The New Raith Rovers Thread

[Rovers_Lad]

3 hours ago, CALDERON said:

I am a wee bit concerned that we don't know what the strongest 11 is.  As much as I thought the changes were right on paper today, I do fear that the options we have make it so tempting to tinker week to week.  Gives very little scope for getting a settled 11 on the park.

Today doesn't change much, for me.  I think we were lucky to have had the points total we had, but do feel we are a decent side who should finish top 4.  A lot of that is still on paper though.  Murray needs to establish a strongest 11 

I'm still really, really dissapointed with Hamilton in front of goal.  He gives us a hell of a lot with his general play, but he's been nowhere near good enough in terms of scoring goals.  That's the big concern for me. We struggled last season largely down to having strikers who couldn't score, and despite making a very good signing to solve that, it's not really changed.  I think some thoughts of us due somebody a doing are absolutely miles off the mark.  

That said, it's the first bad result this season, it's vital not to over react.  That will happen to an extent, and has already started to, but nothing has been won or lost yet.

This

[MICMAC]

Hamilton is a good player but we pump the ball up the pitch to him far too often but we very rarely have anyone in support to pick up the ball from him. I think him and Smith play well together. I haven't been impressed with Mullin so far. He looked great during pre-season but hasn't been anywhere near that form since. Too much tinkering with the squad. Whilst I like the defensive midfield pairing of Brown and Byrne is fantastic but having 2 in there in my opinion is hampering our forward play. We seemed to play a more fluid game when we weren't so defensive minded.

[SerieA]

Pretty frustrating watch this afternoon…again.We’ve got lucky in previous weeks.

Thought we were ok defensively again.Like to see to the goal back again.Murray  critical of Masson in his interview but thought a couple of other players were pretty static during the Airdrie build up which wasn’t the slickest.

Really think Murray should be using the bench earlier in games with today being one of them. Would’ve had Smith alongside Hamilton at some point. Mullin was pretty non existent at times today as well.2nd half he continually drifted inside-maybe to create space for Millen on the outside but it wasn’t happening.Would’ve gave Connolly a go down that side.

Why not give McGill a go in centre mid as well late on for Brown who wasn’t quite on it today.

Never great losing but maybe what was needed-wee kick up the butt for next week and what lies ahead.

[Hank Scorpio]

17 minutes ago, MICMAC said:

Hamilton is a good player but we pump the ball up the pitch to him far too often but we very rarely have anyone in support to pick up the ball from him. I think him and Smith play well together. I haven't been impressed with Mullin so far. He looked great during pre-season but hasn't been anywhere near that form since. Too much tinkering with the squad. Whilst I like the defensive midfield pairing of Brown and Byrne is fantastic but having 2 in there in my opinion is hampering our forward play. We seemed to play a more fluid game when we weren't so defensive minded.

What formation would you play instead? We played 4-1-3-2 in pre-season and it was terrible. 4-2-3-1 is the most balanced formation we can play with what we’ve got, imo. 

[McGuigan1978]

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. 

[Raith Against The Machine]

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. 

[pub car king]

2 hours ago, R12ATH said:

I think the continual  chopping and changing of the forwards is not helping us get any proper momentum. One bad game from Vaughan, Mullin, Smith, Gullan, Easton and Hamilton and they are dropped right away. Meanwhile players behind them are having regular stinkers and never being touched. Probably as we are so top heavy in the front areas with players. Last week Vaghan and Smith had an off day and were subbed, this week Mullin and Easton starting instead, who both had stinkers this week in my opinion.  Everyone quick to point at Masson for the goal but it all came from them playing out from the back and Easton jogging about telling everyone else to pick up the runners rather than him pressing and putting a tackle in.

I also dont think Ian Murray has figured out just how to get the best out Gullan, Vaughan and to some extend Stanton in the same way McGlynn did. Mostly formation.

Hopefully Connolly can come in and pick up from last season and we have to give players longer runs in the team than in one week, bombed out the next.

I think Murray probably knows his best 11 but he has a large squad of talented players to keep happy. That's difficult from a man management point of view gone are the days of ruling woth an iron fist and they'll like it or lump it. You also have the point of say Vaughan for example coming of the bench and scoring important goals chapping his door wanting a start but to chuck him in last week on the right was a little counter productive. 

For me anyway the best 11 are 

Dabrowski

Millen

Dick

Watson

Murray

Byrne

Brown

Mullen 

Stanton

Smith

Hamilton.  

[Ro Sham Bo]

13 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. 

He was injured was he not? I'd hope he'd have stayed on otherwise. Agree about the long balls after he went off though. That was probably the most frustrating thing about the performance. 

[Jan Vojáček]

1 hour ago, Hank Scorpio said:

Hope Greig is alright. He does a bit of coaching with Joe Cardle’s academy in the park near me and seems like a nice lad. Fingers crossed for him but that doesn’t sound good at all. 

I've only met him once, on the day he signed for us, but I took to him straight away. Just seemed like a really nice kid. Kind of like the opposite of the footballer stereotype. No big ego or anything like that, just a well mannered, intelligent and genuinely pleasant guy.

Hopefully, whatever the injury, he can bounce back. Because he's a player with a good ceiling. Hopefully he's still in contact with Lewis Vaughan too, if you'd want anyone on the phone to tell you how to fight back from serious injury then he'd probably be that guy.

[CALDERON]

Thought Hamilton was excellent with his link up play and winning headers, but he has to absolutely bury that chance.

[grumswall]

9 minutes ago, CALDERON said:

Thought Hamilton was excellent with his link up play and winning headers, but he has to absolutely bury that chance.

I thought he was really coming in to the game from half time onward today and was looking to control the ball instead of just flicking it on. It seemed to me he almost got caught with the ball under him before he hit that shot but he needed to hit it low and it's a goal and potentially 3 points. Not sure if he took a nudge which put him slightly off balance, I'm sure the highlights will show weather any of that is true. I think Hamilton is really improving week on week as he gets fitter so I hope his injury isn't a bad one.

Has he actually played a full 90 for us yet? 

[Diamonds are Forever]

55 minutes ago, Raith Against The Machine said:

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. 

 

Interesting reading the comments on 'Murrayball', and I generally agree with you. The only exception would be if the game is totally gone and playing a more conventional way just isn't going to get you enough goals. Our play-off against Montrose 2 years ago was the perfect example, 4-1 down with 20 minutes to go and save your season, the only way back was try something wild and hope it spooks them. I think we ended up with 5 or 6 strikers on the pitch.

But in games like today where you're 1 goal behind with 20 minutes to play, and with good options to pick from on the bench, just sticking a bunch of guys forward is lazy management. You'd like to think that is where a manager will find a small weakness to exploit or have a pattern of play they've worked on.

Having said all that, in the 5 league games before today you'd scored 5 goals in the last 10 minutes. Not seen any of the games so no idea what Murray did, but I'm sure he'd argue it worked.

[bagpuss]

Does anyone know when/if Ross Matthews could be available again btw?

Edited September 23, 2023 by bagpuss

[grumswall]

36 minutes ago, bagpuss said:

Does anyone know when/if Ross Matthews could be available again btw?

I think Murray said two months during the week. For the 100th time they are hopeful they know this issue now... 

[MICMAC]

2 hours ago, Hank Scorpio said:

What formation would you play instead? We played 4-1-3-2 in pre-season and it was terrible. 4-2-3-1 is the most balanced formation we can play with what we’ve got, imo. 

When we had Ross Matthews who's a natural DM in there instead of Stanton we looked a lot better balanced. We know Stanton isn't a DM and strays too far forward when he played there and we know Brown can play that role on his own. Hamilton needs someone who can play alongside him, my choice would be Smith. Stanton can play in front of Brown, Mullin or Connelly on the right and Easton or Hammer on the left with Smith and Hamilton up top.

[Kuma Power]

Was reflecting a bit on the squad and the depth we have this season after the game today. Now, I don't mean this as a criticism of anyone in our squad, least of all Masson who for the most part didn't look out of place against Airdrie. And I do acknowledge that experienced defenders are hard to come by at the moment. But when you think about it, it's pretty wild that we can swap out our entire front 4 for a completely different set of 4 experienced Championship-level attackers - yet are only ever one injury or suspension away from having to play a midfielder or a teenager in defence.

[CALDERON]

6 hours ago, Diamonds are Forever said:

 

Interesting reading the comments on 'Murrayball', and I generally agree with you. The only exception would be if the game is totally gone and playing a more conventional way just isn't going to get you enough goals. Our play-off against Montrose 2 years ago was the perfect example, 4-1 down with 20 minutes to go and save your season, the only way back was try something wild and hope it spooks them. I think we ended up with 5 or 6 strikers on the pitch.

But in games like today where you're 1 goal behind with 20 minutes to play, and with good options to pick from on the bench, just sticking a bunch of guys forward is lazy management. You'd like to think that is where a manager will find a small weakness to exploit or have a pattern of play they've worked on.

Having said all that, in the 5 league games before today you'd scored 5 goals in the last 10 minutes. Not seen any of the games so no idea what Murray did, but I'm sure he'd argue it worked.

Yesterday was the first time we'd seen it to that extent since last season, and it's something I'd really hoped had been binned.  It throws any sort of structure or shape out the window.  

[CountryBumpkin]

11 hours ago, Hank Scorpio said:

What formation would you play instead? We played 4-1-3-2 in pre-season and it was terrible. 4-2-3-1 is the most balanced formation we can play with what we’ve got, imo. 

I don't think its really about formation rather than what we do with it. Getting either Byrne or Brown to run from deep and get beyond the front line would assist us massively going forward as right now we've got an attacking unit of 4 players and little support from the fullbacks or the midfield. It ends up being very disjointed and limited. 

We can see yesterday as well that giving Hamilton service he can run on to or into feet helps us much more than balls up to his head. We have way oo much distance between our lines, our defence sits deep (I assume because we're slow), our midfield also sits back and our front line try and press, it makes us much easier to pass between the lines.

Also, credit to Airdrie, the passing and movement for their goal was excellent. 

[renton]

37 minutes ago, CountryBumpkin said:

I don't think its really about formation rather than what we do with it. Getting either Byrne or Brown to run from deep and get beyond the front line would assist us massively going forward as right now we've got an attacking unit of 4 players and little support from the fullbacks or the midfield. It ends up being very disjointed and limited. 

We can see yesterday as well that giving Hamilton service he can run on to or into feet helps us much more than balls up to his head. We have way oo much distance between our lines, our defence sits deep (I assume because we're slow), our midfield also sits back and our front line try and press, it makes us much easier to pass between the lines.

Also, credit to Airdrie, the passing and movement for their goal was excellent. 

Agree with this, yesterday there was an absolute chasm between our lines - and the front line was quite narrow as well, middle to front. Also felt that while we dropped off quite deep without the ball we really didnt do well in terms of applying pressure when Airdrie did come into our half.

Edited September 24, 2023 by renton

[Mr November]

16 hours ago, CALDERON said:

I am a wee bit concerned that we don't know what the strongest 11 is.  As much as I thought the changes were right on paper today, I do fear that the options we have make it so tempting to tinker week to week.  Gives very little scope for getting a settled 11 on the park.

Today doesn't change much, for me.  I think we were lucky to have had the points total we had, but do feel we are a decent side who should finish top 4.  A lot of that is still on paper though.  Murray needs to establish a strongest 11 

I'm still really, really dissapointed with Hamilton in front of goal.  He gives us a hell of a lot with his general play, but he's been nowhere near good enough in terms of scoring goals.  That's the big concern for me. We struggled last season largely down to having strikers who couldn't score, and despite making a very good signing to solve that, it's not really changed.  I think some thoughts of us due somebody a doing are absolutely miles off the mark.  

That said, it's the first bad result this season, it's vital not to over react.  That will happen to an extent, and has already started to, but nothing has been won or lost yet.

I did wonder before the season started if that could be an issue for Raith. Unless he has a clear best starting 11 Murray does like to tinker with things and move guys around. It’s hard finding the right balance though. 

I thought your front four yesterday lacked pace. Stanton made some great runs beyond our defence but while they’re all very good players, him, Easton and Mullin is a bit one paced. I suppose that’s where the guys on the bench can help but again, it’s about finding the best balance.

I still think Raith will be absolutely fine though, they’ll finish top four.