It was especially telling against Celtic that there are 2 fundamental problems with our game this season.

1) - Being able to cross the ball effectively beyond the first defender.

2) - Jumping! - our players seem to be the worst ever at jumping. Some just dont bother and we seldom win headers.

Putting the 2 together, heres a question for the stattos amongst us, how many goals in the last couple of seasons have we scored from headers?

Hey mun, you should alter the title of this thread to ' Why we are not winning games'

We dont score goals because we have nobody consistantly scoring, we have never replaced Dargo, and we are losing stupid goals because we have never replace Dods.

The management knew what they had to get, but didnt.

I am hoping, really hoping that Barro' and Rooney start on saturday, and that the defence dont **** up again.

Have faith.

The reason we lose games is because we concede goals. If we didn't do that, we'd never lose a game!!!

If you concede more than you score then you lose,pretty basic really

Headed goals this season:

Hastings v Morton

Black v Killie

Headed goals last season (from memory):

Tokely v Motherwell - ???

Wyness v Aberdeen

Proctor v Celtic

McAllister v Gretna

Tokely v Gretna

My concern is the the total "real" goals we have scored in open play?

You know the ones, a few passes and then someone sticks it in the net, preferrable a striker, but I'm not too fussed about that bit.

Lack of experience up front. Up until this season, none of our regular strikers had played SPL football, apart from Barrowman(2 goaless appearences hardly counts). For those strikers we should've signed an experienced forward to play with them.

We have no consistent winger that has real speed nor gurantees a good cross.

Lack of physical strength and height in defence. Duff is tallest centre half at 6'2 but is quite finely built. We constantly loose goals to big strikers...hence Nish and Billy Mehmet. We also got picked apart by Dundee Utd at set pieces a few weeks ago.

We also have this tendency to lack concentration at the start of a half...and sometimes at the end, game at the weekend and the St Mirren and Hibs game are perfect examples.

Also some of our key players have been inconsistent this season, Cowie, Imrie, Barrowman, Fraser, Hastings....the only really consistent player has been Blacky evidently.

Or, to summarise:

we are not good enough.

Or, to summarise:

we are not good enough.

Let's not be too pessimistic.

We've got a brand new and young strike force that's bound to need time to blend/gain experience.

The defence has been hit by injuries resulting in constant changes to the centre-back line up.

Despite this we'ev managed to win a few games and all the losses have been by a single goal - so it only needs a small change in fortune to get a good run going.

Having said that, it's obviously going to be a tough and close season till the end.

PS I hate to be the spelling police but can somebody please change the heading to "losing" before I go mad. DONE (Alex M)

Edited October 24, 200817 yr by Alex MacLeod

Sorry for the spelling! Never really been my strong point after a couple of drinks!!

I'm not trying to be pessismistic but simply think its unusual for a team (were we not the top scorers outwith the old firm last year?) to score so few headed goals.

The last player i can remember scoring regular headed goals was Paul Ritchie.

You dont have to be a huge player to get on the end of a decent cross. Which leads me to deduce that it must be our crossing that is woeful.

We fail to capitalise on free kicks and corners, as the cross inevitably hits the first defender.

If someone is game, then they should count the amount of wasted crosses, free kicks and corners.

I rest my case.

I watch a lot of Premiership games as well as German, Spanish and Dutch and its not headed goals that win the majority of those games.............its the opportune shot from thirty yards.

I watch a lot of Premiership games as well as German, Spanish and Dutch and its not headed goals that win the majority of those games.............its the opportune shot from thirty yards.

Really? Those stats would make interesting reading. Do you have them to hand?

I agree that the biggest problem this season is the lack of a single experienced forward player.

I agree, quite often we don't seem to take the best option in the final third.

Hopefully as the guys get experience, results will improve.

Do we have the luxury of waiting for the current crop of forwards to gain experience ? I'm not so sure.

Well we do need to start putting them away and quick. Thats for sure. Im pretty sure young forwards wont cut it in the PL but then again we havnt got a lot else since Niculae et al parted ways with us.