Raith Against The Machine
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Posts posted by Raith Against The Machine
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Full credit to Ian Murray. Took a real risk with a line-up nobody would've predicted, and it has paid off. Some boy.
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What's the story with Aidan McGeady, then? Proper fucked?
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3 minutes ago, grumswall said:
Wouldn't be surprised to see a return to the 4132 today but it would make more sense for stanton to be dropping back into browns holding role.
Individually, Stanton is better as a 10, but I wonder if the team might not benefit from his drive in a deeper position.
Easy to say it with hindsight, but looking back to Airdrie, with the similarities between Brown and Byrne and the fact that neither exactly shone, would we have been better off with Stanton further back? Quite possibly.
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Just now, Raith Against The Machine said:
Raith Rovers play at Somerset Park without ridiculous selection issues challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)
Largely self inflicted this time, it has to be said. With the size of squad we have, to be starting a midfielder at centre half is mental. Think we'll struggle massively without Hamilton, too.
Still a lot of good players on the park for the Rovers, but I think this game hinges entirely on whether or not Ayr are competent or not.
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Raith Rovers play at Somerset Park without ridiculous selection issues challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)
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1 hour ago, renton said:
Aye, not terribly confident about getting any kind of result today. Think Smith has to start and still think we need a tactical rethink after last week, not so much in terms of shape but need to be more agressive in pressing the ball, and getting more support to Hamilton.
Would take a draw.
The press is interesting. I thought it was quite an astute response to sit off Airdrie's backline on Saturday there, in as much as it was clearly what they wanted. If you look at the goal, you can see how quick they can move the ball once they've pulled a gap. To only have one or two chasing meant the Rovers were retaining shape and made that really difficult.
That said, I do think we could sustain a good press. With the two holding midfielders and somewhat reticent full-backs, the four in front should be able to press without fear of leaving huge gaps behind. I'm just not entirely sure what it gives you with this team. Are we set up to make the most of turning over the ball high up the park? Maybe not with Hamilton still to find his shooting boots.
Getting more support to Hamilton is absolutely key, though. With the 4-2-3-1 I think we're still keeping both wide players wide most of the time, and I'm not sure it's helping. Assuming Josh Mullin is on the park, because he's the starkest example, you've got a proper right winger. Your left sided wide forward, for me, should then be tucked inside, playing more on the shoulder of Hamilton alongside the 10, rather than stationed out wide by default.
When we've faced teams with a back four, it's very rare that we're occupying both centre halfs at the same time. That's what I'd like to see more of, more engagement of the opposition defence at their 18 yard line or deeper. We're still playing a huge amount of football 25 yards from goal.
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10 minutes ago, CALDERON said:
I'd be a wee bit dissapointed if there isn't a loan signing in today of some description, given we've let 3 players go out on loan, and Connolly hasn't really featured so will be short on match fitness.
I hope we do see someone, either a striker to back up Hamilton or an extra body into the backline, but in Andy Barrowman's interview he said something along the lines of "We'd probably overstretched the budget somewhat earlier in the window, but we've been able to correct for that recently", so it might well be that the three loans out (Ethan Ross in particular) are paying for the business already done, rather than making room for more additions.
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16 minutes ago, Stardog_champion said:
Murray has no clue what his strongest team is, I’m tired of the tinkering. We looked flat and ran out of ideas last Saturday and for a squad this big that doesn’t bode well. Looks like we’ll be struggling for a defence if Watson doesn’t make it. We’ve struggled at Somerset for years and I can’t see that changing any time soon.
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I've been a wee bit out the loop. Has there been any sort of prognosis for Keith Watson?
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Games between the Rovers and ICT needed a new angle with the end of #thestreak and I'm pleased to see we've got one so quickly.
Justice for Jock McStay.
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I think we suffer slightly because Mullin and Millen share a similarity in approach as much as they do a similarity in surnames. Both can deliver truly excellent crosses, but both prefer to do so from a deeper position, and ideally from wherever they receive the ball. Neither is immobile, by any means, and both can go beyond if need be, but it's not their first instinct. If you could mirror image Josh Mullin and put him on the other side, I think we'd be better off.
We saw similar in the first quarter of last season where Aidan Connolly was going for his most natural choice of cutting back to deliver on his left, and he was finding himself toe-to-toe with Ross Millen who was already an option to cross from there. That understanding developed fairly quickly, and the lack of consistent selection is probably slowing that process this season.
And I know I'm back on my same old bullshit again, but if we're playing with two holding midfielders (and we are), we need more out of our fullbacks. There are trade-offs elsewhere, but for anyone who was at Airdrie yesterday, swap Millen (crosses from deep, rarely goes beyond his winger, particularly when it's Josh Mullin) and Dick (gets forward out of a sense of duty rather than any sort of natural desire or ability) with two natural running full-backs like Kieran MacDonald and Reghan Tumilty. That's a totally different proposition, and a totally different game.
We're set up well to accommodate adventurous fullbacks - Brown and Byrne can easily drop in on either side - but we don't actually have the fullbacks to do anything about it.
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6 minutes ago, McGuigan1978 said:
Aye, think taking Hamilton off made us significantly worse.
If you’re going to take him off, then fair enough, but to continue to fire the ball long, to a collection of new forwards that aren’t target men or good in the air felt wild, and certainly didn’t help us.
I think this is the crux of my dislike for Murray's "chuck a load of c***s up front" tactic. You see the likes of Ross Millen getting the ball in a wee bit of space and you can see him thinking "Hang on, who the f**k's still here?" and inevitably in those situations the ball goes long. You don't want to try and knock it into the midfield when you can't remember who's playing there and you know you've not got anyone behind you.
If we had a second big unit to go up and win headers it'd maybe be more viable, but the players we had in that last ten minutes were singularly suited to running at and passing through Airdrie. We tried that basically once, and Josh Mullin strayed offside to nullify the whole thing. Maddening.
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I don't know if being top of the league for one week went to people's heads, but this is the Championship, this is how it works. We've been here long enough to know that everyone can beat every me else, and that when you go away from home in particular, you have to play well to win.
We didn't play well today, but I don't think we played particularly badly either. I know some people struggle to separate the result from the performance, but I'm not particularly downhearted after watching that.
I don't think the Airdrie fans are going to come on and start waxing lyrical about their performance either. For the first 70 minutes that was just a case of shaking 22 footballers in a can until a goal fell out. Once it did Airdrie managed the game very well and we didn't, but it could've just as easily been us taking the lead.
There's still a lot of room for improvement with this Rovers side, and I take that as a positive. I don't think Murray particularly got his starting eleven wrong. Or, at least, I don't think swapping in the likes of Gullan, Vaughan and Smith would've helped. The game was too frenetic, too kick and rush, and we never settled into a rhythm. Watson going off certainly didn't help that, but stronger performances from Byrne and Brown would've been a bigger influence. Really the first off day that either of those two have had this season, which is forgivable.
I could pick faults, obviously. I still don't like Murray's "baws oot" strategy when we go behind, I think what we gain in attackers doesn't compensate for what we lose in cohesion. Hamilton should probably do better when he's played through, although I thought he was offside and you've got to credit the keeper. Easton and Mullin will know they should be doing better with the freekick they chipped into Rae's arms.
But I've seen plenty of bad Rovers teams play badly. That's not one of them. That's a good Rovers side who had a bad day at the office, and in this division you get punished for it. And that's fine? It's why this division is so entertaining.
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Ach, these games happen. Thought we shaded it on general play and chances, but when you're not clinical, you run the risk of a result like this.
We've taken points we probably didn't deserve before today, we've lost a point we probably did deserve today.
You can point to poor decision making both on the park and in the dugout, but if you played that game again tomorrow there's just as much chance it finishes 1-0 to us.
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Airdrie are desperate for us to commit forward to try and break, but we're pretty steadfastly only committing Hamilton and Easton to the press. I'm not quite sure why we've swapped Stanton and Easton, but it's six and half a dozen really.
Some fans getting a bit restless with the lack of a full press, but it's working. Airdrie really struggling to get any traction.
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2 minutes ago, OhnononoGeordieMunro said:
Agreed. Games been a million miles an hour.
The amount of movement and interchange from Airdrie's front three, and to a lesser extent the three behind them, is understandably causing us bother. A couple of times we've turned the ball over but Easton and/or Mullin have been twenty yards back because they've been tracking runners.
There's change to be had out of this Airdrie defence, but we've not been able to put them under any sustained pressure.
We're doing better than we were fifteen minutes ago, but a freak goal still seems more likely than one from deliberate, concerted attacking effort.
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We haven't really settled at all. Surprisingly, Scott Brown has probably been the worst culprit for looking off the pace.
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Another +1 for the Lidl shout, a better option than anywhere else I've parked here before.
I think it's the right eleven from Murray after we toiled a fair bit last week. Mullin provides a different dynamic from the rest of our attack, and Easton looked bright off the bench. Gives Smith a real point to prove when he inevitably comes on later, he'll feel hard done by.
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3 minutes ago, RAITHROVERS84 said:
Remember Ethan Varian. I remember he scored against Aberdeen and that’s about it.
https://www.espn.co.uk/football/team/squad/_/id/249/league/SCO.2/season/2021
Great link for anyone looking to see previous squads.
Ideally, you want a striker who's ruthless. Ethon Varian was the polar opposite. He had an abundance of ruth. His ruth cup overfloweth.
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1 minute ago, TxRover said:
For those at the ICT match, how did Stanton look walking around after he took the knock and came off? It seemed to be an ankle they were reportedly working on, but I’ve heard nothing further.
It looked horrible initially, I don't know whether it was his ankle or his knee but he crashed into the defender's standing leg and seemed in real trouble, rolling around and punching the turf in a very un-Stanton like manner.
Once the initial impact passed though, and he'd had a bit of treatment, he looked to be basically fine. Walked back to the dugout unaided. Could easily be the kind of thing that balloons up over night, but hopefully it was just a knock and he's fine by Saturday.
I thought the sponsor's maybe went a tough too far giving Stanton the man of the match on Saturday, I'd have gone for Dabrowski, Byrne or even Murray ahead of him, but I certainly think you could make an argument for him being one of the players of the season so far.
Whilst the likes of Callum Smith have taken the headlines, you could easily make the case for Stanton as MVP, if you'll forgive me borrowing some of your vocabulary.
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3 hours ago, Shandon Par said:
Will Lewis McCann be on Northern Ireland’s radar? Shout out to the Rovers fan who said he’d massacre QP today.
Didn't take the forecasting skills of a Nostradamus, to be fair. I'm astounded to hear that Queen's Park kept up their high line today. Absolutely no surprise to see a lot of QP fans starting to question Veldman's credentials. After watching the footage from the game at Stark's Park, McPake must've been rubbing his eyes as the same thing unfolded. Totally negligent management.
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21 minutes ago, McGuigan1978 said:
Fair play too to the the woman who went sprinting as we scored the winner, fell arse over tit in front of me, and as I helped her up she said, “I’m really sorry, that’s my son”
I hope she’s okay, but god bless her son
Absolutely love this.
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Further thoughts to follow, but a small mention for the woman who took absolutely no joy in the victory, preferring instead to shout "fucking little b*****ds!" over and over again at some nine year olds.
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Ayr United v Raith Rovers - 30/09/23
in Scottish Championship General Chatter
Posted