Hibernian -V- ICT : matchday thread

[Alex MacLeod]

Just home from a freezing Easter Road and wishing I hadn't went. We were beaten fair and square by a not very impressive Hibs. Things we so bad that I didnt even realise Cowie was paying till the second half. Black and Tokely were the only ones trying to play the game. Some of our players really need to go back to school and learn how to pass a ball. Nuff said

[dead_ball_specialist]

Perhaps Marcus Paatelinen is a spy?  :024:

[Harry Chibber]

Just back

Black and Hastings get pass marks... just

The rest were ****ing abysmal... after sticking up for Tokely and praising Duncan, the two of them decided to pay me back today by playing as though they had never seen a football before never mind kicked it.  Tokely at fault for the first and 2nd goal (although McGuire had a hand in both) and everytime Zemmama attacked we were ripped open.  Duncan didn't look interested and spent most the time giving away possession and then blame everyone around him for not being there.

Bayne... it's not working

I can't understand that after having so much sucess with a 4-5-1 formation why suddenly decide to play 4-4-2 away against a Falkirk and Hibs 2 f the best passing teams in Scotland.  It should be obvious that we tighten up the centre of the park....

we plyed such a high line that evrytime Hibs attacked we were caught out by the pace of their front three. Beuzilin (?) ripped us apart today with his passing

glad it's the cup but also angry because it's been so long since we had a decent cup run

bring on Rangers... yay :rolleyes02:

[alimci]

Agree with all Harry says. Bench a total mystery also.

But equally as shocking as our abysmal performance, was the mass exodus at 2-0 down. WTF? Never seen an away support leave in such numbers before. And unlikely as it seemed, we *might* have come back. What's 2-0?

[Yngwie]

Blackie's performance was one of the few positives from today. For a while it seemed inevitable that he would see red, but he calmed himself down and got back to football after a word from the bench.

[Yngwie]

Oh, and when Dean McDonald came on, we played a couple of high balls up to him when he was being marked by Rob Jones  :029:

[davieB]

Well, what a fecking waste of money that was :008: We were shocking.

Duncan gave one of the worst performances I can ever recall. His passing was an embarrassment. Tokely......sorry, yer time is up. Too slow, Hibs (or Parkie) obviously targetted him.

Bayne might be an average 1st division player, but he's ***** at this level!

Pass marks....Blackie, and that's it.

So fecking angry at that display :008: :008: :008:

[andyp85]

Not only was performance poor today, but style of football was dire.  Too many long balls to Bayne and long throws from Munro predictable and ineffective and make our possession a 50/50 ball every time.  Even at the kick off we launch it forward like a rugby start and give possession away straight away. In contrast I don't remember Ma-kalambay once kicking from hand.  

Bayne flicking the ball onto no-one doesn't work and when it comes to his feet he can't control it.  Marius can control it but when isolated his lack of pace means he is quickly outnumbered and robbed of the ball.  I thout the 4-5-1 worked well when we got players like Rankin and Cowie close to Marius quickly.  Not impressed if this is how Brewster is going to send us out to play.  We play our best when the ball is on the ground. We have midfield players who given the opportunity are better than the long ball game.

Where was Wilson today?  He too can cope with playing the ball on the ground and can make things happen.

[The Mantis]

Aye we hardly turned up today. If we hadn't been playing well recently I'd be worried. As it is I'm just gutted we're out the cup.

Mind you apart from beating Hearts our away form has been pretty shoddy, when did we last even score a goal?

We caught an improving Hibs side at the wrong time but even at that they never had to work too hard. Hibs looked there for the taking a lot of the game but feck knows what Brew was playing at.

Maybe plan A was to sit in and steal a replay. Well that lasted for 5 minutes but there seemed to be feck all plan B. Apart from chase the game and let Hibs pick us off on the break like they were in Europe.

I'm not happy paying 21 quid to watch the ball lumped up to Bayne and come down with snow on it.

If anybody was watching Blackie today he was a class apart, notwithstanding his usual booking. If they come in for him this month that's another big hole we have to fill.

I thought Marius had a decent first half but then started trying to do it all himself.

Rossco possibly at fault for the first goal but I still thought he was immense most of the second half at least in getting forward, often having 2 men on him.

The rest looked all too predictable and devoid of ideas. Royston, Cowie and, yes, Russeldinho kept giving the ball away under no pressure. Maybe they were just surprised to get the ball at all- after all Brew seemed to be playing without a midfield today.

Denzil was lightweight and easily controlled but I would still have started him and given him a run. No point coming on in a beaten team. Deano looked ludicrous coming on at 3-0 down and jumping with Rob Jones who must be about seven feet taller.

BTW Jones would solve a lot of our problems, far better than The Machine if you ask me. And don't even get me started on McGuire.

And..... where the feck was Barry?

[Guest das]

Why change a winning formation, even if the decision was made not to play rankin other players should have been juggled to ensure the same plan.

And just what is CB's problem with Barrry?

[PandB]

Just got back, agree with most of the above comments: Black was the only 1 with pass marks today. I think manager & player of the month awards have gone to some people's heads today. We turned up and expected a walk in the park and got what we deserved sweet FA. Parkie obviously said to target Roscoe down their left wing and Zamamma tore him a new @rsehole. Not impressed with today's tactics, get back to 4-5-1 and keep it on the deck!!

[Alex MacLeod]

Reading this you'd be forgiven for thinking we played well. Oh! and Rankin was injured.

[davieB]

Did anyone else notice Blackie screaming towards the bench very early in the match (at one of their corners). Well, it looked like he was losing the plot, and as there were no players in the direction he was shouting, I can only assume it was directed at the bench.......I reckon he was telling Brew to get the tactics changed, because we were getting torn apart down the flanks.

Fair play to the wee man today, he was the only one with any passion. He was carrying us at times.

[kencar]

Reading this you'd be forgiven for thinking we played well. Oh! and Rankin was injured.

The more cynical amongst us might think it was a very convenient injury  :024:

Brew picked the wrong team today. Hopefully he will learn from his mistake

[Yngwie]

Blackie was superb. Hopefully not just to impress his future employers?

Alex - come off it!

[RiG]

Blackie is being stupid again.

He was?

Bit harsh there dog......

Erm....

Congratulations golden boy McGuire, is there no end to your talents :010:

That's a bit harsh. He quite rightly told Morais, who had been diving all afternoon, to get up and stop cheating and Morais repaid him with what looked to be a nice shove in the face. I am not 100% certain McGuire didn't retaliate but I didn't see anything so I think, if in fact he did just say "Get on with it" then he was quite harshly dealt with.

I can't understand that after having so much sucess with a 4-5-1 formation why suddenly decide to play 4-4-2 away against a Falkirk and Hibs 2 f the best passing teams in Scotland.  It should be obvious that we tighten up the centre of the park....

We aren't playing 4 - 4 - 2. We are playing 4 - 4 - 1 - 1. Bayne was the target man with Niculae looking for the knock downs. But as you say, it wasn't working. Mainly because Hibs twigged after about 3 minutes and we never changed our tactics. What was even more hysterical was when Dean MacDonald came on and we still launched high balls to him up against Jones  :015:

We caught an improving Hibs side at the wrong time but even at that they never had to work too hard. Hibs looked there for the taking a lot of the game but feck knows what Brew was playing at.

Hibs had a game plan - use the pace of Benji and Shiels and Zemma and have them play in the other(s) round the back of our defence. It worked brilliantly.

I'm not happy paying 21 quid to watch the ball lumped up to Bayne and come down with snow on it.

I wasn't happy and I paid ?11 to get in  :015:

If anybody was watching Blackie today he was a class apart, notwithstanding his usual booking. If they come in for him this month that's another big hole we have to fill.

Ian Black is our best player. He looked to be the only one capable today of creating anything. No other midfielder offered anything aside from him and he was the only one capable of playing a pass that found it's intended recipient more than 50% of the time.

Just a C n P from P & B:

We were rubbish. Dean Shiels was excellent. Took all his goals really well. Hibs should have had a 4th but somehow they missed an open goal from about 2 yards out. Bizarre. Our passing was nothing short of pathetic. I lost count of the number of misplaced passes in the midfield. We never really got anything going in that area and thus were very blunt in terms of an attacking force.

Cowie has been a victim of his own success. After a blistering start he has now turned in some quite average performances but it's hard and perhaps unfair to really have "a go" at him given his start to his ICT career. What was disappointing was that, with an off the boil Cowie, and no left midfielder to speak of, we had NOTHING coming down the wings. Only last week we were being praised for our marauding full backs but they got nowhere today. I noticed after about 10 minutes that Hibs were cleverly playing in their men behind the back line and it was working really well.

By this point Hibs were already one up after Shiels, supposedly a target for us, left Tokely standing before he cleverly passed the ball round Fraser to give Hibs the lead. Benji, when he wasn't throwing himself to the ground along with Morais, was troublesome and he had a shot just creep past Frasers left hand post. I can't think of too many ICT chances in the first half.....

EDIT: The Niculae chance when he was alone in the box and didn't make good connection with the cross in to him.

Shiels extended Hibs lead when he took on ~ 3 ICT players and beat them all before lashing the ball past Fraser. Pretty much game over really as we still lacked any ability to pass the ball and appeared to have nothing on the left hand side of our team. Hibs missed an open goal from only a few yards out before Shiels got his 3rd. What I noticed from an ICT point of view was that, and not for the first time, Niculae, having lost the ball, stood and watched and never bothered to try and win it back. Hibs broke up the pitch and scored. As Hibs celebrated both Munro and Hastings berated Niculae for his lack of effort in trying to win the ball back after he had lost it initially.

McGuire and Morais were both sent off. Morais for being a diving little prick and then appearing to raise his hands to McGuire who was also given a yellow card for wagging his finger at Morais and telling him to get up and stop cheating.*

So nothing really positive to take from the game from an ICT point of view. A shadow of the team that we saw destroy Gretna and while Hibs are a much tougher proposition it was the fact that we created so little and failed to even get the basics right that will prove something of a concern. Furthermore, McBain is not the answer on the left should Rankin leave. He can perform as a left side midfielder but not an actual left midfielder in my opinion. We were completely devoid of anything down that side and Hastings found himself exposed on numerous occasions as Roy moved inside.

The pubs we went to were nice though...

*I will wait and see what Sportscene have on this but that's what it looked like from where we were.

[kencar]

Furthermore, McBain is not the answer on the left should Rankin leave. He can perform as a left side midfielder but not an actual left midfielder in my opinion. We were completely devoid of anything down that side and Hastings found himself exposed on numerous occasions as Roy moved inside.

You only realised that today!!  :015:

I could have told you that years ago  :004:

[RiG]

I realised that ages ago!  :016:

He would be fine if we are looking to conserve a lead but when you want to win a game I just feel that Rankin is the better option when we are looking to attack. His crossing was really good last week and, while his corners some of the time were poor, he poses so much more of an attacking threat than McBain does on that side.

[alimci]

Morais, who had been diving all afternoon, to get up and stop cheating

Along with many other of the Hibs players. Why they needed to bother, when they were totally unplaying us, is beyond me, but maybe they need to stay in practice for tougher opponents.

Edit: OUTplaying even....

[Alex MacLeod]

*I will wait and see what Sportscene have on this but that's what it looked like from where we were.

Approx 1.5 minutes of highlights. Lithgie got longer

[RiG]

Along with many other of the Hibs players. Why they needed to bother, when they were totally unplaying us, is beyond me, but maybe they need to stay in practice for tougher opponents.

Benji was terrible for it as well. I think Morais is rubbish but Benji is a decent enough player to ghost past our players without having to resort to blatant cheating. I know they won't but I'd love it if the SFA took a look at Morais dive at the end. I knew it was bad but when I saw it on the TV there I was staggered at to just how abysmal it actually was.

*I will wait and see what Sportscene have on this but that's what it looked like from where we were.

Approx 1.5 minutes of highlights. Lithgie got longer

Yup. The goals and the sending off. Bit sad really. Hearts v Motherwell was good though.

[Caley]

Bayne starts, we play a long ball game, we are pish, we lose. Happens every feckin time Bayne starts...wake up to this Brew FFS!

[IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER]

But we have to accomodate Marius - that is why we are playing Bayne and Marius - Marius cannot play the lone striker away from home - it is a total balls up away from home - the club is becoming an embarrassment on the road.

[tm4tj]

I see we lost then, good decision not to go to this game judging by the reports on here.  Disappointing as it is, better to do this in the cup than damage our creaking goal difference in the league.  Our away form is a bit disturbing, something Brew will have to put a lot of thought into in the coming weeks as we are now back to the six diificult starter games that sealed Brew's return.

[Govan Jaggie]

All I shall say on the matter is that it was utter rubbish!