Mccall And The Old Firm

[nethertonwellfan]

Frustrating aye but in the bigger picture we shouldn't be anywhere near them given the gulf in finances so it's not that big a deal. As you say better this way than t'other.

I think we agree then

[Albi]

Aye that'll never catch on will it ?

 

What you awarding points on the basis of ? How shiny the players boots are ?

I would award points based on the number of goals each team scores.

 

For example, if team A scores more goals than team B then I would award team A 3 points and team B 0 points. If team B scores more goals than team A, I would award team B 3 points and team A 0 points. If neither team scores or both teams score an equal number of goals I would award each team 1 point.

 

I don't know what FIFA would do though, maybe that shiny boots idea.

 

I'd explain the idea that a team can outperform their opponents and still be beaten 3 nil but I think you should concentrate on colouring between the lines or not eating your crayons first.

[Mad Dog]

If we lost all 8 games 1-0 or 2-1 then there wouldn't be so many complaints. I couldn't care less if we failed to pick up any points against them as long as we made them fight for those points.

[fatcalf]

I think we agree then

 

Erm.....Yip, I believe we do.

[john_M_F_C]

Smallest team in SPL loosed to biggest two shocker.

Edited September 11, 2011 by Andy_P
Give it a bye with the abuse please

[steelboy]

did they remove your brain when you were in hospital?

 

firstly comparing it to gannon is pointless. gannon won 5 out of 19 domestic games. mccall has won 15 out of 36. mccall sets out a team that can win games, gannon didn't.

 

and who gives a fuck what the winning margin is when we play celtic or rangers. in febraury knickers were drenched on here after we got beat 6-0 at ibrox and a lot of pish was posted. on the tuesday we went up to aberdeen and won. getting draws in both these away games would have been considered good results but the rocket scientists among us will recognise that getting pumped in one game and winning the other is preferable to drawing to two matches.

 

we have a squad that struggle against the old firm but are superb at imposing themselves on and beating other spl sides. the challenge we face against celtic and rangers is a completely different task to what we need to do in the rest of our matches. we are much better playing the rest and luckily 79% of our league games are against the teams we are good at playing.

 

no other diddy team has defeated us yet and we have 3 teams coming to fir park who look ripe for a pumping before the end of the month. why care about how many goals teams with 10xs our wage bill take off us? look at the bigger picture.

[1991]

Let's no forget the old firm are a shambles prob the worst they been for years, we are playing well why not got out and have a go instead of hoping to get a draw, we are better than we give ourselves credit, maybe McCall will learn not to give them so much respect

[Catweazles ring piece]

First things first.

S McCall and the team have done a brilliant job since taking over and has the team playing in a certain way, which seems to suit the players.

However, when we play the old firm........ he seems to over analyze things and plays systems that we struggle to cope with. We've a small squad and don't have massive versatility within it.

 

Over egging it here, but, Red Rum was magic when it ran The National, however don't expect it to do well if it was entered for a show jumping event.

 

Keep playing the way we play, but lets have more confidence in our players against the O.F. - if we're going to get beat, lets do it with the team confident, fighting and passionate in the formation it's set up.

I don't think even Well fans would complain, if they saw us fail, but giving 100%

[ML1]

I would award points based on the number of goals each team scores.

 

For example, if team A scores more goals than team B then I would award team A 3 points and team B 0 points. If team B scores more goals than team A, I would award team B 3 points and team A 0 points. If neither team scores or both teams score an equal number of goals I would award each team 1 point.

 

I don't know what FIFA would do though, maybe that shiny boots idea.

 

I'd explain the idea that a team can outperform their opponents and still be beaten 3 nil but I think you should concentrate on colouring between the lines or not eating your crayons first.

 

 

 

 

Aye that happens all the time the better team losing 3-0.

 

So youd award points on the basis of goals scored but dont think goals scored is an indicator of performance.

 

I think youve progressed on from buzzing crayons.

 

For what its worth , who cares about yesterday. I never even bothered going to the pub to watch it.

[Kmcalpin]

and who gives a fuck what the winning margin is when we play celtic or rangers. .

 

I do for one.

 

I don't like being beaten by the OF but I can thole it given their vastly superior resources. However I don't like losing a barrowload of goals unnecessarily to them. At the end of the season goal difference can make a difference to league placings, financial rewards and Euro qualification. If our real opponents (the Killies, Hibs, Dunfermlines etc) are able to limit their losses then that gives them an advantage over us.

 

A start would be to instill some fighting spirit and confidence for these games.

[Dr.Pangloss]

 

 

For what its worth , who cares about yesterday. I never even bothered going to the pub to watch it.

 

Lucky you didn't .

 

You would have looked like an idiot.

 

[Andy_P]

It's a hard one to put your finger on.

 

I think there are elements from several posts folk have made that require to be addressed for us to tackle the problem. Clearly McCall has to find a system that works against them, there has to be something psychological in there too and much as we might not particularly like to hear it we do need some things to go our way on the day against them.

 

Dundee Utd have been mentioned as an example of a way to approach games against them but we've been there ourselves in the past. I don't think its co-incidental that once you do seem to find a way through them you can go on a relatively sustained run against them. Think back to the way we used to get results almost on a game by game basis against Celtic in the late 80's and 90's. We virtually expected a result against them. You can argue that they were poor then but we did the same to a lesser extent against Rangers when they were in the midst of the nine-in-a-row spell.

 

There has to be something in the mindset that gave those players of that era the confidence to go out and get those results that we can try to tap into. Would it be so ludicrous an idea for McCall with Dougie Arnott "hammer of the Old Firm" and Stevie KIrk both on the club's staff from that period to get them to offer advice on how they approached games under McLean?

 

Not just down to believing you are going to get a result ofcourse. The formation and set up are ofcourse vital too. A quick scan through the pre-and post match chat and this thread offers up different ways of approaching the games. You've got some advocating a do as we usually do, others want to tweak the formation and go with an approach that tries to make us a little harder to beat as a starting platform. McCall seems to have gone for the latter in the main, tried the "normal" approach the odd time, got cold feet and reverted to type since.

 

There is ofcourse the argument that players at that level should be comfortable in adapting to varying formations between games and indeed during games but the evidence shows that playing a certain formation for most games then changing it just for the Old Firm doesn't appear to have done us a great amount of good given the thumpings we've endured. Perhaps it might be better to go with our tried and trusted and attempting to get a lead which you can then look to hold, rather than trying to protect a point and having little or no chance of recovering if you happen to go behind - particularly if its early on in the game?

 

Much to think about for McCall in these games.

[fatcalf]

Lucky you didn't .

 

You would have looked like an idiot.

 

 

Did you go to the pub to watch it tae?

 

[fatcalf]

It's a hard one to put your finger on.....

 

 

 

 

....Much to think about for McCall in these games.

 

Yip, but if he'd gone on the offensive and lost we'd have folk moaning that he needs a plan B in all honesty. I'm sure he's working continually to find ways of winning games outwith the norm but he's in a no win situation with OF games cos likelihood is we'll lose no matter what formation he tries. There's always that one though

[Busta Nut]

every cúnt, wring out yer knickers

[Albi]

Aye that happens all the time the better team losing 3-0.

 

So youd award points on the basis of goals scored but dont think goals scored is an indicator of performance.

 

I think youve progressed on from buzzing crayons.

 

For what its worth , who cares about yesterday. I never even bothered going to the pub to watch it.

 

Magnificent

[steelboy]

I do for one.

 

 

 

yesterday afternoon was a sore one but not sore enough to take the shine off a great start to the season.

 

i don't think we're physical enough to compete with the old firm sides in terms of size and pace. but i'd still prefer we stick with the players we have who are playing good football and picking up points most weeks.

[ankles]

every cúnt, wring out yer knickers

 

 

Well said ,we have two winnable home games coming up,and if we were to win them what a posistion we'd be in. The old firm are too good for us on their own patch,even Alex Ferguson couldn't get our current squad to win there

[David]

In short, what the general consensus is that we'd like to see our team at least try to win a bit more against the old firm, but we don't really expect to beat them. That sounds fair enough.

 

Once we start losing regularly to the likes of Hearts, Hibs, Aberdeen & Dundee United we can get worried.

[Busta Nut]

god forbid we finish 3rd and lose 8 games to the old firm 3/4 nil

[MJC_MKI]

I'm surprised at just how many Motherwell fans seem so baffled and shocked at yesterday's hammering. I've said this before and I'll say it again, Celtic have players who are more than capable of beating our's with more than a bit to spare, regardless of whether they play at the top of their game, or however we set up tactically. I've read a few comments on here and another site saying that we were too open against them as we were against Rangers the other week and we would have been better going 10 men behind the ball and trying to frustrate them, but this is a double edged sword surely because if we do that all that happens is we invite Celtic on to us, they bombard us with balls into the box, force us back and eventually will wear us down. And they might still end up giving us a doing!

 

We don't have the ability to expect to get anything other than a defeat from either Celtic or Rangers and when we come up against them we are relying on them playing significantly poorer than they are capable of, us playing at 120% and, perhaps most importantly, a generous slice of luck to fall our way.

 

I completely agree that we need to be a bit more 'streetwise' when playing Celtic or Rangers than we have been in recent encounters as we really haven't made them work too hard to get their straightforward victories against us, but even if we did 'toughen up', we're still likely to be on the wrong end of a defeat when we play them as we just aren't a match for them on the park, never mind off it.

 

 

[Pepper]

Losing against the OF is not the problem for me, it's the way we fold like a cheap suit after conceding the first goal that gets my goat. That's something we can do something about.

 

Maybe if we stopped drumming it onto our players that they aren't as good as the OF, are not expected to get anything, can only win if the opposition have an off day and we get a massive slice of luck etc. then our guys might actually have some belief and go into games thinking we can get something rather than how many are we going to lose this time.

 

If you think you are going to lose, then you are half way there already. Rather than saying this result was expected McCall should come out and say it's not on, otherwise all he is doing is reinforcing the belief that getting humped 4 nil is acceptable, and that is exactly where we are at the minute.

 

The sooner we break this habit the better.

[nethertonwellfan]

god forbid we finish 3rd and lose 8 games to the old firm 3/4 nil

Nail head hit. Something like that anyway.

[Grant]

Losing against the OF is not the problem for me, it's the way we fold like a cheap suit after conceding the first goal that gets my goat. That's something we can do something about.

 

Maybe if we stopped drumming it onto our players that they aren't as good as the OF, are not expected to get anything, can only win if the opposition have an off day and we get a massive slice of luck etc. then our guys might actually have some belief and go into games thinking we can get something rather than how many are we going to lose this time.

 

If you think you are going to lose, then you are half way there already. Rather than saying this result was expected McCall should come out and say it's not on, otherwise all he is doing is reinforcing the belief that getting humped 4 nil is acceptable, and that is exactly where we are at the minute.

 

The sooner we break this habit the better.

 

 

That's what annoys me aswell. It's the fact we always seem to put in an absolute pathetic performance home and away against the old firm. We just seem to let them walk all over us and give them too much room etc. Don't really know what can be done to sort this though.

 

 

[Steve Diggle]

We could get Tommy McLean in for 8 games a season