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Boo Khaki

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Posts posted by Boo Khaki

    The F1 Thread

    in All Other Sports

    Posted

    Thank god it's bone dry, or else some idiot would bin it into the scenery at the restart, they all start moaning about no being able to stay on track, and we'd be sitting here 4 hours from now none the wiser as to whether there is going to be a race or not.

    0

    The F1 Thread

    in All Other Sports

    Posted

    Haven't watched a single minute of the 2024 season until now, yet here I am at 6 flaming am sitting down deluding myself that this will be something other than yet another procession.

    0

    All things Dundee FC

    in Scottish Premiership General Chatter

    Posted · Edited by Boo Khaki

    31 minutes ago, peebles_Dee said:

    It's only a problem not having a big lump when we've not got the ball. Playing McGhee, Portales and Donnelly would work fine in my opinion as if it goes over Portales/McGhee we have 2 quick centre backs to cover in behind. The 3 I mentioned are better on the ball and make a positive impact. We have changed our style of play to a slow build up and dictating play. Once we through our style of play out the window and get dominated and Shaughnessy get easily turned. The new style of play has worked but hasn't worked as much for Beck. Putting McGhee at CB means we are defensively weak at wing back but Boateng and Sylla are athletic to cover space in behind. All our goals haven't been through strikers winning it in the air it has been through getting turned or giving opponents time and space on the ball. Need to have 90minute performances.

    I agree with you about the goals we're conceding, but from my perspective that's being caused by the midfield. We can't compete. The ball gets passed from sideline to sideline and back again through 7 or 8 players and we don't get near any of them. We drop deeper and deeper, the opponent has as much possession as they like in our final third, and it's only a matter of time before one of the CB's loses his guy, gets turned etc.

    We'd be a lot less vulnerable if we

    1. Had a bit more of the ball. Or any of it, in fact.

    2. Were able to begin defending a bit further up the pitch

    3. Were in any way capable of just holding on to the ball for 30 seconds or so to get out, slow the game down, and take the heat out of the situation

    4. Our WB's didn't immediately drop back into a 5 and leave the the 3 in midfield completely overwhelmed

    All of these things are Midfield issues. The solutions IMO are first of all -

    1. Take a fucking forward off and put Boateng next to Sylla so each player in midfield has slightly less lateral ground to try and cover.

    2. Consider going to back 4 so the WB's don't have to drop and leave the wide parts of the field empty, this would facilitate playing 5 across the middle of the pitch if you really wanted. It seems counter-intuitive to take off a defender when trying to defend, but football isn't as simple as more defenders = fewer goals, more forwards = more goals, although heaven knows plenty of fans seem to believe it is.

    3. Accept that even if McCowan and Cameron are willing to work hard, neither is a tone setter defensively, neither is going to clatter into someone and come out with the ball, so it's perfectly ok to sub one of them for a midfielder with a bit more dig if we are trying to hold a game.

    The fact Joe S is a big haddie really isn't a problem in my view, because that's exactly what the ideal player in his position should be. He doesn't need to be great on the ball because the two guys either side of him are the ones who bring it forward. When we play out of the back it's usually Portales who ends up with the ball on the half-way line. Even JS is perfectly capable of playing a 10 yard sideways pass to Portales.

    All of the things I've listed above are cumulative, in the sense that doing one of them should make each of the others slightly easier and more frequent, but it all begins and ends with more bodies in Midfield. While it's just McCowan, Cameron, and Sylla trying to play against 6 or 7 guys, we have a string of 5 playing across the edge of our box, and Bak and Tiffoney standing doing nothing on the half-way line, this stuff where we don't see the ball for hours on end and put up with wave after wave of opponent attacks is just going to continue. We have no control of the game in these circumstances, because Docherty is doing nothing to actually provide the players with an opportunity to take control. Once it goes 2-1, 2-2, the momentum and belief is entirely with the opponent, and it we never get it back, hence why the roof caves in.

    Just one other wee thing re the goals. If you watch how many times we're letting the opponent put crosses into the box because we're so deep, you'll notice that it's usually ineffective, the ball gets cleared no bother, but that's because the 3 with big Joe in the middle is working as it's supposed to in that scenario. Where it's not working is in defending stuff through the middle, but that to me is because of the sheer amount of possession we surrender  in central areas immediately in front of our box. That's a midfield issue.

    4

    All things Dundee FC

    in Scottish Premiership General Chatter

    Posted · Edited by Boo Khaki

    If you are playing 3 CB the guy in the centre needs to be a lump, hence Shaughnessy. McPake did this as well with Jordon Forster, that didn't work out due to the player, and none of our other CB's were able to make it work until we got Berra on loan.

    Faced with two forwards, the fact there is only one central CB puts a lot of onus on him having to be utterly dominant in the air to cut out supply to those two guys. Different when it's just one forward player, or you are playing a four with two CB's who can pick up a man each, because they can then decide between them which forward poses the most difficult physical challenge and allocate responsibility, but when it's 1 v 2 then the lone Central CB has to be able to dominate either forward, and because he theoretically has responsibility for more area directly in front of the goal due to the lack of a partner, he needs to be dominant in the air, a near certainty to get his head first to anything that gets piled in there, and a lump who doesn't get bullied when he jumps.

    I've never seen a 3CB system that works well long-term without a big, strong guy in the middle. Shaughnessy is the only CB we have who meets that profile. The only other guy close is on loan in the Championship, but Ashcroft is too immobile. Portales would get bodied playing in the middle of a 3. He's the perfect wide CB for that formation, but totally unsuited to the centre.

    Mind when it was aw the rage in the 90's? Craig Broon played Colin Hendry there, the Germans always had an enormous lump in the middle for the same reasons. Football has changed, but not that aspect of it.

    0

    All things Dundee FC

    in Scottish Premiership General Chatter

    Posted · Edited by Boo Khaki

    2 hours ago, Caballero said:

    It’s not really like that though is it?

    as someone else said, first season back up we are doing very well.

    Personally, I hope the Rangers game gets called off, we tell them it’s being played on the 16th or 17th, as it could have been played this week, but they chose not too.

     

     

    If you are measuring the season so far by pre-season hopes whereby most of us would have been happy to accept 10th, then yes, it's an enormously satisfying season so far. However, you can do well and still underachieve in certain respects.

    No team that surrenders that many points from winning positions can pretend they don't have a major, glaring problem, and since it occurs in more or less exactly the same way every single time, it's perfectly reasonable to ask why it isn't being addressed.

    That old thing about "insanity doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results". It's indefensible. Whether you blame the players, Docherty, or a bit of both, the fact is most people watching are seeing the same pattern of events over and over, to the point whereby they are completely unironically predicting it, and lo and behold it plays out exactly as predicted. Now if folk in the stands can see the problem, why does our coaching staff persist with doing the exact same thing over and over when the outcome is the same over and over?

    If we'd clung on to just half of the points we've thrown away, we'd be sitting in a comfortable 4th, Docherty would be a shoo-in for Manager of the Year, and everyone would be ecstatic about a fantastic season, rather than just pleased with a satisfying one.

    A lot has been made about how ineffectual and inconsistent the play is from our forwards, yet from where I'm sitting the reason we aren't far higher up the table than we are already is not because we aren't scoring goals, it's because we can't take the heat out of games where the opponent is throwing everything at us. If we want to think about where to improve in the off-season, sorting that out will yield far bigger results than changing one or two players up front.

    The daft thing is, it's not really one goal leads we struggle with. The reasons for this are debatable, but it seems clear to me that just as things are at 0-0, teams don't get overly ambitious when playing against us because they respect our ability to get up the field quickly and cut them open. This doesn't change much at 1-0, but as soon as it goes 2-0 or 3-0, this forces opponents to throw caution to the wind and chuck everything at us, whereupon our lightweight, undermanned midfield becomes totally overrun because the WB's drop into a 5, and 3 guys are left trying to deal with a 4 or 5 man midfield when there is also a CB stepping up and FB's bombing on. It's sometimes 3 v 6 in Midfield, and it's absolutely ridiculous to suggest that's a player mentality problem. 

    It's no wonder at all we end up playing with a string of 5 across the back and barely get a touch of the ball. Yet it simply is not a problem at 0-0 or even 1-0, because opponents don't throw the kitchen sink at us while scores are level or one goal different. The exception really is the games against the OF, where they tend to just attack us relentlessly anyway, and I think it's quite telling that our system that copes with most sides in the Premier has so far caved in completely v's the OF. That's entirely consistent with what happens when those other sides go all-out attack.

    6

    Dundee v Motherwell - 6th April

    in Scottish Premiership General Chatter

    Posted

    Just now, rainbowrising said:

    From 2 goals up time and again? Nah. One time, ok maybe the coach does f**k it up. Time and again? Means the players don't learn, don't have the mentality. 

    2-0 with about 10 minutes to go and lose. Aye, but the coach... Total fucking bullshit. 

     

    "learning" means jack shit when it's a case of two midgets and Sylla trying to deal with 4, 5, and sometimes 6 players passing the ball straight around them. 

    1

    Dundee v Motherwell - 6th April

    in Scottish Premiership General Chatter

    Posted

    Just now, DeeTillEhDeh said:

    2-0 with 12 minutes to go and we lose it - just a fucking joke.

    Once or twice a season you can forgive, but not when it's half-a-dozen times and follows the exact same predictable pattern every single time. It's clearly a Docherty problem. Either he's oblivious to why it's happening, or he's so stupidly stubborn that he just refuses to acknowledge it, change his system, and is happy for the players to take pelters when it's his fault for setting them up to fail.

    0

    Dundee v Motherwell - 6th April

    in Scottish Premiership General Chatter

    Posted · Edited by Boo Khaki

    3 minutes ago, rainbowrising said:

    The players need to have the ability to play out and kill a game. Some things aren't coach related. They have blown this time and again. 

     

    To an extent, aye, but this midfield isn't built for dealing with teams trying to push a game, it's a man down on most opponents to begin with, so when it starts getting completely overrun and can't get the ball Docherty should be changing that, and yet he never does despite it happening practically every other weekend.

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