Falkirk at Home

[OrlandoDon]

We were better until the red and second half hasn’t been great. My fear is us getting stretched and Milne booked again.

[OrlandoDon]

Pretty shit second half. You have to prepare for playing with ten, as you know it happens, we have been poor.

[OrlandoDon]

Mini chances but awful set pieces and nothing created. We look like a bunch of players recently brought together, little cohesion and chemistry. Minimal/nothing being created.

[OrlandoDon]

Disappointing day. Looked decent until the red. Another game where, obviously with my red tinted specs, were very hard done by with the red, plus the inclusion of var and a wrong decision, and it totally changes the game.

positive, lazetic looked technical, athletic, and quick.

[BigAl]

Not going to sugar coat this in any way 

This is completely and utterly unacceptable and  extremely worrying.

The comings and goings of the next thirty hours are massive 

Another few weeks of this level of shite and I will be starting to question Thelin.

[redordead]

Losing is a habit and we've gotten into it. 

It's September tomorrow and we're still not ready for the season. 

Say what you like about VAR but we play like we expect to be hard done by rather than taking charge of things

It's just not good enough! 

[Kowalski]

The red card didn’t help but that was piss poor in the second half. Not enough battlers in the team. 

[DantheDon]

Wasn’t at the game, but seems like we had our good stages and again failed to capitalise. You can only read so much into the red affecting the game, I was expecting us to get a reasonably comfortable result today. Not winning games like this is extremely worrying. 

[OrlandoDon]

Not sure we can pick up anyone special by the end of tomorrow, but we do lack a central midfield presence. Sivert has the personality but he’s passed it, someone like him to dictate a game as we saw early last season.

[OrlandoDon]

Just now, DantheDon said:

Wasn’t at the game, but seems like we had our good stages and again failed to capitalise. You can only read so much into the red affecting the game, I was expecting us to get a reasonably comfortable result today. Not winning games like this is extremely worrying. 

The red totally changed the game, we had chances first half, yengi had chances, and milanovic and topi had decent efforts. Better team until the red, but I will say even in the first half falkirk were decent. Second half we just let falkirk dictate and they deserved the win.

[OrlandoDon]

I’ll also add that polvara had a huge opportunity today, game at home against one of the weaker teams, and playing centrally. He did so little to get involved, that’s the polvara jimmy said isn’t aggressive enough. Opportunity lost there, doesn’t take advantage of the start when given it. Next.

[redordead]

15 minutes ago, OrlandoDon said:

Not sure we can pick up anyone special by the end of tomorrow, but we do lack a central midfield presence. Sivert has the personality but he’s passed it, someone like him to dictate a game as we saw early last season.

Absolutely this

[Elgindon]

Just back,yes should have been a goal or 2 up before the sending off,a ridiculous decision.Saying that,Falkirk were growing into the game before then,so no gaurantee we were winning without the sending off.Polvara pretty anonymous today in midfield and up front secopnd half.First time Ive seen Yengi in the flesh.Got himself into some decent positions,but doesnt seem to have the confidence,(or brains) to make the right choice thereafter. Cant really afford to hope he may come good in our current form,the fans will have got on his back before then if we dont start picking up points

  Defence doesnt overly fill me with confidence either,but hopefully it settles down.We do need to give them all time though,...and hope a midfield maestro comes in before tomorrow pm

   

Edited Sunday at 16:56 by Elgindon

[DantheDon]

27 minutes ago, OrlandoDon said:

The red totally changed the game, we had chances first half, yengi had chances, and milanovic and topi had decent efforts. Better team until the red, but I will say even in the first half falkirk were decent. Second half we just let falkirk dictate and they deserved the win.

Like I said I wasn’t at the game. What worries me is we’ve had a whole half of football being the better team before the red but we haven’t got anything to show for it. It’s not too dissimilar to last season, we’ve never looked terrible under Thelin, we just don’t seem to be able to grind out results. 

[OrlandoDon]

35 minutes ago, redordead said:

Absolutely this

On field leadership from this player as well. Bunch of followers at present.

[Kowalski]

I think we may currently be the worst team in British Professional football. Llanelli Town in the Welsh Prem are also on zero points but they have managed to hit the net!

[Jute]

Thank fuck I sacked this off. 
 

The money we have spent means even with 10 men we should be beating a promoted side. We simply do not look like scoring as we have no striker. I will again ask what substance was the person who signed of on Yengi on and where do I buy some. 

[wee toon red]

It’s a big two weeks for Jimmy, he’s got to use the break to get the new signings bedded in and hit the ground running straight after it or we’re in bother.

[OrlandoDon]

31 minutes ago, Jute said:

Thank fuck I sacked this off. 
 

The money we have spent means even with 10 men we should be beating a promoted side. We simply do not look like scoring as we have no striker. I will again ask what substance was the person who signed of on Yengi on and where do I buy some. 

Yengi is shite but lazetic gives me hope. It’s center mid that is my concern. If we have three attacking mids/flair players behind a striker we need two work horses behind them. Our center mid is totally off and that’s the biggest problem. I’d say shinnie and sivert 5 years ago would have been the answer. Fix that and more chances and goals will come, plus we’ll be better defensively.  Until we fix center mid we’ll always struggle. As was commented before, we had Ferguson, then Rama, and nothing since.

[RicoS321]

Aye, that was turgid stuff. We're not very good. They were a good championship side basically. The red card was a decision that needs to be made in order to justify VAR, and the other over-officiating that preceded it. Football is a contact sport, and people get hurt in accidental collisions. Trying to eradicate all injury from the game is not the goal of anyone but the dickheads that run the game. That red changed the game. We are nowhere near good enough to beat anyone when a player down.

Anyway, very little to get excited about so far this season. Our signings look very ordinary. Keskinen hasn't kicked on, with his decision making still atrocious (he is playing a hell of a lot of football in fairness to the lad). Across the front, generally, we looked very poor. Milanovic offers very little, Aouchiche was terrible when he came on, Polvara struggled. Palaversa was shite. Jensen just a very average footballer. Lazetic looked good, Bilalovic might have something about him, although he was a little 100mph in the little time he had. Otherwise, I don't think we're actually a very good team!

[OrlandoDon]

1 hour ago, RicoS321 said:

Aye, that was turgid stuff. We're not very good. They were a good championship side basically. The red card was a decision that needs to be made in order to justify VAR, and the other over-officiating that preceded it. Football is a contact sport, and people get hurt in accidental collisions. Trying to eradicate all injury from the game is not the goal of anyone but the dickheads that run the game. That red changed the game. We are nowhere near good enough to beat anyone when a player down.

Anyway, very little to get excited about so far this season. Our signings look very ordinary. Keskinen hasn't kicked on, with his decision making still atrocious (he is playing a hell of a lot of football in fairness to the lad). Across the front, generally, we looked very poor. Milanovic offers very little, Aouchiche was terrible when he came on, Polvara struggled. Palaversa was shite. Jensen just a very average footballer. Lazetic looked good, Bilalovic might have something about him, although he was a little 100mph in the little time he had. Otherwise, I don't think we're actually a very good team!

Bit harsh, thought falkirk were decent. They didn’t come to sit in, plus built out the back quite well. They do what we can’t, they advance the ball from defense to midfielders (central) who move the ball up field. Far too often we’re sideways and backwards then long ball.

topi and milanovic were aggressive first half and both had scoring chances. Where they fail is they don’t blow by the full back (like morris would) so always seemed to be under pressure. Polvara was non existent and we really lacked the presence of a 10 first half. Topi also reminds me a bit of duk, low footie IQ and not much of a team player.

said it before, until we have a 9 who can combine with the other attacking three we’ll struggle, although thought lazetic looks intriguing. A good two weeks training, plus hopefully a commanding and mobile, and experienced central mid, will help.

was thinking at one point today how young and inexperienced we are, and Scottish fibs requires street smarts and experience. Our front 4 are lazetic milanovic adil, and topi, with potentially clarkson deep. We must have a mobile old head leading the way from both center midfield balance and central defense. I worry we’re far too young, naive, and soft, especially with Delvin shinnie and sivert bit part players

 

[tlg1903]

Not long in from that, it's good to have a season book again but it would be nice to see us get a goal at some point let alone a win.  Falkirk were stodgy and surprisingly fond of falling over too. We weren't awful with 11 men and I think we would have taken it had 11 stayed on the park.  Very harsh red on Devlin, just watched it back there.  He barely touched him and was focused completely on the ball, if this is how the game is going we would be as well just making it a non contact sport now and getting it over with.  The ref was awful in general quite frankly and looked  completely out of his depth.  

I do take some positives though.  Firstly we defo seem to be getting a lot better with aerial balls into the box which has been a problem for ages and just improving defensively in general.  Knoester coming back in has helped but credit has to go to Jack Milne who is making that RCB position his at the moment.  I liked the look of Lazetic, my main first impression was he looks to have good feet and very keen to get involved.  That was about it though, everything else on show was varying degrees of disappointing.   It's also worth noting we have been limping by at LB where every game played so far someone has been shoehorned into the position.  Personally I think this is one of the biggest reasons we are looking a bit impotent going forward as fb's are so key to how we try to attack.  Hopefully Gyamfi will return to training over the international window and we now have backup in Frame too so fingers crossed no more Molloy or Devlin at left back.

Am I worried?    Not yet and 2bh I don't think there's any point in being so as the die is cast and we are very much in a "trust the process" scenario which the chairman has bought into.  In the big interview after the cup final he was talking about how Jimmy was hired on the understanding it would be a 3 year 'project' and how not winning the cup would have made sod all difference to his commitment to it.   When we appointed Thelin I heard/read multiple Swedish journalists say "you need to give this guy 2 seasons before you see what his teams are all about"  and when you dive into the numbers at Elfsborg over Thelins first few seasons you soon see why.  They really didn't start putting results together consistently until the last few months of season 2.  Season 3 they really took off and were successful until he joined us but for quite a while in those first two seasons it would appear the Elfsbog fans wanted rid in great numbers.  

My feeling is we are probably going to have to endure some struggles in the first half of this season, especially with the demands of europe though I think the extra games will be good for squad gelling in the bigger picture, but I think/hope we will really kick on in the second half of the season.  

[manc_don]

I hope you're right tlg, but if we're still bottom or thereabouts by Christmas, I'm not sure the club will have much choice. We really need to start seeing something and something positive fast.

[Slim]

What’s the upside of the 3 year project? Winning the league or consistently challenging for 3rd and getting into Europe most years?

If it’s the latter, you’d get similar return out of someone like McInnes/Robinson without having to wait 3 years, especially with the amounts we’ve been spending on transfer fees during the last 3 windows.

[RicoS321]

12 minutes ago, Slim said:

What’s the upside of the 3 year project? Winning the league or consistently challenging for 3rd and getting into Europe most years?

If it’s the latter, you’d get similar return out of someone like McInnes/Robinson without having to wait 3 years, especially with the amounts we’ve been spending on transfer fees during the last 3 windows.

I suspect the upside is that you get the consistent challenging for third, doing so while also getting a good return on the foreign project players, plus playing out from the back (it's very debatable whether this is better than a McInnes or Robinson side or not). Overall, the idea is that we'd have a structure in place behind the manager, that would allow us to transition to the next guy with little upheaval, but I'm not convinced that is the case at all. 

There is no reason for us to take the three year project with any seriousness though. Cormack simply chose to say that about Thelin. He could easily have said that about Glass, Goodwin or Robson but for some bizarre reason chose not to. Thelin's repeated mistakes and failure to address key areas wouldn't look out of place in any of the other guy's Dons teams. Hopefully he can learn from mistakes in the way the others weren't given the opportunity to. Thelin certainly has a more complete backroom than the others had (strangely missing a technical director). All of this should have been ready while McInnes was still at the club, but we chose to half-arse it with a few role-players (Cormack included). As I mentioned on the transfer thread, it seems we are still making errors and there's no overall good strategic thinking at the club. 

It's still hugely debatable whether our model versus our model under McInnes works better in Scottish football though. The risk is that a team like hearts or Hibs get it right and we're lagging because we chose to stick with giving a manager all the control.