Aberdeen v St Mirren

[The.Moog]

58 minutes ago, RicoS321 said:

I think that's been cancelled in modern fitba. They're supposed to be able to take it down, pirouette and play a sixty yard pass to feet. I was a distance from it, but I didn't think he had the chance to deal with it before the bounce, but would need to see it again.

There’s two fundamental issues with the defending of the ball in the air at the back.

For set plays, long throws & crosses into the box, we just get out jumped and out muscled far, far more often than CH’s should.

For long balls over the top from the opposition half, we get caught out being in the wrong place to deal with it far, far more often than we should. The amount of times the ball sails over our guys heads, or bounces in front of them is ridiculous.

It’s the absolute meat and drink basics of defending and we are constantly, consistently, absolutely shite at it…

Edited 16 hours ago by The.Moog

[The.Moog]

Just watched the highlights - aye Milne was poor at the second but fuck me Devlin, that’s appalling defending. Didn’t close down, shut the angle or try to force him wide, just let the boy run by him.

Very poor…

[RicoS321]

2 minutes ago, The.Moog said:

Just watched the highlights - aye Milne was poor at the second but fuck me Devlin, that’s appalling defending. Didn’t close down, shut the angle or try to force him wide, just let the boy run by him.

Very poor…

Aye, I think he lost his bearings having not expected Milne to make a cunt of it. Should have been right across and forced the guy wide. Not like him.

I also think Mitov wasn't as bad at the third as suggested. It's a really good header down at his feet, as he's running across goal. One of those ones that if he had saved it they'd have said "he didn't know much about it" as they generally just hit you. He was honking for the disallowed goal of course. 

[RicoS321]

22 minutes ago, The.Moog said:

There’s two fundamental issues with the defending of the ball in the air at the back.

For set plays, long throws & crosses into the box, we just get out jumped and out muscled far, far more often than CH’s should.

For long balls over the top from the opposition half, we get caught out being in the wrong place to deal with it far, far more often than we should. The amount of times the ball sails over our guys heads, or bounces in front of them is ridiculous.

It’s the absolute meat and drink basics of defending and we are constantly, consistently, absolutely shite at it…

It's the wind! 

Agreed, we do get caught under the ball a lot. Rubi was really bad for it in the early Thelin period, but Milne has more than his fair share. It is his job to be the aggressive one, so I suppose he is going to make more errors in the air (because he headers it more). I don't think it's down to tactics or anything, just consistent individual errors. Knoester usually lets it bounce, Milne misses it, and Devlin doesn't get distance on them. It's why we need three defenders and not two.

[OrlandoDon]

Disappointing to see we lost the lead twice, but we did ride our luck with the disallowed goal, looked shaky at the back, and mitov didn’t give us an lot of confidence, but we came back from a goal down, good character. Based on how we are playing, 4 wins and 2 draws out of the last 7 league games is more than we probably deserve. We’re just not very good. Yet 5 off third. What if we actually start playing well?

Nice to see lazetic getting a couple of goals, even off the bench, problem is though, and it’s the same for the majority of the midfield/ forwards, it’s hard to get any sort of rhythm/form when you dont always start and we rotate/change everyone around you. Squad rotation is balance, and I dont think we’ve done well with it. 

harsh to criticize Milne, in any other game he wins/clears the ball and we don’t lose the second goal. Boy has had a great season to date. Same with devlin, could have been better on the goal too. Those two and knoester have certainly been our 3 most consistent players.

disappointed to see Aouchiche balloon over the bar at a pretty open goal, he’s been better of late and a goal would have been good for him, and mitov continues to cause concern. Wonder if we are considering a new keeper. I didn’t see it but read polvara could/should have won the ball right before the third goal, as much as he scored and is a popular player, he’s one of a number of mediocre players we have and I’m not worried to lose him to hibs or the likes. We need to sign better.

harsh to criticize JT for making 5 subs and we finish the game with 10. We subbed two in the 89th minute to see out the game, just unlucky there.

Edited 14 hours ago by OrlandoDon

[Panda]

The best thing that happened to us tonight was St Mirren going 1-0 up. We made subs, got Lazetic, Nisbet and Karlsson all on the pitch together, and on another day we win 3-1.

The penalty isn't a penalty (and the referee didn't appear to have been shown any video footage going by the VAR that showed on TV. It looks like he simply looks at two paused images. The video would show Knoester can't do much about his arm placement and does his best to move it backwards.)

Second goal is individual errors. Third goal we're down to 10 men, although we should kill the game more than we did.

It's the second game where Thelin has made changes and improved things, but it's also the second game I think he waited too long to make those changes. For a lot of the game we had five players in our own half passing in a semi-circle while St Mirren sat deep and watched us. 

Keskinen tonight I thought was very good again. I did say in summer I thought he'd be out POTY this season. It's taken him a long time to get going, but I think we're beginning to see a very good player emerging.

[OrlandoDon]

Didn’t realize we hadn’t made our 5 subs, but the issue was we’d used our three sub ‘windows’ so couldn’t bring in a 5th sub. That rule makes no sense when there’s a legit injury, not like it’s time wasting, and we’re forced to play with ten. 

[Blow.Up.Sheep]

For sure the first half performance could have and should been a lot better, it was pathetic.

Yes the final result could have been a lot better, there are certainly positives to take from last night 100%

How many minutes were Lazetic and Nisbet on the park at the same time? how many goals did we score during that time? (jist saying) we also managed to have Lazetic, Nisbet and Karlsson playing together in the same team and we looked much better when we did that.

FFS Jimmy it can be done, jist stop being so fukin stubborn 

thought Mitov was very poor last night 

[InversneckieDob]

Was it not about this time last year 'that' Hibs game happened?

That was the start of a honking run......JT, I don't think, survives another honking run as such a run could see us back in relegation country.

[TheDonbytheDee]

Just watched the highlights. I think St Mirren are right to be aggrieved about their first goal being chalked off, didn't look right to me seeing it back, not sure it was a penalty though, so I suppose one cancels out the other. 

Their second, Milne slips, (wasn't the only one to slip during the match last night), I had forgotten Devlin was supposed to be covering, I had a recollection of their striker being one one one with Mitov.

Their third, fuck me, it was a poor one and so late.

Still not going to grumble too much, it was an entertaining game, not something we have been able to say of late. Was nice seeing one of our strikers score a poachers goal, with our second. 18 shots with 8 on target I think the stats said. if only Nisbet hadn't used the sharp edge of his head with thon header.

We rode our luck on Sunday and came away with three points, we played much better last night and got a draw. 

That's fitba.

 

[TheDonbytheDee]

1 hour ago, InversneckieDob said:

Was it not about this time last year 'that' Hibs game happened?

That was the start of a honking run......JT, I don't think, survives another honking run as such a run could see us back in relegation country.

I don't think we are going on another bad run, we have shown we will change tactics now instead of blindly doing the same shit, game after game, like we did last season.

It was disappointing to only get a point last night, but we didn't play too badly. 

[RicoS321]

6 hours ago, Panda said:

The penalty isn't a penalty (and the referee didn't appear to have been shown any video footage going by the VAR that showed on TV. It looks like he simply looks at two paused images. The video would show Knoester can't do much about his arm placement and does his best to move it backwards.)

That's what VAR does, and always has, done. It removes context via still shots and slow motion replay and asks the referee "can you see a foul here?". The reason that the ref is given a still shot is because the VAR lads will have deemed (correctly) that there was no foul on Knoester, and so the decision left to be made is whether or not it strikes his hand. Which is obviously ridiculous. The context of why his hand is in that position in the first place being completely omitted is unsurprising. 

It's fairly simple. The player wasn't being unsporting, wasn't trying to gain an advantage, had no reason to handle the ball, and didn't attempt to handle it. All of this can easily be determined in real time by the referee, and could easily be determined by the VAR lads too, but with context removed it becomes a "does ball hit hand" call, with a frantic discussion over how to interpret the rules that are only there in the first place because of VAR. The worst thing to happen to football, ever. Including Mark Hateley.

[OneBrianIrvine.]

8 hours ago, Panda said:

The best thing that happened to us tonight was St Mirren going 1-0 up. 

Said that to my dad last night.

As much as we played some bonnie stuff first half (we actually played football in the lead up to Topi hitting the bar!) it was still all far too slow. No tempo whatsoever. Going behind spurred us on.

What a difference when we ‘go for it’ and like you say with more than a lone striker. 

Some good stuff from Armstrong and Polvara last night as well I thought. Although Adil reverted to early Adil. As others have said hard to be tough on Milne given season he’s having. 

Not watched Sportscene yet but Mitov looked affa flappy. Didn’t see much wrong with their ‘goal’.

As ever the length of time VAR takes is bloody ridiculous.

Disappointed to draw, and JT maybe needs to heed use of subs (could we have a used a H/T sub window?) for future but encouraged by that last night. 
Just hope JT can get us to approach more games like we’re behind!

[OneBrianIrvine.]

2 hours ago, RicoS321 said:

The worst thing to happen to football, ever. Including Mark Hateley.

Trigger warning please.

[RicoS321]

31 minutes ago, OneBrianIrvine. said:

Disappointed to draw, and JT maybe needs to heed use of subs (could we have a used a H/T sub window?) for future but encouraged by that last night

I mentioned earlier in the thread about how Karlsson would be on earlier than JT would normally make subs. It's unusual for us to make a sub before the hour mark. He almost always makes a double change at >=65 minutes (around the time he took on Lazetic). I said to my mate when Karlsson came on that it needed a double sub, because we were crying out for it. I hadn't considered the implications of the injury of course, but hopefully it's a lesson learned. The mistake was taking on Karlsson before Lazetic, and after half time. He has probably got to decide to do one or the other next time. The other subs were probably necessary. I'm not totally convinced we needed a double sub at the end, but it wouldn't have mattered with the three sub "windows". 

[wee toon red]

Just saw the goals and I think Mitov's getting a bit of a hard time. I'd have the second and third firmly in the "could've done better" category and on a good day you'd have hoped he'd save them both but they weren't exactly clangers - like the St Mirren keeper's for Lazetic's first (and Mitov's attempt at the disallowed goal).

The defending around both the open play goals was way more of an issue than the goalkeeping but players have off-nights so what can you do? Lobban, Devlin, Milne and Knoester all need to - and will be - better in other games.

I just wonder if it's a coincidence that in the game we score three we also leak like a sieve...

[BigAl]

Couldn't watch last night as in radio studio so only have the Sportscene highlights to go on.

Can't really add much, if anything to what has had been said.

IMHO goal in first half should have stood, penalty award shouldn't have been given. The entire handball scenario is just nonsense, if you are going to have a handball rule, make it fucking simple, ball hits hand under any circumstances in the penalty box then penalty given, then at least everyone knows where they stand. 

The Swedes know what they're doing by refusing to implement VAR in their domestic football.

Somewhat ironic that the game we actually look like scoring a few, that our defence, which has been so solid, decides to to take a night off.

[RicoS321]

1 hour ago, wee toon red said:

Just saw the goals and I think Mitov's getting a bit of a hard time. I'd have the second and third firmly in the "could've done better" category and on a good day you'd have hoped he'd save them both but they weren't exactly clangers - like the St Mirren keeper's for Lazetic's first (and Mitov's attempt at the disallowed goal).

The defending around both the open play goals was way more of an issue than the goalkeeping but players have off-nights so what can you do? Lobban, Devlin, Milne and Knoester all need to - and will be - better in other games.

I just wonder if it's a coincidence that in the game we score three we also leak like a sieve...

Agreed. The second goal, Devlin has offered the guy the whole goal to aim for, whilst at the same time being close enough to the player that Mitov can't come off his line to narrow the angle like he normally would. The player angles to put it in the far corner, and just wraps his foot round it a bit to fool the keeper. It's an easy save with only the near post to aim for. The second is just a case of throwing your body towards the ball and 9 out of 10 times it hits you. It was a very good header, right into the ground. It was his all round play that wasn't at it last night. He was struggling to hold onto it on the first attempt. I noticed their keeper was the same, but the conditions weren't particularly bad. 

I don't think it's a coincidence that we lose goals the way we attacked last night. Nisbet and Lazetic both gave the ball away trying to do too much around our box late on, and Karlsson generally isn't a reliable defender. I think it's a combination of the attacking setup and the tiredness of our players. Quite a few looked spent around 80 minutes, and that leads to raggedness. The sort of thing you might get away with if you'd chosen a stuffy, narrow approach to the game.

 

[irnbru1903]

A point against a team that recently has our number is ok on papar. They have scored 3 goals at Pittodrie 4 times since 2023 which is rather embarrassing in itself. At least this time we matched them. 

The manner of the result was the annoying thing. As soon as I saw the added on time it was obvious what was going to happen and it did. Not as bad as the time we shipped two in injury time to lose but it left the same gutting feeling. I just hope it doesn't dent our defence's confidence too much in the way last seasons 3-3 with Hibs did. We will find out on Saturday against the only team we haven't struggled against this season.

[Slim]

Probably wouldn't have made any difference, but can't help wondering.

If you're faced with protecting a lead with 10 minutes to go and want to bring on fresh legs to press the opposition and keep them as far from your box as possible, why on earth would you bring on Nilsen ahead of Shinnie? Or choose to keep a broken Polvara on the pitch instead of replacing him with Shinnie at the same time as the other subs?

If there's a single person in the squad you want to have charging about the pitch (or even shielding the ball and buying fouls) in those circumstances, it's Shinnie.