Leaderboard

Actually saw him at the weekend. Stayed at home and watched Bonnyrigg v Elgin. He had a great first half, won 2 pens, led the line well and looked very pacy and nimble. That's against one of the worst defences in Lge 2 though.

20+ goals already for him up to now this season. Have seen him a couple of times, reminds me of Ian Stewart.

We were dreadful for long periods. Absolutely nothing going on in the final third of the pitch. Too often we tried to force balls wide towards Shaw and Doran instead of trying to patiently work the ball forward. When we did this in the second half it coincided with our best spell of the game. Then Carson's error let Arbroath back in and we resorted back to route one with Dodds also taking off Oakley (makes sense) and we were second best thereafter. Arbroath could easily have won it. Delaney looked good, Shaw had a good game and Mckay worked his socks off as usual. Beyond that though...

If we had all of the squad fit, I wonder how many of Saturday's starting line up would have been starting - and in the position they played? Not very many, that's for sure. Missing the central pairing of Deas and Devine together with Allardice is a big loss defensively, whilst the loss of the creativity of Dan MacKay, MacGregor and Samuels limits our attacking options. In addition we are without the often under appreciated Shane Sutherland whose importance to the team is reflected by the fact that he was the players' player of the season last year. In those circumstances, I thought we played pretty well on Saturday. Mackay was rarely troubled in goal, we played some good passing football and created some decent chances. Shaw, in particular, had an excellent game. No doubt with the return of some of the injured players we will create more chances, but the question is, will we take them? Billy Mckay remains our main striker, he works his socks off and has scored 5 goals in all competitions this year, but his conversion rate is just 14% . Oakley has played in 17 games and scored just 2 goals with no assists. He's only had 7 shots in those 17 games. Doran is 7th on our all time scoring list but in 16 games he has only scored 1 goal with 1 assist. Boyd isn't shy at having a pop at goal but just 1 goal from 20 shots is a poor return. Of the players out, only Samuels looks as though he might contribute a reasonable number of goals in a season and therefore it seems to me that we are over reliant on Mckay to get the goals. There is a lot of pressure on him and he gets a lot of attention from defenders, so we really do need others to step up and get their shooting boots on. We also need to be sharper in our attacks and have a bit more movement in the box to help Mckay find a bit more space. Given our injuries, we have performed pretty well defensively and in midfield. What we need now is to be more clinical in creating and taking chances up front.

I thought we were much better today than last week and created plenty chances, and should have taken several of them, with at least four decent saves from the Arbroath ‘keeper and several cases in the first half when players passed rather than taking good shooting opportunities. We had 9 attempts on target out of 14 in total and on a different day would (and should) have won that comfortably. When we went in front it was in a spell when we were totally dominant, but an error by Carson gifted Arbroath the equaliser and thereafter they pressed us back a bit. I don’t know if we have a problem off the park (hopefully not and it is just that Ridgers’ form has dropped a bit) but I thought we had several key players who were low on confidence in the first half which meant they did not take shots on, with Mckay and Doran standing out for me in that regard. With the ball skidding off the pitch the way it was, it was a game calling out for shots on goal. Mckay had two goal bound headers saved well, Duffy had one saved and I’ve no idea how the ‘goalie kept another goal bound effort out. With 8 players out and only 2 points out of the last 12, we are only 3 points off the top, so if we can get players back and / or start taking our chances, we can still be right in contention. Everyone else is slipping up too, which is helping us. MacKay had no chance with the goal or the one that hit the post, and there was less route 1 from him. Other than Carson’s mistake, the defence was pretty secure, with Duffy starting a few forward moves whilst Delaney continues to catch the eye. Welsh was more like his old self, whilst I didn’t realise Scott Allan was on the park until he was hooked. Harper was looking to get shots away, but not his best game this season. Shaw had probably his best game for us and followed in well for the goal. Doran sometimes did take players on but seemed a bit shot shy. Mckay worked hard and could have had a hat trick but seemed reluctant to shoot in the first half. Oakley did what Oakley does but strayed offside too often. To sum up, better but still not good enough, but we are in touch and should be capable of climbing the league. Shooting practice is needed before next Saturday’s game.