Arabs v Dons

[RicoS321]

51 minutes ago, OrlandoDon said:

Not excusing, just trying to understand what happened. Did we go to fight/pitch invasion or was it them, that’s my question, just trying to understand the idiocy.

Yep, a reasonable question. There's a lot of conflating "seeking to explain", with "justification" when these types of incidents occur. It's completely acceptable to try and understand why something occurred, whilst also maintaining that it is entirely unjustifiable (which you are doing). 

I asked the question about booze, because every time I've been to tannadice, it's been riddled with folk completely fucked, and it's the second time that throwing incidents have occurred. It's also correct to point out that had the pitch invasion not happened, the chair throwing wouldn't, Utd will have a degree of liability here and will probably get fined. Again, it's not an excuse, or justification, just evidence. As @Slim points out, they were teenage kids that were goading the Dons fans, it could have caused some serious damage. It takes a serious idiot to launch a chair at a crowd of people. 

[Panda]

I was at the game.

Seat throwing

I was in the fair play lower and wasn't far from where Mackenzie got hit. He was in a bad way, was down for a long time. Keskinen also got hit by the same seat but Mackenzie took the full brunt of it.

He was wheeled past us. Was a lot of blood and I wouldn't be surprised if one of our fans has just put one of our own players out of the cup final. As soon as fans saw how bad it there were a lot of anger towards those in the upper deck above us.

You could hear the seats getting broken above us, and had the first one not hit Mackenzie, I reckon a lot more were about to be thrown, and only his injury stopped folk.

In the first half where was a lot of drinks getting thrown down on fans in the lower deck too. What that was about I don't know, but we have an element of bloody idiots in our support.

We can expect the tickets for this fixture to rise significantly next season (was £28 today) because they'll probably have to make it a category A fixture now, and put on more police and stewards, and it'll be us paying for it.

 

[Panda]

The game

I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say I didn't think we played that bad. I just don't think this team is capable of much better away from home.

We can't kill teams off. Hibs would have got a second before half-time today, and that's why they're deservedly in third.

We don't have a single player in our team able to win headers, either defensively or offensively. The goals, as they normally are, were soft.

But we did create good chances. Thelin's subs questionable, but the changes he made to a three after going behind allowed Clarkson to always be in space, we doubled up on their full backs, had bodies in the box. It "worked" to an extent. But we just don't have enough goal scorers in the team. Nisbet has 11 league goals, which is as many as the next two (Gueye & Keskinen) combined. And the three of them combined have scored just four fewer than the rest of the team put together.

Hibs 'success' this season is they have an athletic team. Not particularly physical, just athletic. Pacey, can beat opponents down the wing, can get from box to box quickly, win headers, and they've not all ran their race by 70 mins.

Gueye started okay, was good at putting himself about and was winning challenges in their half. But he went on a run with the ball, lost it, we nearly conceded, and afterwards Shinnie in particular (but also Mitov) unloaded a volley of abuse his way. His head dropped and after that he was a man down. 

Ambrose offered nothing in his place. But who else does Thelin throw on? 

A pish finish to the league season, but it's coming at a good time for us. Get the cup final done and then bring on the summer overhaul.

[Panda]

Just to add, John Beaton was woeful today. Absolutely woeful.

 

[manc_don]

What an embarrassing day to be dandy. Ending in fifth after the start we’ve had and having cretins like we do in our support, behave the way they have? Embarrassing. So lucky it wasn’t worse.

[dons8321]

3 hours ago, Panda said:

The game

I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say I didn't think we played that bad. I just don't think this team is capable of much better away from home.

We can't kill teams off. Hibs would have got a second before half-time today, and that's why they're deservedly in third.

We don't have a single player in our team able to win headers, either defensively or offensively. The goals, as they normally are, were soft.

But we did create good chances. Thelin's subs questionable, but the changes he made to a three after going behind allowed Clarkson to always be in space, we doubled up on their full backs, had bodies in the box. It "worked" to an extent. But we just don't have enough goal scorers in the team. Nisbet has 11 league goals, which is as many as the next two (Gueye & Keskinen) combined. And the three of them combined have scored just four fewer than the rest of the team put together.

Hibs 'success' this season is they have an athletic team. Not particularly physical, just athletic. Pacey, can beat opponents down the wing, can get from box to box quickly, win headers, and they've not all ran their race by 70 mins.

Gueye started okay, was good at putting himself about and was winning challenges in their half. But he went on a run with the ball, lost it, we nearly conceded, and afterwards Shinnie in particular (but also Mitov) unloaded a volley of abuse his way. His head dropped and after that he was a man down. 

Ambrose offered nothing in his place. But who else does Thelin throw on? 

A pish finish to the league season, but it's coming at a good time for us. Get the cup final done and then bring on the summer overhaul.

I'd agree we played well for the first 35 mins.  And even at the beginning of the 2nd half looked like we were going to continue the same pattern...then Nisbet misses a simple chance - he could easily have taken another touch and lashed it into either side of the keeper - and suddenly instead of being 2 up within 10 mins we were 1 down. Why are we so poor in the 2nd half - not just today but for many games this season (last 3 games conceded 9 goals in the 2nd half, that's 9 goals in a game and a half) why do we seem to run out of puff after h-t? 

Also, why take off Nisbet?  Even if he's running of gas, has had one leg amputated and is in a self induced coma he's still more likely to get a goal than Ambrose.

[OrlandoDon]

10 minutes ago, dons8321 said:

I'd agree we played well for the first 35 mins.  And even at the beginning of the 2nd half looked like we were going to continue the same pattern...then Nisbet misses a simple chance - he could easily have taken another touch and lashed it into either side of the keeper - and suddenly instead of being 2 up within 10 mins we were 1 down. Why are we so poor in the 2nd half - not just today but for many games this season (last 3 games conceded 9 goals in the 2nd half, that's 9 goals in a game and a half) why do we seem to run out of puff after h-t? 

Also, why take off Nisbet?  Even if he's running of gas, has had one leg amputated and is in a self induced coma he's still more likely to get a goal than Ambrose.

Was thinking something similar after the game. Early season it was get them in to jimmy at HT and things would get better, maybe a sub or two and we kick on and win the game. Recently it’s been a poor 2nd half and we go backwards. Plus some questionable subbing like we’re clutching at straws/desperate and out of answers.

nisbet coming off today was like subbing Morris or topi in games when they were clearly our most productive attacking player, has been a thing. 

a knackered nisbet is still better than Ambrose, even stick topi up top and bring devlin to right mid. As I keep saying, not gunning for JT but he’s making us ask questions. Hoping a summer clear out and new signings gives a more capable squad for him to work with.

[RicoS321]

Maybe saving Nisbet for the final. To be honest, we had lost the game by that point, and Nisbet had already missed a good chance and looked frustrated generally. 

Earlier in the season, I complimented Thelin on numerous occasions when he made proactive subs that stemmed the opposition after they'd come back into the game. He's reverted to type now though. What is it with every single manager in the world not making subs until ~65th minute? Is there some sort of training manual? As soon as we started to get shaky, about 5-10 minutes before the goal, the subs should have been on. Disrupt the flow, make their manager think, and maybe one or two of their players will be hesitant to push on until they get a handle on the sub. Keskinen for Okkels, a lamppost for Gueye, does it really make a difference taking those two off ten minutes before the alloted time? It should have been very clear that we were going to be losing a goal shortly. It was to me.