Topish v Bottomish

 

Hamilton Accies are the visitors to the Caledonian Stadium on Tuesday night at 7:45pm. This game was called off in the aftermath of the passing of Queen Elizabeth on 8th September. We had just come off the back of a dismal three game loss before beating Raith Rovers at Starks Park. That has now turned into a five game winning run of Championship games which has put us top equal on points with Partick Thistle, one of the teams we beat during that run. 

MATCH/TICKET INFO

 

Venue

Pld

Won

Drn

Lst

For

Agst

+ / -

Home	15	5	4	6	25	19	+6
Away	11	6	2	3	17	13	+4
Neutral	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Total	26	11	6	9	42	32	+10

It seems that the away side have the edge in fixtures between these sides over the years, but there;s not a lot in it. Recent games show that Accies have the edge although we pumped them 4-0 in the last meeting last season as we warmed up for the play-offs and Accies wound down their season.

Last 10 Competitive Meetings

4 - 0 (H)

1 - 1 (A)

1 - 2 (H)

1 - 2 (A)

2 - 1 (H)

0 - 3 (A)

1 - 1 (H)

1 - 1 (A)

1 - 0 (A)

0 - 1 (H)

 

Pos Team Pld W D L F A Pts   1. Partick Thistle 10 6 2 2 23 13 20 2. Inverness CT 10 6 2 2 14 9 20 3. Ayr United 10 5 2 3 20 13 17 4. Dundee 11 5 2 4 19 16 17 5. Morton 11 5 2 4 15 13 17 6. Queens Park 11 5 2 4 15 19 17 7. Raith Rovers 10 4 0 6 11 12 12 8. Cove Rangers 11 3 2 6 14 18 11 9. Arbroath 10 1 4 5 7 14 7 10. Hamilton Ac. 10 1 4 5 8 19 7

Midweek Fixtures (19:45)

TUESDAY 18TH OCTOBER

Inverness CT v Hamilton    

WEDNESDAY 19TH OCTOBER

 Arbroath v Rovers

Last Time Out

After some inept performances, Inverness came away from Stark's Park with all three points. A Scott Allardice penalty and a goal in time added on from Billy Mckay secured the win against a punchless Raith Rovers. Many were doubting if we had the bottle for the battle. Well, we won this fight, but the war will continue and some optimism and confidence will return after this game played without seven injured players. Credit where it's due for this mini turnaround. Here's where we are now. We have since beaten Dundee, Ayr, Partick and Cove for five wins out of five, four of them coming away from home.

Hamilton over that same period have only picked up one point, a draw at Cove. Of the four defeats, the abyss was a 5-0 thrashing by Morton. However their last game was a narrow 1-2 defeat by League leaders Partick Thistle. The stats will show that Accies created plenty of opportunities against Partick. Queens Park and Dundee were the other winners over Accies. The second Dundee goal came in the 95th minute, so a tough run for John Rankin's side which puts them in bottom place, level on points with the Smokies.

Latest Team News

Sutherland, Walsh, Samuels, Welsh and Devine were all missing at Cove. Allardice and MacGregor may well be added to that list now after the bruising affair at Balmoral. We only had six subs last time, story of our season so far.

 

Eck's Accies catch-up, unchanged since postponed game

With ex ICT player John Rankin taking over from outgoing manager Stuart Taylor in the summer break he has taken in some new faces at Hamilton. Rankin spent a season as assistant manager at New Douglas Park and prior managerial experience at Hearts U17 & U18 teams.

Out are.

Joe Hilton goalkeeper saw his loan from Blackburn U21 ended after 16 Championship starts last season.

Backs Mihai Popescu end of loan, Adam McGowan currently on loan to Tranent JFC and Kieran Macdonald away on a free to FC Edinburgh.

Of the midfield players departed are Ronan Hughes off to East Kilbride and Josh Mullin recalled to Livingston after loan expired.

David Moyo, centre forward has been transferred to Barrow AFC. Winger Kai Kennedy the perpetual loan player from Rangers FC is now out on loan at Falkirk FC so will not appear against us in the Championship this season.

Rankins new recruits.

Michael Doyle a right back arrives from Queens Park FC, no fee involved.

Three players added to the midfield are Lucas De Bolle on loan from Newcastle FC youth to U 21 level. Another Newcastle youngster is Reagan Thomson in on a free transfer and Jonny Ngandu has signed from the Coventry U21 squad.

On the left-wing Dario Zanatta previously of the Hearts youth system signed via Raith Rovers FC.

On loan from Fulham FC is centre forward Jean-Pierre Tiehi. Promoted from Hamilton U18s is Ryan One as an attacking centre forward.

Accies had four missing last week: De Bolle, Redfern, Spence, Thomson

It proves that we have a poor squad, Outwith our top 13 or 14  the players I'll have to say are very ordinary !  Boyd was best by far but was let down by the poor midfield support for him. 

10 hours ago, Jaggernaut said:

That was one of the worst performances from us for quite some time, there were no positives to take from this game, apart from it's over. Yes, we had injured players missing, but we showed nothing apart from our default setting of 'hoofball' rearing it's head for most of the game. Hamilton were by far the better team, they passed the ball better and created the better chances. We seem to be back to our way of beating the better teams and dropping points against teams in the bottom half of the table.

Dodds, is no tactician. He wasn't very animated on the touchline, so I take it that he was quite happy playing hoofball! He really needed to start with the best eleven on the park, get a hold of the game, and then defend it. What was Billy Mckay doing on the bench? Was Welsh fit enough? If not, why was he on the bench when the game was crying out for a player to take a hold of the midfield.

More injuries today, is there a problem with our training methods or do we just sign injury prone players that no-one else wants? We need to now work out a plan for Saturday, to not get beaten again, we had the chance to go top today, and blew it big time.

The game strategy was against Hamilton (like Morton), was ‘Hack and Hope’.

If this is the most competitive league in Scotland no wonder support is dwindling! 

Terrible night and it seems to be the same inconsistencies every season.

Plainly obvious that the fringe players are pretty average , but that said, they should at least be giving the bottom club a game.

We can count ourselves lucky it was only 1 .

IMO only Boyd and Delaney performed at an acceptable level, the rest WTF.

A great chance to go clear top and we froze.Deleaney,Boyd and Ridgers get pass marks,the rest were woeful.From the first few minutes it was obvious the tactic was to boot the ball forward and chase it.It never works for us and even having a taller player than normal upfront as a target man it made no difference.Why we keep trying this is beyond me.The midfield were all posted as missing for the entire game and as for their goal,it was embarrassing from a defensive point of view.The hungrier team won and although no great shakes,they were better than us.This is not a top flight team and shows that outwith our first 11 we are just left with at best average players.I thought they would be so keen to show what they can do.

You can always tell when ICT have had a stinker, Billy Dodds post match video takes ages to be aired, or at all, when we've been beaten, while it's out after a few hours when we win. That's the third game I've watched this season when the teams we were supposed to be better than, Morton, Brechin and Hamilton, have had a far better passing game than ours. None of them just kept booting the ball up the park, hoping that maybe something might happen, no, they try and play football. I've heard the excuses of injured players not being available, but surely it's a basic need for any player that plays for a professional team to be able to pass the ball to a team-mate, something we seem to be devoid of.

Dodds said before the season started that he was happy with the squad he had, and that there were battles for places in the first eleven all over the park, but, as I have said before, we have a very good first eleven, and after that we are very ordinary.

I feel that this was one of our best chances of promotion, as we are on par with most of the teams around us, but, I fear we will lose out again. If we win against our rivals for the title and get beaten at home by the bottom team, who were more game savy, and were the better team, it is not title winning credentials. Good teams find ways to win, or at least not to get beaten.

Same old, same old.  Starts at the top.

On 10/17/2022 at 3:32 PM, Robert said:

Thanks as always Tm4tj, the stats are fascinating as always and highlight why we must not be complacent about tomorrow evening’s game.

I’m looking forward to it as I always enjoy evening games under the floodlights. 

Well, the fans weren’t complacent but perhaps the Management and squad were.

Equally I can’t say I enjoyed last night’s game under floodlights.

Reflecting on the game and the comments, I agree that Ridgers, Delaney and Boyd are those who get pass marks. Carson was the one trying to galvanise the team late on so deserves some credit too.

I’ve been to every home game, league and cup, and in eight games we’ve beaten Albion Rovers, Cove and Partick. We’ve beaten Cove and Brechin on penalties after drawing in normal time. We’ve drawn with Queens Park. We’ve lost to Morton and Hamilton.

I’d only consider the first half against Cove and the performance against Partick as being good performances.

We seem to be doing best away from home so we need find a way of getting the same results at home, and if that means grinding out results at home, so be it.

Hoofball, as described above, does not work for us. How are guys like Boyd and Doran going to win headers? We have decent players and need to play to their strengths.

The injury list is bad but not an excuse and it does concern me that we are picking so many injuries up.

I don’t know who will be fit for Saturday but if we don’t have Allardice or Welsh fit enough to be back, we need to move Carson in to midfield to beef things up.

We are still in a good position in the league, but need to build on it and not slip back further. 

Edited October 19, 20223 yr by Robert

Different game?

 

4 hours ago, tm4tj said:

Different game?

 

The guys a clown. "we weren't quite at it"? They were as far off it as they could possibly be it's worrying how him and dodds stand at the sidelines watching, motionless whilst rankin and his coaches were shouting constantly at their side and they were playing the better football. 

Wasn’t able to make this but listening to Barry Wilson it sounds an impossible job for them at the moment. They didn’t even know who was going to be able to take the pitch for KO. This is an injury crisis, no doubt. I think if the club could have afforded it they would have bought in some more seasoned pros knowing that two were definitely out till new year, and one, Welsh, was almost definitely going to be injured at some stage. 
we just need to stay in the mix and get folks back from the treatment table. 
The home atmosphere definitely needs addressed but I’m blowed if I can work out how to get folks vocal and supportive. 

This makes it sound better than it was!

https://ictfc.com/match-report-ictfc-0-1-hamilton-accies-18-10-2022

13 minutes ago, Robert said:

This makes it sound better than it was!

https://ictfc.com/match-report-ictfc-0-1-hamilton-accies-18-10-2022

They should be in politics, it's a good piece of spin.

Hoofball has been a big feature of ICT for years. It rarely works and can't understand why that doesn't get through to players and management.

Get the point about injuries but we need to get a bit more variety into our game.

.....and sort out our pretty awful home form.

There are really no stand out teams so it's just about grinding out results and staying at or near the top.

4 hours ago, DWH said:

Hoofball has been a big feature of ICT for years. It rarely works and can't understand why that doesn't get through to players and management.

Get the point about injuries but we need to get a bit more variety into our game.

.....and sort out our pretty awful home form.

There are really no stand out teams so it's just about grinding out results and staying at or near the top.

We have always played better when we keep it on the deck. Our pitch was designed with the highest point in the middle and sloping off to the edges, partly (or mainly I suspect) due to drainage but it also means that a passing game using the width seems to work best on that pitch. Route one stuff has its place, even at ICT but it should not be the default tactic, especially when you dont exactly have tall attackers! 

As I have said before, the injury situation is one of our own making as we sign way too many injured/injury prone players.  Of course there are players with injuries who don't fall into that category, but it's a strategy which will always leave us vulnerable, so we can't act all surprised and 'poor us' when it bites us on the ass.

What worries me is the comment by Barry Wilson that we have been playing players who are not fit.  Setting aside the welfare aspect of such a thing, and the idiocy of admitting it publicly, it can (again) be no surprise that these guys then get injured so quickly again.

Finally.  Is it just me, or have we been picking up more strain related injuries since we employed a dedicated sports scientist?

5 minutes ago, STFU said:

As I have said before, the injury situation is one of our own making as we sign way too many injured/injury prone players.  Of course there are players with injuries who don't fall into that category, but it's a strategy which will always leave us vulnerable, so we can't act all surprised and 'poor us' when it bites us on the ass.

What worries me is the comment by Barry Wilson that we have been playing players who are not fit.  Setting aside the welfare aspect of such a thing, and the idiocy of admitting it publicly, it can (again) be no surprise that these guys then get injured so quickly again.

Finally.  Is it just me, or have we been picking up more strain related injuries since we employed a dedicated sports scientist?

Totally agree with all that 👏

3 hours ago, STFU said:

What worries me is the comment by Barry Wilson that we have been playing players who are not fit.  Setting aside the welfare aspect of such a thing, and the idiocy of admitting it publicly, it can (again) be no surprise that these guys then get injured so quickly again.

It is common knowledge that Devine played with a hernia problem.

Ram was struggling from very early in Tuesday’s game, so a sign he may not have been fully fit.

Duffy taking a knock in the warm up indicates he probably had an issue that was known about. Did he come back too early from injury?

Was Mckay on the bench as he’s not fully fit?

Welsh was on the bench but was clearly not fit enough to play given it was a game crying out for a player like him.

Did we bring MacGregor back too quickly, increasing the chance of him picking up another injury?

Likewise Samuels earlier in the season? He got subbed in consecutive games, I think, due to picking up injuries and we’ve not seen him since.

All questions but perhaps an indication that we are being too hasty?