, and Duffy appears completely incapable of striking it. 

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Just now, AuAl said:

Thought we were worthy of a point in the end there. First half was atrocious all over, but in the second we showed a bit of fight and played some nice football at points. 

We sat off Raith and let them play the ball around and they punished us. As soon as we started pressing them they looked weak and if it weren't for some decent defending we would have got something from that.

You have us sussed

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7 minutes ago, D'Jaffo said:


If he set us up in the first half like he did in the second with 3 strikers on then I think we’d have been more that 2-0 down at half time.

We are absolutely capable of being set up in a more positive manner but we don’t have the defensive players to adequately cover them nor do we have the quality up front to make it count when we get into good areas.

Counting McKenzie as a striker is a stretch tbh.

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That’s a counterfactual argument that doesn’t really help move us forward.  The simple fact is that there is a clear pattern emerging - Duffy prefers to go defensive, and when we do, we lose goals and create nothing.

Yeah, we can’t move forward right now. Not with this group of players. The only improvement that can really be made is in their effort.
We definitely have the players to set up with more than one attacking player on the pitch though. There is a balance, and Duffy appears completely incapable of striking it. 

I completely agree and I’d probably have Adeloye starting up front with either Bradley or McKenzie alongside him. I’d then have Maxwell and O’Connor either side of Muirhead and Murdoch.

However with Muirhead out we have absolutely nobody capable of protecting the defence so we are forced to put another body in there to compensate. It’s a shite state of affairs that we literally don’t have one single defensive midfielder and are forced to play our best centre back there in the meantime.
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5 minutes ago, AuAl said:

Thought we were worthy of a point in the end there. First half was atrocious all over, but in the second we showed a bit of fight and played some nice football at points. 

We sat off Raith and let them play the ball around and they punished us. As soon as we started pressing them they looked weak and if it weren't for some decent defending we would have got something from that.

To be fair, from our point of view replacing Spencer for BRS pretty much killed our ability to build from the back or play our passing game - with Matthews suspended, Tait having a bad game and BRS nowhere near good enough we just conceded the middle of the park at half time.

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9 minutes ago, D'Jaffo said:


Yeah, we can’t move forward right now. Not with this group of players. The only improvement that can really be made is in their effort.

I completely agree and I’d probably have Adeloye starting up front with either Bradley or McKenzie alongside him. I’d then have Maxwell and O’Connor either side of Muirhead and Murdoch.

However with Muirhead out we have absolutely nobody capable of protecting the defence so we are forced to put another body in there to compensate. It’s a shite state of affairs that we literally don’t have one single defensive midfielder and are forced to play our best centre back there in the meantime.

Yeah, it’s beyond embarrassing mismanagement that we are in that state in midfield. 

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17 minutes ago, No_Problemo said:

We definitely have the players to set up with more than one attacking player on the pitch though. There is a balance, and Duffy appears completely incapable of striking it. 

I thought a key difference was that Salkeld constantly gives away possession putting us under pressure immediately whereas Afolabi (who I have criticised a lot in previous weeks) holds it up really well and often manages to complete a pass to a teammate. I am sure Duffy would say that the idea of Salkeld was to offer some attacking threat but that obviously just does not work.

Also I think that McAllister is better than Houston at RB and it's hard to see Houston getting back into the team.

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2 minutes ago, rgreig said:

I thought a key difference was that Salkeld constantly gives away possession putting us under pressure immediately whereas Afolabi (who I have criticised a lot in previous weeks) holds it up really well and often manages to complete a pass to a teammate. I am sure Duffy would say that the idea of Salkeld was to offer some attacking threat but that obviously just does not work.

Also I think that McAllister is better than Houston at RB and it's hard to see Houston getting back into the team.

From what I’ve seen I don’t think McAllister is particularly great at RB either, but is very good in the air and offers some drive that Houston doesn’t. He is still very young too. 
 

I genuinely think Salkeld is league two standard at best - one good performance against Dunfermline all season. 

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Another game where we're cruising it, lose a player to an injury and then struggle to see out the three points. Duffy set the first half up all wrong but deserves a mention for the double sub. We had no cohesion in the middle of the park, and almost right away folk started chucking the toys out the pram for us not maintaining the style we had in the first half. We just can't seem to get a clean sheet at the moment - the last one we had was on 18th September away at Cappielow. Tough test next week away to Queen of the South - Is Matthews out for three games? 

Good to see young Aaron Arnott getting a run out in the second half again. Some decent touches and didn't look phased when we were under the cosh. 

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Cruise control first half, utter dug second. We sorely missed Spencer in the middle, needed that calm head to control possession when we had it but instead had snow running about like a headless chicken like he’d won a raffle to play a game. 
lang and Berra absolute titans again. At this rate, Bene will have some job to displace Lang from this team. Man of the match for me. Wouldn’t mind going to a rovers game and feeling comfortable that we can see a game out. 
Ayr definitely deserve a point out of that, we got away with one. Big 3 points with a couple of tough away games the next couple of Saturdays. 

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