Queens v Inverness

[Monkey Tennis]

35 minutes ago, Mr X said:

This. Im genuinely quite surprised how many people are blaming Leighfield for any of the goals today

Yes, I agree.

Maybe a slight question re the first, but he was certainly blameless for the other two.

I think though that some views are maybe reflecting his poor handling of crosses earlier in the game.  Indeed, the only times we looked remotely threatened before we started looking constantly threatened late on, came when he flapped at things.

I agree though that he didn't have much of a role when the roof did actually start falling in on us.

[Homer Thompson]

33 minutes ago, 19QOS19 said:

Are you? It seems to be a go to move. I've said already that I've been critical of Martin recently but I think if anything I'm usually defensive of them. I left today and said that I expect Leighfield will get pelters tonight. His response was "seriously?!" to which I explained that it doesn't take much on here for our goalkeepers to get roasted.

I'm not shocked he's getting slated but I am shocked there has been little mention of our right hand side's inability to stop cross after cross coming in.

Well, no Im not. But I should be, if you know what I mean?

4 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Yes, I agree.

Maybe a slight question re the first, but he was certainly blameless for the other two.

I think though that some views are maybe reflecting his poor handling of crosses earlier in the game.  Indeed, the only times we looked remotely threatened before we started looking constantly threatened late on, came when he flapped at things.

I agree though that he didn't have much of a role when the roof did actually start falling in on us.

This. He did certainly come for a couple of crosses and didnt deal with them particularly well, but got away with it.

[Rjc-1988]

It is totally depressing when we fail to win a game from 3-0 up having dominated the proceedings and played some lovely football into the bargain. We did our best to squander a 4 goal lead earlier in the season against Crusaders and our failure to learn lessons reflects extremely badly on our Management team and every player who allowed that to happen today. Some tremendous individual performances that were sadly overshadowed by a totally shambolic end to the game.......and it could have been even worse!!

Well done to Caley - despite not playing well they competed for everything and once we lost one goal we were in deep trouble. Sadly I have seen this movie before and it begs the question just how many goals we need to have in hand before we can relax and do what any good side would do .....”keep the ball”.

[The Mantis]

That last half hour was like the good old days watching Pele’s teams.

[19QOS19]

It is totally depressing when we fail to win a game from 3-0 up having dominated the proceedings and played some lovely football into the bargain. We did our best to squander a 4 goal lead earlier in the season against Crusaders and our failure to learn lessons reflects extremely badly on our Management team and every player who allowed that to happen today. Some tremendous individual performances that were sadly overshadowed by a totally shambolic end to the game.......and it could have been even worse!!

Well done to Caley - despite not playing well they competed for everything and once we lost one goal we were in deep trouble. Sadly I have seen this movie before and it begs the question just how many goals we need to have in hand before we can relax and do what any good side would do .....”keep the ball”.

You're last 3 words are correct. Caley's tempo was extremely high. Booting it up the park isn't what was needed. When we got the ball we needed to slow it down and mess with Caley's rythmn. Instead we punted it and only delayed Caley coming back again.

[Fullerene]

Was sorely tempted to leave early and visit the Dumfries Opera House instead.

Really pleased that I decided not to.

[Skyline Drifter]

In the cold light of day we played really well for well over an hour, Inverness never quit, it was a terrific game of football and fine entertainment. Lots to be encouraged about.

Right now though it feels a lot like a loss and its a real chance missed to move closer to the playoffs. Very frustrating.

[Monkey Tennis]

8 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

In the cold light of day we played really well for well over an hour, Inverness never quit, it was a terrific game of football and fine entertainment. Lots to be encouraged about.

Right now though it feels a lot like a loss and its a real chance missed to move closer to the playoffs. Very frustrating.

It's hard to disagree with that; yet I'm finding it hard to feel encouraged.

We've played well in the last two home games, being comfortably the better side for the vast bulk of both, yet ultimately scraped one point from six.

These aren't pre-season games.  We need to be securing the points our performances for the most part merit.  That we're frequently failing to, feels pretty discouraging.  

[sophia]

34 minutes ago, Fullerene said:

Was sorely tempted to leave early and visit the Dumfries Opera House instead.

Really pleased that I decided not to.

My radio was silenced immediately as the deficit was reported as three.

Imagine my surprise when I later learned of the turnaround.

It wasn't exactly the stuff of Verdi's Marcia Trionfale, but thoroughly acceptable nonetheless.

[Q0S-RUSH]

F**k me its never been dull at Palmerston this season. For an hour today i think its the best i,ve seen us playing then the same old story. As soon as Caley got their first you just knew panic would set in. Even though Dykes should have had more than one today i thought he was excellent as was Stirling in the first half especially.

[QosLoyal]

F**k me its never been dull at Palmerston this season. For an hour today i think its the best i,ve seen us playing then the same old story. As soon as Caley got their first you just knew panic would set in. Even though Dykes should have had more than one today i thought he was excellent as was Stirling in the first half especially.

Dykes was motm easily today.

[Skyline Drifter]

2 hours ago, Monkey Tennis said:

It's hard to disagree with that; yet I'm finding it hard to feel encouraged.

We've played well in the last two home games, being comfortably the better side for the vast bulk of both, yet ultimately scraped one point from six.

These aren't pre-season games.  We need to be securing the points our performances for the most part merit.  That we're frequently failing to, feels pretty discouraging.  

Yes, that's also fair. It's the opposite "glass half empty" approach, but I can't argue with it. I used the same point when an Alloa fans was talking about how encouraging their performances were a couple of weeks ago so I can't complain at the same being said here. Undeniably, no matter how half decent we've been in the last two home games (and we were no more than decent against Morton, I thought we were much better than that for long spells today) we've not got the results our play as deserved. Not getting results when you play well isn't a good sign and it appears to happen to us more than the opposite does. We pretty much nicked a win at Dunfermline and we certainly stole a point at home to Alloa but we should have won those home games with Morton and Inverness, certainly the one at Morton and probably the home one with Ross County too.  We're below the points we should have for sure.

[palmy_cammy]

Our front 5 when on song are as good as any in the division. Some of the play today from Todd, Stirling, Harkins, Dobbie and Dykes was as good as I have ever seen from a Queens team.

Unfortunately our back 5 are as bad as our front 5 are good. As soon as Caley figured out our weakness from crosses it was curtains. They went from posing zero threat to looking like scoring with every attack. You have to give the visitors credit for coming back. They clearly have an unbelievable never say die attitude to have been unbeaten in so long. It is also to their credit that they didn’t settle for a draw after equalising as they rightly smelled blood. It made for an exciting contest.

No team should be drawing from 3-0 up at home though, that really is unforgivable. Norman should have been on to shore things up at 3-1 when the tide started turning, but not for the first time Naysmith was far too slow to make a change.

If I genuinely viewed us as playoff prospects I would probably have been furious about that results. As it is though, I strongly suspect we’re once again headed for mid table mediocrity so what happened today is of no real consequence. It was great entertainment on a cracking day.

[Distant Doonhamer]

14 minutes ago, palmy_cammy said:

It was great entertainment on a cracking day.

Fucking hell. Northfield  aka I.M. Jolly  will quite possibly have a stroke when he reads that.

He`s probably busy composing a post about how Formantine will rip us apart next week.

[Skyline Drifter]

37 minutes ago, palmy_cammy said:

Norman should have been on to shore things up at 3-1 when the tide started turning, but not for the first time Naysmith was far too slow to make a change.

Ach, its easy to be wise after the event. He has had plenty of pelters before for trying to sit on leads. Rjc criticises that approach all the time. At the time it looked like a consolation and we were still carrying a threat in the other direction. It also went 3-2 very quickly after 3-1. He would have been hard pushed to make that change at 3-1 unless Norman went on without a warm up. He had him standing waiting to come on when the penalty was given.

[palmy_cammy]

Ach, its easy to be wise after the event. He has had plenty of pelters before for trying to sit on leads. Rjc criticises that approach all the time. At the time it looked like a consolation and we were still carrying a threat in the other direction. It also went 3-2 very quickly after 3-1. He would have been hard pushed to make that change at 3-1 unless Norman went on without a warm up. He had him standing waiting to come on when the penalty was given.

It didn’t feel like a consolation to me in the slightest, it felt very ominous given our habit of conceding multiple goals in quick succession.

After his showing last week it was a real surprise to not see Norman starting. To not see him at a stage when we were crying out for someone to keep hold of the ball has to go down as poor management.

[Distant Doonhamer]

12 minutes ago, palmy_cammy said:

It didn’t feel like a consolation to me in the slightest, it felt very ominous given our habit of conceding multiple goals in quick succession.

After his showing last week it was a real surprise to not see Norman starting. To not see him at a stage when we were crying out for someone to keep hold of the ball has to go down as poor management.

We`re so fragile defensively that it`s hard to feel that a goal for a team on a very long unbeaten run with 20 minutes to go is just a consolation.  Like many others when it went to 3-1 I immediately felt we could f**k this up.  We keep the ball really poorly when other teams press us. It absolutely invites  today`s result.

[queenslad]

A game we should have won, at 3 nil we were coasting playing with confidence , winning second balls and first balls, need wee flicks then they score and it goes into reverse. ICT were on to No 7 who had a niggly first half controlled the game in second half specially in last 30mins with amount of space you could have turned a warship.

Should we have made changes at 3 up , with hindsight yes but at that stage we were more likely team to score and add to the three. After first went in it was difficult to change until it went 3-3. First change to Stirling was due to booking he received, other refs may have sent him off for reaction. Until then he was MOM. Dykes had best game I have seen for ages but should have scored more first half and been cleverer when through in second half - either scored or rode the  tackle to get a pen. I thought Jacobs had another good game, clearly slipping into right back when Doyle went forward.

I noticed Doyle didn't go down tunnel at end - what was going on - upset, getting away early or even a drugs test??

 

[JessieField]

When we went 3-0 up after an hour, in my opinion, that's when you should introduce subs (even if they're youngsters). The youngsters would feel no pressure (the game's won at that point 99 times out of a 100), but too frequently, we run out of "legs " in midfield and surrender the momentum to the other team. Maybe our management team should consider the following - "“Attack is the secret of defense; defense is the planning of an attack.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

[palmy_cammy]

10 hours ago, Distant Doonhamer said:

We`re so fragile defensively that it`s hard to feel that a goal for a team on a very long unbeaten run with 20 minutes to go is just a consolation.  Like many others when it went to 3-1 I immediately felt we could f**k this up.  We keep the ball really poorly when other teams press us. It absolutely invites  today`s result.

We are lacking a real leader in this squad, someone to organise us when the chips are down.  Yesterday doesn't happen with a Jim Thomson or Chris Higgins in the side.

When the heads go down, everyone's go down, the forwards start pointing fingers at the defenders and we just fall apart.  The spine of our team is pretty brittle when you look at it.  Yesterday we had a young lad in goals, but Martin is far from commanding and I've never seen him dishing out the hairdryer treatment to his teammates.  Fordyce is quiet as a mouse on the park and so is Semple,  Doyle is the most vocal of our defenders but given he was having a complete nightmare at the end yesterday he wasn't best placed for dishing out instructions.  Jacobs plays the "Steven McKenna" role but despite his love of flying into tackles he comes across as pretty timid.  Then you look to our experienced guys like Stirling, Harkins and Dobbie and they just seem to throw their hands up in frustration at the defenders undoing all their hard work.  You can understand their annoyance, but it is a team game and they should all be in it together.

I know the captain's role is largely symbolic and that cliche tells us we should have 11 captains out there, but I don't think Dobbie is a great choice.  He definitely has the role more as a reward for his service than his ability to lead.  A captain would have had a word in Harkin's ear in the first half yesterday when he was having a bit of a meltdown and appearing determined to get booked for persistent fouling, and a captain would have steadied the ship yesterday, slowed the game down and had us keeping hold of the ball.  The manager should have been taking the sting out of things by making substitutions as well.