Clydeside

Aye. No doubt we'd be humped without him. But he's definitely not feeling that lone forward role as much as he was. He plays like he's expecting to lose contests before he goes into them and rarely puts his body on the line. He's stood still watching defenders play around him. I know someone had a go at Jones for falling about but come on... Goodie does that a lot. Real pity we couldn't get Jamieson back to put pressure on defenders and buzz about up there. It's agony watching it at times.

It always produces a tactically interesting match, Clyde versus Montrose. That's certainly been true these past few years and today continued the pattern. Whether it was our newly more stuffy shape and defence minded starting eleven denying Montrose for much of the game, or Montrose's second-half counterpunch in the form of an extra and more physical player being put up front, as well as bringing Ballantyne on to bolster the threat down their right hand side. Or indeed our last few rolls of the dice in bringing on Cunningham, Love and Jones. There was a lot to think about. Curiously, I'd say that all of the aforementioned decisions were good and effective ones. In the end, each cancelled out the one before to produce the stalemate. We stifled Montrose for a long time; Montrose's changes opened things up enough for their goals to come; and in the end,our introduction of Cunningham's pace, Jones's presence and Love's dig pulled it back. Interestingly, I think you could make a good case to say that we've been spared some heavy defeats this season because the teams who've beaten us have either taken the lead very quickly and very easily or taken it back in the same way. More than that, they've never had to temper a backlash. Nobody has been itching to bury us because they've never registered us as a threat. Of course, it's not quite as simple as that. Among other reasons, the scarcity of clinical forward players there are at Kilmarnock, Morton, Dumbarton and Montrose has also helped minimise our blushes. I think Montrose need another good quality striker and probably one more reasonably athletic central defender if they want to be sure of a play-off. Waddell and Dillon are obviously good, solid players but Waddell is on the heavy side and Dillon isn't the most mobile either, advancing as he is in years. Both were menaced by the pace we added when Cunningham came on and by physicality of Jones. While there won't be too many players of Jones's size needing dealt with, there are a few players who can shift like Cunningham in the league. Perhaps a third central defender for those games where you'll come up against quicker attackers could mitigate the weaknesses of Waddell and Dillon as a pair. For ourselves, although we were much the poorer team for most of the match and were without any menace at all before Cunningham, Jones and Love came on, I think we should be heartened by the fact that we didn't give up. The very visible determination shown by players like Cuddihy, Love, Cunningham and Splaine to get us back level weighs against some worries we had about team spirit. Nonetheless, we still must address the quality deficit with more signings. In a small way, we've done that this week with Munro's return. But we need at least another two centre backs in my opinion. While we're waiting for those, if we can make a habit of lulling teams into a false sense of security before picking them off with sucker punches then more power to us. About Splaine and Jones. Both deserve praise for sure. Splaine's play to set up the winner was great. And Jones was exactly where we needed him when the ball came in for our first. However, to say Splaine played well generally is stretching the imagination a bit. We can all see what he's good at: beating a man when it doesn't seem possible, playing out of trouble, playing a cute pass. It's rare to see a player at this level be so good at those things. But let's have it right. His yield on those things is maybe one in ten. That's to say that the other nine times he tries them out, he's caught in possession or simply gives it away. That betrays the game of a player who isn't very experienced. We can't carry a lot of players who'll be good with a season or two behind them if we want to avoid the drop. We need to be playing players who're good now. In my opinion that means having Cuddihy play ahead of Splaine in the centre of the park. And on Jones, sure, a lot of his play is awful. But we should surely now see the value of a player with that kind of presence, especially when you've tried everything else. His objective contributions are there for all to see. I don't think we should pile into him for being asked to do things he can't do like play as a lone forward. That's the manager's problem. But give him a half or thirty minutes in tough circumstances, I think we'll get a modest but useful return from him here and there. Lastly, I worry about about our lynchpin, David Goodwillie. He was absolutely rotten today. Everything from timid to resigned-looking in how went about his game. But it's his diminshed work-rate that's the real worry. It's really fell away in the past year or two. I don't know what's behind it but we better keep a watching brief on it because we need much more going on ahead of our our midfield if we want to win games. I don't think he's shown up well in any game this season.

What we should worry about is Petrie bringing Ballantyne on to reinforce the attack down the right. That'll be a lot rougher for us than just Webster with Allan behind him who is basically a centre back or more conservative full back.

Positives: we've kept the back third of the park crowded which has limited Montrose to a couple of chances; good chances mind. If you remember that conceding three will've loomed large in our minds, setting out in such a compressed shape and with such a conservative eleven makes a lot of sense. It'd have been a bold more with our squad to open the game up much more. Negatives. Well, there's been a continuation of the inexperienced, timid and uncoordinated defending that's been a feature of the season so far. What that looks like is Livingstone making the contest between him and Webster harder than it has to be. The space available to Webster has been limited. Livingstone has given him opportunities by letting balls over his shoulder and behind him on the deck on the belief that he can get it under control and play out of trouble. He's done it a couple of times. But the other times he's let them in to score. It isn't Webster's skill that's troubling us. It's Livingstone's inexperience resembling arrogance at times. Lennon's been in his ear a lot. By that, Rumsby's got his headers landing half a yard in front of him and Balatoni and Munro have been guilty of playing Mo players onside needlessly once or twice. But listen, we could get some pace on second half and nick one. It's not unthinkable.

Worth remembering that there might be something in it for him. The longer his indignation is treated as sincere, the longer he's likely to enjoy the perks of publicity, and those have never been easier to monetise.

Academic in finding something to do online shocker. Expect he'll be interviewed on Chorley FM shortly.

We've never opened a league season with a poorer performance than that. Not under Bomber in the old second division nor under Millar in the old third. We've shipped nine goals in the five competitve matches we've played this season. And in the only one of those five matches we won, we played awfully and might even have been lucky to win insofar as we scored from a penalty which on another day wouldn't have been given. But hold those thoughts. I think we could use a reality check on Dumbarton before reflecting on our own failures. Some of our supporters have the view that Dumbarton's squad is similar in quality to our own and, more than that, that the two teams which faced-off against each other today were of similar quality. That view has a long way to go before it is even naive. A man-for-man comparison of the starting elevens will show this to be the case. For my money, we have a better goalkeeper. But in terms of outfield players, there's barely a single position in which we have a better player. To start off, it's unarguably the case that McGeever and Buchanan are better than Rumsby and Balatoni or Page. Insofar as there are differences in quality seen between players at this level, the gulf in quality between Dumbarton's central defenders and our own is vast. Measure it however you like. Recent CVs. Physical stature. Speed across the ground. There is no contest. Moving on to full-backs. Sam Muir, just by reason of being lean and reasonably athletic, pips Docherty in terms of utility and looked at least as good as Livingstone on the evidence of today; both Livingstone and Muir are players recently released from Motherwell's youth set-up. Lynch, just by reason of having played as a defender for most of his young career, having a good stature and decent athletic ability pips both Mortimer and Cuddihy on the other side. Into midfield. Splaine and Cunningham barely have a CV. Cunningham is 23 and has barely had a full senior season of football behind him. He's also carrying more weight than he ever has. Splaine's a year older than Cunningham and has even less senior experience than Cunningham. Again, there is no contest whatever. McKee, Hopkirk, Carswell, Pignatiello. They're all getting a team before the aforesaid two. The same follows for Kennedy, albeit I think he's a good prospect, and Gomis who'd only get into Dumbarton's midfield via a Tardis. Even Cuddihy and Love would have a fight on their hands, albeit their recent CVs and ability levels mean it's a much more arguable thing. Finally, up front. Well, it's an open and shut case on Jones. And sure, we have a better player than Orsi or Syvertsen in David Goodwillie. There are some caveats to this that I'll go into later. But it must be clear for all to see: Dumbarton have both a better squad and a better strongest XI any day of the week. They've got Paul Paton and Andy Geggan to call on too. We don't have that kind of useful experience and quality on our bench. I think if Dumbarton are plucky enough they could keep the hope of a play-off alive for much of the season, albeit they'll probably fall short because there are better and more settled teams to compete with. Back to us. Put simply, if we don't sign another three or four players we'll be relegated. We need that many. Two or three of those have to be defenders. Even if we can't get those players, we very quickly need to sort out a simple system of play that works for our players. We'll get nowhere with just two central midfielders. We neither have the experience, strength or legs for that. We'll get nowhere with Balatoni and another at the back. They're too slow and too weak. We'll get nowhere with Docherty in the side. We'll get nowhere with Ally Love turning like a bus inbetween the lines. We'll get nowhere with Cunningham, Love and Goodwillie all swapping jobs in midfield or up front. And we'll get nowhere with Jones up front in relative isolation. We need to be putting pressure on defenders a lot more. We need to be working a lot harder in midfield any beyond than we did today. The work-rate and movement from our attacking midfield and forward players is abysmal, Cuddihy and Love aside. You could fairly say that only Cuddihy played well for us today. And that was only in the second-half. Worse than all that, and I hope I'm wrong, I think we might have the beginnings of a dressing room problem. If you think about the stories of Livingstone not training well, David Goodwillie's demeanour for the last year or so, and the very changeable roles the players are being asked to play in.. None of that bodes well for the players' attitudes or the overall spirit of the team. You could add subtler things into that list of woes, like our frightening and longstanding failure to organise plays from throw-ins, as well as the deafening silence there is on the park at times. While it's just one bad result, and only our first league fixture, it is a fact that we're much more a team in development than our apparent near-competitor teams, Peterhead, East Fife and Dumbarton. I hope that doesn't plague us but I think it will unless, we sign a few more players.

Dumbarton have only had to turn up. We've nothing approaching a coherent system.

Sons side looks it has enough about it to cause our ropey defence problems. Looks like the EK system we'll play, which doesn't inspire confidence either as it wastes Goodwillie. Well, we'll see.

Page injured again. Watching his warm-ups and warm-downs and how he moves during games, I'm worried that we might've signed a player whose fitness will mean he doesn't play much.

I think it has been a uniquely difficult year or so for player sourcing. In all of the lower leagues only Cove's pre-season business has struck me as impressive. And they've clearly paid a premium to sign or retain their spread of good senior players. Neither Cove nor any other team has pulled many promising players from outside of senior football in this country or even taken that many young players in from the bigger full-time teams. Recycling or retention of players who, ten years ago, would've fallen out of the senior game is more the pattern I see. Thinking about it, I don't imagine that scouting outside of senior football will have been going on to quite the extent it otherwise would have been due to the pandemic. And if you add into the mix that there won't be the same easy access to players from outside the UK that there used to be (not that many featured in part-time football), as well as remembering the general slide in quality that the game in Scotland has seen in the last ten or so years, it makes sense that we're seeing clubs draw fewer and poorer players. A few things have come together to shrink or interfere with the player market. That's how I see it. Though they've never commented on the causes, I know that managers with good sourcing records, particularly in part-time football, like Dick Campbell have commented on the difficulty of getting players this summer. There's no way it's just a Clyde thing. Of course, that doesn't excuse some of the blunders we've made like letting go of Jordan Stewart and having Martin McNiff play left back for ages. Having Lang play as a right back for a good while. Doing the same with Cogill and so on.

To be fair to Oliver, he was sought after by other senior clubs before returning to Clyde. And more than that, he was very visibly a better player then. He'd obviously done a lot of gym work to put on the muscle he had when he came back. I don't buy the worst player patter. We've had twenty, maybe thirty worse that I could name. He had nothing about him in his first spell. I think everyone agrees about that. But he didn't get a decent run in the team second time round. When he did, he showed some decent qualities as a defender. He was aggressive about his tackling, strong and decent on the ball. He was never the quickest player mind you and in beefing up he probably lost another yard. Didn't have enough about him to be a centre back in the seniors I thought. Especially because he wasn't the tallest. Mortimer is certainly more athletic than Oliver, I'll say that for him. But I've noticed that he goes to ground to tackle awfully quickly and in other ways he doesn't look like he's had a lot of experience as a defender. It does speak volumes about our sourcing of full backs and defenders generally in the recent past that we distinguish them by how one was 'less bad' than the others.

Aye, he wasn't up to much was he? I think he was a centre back though. Craig Potter was the full back. Both players that instantly looked out of their depth.

Mortimer will be the second Colts striker-turned-defender we've had in the recent past. Remember Michael Oliver? Although he became a centre back, he could and did play as a right back the odd time. And to be honest, on the limited evidence available at this point, I'd judge that Oliver is the better defender, albeit he was a little wee for a centre back. Always thought he should've been made a full back.

Shame we never tried it in pre-season. It can take some shaking out to get defenders used to the three and full backs used to being wing backs. Conceding five against Airdrie and Raith in that shape linger in the mind.

I'd like to see us try a 3-5-2. A third central defender could compensate for how slow we are back there. It'd mean we could get Cuddihy and Livingstone working up and down the pitch. It'd also mean we could have three central midfielders too which I think we need because of the imbalance any two would saddle us with. And most importantly for me, we could play two up and not have teams walking into our half. An old school pairing of Goodwillie and Jones or Love would, I think, see us in our strongest form. We'd almost certainly be harder to beat that way. And we'd be an awkward proposition for any defence.

Rotten stuff from us. The manner of the defeat was predictable. Morton's physicality was too much for our mid-table league two defence and, particularly as the second half wore on, Morton's superior fitness told as they zipped it through our midfield without much strain. I think Ton will have a good season. Particularly if they add a few more players. A midfielder with a bit of guile and possibly a more selfish centre forward to keep the goals coming. Maybe another left back too. It's already a big side Gus has built. That's never a bad thing. And signings like Ugwu and Lithgow strike me as very good ones. Lithgow, if he sheds a few pounds, will be a good strong defender for you I expect. And Ugwu can give you an outball to mix it up with. Both players have decent records at this level of course. Bit miffed as to why Raith let Ugwu away.

I can see us competing well for long periods this season.

Timid, weak and aggression free defending there. Normal service resumed.

Jones has taken a lashing on here after almost every single game so far. But in purely objective terms, he's made an important contribution in most games he's played so far.

Aye, we've mixed the who's-where up in the midfield. Bringing Splaine central, putting Kennedy out left. Bringing Cuddihy inside. Having Andrew out right. All the rest of it. But whatever the case is, we're nowhere near it. Perhaps it's calculated. Seeing how much Morton pressure we can soak up and looking for a counter late on. On the other hand, maybe that's giving us too much credit. I think Gomis has done well insofar as he has broke up the odd attack and set us off up the park calmly. Wouldn't be too critical of the full backs. Centre backs are having a hard time with Morton's physicality I think. Could see a goal coming from Morton's success in those battles. Not a lot to say other than that. Splaine has lost possession, as he has in previous matches, a little bit much, albeit that he's had little on when he's picked it up. I don't like the concept of wide players who've nothing to offer as wide players. Cunningham and Love should come on at some point. Jones too. I think we could bother their two centre backs a lot more that way.

Looks like one up with Andrew pushing out of midfield to pressure the defenders. Splaine on the left. Call it what you will. 4-4-1-1/4-5-1. Strong side in terms of individuals on the pitch but Morton have all the time in the world to push onto us. Should've been 1-0 up after a few minutes as well.

Be surprised if it was a diamond in the AC Milan style with two always left up top. If it was, what would it be? Splaine at the top of the diamond. Kennedy or Gomis the sitter. Presumably Cuddihy on the right and one of Gomis or Kennedy then takes up the left hand side? I think it's more likely to be a 4-5-1. Without the ball anyway. Andrew tucks into the left side of midfield leaving Goodwillie up. Cuddihy right. Gomis, Kennedy and Splaine central. Whatever the case is, configuring that line well is going to be key to our success or failure this season.