hislopsoffsideagain

Opportunity for me to try out a new toy...

http://lineupbuilder.com/?sk=67jy8

That's assuming that Devine is available (he wasn't even a sub on Tuesday), any potential new signing (Kink?) won't be fit to start, and that none of our casualties (Brill, Doran, Vincent, Foran) are back.  Warren and Watkins are suspended.

We're down to the bare bones, aren't we?

Edit: damn, couldn't get the graphic embedded in the post so just had to leave the link

Sounds to me like a few of the players are running on empty.  It's not a surprise, given that we've used fewer players than any other Premiership team this season.  That's four games in a row in which our second half performance has been poor, and I bet it's because they're tired.  Trouble is, we really are short of options right now, and with Warren and Watkins suspended for Saturday we're going to be even shorter.  Doesn't sound like Doran and Foran are coming back any time soon, and the situation with Devine and Vincent is unclear.  But, barring Tremarco, I wouldn't have trusted any of the subs on our bench last night.

If there is a silver lining, it also sounds like United are struggling at the moment too. And we're the ones who are 7 points ahead in the table.

After Saturday, the fixtures stop coming as thick and fast for a bit - Raith on the 7th in the cup, then only one game in the next four weeks after that.  That should give the guys a bit of rest.  And it's a rest they've earned.

 

...

Agree with much of this, but can I check one thing? When you said the ref was inconsistent, you meant clueless and gutless, right?

 

Yup, pretty much!

Like a lot of folk I was properly fizzing with frustration at full-time - at our players for blowing the lead three times, at their players for kicking us (and, in Magennis' case, shoving) and at the referee for a performance best described as 'inconsistent'.

On reflection, though, it was just one of those days.  We dominated for long spells.  We played some decent stuff.  And of the three goals that we conceded, two were really very unlucky - Eccleston gets a hugely fortunate break of the ball for the first, and the second was a great free kick that goes in via the post and Esson.  The third equalizer was the most hard to stomach.  We're far more vulnerable at set pieces than we used to be, and I think it's crazy that we keep three players up when defending corners.  It just means there's more space in the box, which is one of the reasons why Obadeyi got a clear shot away.

A lot of criticism for Esson from the folk who sit around me, but I thought it was harsh.  He was unlucky for the second, and he'd have been struggling to fight through a scrum of players in the six yard box to get to the cross for the third.

As stated elsewhere, Christie was absolutely magnificent today.  He floated in between their defence in midfield and caused havoc.  On a lot of occasions, I thought he was let down by less talented teammates who weren't on the same wavelength!

Call me a pessimist, but I've never really believed that a second place finish was going to happen.  However, today is the first day I've ever really thought that third place was on the cards, thanks to Dundee United's result.  So let's look back on it as a point gained.

We might not get on the TV, but if we get to the semis then I think that's where the big bucks are.  Doesn't all the cash from the two games get shared between the four semi finalists?

Make no mistake, this cup run is important for the bank balance.  After all, we were barely in the black last season despite reaching the League Cup final.

County were set up to stop us playing, and that, combined with the awful weather and a rotten pitch, made life difficult for us.  Given that we had little choice but to play long ball, I'm not sure we had a better option up front than Watkins, though playing Williams up with him was a strange move.  Tansey and Ross were passengers and both should have been hooked much earlier.

Watkins' goal was tremendous, about the only piece of quality from us in the first half.  We did have our chances to put it to bed after the break though.  From what I could see, the equalizer was a result of a ****-up from Esson, who should have had an easy take of a cross; he seemed to drop it and the ball hit Warren and went in.  Esson's kicking was atrocious today, and he wasn't even trying to pass it out of defence like Brill usually does.

I thought the back four generally did fine today, as did Draper and Shinnie in front of them, but in hindsight we really needed either Tansey or Ross in a more central role with Williams wide; our full-backs were very exposed, especially in the second half.

I'd have taken a point before kickoff  Frankly, it's a miracle that a football match came close to breaking out, given the conditions.

Given that we were going to lose Mckay for nowt in the summer anyway, £150,000 seems about fair - it's the equivalent of finishing one position lower in the league than we are now.  We only got £50,000 for Don Cowie in a similar situation 5 years ago.  

The chairman's comments seem to imply that we'll be bringing in a replacement, possibly with some of the money.

Let's face it, Wigan are a much bigger club than us; given that it isn't a derisory sum, it'd be unfair to deny him this opportunity to prove himself at Championship level.

There's no question he's a huge loss though.  Anyone who thinks he was 'over-rated' or 'not that good' is deluding themselves.  Like all but the most elite strikers, he had lean spells in front of goal, but his movement off the ball was always terrific and his link-up play is excellent.  His poorest spells for us - his first season, and the second half of last season - came because we weren't getting the ball to him at all.  I'd claim that Mckay is currently the best striker in Scottish football not employed by Celtic (maybe with the exception of Adam Rooney).

Is he good enough for the English Championship?  The jury's out - defenders will be quicker and stronger than in Scotland.  But he deserves to have a crack at it.  Good luck to him.

There's a difference between shouting "Oh, f***" when we concede a goal, and screaming "Player X, you're a f****** c***!"

The former is forgiveable (I hope so, because I've done it from time to time); the latter is not acceptable at a football match, in the street, or whatever.  People like that should be thrown out, not tolerated.

Last nights game reminded me of a comment Yogi made earlier in the season, that at some point we will play a team that will get absolutely battered by us(may have been post Dundee United at home when we played them off the park, only to win 1 nil). Last night should have been that game, St Johnstone had a few corners right at the start but otherwise were never in the game. Very impressive performance from us and so comfortable.

 

One negative for me which has nothing to do with the team. There was a heckler in the row behind me in section D who just could not be pleased no matter what we were doing, this man the entire game was moaning(loudly and not to himself) about not going forward with the ball and instead finding a pass along the line or in the middle. I can understand this impatience if we have had no attempts at goal after 60 minutes(just like our opponents last night) and/or are losing but i looked at my phone to see the BBC stats at half time as i thought they would probably be one sided. The stats were telling me the possession was 60/40, shots were 11 to 0, SOT were 9 to 0 and the score was 2 goals to zero. I am astounded that even at 2 goals up, put ourselves in a position where we have no need to bust a gut and expose ourselves when you don't particularly need to and still creating chance after chance, some people are still unsatisfied? He wasn't alone either. I don't expect people to ever like Yogi or his play but some people need to seriously get a grip, if he wasn't twice my size i might have told him. Having watched this new style of football that we're playing i remember how i felt last season, i remember feeling the same way as him but we have come on so far from then, i don't feel like having my head in my hands anymore(although Brill came close once) every time we make a pass along the back and i reckon every one of our players are better players from playing this way. If he had been watching properly, he would see that long balls and clearances weren't working...because they literally gave the ball straight back to us on a few of the small number of occasions they even had it.

 

So an awesome game for me and my girlfriend, i am sure most people thought it was but a shame there are still people out there unsatisfied with such a comfortable win. 

If you're talking about Section D in the main stand, there are a couple of guys there who have been turning up for years to do nothing but shout abuse at both our players and the opposition, and occasionally other fans that ask them to be quiet.  They're usually absolutely plastered.  I can hear them from Section C, and it's often made me wonder what someone has to do to get ejected from the ground.

Well, that was rather easy.  After an early barrage of high balls into the box from St. Johnstone, we took control and never relinquished it.  Our passing in the first half was crisp and incisive, and I've never seen so many back heels at a game here!  We understandably took our foot off the gas after the break - and even then we should have scored a few more.

Yogi now has a selection headache - the type every manager wants, mind.  He has Ryan Christie and James Vincent on the bench, plus Tansey and Raven to come back from suspension, but the starting XI last night played really well.  In Tansey's absence, Danny Williams took the bull by the horns and was my man of the match; whilst he doesn't offer a Hollywood Pass like Tansey does, his movement with the ball made us play at a higher tempo that St. Johnstone couldn't live with.  Nick Ross has been deservedly getting plaudits too, whilst Tremarco, not a favourite of mine normally, had a great game.  His first touch remains iffy, but you could see his confidence shoot up after he set up Watkins' goal and in the second half he spent more time in their half than ours.

This was a superb team performance, albeit against a St. Johnstone side missing some important players.  Hopefully it impressed some of the folk who took up the Pay What You Can offer - which came on a night where, to be honest, ICT were so good that it would have justified the full admission fee.  

According to ex-Hibs player David Farrell, the idea that an artificial pitch runs "straight and true" is a myth.  

(taken from the article I linked to above)

“From a player’s point of view, grass is always preferable”, ex-pro David Farrell told me.  “At first team level it hinders passing football due to the speed of the game. The unnaturally high bounce means that many passes are difficult to control, meaning play continually breaks down. Also the speed of the pitch means many passes being misplaced even if they are only a fraction out.

“Ultimately a form of "percentage" football is played by the home team who are more used to the bounce and feel. Long balls into channels clipped to force teams into playing in their own half as they don’t want to risk losing possession in their own half.”

I seem to recall Jackie McNamara having similar objections to the pitch at Rugby Park earlier this season, after Dundee United lost there.

I wrote this piece earlier in the season for The Terrace on the subject.

There are certainly pros and cons.

http://terracepodcast.net/scottish-premiership/2014/10/8/the-plastic-pitch-fallacy

These things happen in football sometimes.

Partick won't play better than that all season - and they produced that performance on a day where every one of our players, to a man, was honking.

It might have been very different had Watkins not squandered that early chance.

Tactically I thought we were poor - Partick picked a team with plenty of energy in midfield, which allowed them to press high and stop our midfield from having any time on the ball.  They also used their full backs as a very effective out ball, knowing that our diamond midfield would be very narrow.  Elliott (who looked well offside in the build up to the opener) and Higginbotham had a lot of joy getting in behind us when Shinnie and Raven were caught up the pitch.  Really we should have gone back to 4-2-3-1 early on.  That said, all the goals we lost were shocking from a defensive point of view.  Brill should have come for the first, and we were all over the shop for the second and third.

The fourth was partly down to our ploy of leaving three men up when we're defending corners.  It's suicide.  We can't afford to leave anyone on the posts, nor do we have enough men back to deny opponents clear space to attack the ball.  Balatoni was able to get a run and jump without any impediment whatsoever.

I'm not sure what the point of bringing on Doran and Christie for the last 25mins was.  Talk about an exercise in futility.  They should have been on as soon as it went to 0-3, if not at half-time.

Onwards, then.  Hopefully this was a blip rather than our bubble being burst.

Looking back, Motherwell's goal was their only clearcut chance of the whole game - and that came from a defensive shambles on our part.  That in itself tells you how much we dominated.

We looked superior from the get-go but we seemed to be playing in second or third gear till the opening goal.  Mckay's finish was that of a striker who has his mojo back.  Christie's through ball was beautiful.  For Mckay's second half miss, I assume he had a pretty tight angle?  If anything, Watkins hitting the bar from six yards out was worse!

I always felt a little nervous at 1-1 but Watkins' goal knocked the stuffing out of Motherwell and it could have been five or six by the end.

Not the best performance from us this season, but it was still pretty good and more than enough to beat today's opponents, who look like real relegation candidates.  That's eleven game unbeaten at home, going back to April 1st.  That's a heck of a record!

A special shout out to Graeme Shinnie, who I thought was sensational today, both in defence and attack.  Clearly he let all the guff with his agent go right over his head.

The scoreline flattered Dundee United.  Apart from a brief opening salvo from them, which led to Erskine hitting the post, they looked disjointed and created very little.  That was mostly down to our midfield.  Draper's muscle and Vincent's tremendous industry meant we had control of the middle of the pitch all day long, and that meant that Tansey could spray passes to his heart's content.  The three of them were absolutely brilliant.

Huge credit to the boss today, who tinkered with the tactics.  Watkins played so far forward that he was effectively alongside Mckay.  The midfield was so narrow that often it looked like a diamond, with Draper at the back and Vincent at the front - and it worked because Hughes knew United's full-backs would be rubbish going forward.  It was amusing how we kept goading them to pass to Sean Dillon, safe in the knowledge that he wouldn't threaten us.  In contrast, Raven and Shinnie were great going forward, particularly the latter.

Given that Meekings hit the post, and that Mckay, Watkins and Vincent all wasted one on ones, we should have thumped them. A great effort.

On the one hand, Kingsmills' point about the amount of cash that should have come from the cup semi and final is valid.

On the other hand, CaleyD tends to have insider knowledge about this sort of thing.

We only finished one place lower in the league than the previous season, which means a much smaller difference in prize money than previous.  Our attendances were lower, but so much lower as to cost us that much money? 

CaleyD, could you elaborate on how the income from the cup semis and final was divided?  It would be interesting to know how much of it was siphoned off by the SPFL and by Hibs and Celtic.

My interest is purely selfish, as I feel I could write a good blog about the effects the lack of sponsorship etc are having on clubs...if I can prove that this is so.

 

Is there a reason why our annual report doesn't break down costs and sources of income, so we don't know how much is coming in from sponsorship/gate receipts, or how much is going out in wages?  It's not nearly as detailed as reports from other clubs have been (Celtic's from a few weeks ago was about 70 pages long)

 

As a small company we aren't required to disclose very much information at all, whereas a stock market listed plc has a whole raft of additional requirements in their accounts.  There's actually nothing to stop ICT including the kind of additional info you suggest if the directors wanted to, but why would they? They will say it is commercially sensitive, for example there's nothing to be gained from publicising to our rivals what we spend on player wages. 

 

All that matters is that these figures are available to the relevant people at the club!

 

Thanks for the explanation. Makes sense.

The main reason for my interest is what CaleyD has alluded to already - that our cup run was worth very little cash to us because of the lack of sponsors and the amount of money paid to Hibs and Celtic for use of their stadia.  

If a well-run club which made a cup final can barely break even, what does that mean for the other clubs?  We already know that Motherwell are cutting costs like crazy...

I read the report last night, and was surprised that our profit was so low given the cup run - some of the posts above give a very good explanation of why.

Is there a reason why our annual report doesn't break down costs and sources of income, so we don't know how much is coming in from sponsorship/gate receipts, or how much is going out in wages?  It's not nearly as detailed as reports from other clubs have been (Celtic's from a few weeks ago was about 70 pages long)

Like Kilmarnock before them, St. Johnstone came up with a plan to frustrate us.  I think people who are criticizing the first half performance need to remember that.  We had all the play and Graham's goal was their first shot on target.

We were in control and cruising till that point, and I think the shock of conceding a soft goal, coupled with some weary legs after three games in eight days, was why we were hanging on at the end.

I've got to say that I was generally happy with our build-up play.  Christie, Doran and Watkins were interchanging very effectively and finding lots of space between defence and midfield.  The criticism of Mckay is completely unwarranted - there were several occasions where he made superb runs but the man on the ball made a mess of the final pass (or, on a couple of occasions, didn't even notice him).

Three points, two terrific goals and sunshine...I'll take that any day.

The game was hard work for long periods, but Killie were well organized and sat in a lot of the time, much like Dundee did.  It was so hard to carve them open, but in the second half they ran out of legs and there was much more space to operate in.  Doran's goal was beautifully worked, with a terrific assist from Williams, who I thought was outstanding today.  As for that Tansey strike...RiG has a word for those.  I daresay he'll be using it later.

Hard to pick out a poor performance today.  Aside from Williams, I was hugely impressed by the back four.  Draper looked very comfortable in that role, which is reassuring.  And some of Tansey's passing today was just gorgeous.

The possession football can be so frustrating, but most of our opponents will be more adventurous than that.  Not everyone is going to come up here and stick ten men behind the ball like Kilmarnock often did.  Well, they might if we're still top of the league...:-)

After the first two minutes, where we passed the ball around at lightning speed, I turned to my friend and said "If we can keep this tempo up then we'll do well."

We didn't.  Not even close.  Not a minute went past in the main stand without the phrase "too slow" being used by somebody.  For all our possession, we managed to create one glaring chance in open play all night, for Graeme Shinnie.  That's woeful for a home team playing against anyone.

At the back, Warren and Meekings look a whole lot more comfortable than they did in this system last season, and until the late flurry of Dundee chances we didn't look like conceding.  But often we got so many people behind the ball defensively that Mckay was left terribly isolated even when holding the ball up.

If we're going to score goals in this system, we have to either be capable of 'pieces of magic' in the final third or we have to be able to simply tire out the opposition and pick them off in the later stages.  Unfortunately, Scottish Premiership players are not capable of 'pieces of magic' unless they have time and space, which ours don't have.  Worryingly, I thought Dundee looked fitted and stronger in the last 15 minutes, which means we weren't tiring them out.  Quite the opposite in fact.

We even managed to screw up a 4 on 3 break late on.  If we can't manage to open up defences in these situations, what hope does Yogi have of us doing so against two banks of four?!

Some great performances tonight, mind - Shinnie and Draper in particular stood out for me.  Drapes must have won about 10 tackles, and the moment in the second half when a Dundee player tried to obstruct him and got run over was the highlight of the game for me!

Argh.  Not Shinnie in midfield, for the love of god.

At left back, he is an excellent defender and is able to get into dangerous areas, where he can threaten with a dangerous final ball.  In midfield, his energy allows to him to burst forward quickly...into exactly the same tiny area in the middle of the pitch where all our forwards are running into.

Meanwhile, if Shinnie plays in midfield, we end up with Tremarco, a hatchet man who is too slow to track wingers, too poor in the air to defend against big wide players and whose crossing is right out of the Richard Hastings school.  In the last few months of last season, opponents set up so that we had to pass the ball to Tremarco, safe in the knowledge that he wasn't dangerous in the slightest.

Is a wee bit of width too much to ask for?!

A wee plug for this article for the outstanding Scottish football website The Terrace (written by yours truly)

I'm sure it'll bring back a few memories!

http://terracepodcast.net/scottish-premiership/2014/5/15/hot-goal-time-machine-inverness-ct

Have to say that I thought DD summed up yesterday really well.  

In the first half our play was directionless.  Again, and again, and again, it was sideways, backwards, sideways, backwards, and repeat until the ball was given away in our own half.  Our tempo was too slow to particularly wear St Johnstone out, or to carve them open.  There was precious little width and our attacks tended to stall just in front of the penalty area as all our forwards moved into that central area.

The second half was completely the opposite.  We were far more direct and decisive with the ball.  We were more willing to throw players forward, particularly the full-backs, which gave us width.  Possibly because they had the cup final in mind, St Johnstone couldn't, or wouldn't cope with the increased pace of our play.  We carved out numerous chances and it was terrific to watch.  It proves we can keep the ball on the deck but still play attractive attacking football.

The trouble is that the first half reminded me of many of our games in 2014, while the second half reminded me of many of our games in 2013.

It seems far more likely that Yogi made the necessary changes at half-time, rather than the players spontaneously reverting to type.  But, pessimist that I am, the thought had crossed my mind...

I strongly believe that we are a better team - and, with these players, will always be a better team - playing the way we did in the second half yesterday.  That's simply because, in my opinion, you can't play like Barcelona unless you have Xavi at the base of your midfield, rather than Tansey.  If Yogi proves me wrong, then brilliant.     But, with 'Butcher-esque' tactics, we will be top six next season.  With Yogi tactics, I'm not nearly as confident.

At least, following that win, we have now scored more points with Yogi (29 from 25 games) than without him in the dugout (28 from 13 games).