2018'19 Game 2: Hamilton Accies (H) Saturday 11th August

[Mintymac]

Nope .It wasn’t all Bigis  fault  . Most of the team were 4-5/10 at best . But the idea that by introducing bigi would solve our problems is delusional. Very average midfield player imo . For centre of midfield . No chance . We hang our jacket on him coming in and turning us into a passing team . Not for me 

[Pettywulliegrew-2]

40 minutes ago, weeyin said:

Aye, it was all Bigi's fault.  Thankfully, everyone else was excellent and blameless in the defeat. 

Don't think anyone posting has blamed Bigi for the defeat.........he tries to play football..... which everyone on here wants us to do

unfornatley our manager seemed to deem him unsuitable/unnecessary as he failed to select hin throughout his MFC tenure including numerous friendlies/leauge cup games recently

if any one should shoulder any blame today it's on Mr Robinsons door........team selection & tacticsand poor substitutions 

[Welldaft Mk1]

That was woeful. 

Hamilton were rank but we still lost to them. 

As soon as I saw Main and Sammon star5 I thought what the fuck. Johnson deserved to start that game. 

We need to wake up soon or we r fucked for the season. 

[Welldaft Mk1]

6 minutes ago, Pettywulliegrew-2 said:

Don't think anyone posting has blamed Bigi for the defeat.........he tries to play football..... which everyone on here wants us to do

unfornatley our manager seemed to deem him unsuitable/unnecessary as he failed to select hin throughout his MFC tenure including numerous friendlies/leauge cup games recently

if any one should shoulder any blame today it's on Mr Robinsons door........team selection & tacticsand poor substitutions 

Yes but Bigi did what is the best and quite frankly worst piece of  movement all game. On the goaline and misses.

He is a better footballer but today proved he is not the messiah or nowhere close. That cross that went out of play when we had 6 or 7 players in the box. Just. Awful. awful. Fkin does my nut in.

[The African]

Sounds like it was predictably pish. 

Our squad is not without talent, but we really need to find a system and style of play that can get the best out of them. Sadly, as Hartley's performances prove, I don't think we can rely on the returning Dunne and Tanner to help us turn the corner. Players returning from long term injury need time and patience and we may very well be short on both of these by the time they are ready to return. The senior professionals need to stand up and face the challenge. Carson, Tait, Aldred, Hartley and McHugh have plenty of experience. It needs to kick in soon or we will find ourselves in a serious hole.

[Pettywulliegrew-2]

38 minutes ago, Welldaft Mk1 said:

Yes but Bigi did what is the best and quite frankly worst piece of  movement all game. On the goaline and misses.

He is a better footballer but today proved he is not the messiah or nowhere close. That cross that went out of play when we had 6 or 7 players in the box. Just. Awful. awful. Fkin does my nut in.

as per my previous post ......"I thought some of his distribution was shocking "

[fergi4]

What a horror today.  Surely can only get better?  

How can on earth has Connor Sammon made a career in football? In similar time I've seen them gracing the 'well shirt, James Scott has a better touch, he can win challenges in the air, he can head a ball better, he links up better with teamates, and he has a better head of hair (and better tan). 

2 games, zero goals....i think we need a better striking option before window closes. 

[The African]

7 minutes ago, fergi4 said:

What a horror today.  Surely can only get better?  

How can on earth has Connor Sammon made a career in football? In similar time I've seen them gracing the 'well shirt, James Scott has a better touch, he can win challenges in the air, he can head a ball better, he links up better with teamates, and he has a better head of hair (and better tan). 

2 games, zero goals....i think we need a better striking option before window closes. 

I certainly wonder where our goals are going to come from. Bowman tries, but has never really been a regular scorer, Main looks like his goals have dried up, hopefully not terminally, and Sammon has not turned a corner with us, so doesn't look like the answer. Puts a lot of pressure on Johnson coming good, or let's see who we can get in?

[Burn_Broomfield]

On that performance, it won't even be a close run thing when we go down.  There's absolutely nothing there.  No attacking threat whatsoever and we look particularly poor from defensive midfield to the back 3.  The ball was mainly at eye level with my seat up the back of the POD stand.  We've regressed badly from last season rather than build on it, with us looking very much like the team that couldn't buy a win post League Cup final.  The Summer recruitment so far looks terrible, as I've said before; sign enough League 2/National League players and eventually you'll drop to that standard.

[WellFlag]

Was such an awful game with no sides showing any goal threat. I dont mind ugly football but our strikers couldnt hold the ball up and our crosses always come from so deep. Wingbacks are meant to hit the byline and ours never do. Frear is so utterly predictable always goin on the outside. Cadden is the same.

 

Constant long balls clearly werent working today. Im eagerly awaiting the return of Bowman and Tanner there better than main or sammon. Ciftci is also better than they 2 as he offers something different and is unpredictable, kinda felt we needed someone like him today.

 

Dont think our defence played bad but they must play some forward passes that are on the ground. 

 

Gorrin seams an odd signing to me, what does he offer?? 

We need to give our strikers some service and they arent getting it, i do think even they 2 today could score if they had some service.

 

Robinson has done a great job in his time in charge and doesnt deserve the sack, but he needs to consider other formations and tactics. Johnson should have started today.  Was really cheesed off after todays game been looking forward to it for a while and just felt drained after it. Substitutions seamed odd to me, tait for me is one our better players as is campbell and putting on a third striker doesnt solve the issue of giving strikers service. Doubling up on one wing would have been smarter i think. 

 

Looking for this cup spirit next week and a must have improved performance. Something positive to build on because if we lose its really going to have me concerned about this season.

[mfc88]

4 hours ago, Burn_Broomfield said:

We've regressed badly from last season rather than build on it

Totally agree with this comment. We have regressed! In the end of the day, we've lost one first team player and signed, what, 6 or 7 over the summer? Early days still, but not one  of them would you put in the starting 11 with our full squad fit.

I really don't understand that philosophy. Add depth yeah, but (1) signing 2 or 3 quality starters does that by default if you don't lose players. And (2) how much depth do we need? I've lost cost count of the number of centre mids we have on the books. 

Oh and yeah, f---ing woeful yesterday.

[johnstone]

Can anyone explain to me why Tait was substituted and Aldred left as a right back? Or even why he was shoehorned in there in the first place? 

 

Sammon is utter pish too. His timing for headers is comical. 

[MelvinBragg]

6 hours ago, Burn_Broomfield said:

On that performance, it won't even be a close run thing when we go down.  There's absolutely nothing there.  No attacking threat whatsoever and we look particularly poor from defensive midfield to the back 3.  The ball was mainly at eye level with my seat up the back of the POD stand.  We've regressed badly from last season rather than build on it, with us looking very much like the team that couldn't buy a win post League Cup final.  The Summer recruitment so far looks terrible, as I've said before; sign enough League 2/National League players and eventually you'll drop to that standard.

I agree with a lot of this. I reckon we could be cut adrift from the rest pretty early.

In recent seasons when relegation threatened, I always felt there was a player that would get us out of it. Two seasons ago it was Moult. Season under Baraclough, you had Johnson and McDonald. Under Malpas, it was McDonald. There was always a player you could look to that was capable of dragging the team from a draw to a win. Or a leader. This season, I see nothing...

[milo]

9 minutes ago, MelvinBragg said:

I agree with a lot of this. I reckon we could be cut adrift from the rest pretty early.

In recent seasons when relegation threatened, I always felt there was a player that would get us out of it. Two seasons ago it was Moult. Season under Baraclough, you had Johnson and McDonald. Under Malpas, it was McDonald. There was always a player you could look to that was capable of dragging the team from a draw to a win. Or a leader. This season, I see nothing...

Yep.

We will be pointless after 7 games.

Even the poorer teams will have amassed 6/7 by that point.

[supermarv]

2 hours ago, MelvinBragg said:

I agree with a lot of this. I reckon we could be cut adrift from the rest pretty early.

In recent seasons when relegation threatened, I always felt there was a player that would get us out of it. Two seasons ago it was Moult. Season under Baraclough, you had Johnson and McDonald. Under Malpas, it was McDonald. There was always a player you could look to that was capable of dragging the team from a draw to a win. Or a leader. This season, I see nothing...

Exactly and you usually have at least one of the strikers who can score but never going to score playing it long 99% of the time. Unless we play young James Scott next week to see if he offers more then we must buy another striker. Was always ridiculous signing Sammon, I usually give new signings no matter their background my vote of confidence but him ... nah.

[davkel]

Bobby Graham and Willie Pettigrew must be sitting watching those 2 up front and thinking WTF . .

[Yorkyred]

Robinson was spot on when he said the final third cost us yesterday. We dominated posession but were woeful up front with both Main( who has taken a step back) and Sammon ( Who spent most of the game jumping into players) just not working together. Sammon should have been sent off first half for an obvious elbow and I still feel he’s a waste of a shirt and should only be used as an impact sub. Surprised to see a Bigi get a start and he did just ok, he had plenty of the ball but still flatters to deceive for me. The substitutions were a mistake, Sammon should have come off for Johnstone. At the back we are really missing Dunn with Hartley well off the pace. It’s not panic time just yet but we badly need Dunn, Tanner, and Bowman back who would make a real difference.

[Kmcalpin]

A morale sapping defeat yesteday but we can take 2 positives from such a match...no one carried off and no one stretchered off.  Despite having some new players, Accies played exactly how we have come to expect them to - very combative and streetwise.  As the game wore on into the second half and we bored the Accies keeper through inactivity it became more and more likely that they'd snatch the winner and so it came to pass.  We've seen this type of game at Fir Park countless times before.

I think Robbo made some critical errors in team selection and tactics especially in midfield and up front.  Cadden was wasted at right wing back; it just wasn't Rose's type of game; Johnson ought to have started and Sammon was misused as an out and out target man which he isn't.  I'd like to have seen Frear start, when his pace might have been slightly more useful.  Substitutions were odd although I understand why Rose and Campbell were hooked.

As for the players,  no one single player was to blame lets make that clear.   However as Mintymac says they were all worth maybe 4 or 5 out of 10 individually.  We certainly missed the pace of Dunne and Kipre at the back and the latter's physique was sorely missed.  McHugh was no worse overall than Hartley and Aldred at the back but lost a helluva lot of headers in the first half.  The combination there just didn't seem right.  

Midfield was where our real problems lay.   The mix of players wasn't right.   Players who can charge up and down the park like Cadden and Rose aren't much use against a deep lying defensive formation and so it proved.  Campbell was not his usual combative self at all and even shirked a couple of challenges.  Not surprised when he was taken off.  I agree with Mintymac about Bigi - and his expression "flattered to deceive" was exactly what I thought.  Tried to play on the deck and, apart from a couple of flashes maybe, didn't actually do anything.  Being fair though, perhaps he is not match fit. Main and Sammon were entitled to feel hard done by as the service they were given was crap no other word for it.

The strikers then?  I agree that Main and Sammon don't appear to play well together.  Despite his size, Sammon is not a target man and likes the ball at his feet.  So why pump high balls at him all day? Even with what poor service they were given both strikers were ineffective.  Like Campbell, Sammon shirked a couple of 50/50s but maybe understandable given his relationship with the referee and Ziggy Gordon.  Presumably Sammon was given a new shirt at half time and Gordon will be billed for the cost of damage. We could have played till next week and not scored. Despite enjoying the lion's share of possession we failed miserably to get decent crosses into the box (credit to Accies for denying us the space and time), let alone get efforts on target.

Massive improvement needed next week in what's shaping up to be a crunch game. Someone please tell Robbo its a plastic pitch at Livingston and we have to adapt our game accordingly.               

[David]

Another bad day at the office, and while it's certainly cause for concern it's not the end of the world as some would have us believe.

I'm actually surprised half the posts on here don't contain more errors, as it must be difficult to type with your knees jerking all over the shop.

First of all, we were shite. I'm not defending the team or the manager at all. This is the part where Robinson either proves his managerial acumen by changing things up and giving the opposition something different to think about, or he continues as he is and ultimately fails. Time will tell in that regard.

Personally, he's got until about the end of October to get things in order. If we're still sitting in a relegation spot then serious questions will have to be asked, especially if we're still playing as we are.

I also think people need to get a grip with the Bigi chat. No one claimed he was the fucking messiah, what I saw people saying was "he likes to play football on the deck, why not play him in an attempt to change things up a bit?"

That doesn't mean he comes into a poor side, plays equally as poor as the rest of the team in a poor game against Accies and should be shot down as rubbish and dismissed. How many games has he played this season? Do you think he's match fit?

If Robinson decides to try and implement a Plan B then there's a good chance that Bigi should be a part of that. Not the central piece, not the fucking messiah, just a part of it. He offers something different in the middle of the park, simple as that.

Dundee is looking like a crucial game for us, surrounded as it is by games against Rangers, Hearts, Aberdeen and Kilmarnock. 

Assuming we get nothing from the other games (which, if I'm honest, is a long shot, as we always fear these games then somehow spring a win against one of these sides) then the Dundee game is critical. We need to win that one.

October will be important. With home games against Livingston and St Johnstone, and away games with St Mirren and Celtic, if we come out of October in the relegation zone then it could be time to make some changes at managerial level.

[Yodo]

We need to win our home games no ifs or buts we are not that good we can target teams we think we can get points from ,but the managers results over the last season and this season shows he is not the man to deliver what we need 

[Well Well]

I said it after the Hibs game that I watched our front two closely and they didn't communicate with each other the full game, not one comment. They didn't even look at each. If you see any good partnership up front the guys are always talking to each other, communicating, switching sides, doing anything to keep the opposition defenders on the back foot. Our guys just walk about with the markers, make no attempt to win the ball other than foul the defenders. No imagination, no spark. they cant even hold the ball up for 5 seconds to allow the midfield time to come up and support. Only person who has done all this is Johnson but we insist on making him a sub. he does more work in the time he is on than Sammon and Main do the whole match. Once again it seems we only played one half of the game. This time it was the first half. Any team watching us can read us like a book, one dimensional and heads down the minute we start losing.

[Katie]

59 minutes ago, Well Well said:

I said it after the Hibs game that I watched our front two closely and they didn't communicate with each other the full game, not one comment. They didn't even look at each. If you see any good partnership up front the guys are always talking to each other, communicating, switching sides, doing anything to keep the opposition defenders on the back foot. Our guys just walk about with the markers, make no attempt to win the ball other than foul the defenders. No imagination, no spark. they cant even hold the ball up for 5 seconds to allow the midfield time to come up and support. Only person who has done all this is Johnson but we insist on making him a sub. he does more work in the time he is on than Sammon and Main do the whole match. Once again it seems we only played one half of the game. This time it was the first half. Any team watching us can read us like a book, one dimensional and heads down the minute we start losing.

Agreed. At one point yesterday Sammon (who I think is better than Main at the moment) headed a ball into space to where he presumably thought Main was...when he was actually standing right beside him. 

[Shotts Well Fan]

For me during last season i was willing to not be too critical of our long ball, physical game as it delivered results, in the main in the first half of the season. We had a lot of energy, enthusiasm and this made up for lack of skill. However, so far this season we don't seem to have the same energy or enthusiasm and this has carried on from last December when we hit the "wall". Our performances in the cups were certainly  exciting and how we should be playing under Robinson's apparent style. With the squad we have we won't be winning any great plaudits for silky soccer but we need to get back to our strength of at least working hard and getting in our opponents  faces. I am not sure a top 6 is feasible but let's see if we get any new faces in or the current squad turn it around or a relegation battle is looming

[joewarkfanclub]

I actually thought we started quite brightly yesterday and for the first 15 - 20 minutes the intensity in our game looked back. I thought Bigi looked decent on the ball in that period and I was encouraged that it might be our day. However, we very quickly ran out of ideas after that and started shelling long diagonals from the back which at least made Hamilton have to defend. 

Even in the 2nd half I didnt think Hamilton looked like scoring, and although we werent great going forward we still looked the better team and more likely to score.

I think for me the game changed on the Tait/Campbell substitutions. Whilst they were having quiet games by their standards you could see the loss of their influence immediately. I would have hooked Sammon for Johnson and Cadden for Frear putting Tait back across to his natural side.

Sloppy free kick to give away for their goal and an absolute "Worldy" finish which you just knew was on the cards.

After that we go chasing the game and they really should have finished us off with 2 breakaways.

Ultimately a very disappointing day. But we werent outplayed by Hamilton. We matched their physicality (which in the past we have not) and there were some signs that Sammon and Main were developing more of an understanding (see Sportscene) albeit with a long way still to go. Not the absolute disaster of a performance this one is being painted as and a long long way from the worst Ive ever seen.

 

 

[Gadgey]

8 hours ago, Yodo said:

We need to win our home games no ifs or buts we are not that good we can target teams we think we can get points from ,but the managers results over the last season and this season shows he is not the man to deliver what we need 

There’s a lot of pissed off people on here about where things are at but at the moment (not yet at least), there aren’t many calling for his head.

You've been consistent in wanting him gone so fair do’s. A genuine question.....you want Robbo out. Who would you want in to replace him and get a tune out of this squad?