A strange footballing weekend. Man City lost, Celtic lost, Cove Rangers lost and, in the Championship, both Dundee United and Ayr lost.
The Terrors dropped points once again to bottom of the league Alloa. Same old Alloa, always beating (United). I don't know what it is but we seem to have a massive problem with Alloa and small teams in general in that we are consistently dropping points to them. Given the overhaul of players and managers over the last few years it's really difficult to pinpoint why it is we struggle there. It has to be a mentality thing, I can't see any other explanation.
The most worrying thing for me is that this wasn't a smash and grab win for Alloa where we can say we were simply unlucky. We weren't. The better team won and if you didn't know the teams you would have thought Alloa were the team at the top and United were the struggling part-timers. The truth is we were lucky to only lose by a single goal. Credit to Alloa for that.
It's easy to look for simple excuses and blame the pitch. It was dreadful and clearly hadn't been watered. The ball stuck under our dribblers feet on countless occasions and it seemed to slow the game down. But the fact is we still should have had enough to put them away.
No positives to take from the game for me. I did think that when we brought Appere on we started to look threatening, and having two up top seemed to be working. Naturally Neilson then moved him to the left to accommodate Pawlett who once again reverted to being a passenger. Neilson needs to realise that Pawlett doesn't warrant a start more often than not and in games like this then we need to play two up front.
The biggest problem for me were the midfield two, and that surprised me. I won't pretend that I'm a fan of Butcher in the midfield - my comments on here previously won't support me in that - but we missed him badly on Friday night. Harkes had a poor game but Stanton was anonymous. We need to dominate the midfield in these games and neither did that.
Defensively we were poor again and Liam Smith went from the sublime to the ridiculous. After being very good against Morton he was all over the place and his positioning cost us the only goal of the game. Neither centre half did well either.
A poor poor result. We remain top on goal difference after Ayr losing by two, but we've opened the door again for Inverness and potentially Dundee by dropping these three points and now it's a long international break for us.
Mon the Terrors, be better.
AAFC 1 DUFC 0
posted on 7/10/19
spoke to your director of football on Saturday
Decided against mentioning the game
posted on 7/10/19
comment by The Duke (U10059)
posted 10 minutes ago
spoke to your director of football on Saturday
Decided against mentioning the game
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I suspect that was sensible
Was he saying anything interesting about the club/game as a whole?
posted on 7/10/19
comment by IvanGolacIsMagic (U5291)
posted 1 minute ago
comment by The Duke (U10059)
posted 10 minutes ago
spoke to your director of football on Saturday
Decided against mentioning the game
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I suspect that was sensible
Was he saying anything interesting about the club/game as a whole?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
no
kids family stuff etc
I cannot claim any ITK stuff
Next time
posted on 7/10/19
posted on 7/10/19
haha your team lost
posted on 7/10/19
comment by Call Sign: Invictus (U3627)
posted 2 minutes ago
haha your team lost
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posted on 7/10/19
Proper scheidter of a weekend for football for me
Kids team lost at home to a team near the bottom of the league that they only managed a draw with away a few weeks back.
St Mirren lost
Celtic lost
so I got to my weekly ironing pile thinking "at least Man Utd" are playing Newcastle and I can get something out of this weekend"
Then to see Man City lost so Liverpool are 8 clear just made the weekend all the worse
posted on 7/10/19
Went to the match. What a dump that stadium is! More away fans than home fans, shame the team didn’t give us anything to shout about.
posted on 7/10/19
comment by border_arab (U5560)
posted 34 minutes ago
Went to the match. What a dump that stadium is! More away fans than home fans, shame the team didn’t give us anything to shout about.
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Only been there once - my abiding memory is Jimmy Gomis skying a shot from about 10 yards out, so much so that the ball went into the railway yard behind the stadium.
I like dumps like that, they have a certain charm.
posted on 7/10/19
comment by Call Sign: Invictus (U3627)
posted 6 hours, 22 minutes ago
Proper scheidter of a weekend for football for me
Kids team lost at home to a team near the bottom of the league that they only managed a draw with away a few weeks back.
St Mirren lost
Celtic lost
so I got to my weekly ironing pile thinking "at least Man Utd" are playing Newcastle and I can get something out of this weekend"
Then to see Man City lost so Liverpool are 8 clear just made the weekend all the worse
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My Dundee & Newcastle-supprting mate had the opposite weekend:
Dundee won
Dundee United lost
Newcastle won
Sunderland lost
And all on the weekend he got married. Jammy git!