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vikingTON

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Everything posted by vikingTON

  1. Wouldn't criticise individual stewards for this, but it's notable that when there was some Celtic supporting jakey openly smoking a joint and giving out continuous, dreadful patter* about wearing a hair band to some Dundee United player a few weeks ago, eagle-eyed enforcement of The Rules was nowhere to be seen. Given the regular reports of spitting from the other side of the Shed too, company policy seems to be that they will pick and choose their battles - i.e. against those not likely to cause them trouble. *Probably the worst offence of the lot
  2. That's not unfair - it's the reality of professional football. If you're on the fringe of the first team, then your task is to make a starting spot your own by impressing on the training ground during the week and making an impact on the pitch when you get the chance. No player at any reasonable level of the sport has got there by being able to write off the last 15 minutes of any game as some impossible task to show their worth to the team. We're consistently chronic at turning around games from losing positions. The complete lack of demonstrable impact - rather than 'looking dangerous' which does not actually change the outcome of any match - is the cause of that and it applies to every single one of our gubbins wingers equally right now. As for a lack of fairness, we're seeing on the same thread here complaints that the manager is being unfair and 'picking' on McGrattan for calling out a piss-poor performance after giving him a start, while also being unfair on Bearne for not giving him a chance. Well you can't have it both ways: if the manager is picking on McGrattan then how do you explain why he was chosen to start the match yesterday? It's almost as if Imrie is not impressed by any of these options and is quite justifiably frustrated by their lack of development. This parade of excuses is not going to stop them from ending up in the seaside leagues unless they step up their game very soon.
  3. The season consists of both halves of the year, you can't just bin the first part to suit a hysterical line of argument.
  4. I'd say the reality is somewhere in between. The budget wasn't there in June-July which is why we were shopping exclusively in a market of unproven wide players, all while 'Frankie Deane' and the Tiktok defender were being touted as legit signing targets by quite a few on here who moan about wasted money now. Short memories right there. Quitongo was a necessary risk we had to take with the previous year's available budget and we've got just about enough of a return on that, but we now need a more reliable option to compete at the top end of the table. The other two wide options are our much vaunted 'academy products'. None of these signings are high value additions or investments and we're seeing that in the low quality of output from all of them. We've correctly prioritised the spine of the team for signing effective players to compete on a weekly basis, but we're just seeing the limitations of that budgeting priority play out. As for giving people a fair chance - they train all through the week and when they come on they do not make a real impact: goals and assists to turn the game around. Those are the demands of professional football - we're not handing out participation medals to everyone in an under 10s team here. It's really not going to be hard to make the jersey your own given our failure to deliver in that area of the park all season. That those two players haven't done so says more about them than it does about the manager.
  5. I asked for evidence of both players' contribution to goals - those are purely vibes based preferences. Which nobody would have said for Quitongo in our previous two home games either btw. Our wide options are objectively poor by the standards of the league - though we probably also have one of the lowest investment in that area of the squad too. No Championship manager or defender would be having sleepless nights about how to deal with any of them;. it is not even remotely our strength, so doubling down on it is the wrong answer.
  6. What evidence shows that this would be an effective approach? How many goals/assists have those two options added this season, that lead you expect that we will break our current duck in the next match? The same question applies just as much to McGrattan or Bearne. Absolutely none of this cast of wide options reliably deliver anything at all. It's like having four Stephen Stirling figures rotating around the line-up at the moment, who suddenly become twice as good the week that they're not actually on the park. Enough of these wingers. What's actually needed is a reset to executing the basics well. Play the ball directly towards Oakley and actually press as a unit the second ball wherever it drops. Then start playing football in the opposition third of the park instead of fannying around with it in the back four. That has always been the key to our success and we have unintentionally deviated from it.
  7. Which natural wingers would these be: the two who haven't kicked their own arse all season, or the two who came on today and shelled every other cross out of the park? All of our wide options are mediocre at best and that's why we are persistently chronic when we concede the first goal. I didn't see evidence today of Dunfermline having sussed us out tactically - we were competitive but there were simply too many players off it in terms of performing basic tasks and the use of the ball showed a team short on confidence. Chucking in one ridiculously slack goal at a set-piece and Mullen bailing us out for a second is not a tactical issue. If we get a lead in a game and win then I think we'll be fine.
  8. We need more balls into channels to make them defend it, trying to pass the ball around our back four and midfield is not going to work on this surface and any level of pressing.
  9. Yes it really was though: "As has been said we need to get more involved in schools. Back in my day even the likes of Martin Doak, John McNeil and Jim Holmes would even turn up to Cubs and Boys brigade events and they weren't even full time!! Reaching out to local boys clubs who obviously have an interest in the game is a no brainer as they would provide coaches to watch the youngsters and it would be highly likely to add some parents through the turnstiles. We have "a good bunch of lads" who were not utilising enough if @ all in the future support. How often is there a first team player or 2 showing up at youngsters prize giving events/sports days nowadays? First team football doesn't end when you walk off the training pitch imho."
  10. That was the entire premise of the post you responded to, with a 'missing a trick' claim. I'm hardly chief cheerleader for Community based engagement, but I'm really not seeing how we're missing out on some obvious sure-fire way to build the fanbase, on top of what is already taking place along similar lines.
  11. Perhaps Dale has misunderstood the question posed, as providing a concession on certain grounds should apply all season and should apply to both home/away fans. That's not money wasted, so long as the club does eligibility checks at a ticket booth. There's no magic law compelling SPFL clubs to offer their existing discounts based on age or economic activity either - although if a club did something buckshee like giving a tenner off after a pint in Chaplin's or whichever wine bar/bistro Partick fans frequent before their home matches, then you'd still expect the SPFL to knock heads together. Regardless, given our track record, I wouldn't be taking any Morton club official's insistence that something can't be done for Very Important Reasons seriously until Warren 'Iron Man's Hawke's tenure is a fairy tale used to frighten weans into eating their broccoli.
  12. First team players are regularly involved in those engagement activities though, as a browse through MITC content would demonstrate. Leaving aside the fact that it's not actually a footballer's contractual obligation to grow the fanbase - that's commercial/marketing behind the scenes - the idea that they're not doing their bit is nonsense.
  13. Any news on Quitongo's fitness? While his performance between bouts of injury/illness was risiblea few weeks ago, it's the double whammy of both being out that deprives us of any serious physical presence in the final third. Any competent manager can then just push their defence up the park to help win the midfield battle, and it's an uphill task to do anything after that. Wingers alone won't solve that, especially as I wouldn't say any of ours are particularly pacey.
  14. How do you know the first team players haven't been at those events?
  15. Behave: when Oakley's fit we'll be fine. It was less than a month ago that the consensus (wrongly) was to hand out new contracts all round to reward our unbeaten run - we can't have it both ways. That said, any experiment of Tyler French dictating possession from central midfield needs to be launched into the sea with no follow-up investigation.
  16. That wouldn't be the same formation at all, unless you're giving Garrity a Muirhead at left back level task.
  17. Hardly surprising given that Oakley was born in 1995, while Tam Cowan lives permanently trapped in 1974.
  18. I was referring to relevant clubs to our current target only.
  19. Perfect set of results for us and limits the impact of Tuesday's defeat - a game in hand back over everyone below us apart from Airdrie.
  20. That's probably for the best, seeing as literally two games after the club's best run of form in a Paisley lifetime, we're already back to you and others bumping your gums about fringe players not getting enough opportunities - when they either fail to do enough with the ones that they had; or in O'Boy's case have zero experience of adult competitive football.
  21. I haven't seen this good delivery on any reliable basis and if pace alone was required then we wouldn't have seen Quitongo's poor performance last night. People keep claiming that there's only much you can do in ten minute cameos - well you can make it impossible to be overlooked by turning a game and having an impact. Bearne hasn't done even remotely enough despite the cherry-picking that we've reverted back to just like before our 16 game unbeaten run. You don't have the jersey - you need to take your chance and claim it. I've read this same script with McGrattan 'strangely' not getting a game last season - although I note that fixation and stat updates have been quietly ditched from the forum. Perhaps it's a case of these players not actually being good enough to merit a starting place based on the manager's judgment?
  22. If a player's not performing well enough in training and/or game time then he shouldn't be playing, whether we gave him a two year deal in the summer or not.
  23. Muirhead is a striker. He is a different type of striker to Oakley but the idea that we can just pigeonhole our players into these unique little roles in the team is nonsense. Muirhead chipped in fine earlier the season and is not doing so currently; I fail to see what some Ally Roy ringer would have automatically contributed instead.
  24. Mullen pulled off a good save in either half. All the other times we tried to pass through Dundee United's press, O'Connor misplaced a fairly basic pass or French shelled the ball to nobody. Dundee United weren't sitting back while we played long ball - to play passing football against that side you need to take care of the ball better. We couldn't use Mullen to pass the ball through either because of injury and the two holding midfielders (who were fine otherwise) don't have the dynamism to avoid being tracked easily either. There were no easy passes on. The real problem is that whej you either choose or are forced to feed off scraps, you need to actually challenge the first and second balls effectively. We've stopped doing that and it's not just due to the absence of Oakley. Quitongo and Muirhead were lucky if they won 20-80;of their contests but others like Blues and Crawford have been 40-60 in the past two games as well. That's the difference between winning possession and pressure in the opposition half and an 'aimless punt that doesn't work', right there. We were better than Saturday and even the extra couple of days before the cup game (and before the next league match too) will hopefully be beneficial.
  25. We didn't have a rhythm before that either and could be playing now and still wouldn't have scored. Perhaps if French spent less of the first half complaining to the referee and more time dealing with basic defensive tasks and passing the ball to a team mate, we might have had a different result. The fixation with refereeing decisions was a distraction from the actual issues.
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