Half Time Report Card

[RandomGuy.]

Time of the season where you can officially evaluate things.

Season so far - 3/10: Been a dreadful season so far, knocked out the Betfred Cup Group stage, then opened up with no wins in 11. Shitfested our way back to safety but we've still only beaten Hamilton and Hearts in the league. Still in real danger of the play offs.

Manager - 5/10: Tommy Wright - Done a remarkable job to turn things around, but has to take his share of the blame too. Abysmal transfer window caused the issues, and hes not settled on a side until mid-December. If we survive though, itll be dowin to his ability to grind out results.

Best Player - Ali McCann: Harsh on Callum Hendry maybe, who's single handedly winning us points, but McCann pretty much runs our midfield these days. Incrediblely talented player at just 20.

Transfers - 2/10

Spoiler

Elliot Parish - 0/10: Hasnt played a single minute in the league

Max Johnstone - 0/10: Does he exist?

Callum Booth - 4/10: Come into things and made us more solid, but offers almost nothing in attack. Feels like a stop gap.

Madis Vihmann - 0/10: Odd signing in the first place. Arrived, played as we got pumped by Celtic, started a league game and could barely pass the ball. Says it all that Wallace Duffy was regularly picked ahead of him.

Wallace Duffy - 1/10: Given a point for one good performance against Hearts. The worst centre back I've ever seen play regularly for us, absolutely miles out his depth. He played over 10 games this season and we average just shy of a goal conceded every 35 minutes with him. 

Tony Ralston - 4/10: Huge downgrade on Foster. Hes alright, but probably deserves to be a level lower. Can barely control the ball, or his anger, and is regularly beaten by the simplest of moves. Hopefully be replaced in January. 

Jason Holt - 6/10: Done almost nothing, apart from one good game on his debut, until December. Hes formed a formidable midfield with Davidson and McCann now though. Needs to offer more in the final third really.

Stevie May - 3/10: Got two goals, but has done almost nothing else. Theres the odd flash of something but hes too slow and weak to play on his own, and we need a lone striker just now. Seems to have lost all belief in himself.

 

Edited December 29, 2019 by RandomGuy.

[Zing.]

Season so far - 5/10: Mid-table pish. 

Manager - Paul Heckingbottom (1/10) - Just simply awful. Signed dreadful players and didn’t know how to use them. Had us heading for relegation.
Jack Ross (5/10) - Picked us up a bit and had some very good results vs Aberdeen, Motherwell and Hearts. Shite away to Livi and Ross County and also struggled against the OF. Big January window for him.

Best Player - Scott Allan. No contest. 

Transfers - 2/10.

Its hard to try and work out what the plan was for our summer transfer window. Absolutely baffling from start to finish. Scott Allan coming back is the only reason I’ve scored it as a two. 

Edited December 29, 2019 by Zing.

[PauloPerth]

Very harsh on Callum Booth RG. He's at least a 6/10 on performances so far.

[sergie's no1 fan]

Season so far 6/10. We should have more more points in the board and our away results are relegation material but we have a team willing to work their bollocks off for the manager who also have them well organised (majority of the time).

Manager 7/10. Was going to give him 6 but it's his first full time position and also first season managing in the top flight. We are hard working, organised, and finally are scoring goals. Reminds me a wee bit of Gus MacPherson's old sides with a bit more attacking intent.

Best player. Toss up between Sam Foley and Ryan Flynn. Both are key to our system, hard working and very tidy on the ball. Young McPherson is looking like another talented player to come through our youth system.

Transfers 6/10. Quite a few signed from lower leagues in England. Foley has been quality, Obika and Morias are beginning to look like real threats in the final third for us. Durmas has been inconsistent but has earned us 2 wins, McAllister has been a write off. Broadfoot and McLaughlin have been brilliant at the back. Would like another winger signed, another centre half too if Baird stays at Morton.

Baird going to Morton annoyed a few folk but I think that's been justified, rumours of our captain going to United in January will upset a few folk too.

[Snifter Pee Rot]

Safe to say its a league of 2 then 9 and 1 cut adrift floating like melting pack ice (Hearts)

[LiviLion]

Season so far: The only thing stopping this being a perfect score is how frustrating we've been in throwing away 2 goal leads, and once again being incapable of more than 1 away win per season/calendar year. 8.5/10

Manager: Pretty much as above, tactically he prefers to make defensive changes to see a game out and it bites us on the arse. Adapted well to losing Kelly, Halkett and Gallagher and changed the formation and style of play to suit the players we've now got. Another frustration would be during our bad run when his post-match interviews were very similar. 8.5/10

Best Player: You could make a case for a few of them: Marvin Bartley, Steven Lawless, and probably Nicky Devlin (pre-injury) too. But Lyndon Dykes probably just edges it and every week the mention of him getting in the Scotland squad looks a little bit less silly.

Transfers: Sarkic has been excellent in goals; Guthrie has been a massive player for us recently; Devlin has been superb at RB; Souda has been a bit 50/50 but there's definitely an excellent player in there; Robbie Crawford came onto a good game before he got injured; Aaron Taylor-Sinclair has looked good at LB when he's played; Marvin Bartley has been by far the best signing we've made; and Cece Pepe is a bit of a bombscare. 9/10

 

[bennett]

9/10 for the season so far, I'd have bitten your hand off at the start of the season to be up there with them. A few poor games against hearts and the sheep but we've played some great fitba at times. Still in Europe which is a great boost.

9/10 for the manager. Learnt a lot from last season's mistakes,  setting the team up better and not constantly chopping and changing the team.

7/10 for transfers.  Most of our main signings have fitted in well, strengthened the squad so we can deal better with injuries and suspensions. 

Best Player. A few too choose from here and Morelos is and obvious choice as goals and play speak for themselves but I'm going to with McGregor who just edges it.

 

 

 

[LIVIFOREVER]

5 points down on last season's Winter break total, but 2 places further up the table, looking good going into the 2nd half of the season.

[Guest Bob Mahelp]

Season so far - 5/10. A wee bit tainted by today's pish, but I'm honestly struggling to think of one game this season where we've played well for 90 minutes.  No consistency of selection, no consistency of tactics. As usual, we're good enough to beat most of the dross 7 times out of 10, but the feeling that we've plateaued is overwhelming. The next 5 months is huge for the club.

Manager - 5/10: Derek McInnes - Doing enough to keeping us at a certain level, but the credit he's built up with the support is eating away.....and days like today don't help.  Needs to find his best team and tactics, and stick with them. The tombola and a pish poor cup record did for Jimmy Calderwood, and McInnes is slowly edging towards that door. We can't have another 18 months like the last 12. He has to start getting things right.

Best Player - Sam Cosgrove/Niall McGinn. Both are equally responsible for keeping us in the top half of the league. 

Transfers - 3/10.  Meeeh. We've been hit hard by injuries to new signings, but our marquee man in Bryson has barely played 15 minutes this season....we signed a dud. Ojo looked fairly decent but the curse hit early and he's just on his way back. Leigh and Vyner are OK without being spectacular, and after one half decent performance at Fir Park the manager suddenly decided they were midfielders. They're not, but it shows how utterly desperate we are to have a dynamic central midfielder, and it highlights how poor our signing policy has been. 

And Curtis fucking Main. Don't even get me started. 

[capt_oats]

Season so far - 7.5/10
In the broadest sense 3rd in the league at the winter break - on par with McCall's 2nd place seasons after the same number of games - is an A+ effort. However, a fairly meek cup exit to a Hearts side that have turned out to be absolute dugmeat along with a tendency to shoot ourselves in the foot on occasion kind of takes a bit of the shine off things (losing from winning positions against County and Accies being obvious examples - we've also chucked leads against Celtic, Rangers and Hibs).

Manager - 8/10 Stephen Robinson
As I said above, we're ahead of McCall's 12/13 2nd place side on points and not far off the 13/14 side. Robinson's doing this with a bottom 6 budget, the McCall sides were budgeted on a top 6 finish, a cup run and player sale (which is why we were posting losses when we finished 2nd but got papped out the cup by Albion Rovers) - in a league without Rangers (and in 13/14 Hearts).

Robinson's massively punching but it doesn't feel a false position. The improvement is down to coaching and improving players rather than signing finished articles or relying on a single player. That's fully down to the manager and coaching staff.

Some turnaround from this point last season like.

Best player - In the absence of David Turnbull it's clearly Declan Gallagher. Absolute fucking Don - give him our POTY right now.

Transfers - 7.5/10
We've got the major ones right: compensated for Turnbull's absence with Polworth, upgraded on Aldred with Gallagher and both Long and Cole have scored more league goals than Curtis Main managed all last season. In fact, Long's now on 5 in 18 in the league (14 starts) which puts him in a similar-ish bracket to Hastie - 6 in 14 apps (12 starts).

Even Jake Carroll who arrived to less than complimentary reviews has been fine.

It still feels like Robinson has a bit of a blind spot when it comes to centre forwards (Long and Cole have been fine but no Moult or Higdon) and the likes of Hylton and Seedorf have blown hot and cold while in Casper Sloth's case he can't even make the bench.

Overall though, Sloth aside, the players who have been brought in for the first team have been good and the ones who are more obvious punts have been as you'd expect.

Edited December 30, 2019 by capt_oats

[Aim Here]

39 minutes ago, Snifter Pee Rot said:

Safe to say its a league of 2 then 9 and 1 cut adrift floating like melting pack ice (Hearts)

The gulf between Aberdeen/Motherwell and whoever is in 5th place is bigger than the hole that Hearts have dug themselves into, IMO.

Edited December 29, 2019 by Aim Here

[AngusTheBull]

The fact we’re in 4th and 11 points clear of 5th shows how horrendous the general quality of the league is this season.

 

Aberdeen: 4/10

Won less than half our games this season and seem to be just treading water at this point. As mentioned above it feels like McInnes’s time is drawing to a close.

Manager: 4/10.

Transfers: 3/10. Ojo was maybe ok but has been injured half the season. Gallagher is shite, Taylor has been both ok and very shite. I like Hedges but again has been out a bit. The less said about Main the better.

Best Player: Cosgrove ballon d’or. Hopefully we get him until the summer or the second half of the season will be a struggle.

 

 

Edited December 29, 2019 by AngusTheBull

[accies1874]

Season so far - 1/10: This has probably been our joint-worst first half to a season since we were promoted, although we've had fewer points by this stage in the past. Most away games have been a case of playing for a 0-0, while, until today, none of our wins were as a result of a good performance. We've had too many games where the opposition goalkeeper hasn't had a save to make, and the defence often either makes too many mistakes or don't look organised. 

Manager - 3/10: His football has been almost identical to Canning's - perhaps even more negative - and there is seldom a clear plan on show in attack or a good shape in defence. His subs tend to be really unimaginative and ineffective too. There have also been some fucking mental post-match interviews that defy logic. On the plus side... we're not bottom and any Accies manager that manages that deserves a bit of credit. 

Best Player - Brian Easton: I'd initially written a bit on Mickel Miller as he's really impressed me over the last month or two, but f**k it, I'm gonna go with Easton. He's the top CB in the league for relative shot suppression (which can only be good, I'm sure) and is usually solid defending the numerous crosses McGowan and McMann let in - he's dominant without being aggressive. Also, when he's got time in on the ball, he's usually good at progressing it: his diagonals to McGowan are a big part of our play and some of his ball-playing ability seems come from his time as a FB (passing with a similar technique to a cross). He's not great, but I think he's the only player who's largely performed at a consistently decent level. I'm happy to listen to other suggestions though. 

Transfers - 3/10: We've brought in two (mostly) fine CBs and a fine GK, technically decent but largely ineffective midfielders, an OK centre-back, a garbage centre-back, a garbage goalkeeper, a third-choice goalkeeper, and a winger on loan who we'll never see. I don't think any of our starting signings are downgrades on last season, but there aren't (m)any upgrades either, so we've mostly just signed guys who'll prolong our perpetual shitness. Our failure to get an attacking player who can elevate unimaginative football was a killer, and I think we needed a couple of full-backs (one to start at LB and a backup RB). 

[Snifter Pee Rot]

1 hour ago, Aim Here said:

The gulf between Aberdeen/Motherwell and whoever is in 5th place is bigger than the hole that Hearts have dug themselves into, IMO.

 

Not for me, all total shite from 3 to 12. 

[Radford]

I'd rate our league season at probably 4/10 so far. A handful of abject performances but a number where a lot of decent play wasn't fully rewarded, certainly away from home. We have struggled more at home, although more positive signs today. There were excuses with injuries but the Betfred Cup exit was ultimately embarrassing. 

[welldaft]

9 minutes ago, Snifter Pee Rot said:

 

Not for me, all total shite from 3 to 12. 

Basically. We are sitting 3rd yet I would struggle to think of a game where we have dominated and been comfortable winners. Maybe St Johnstone and St Mirren at home but almost all other games have been average. 

All that said it would churlish not to acknowledge 3rd place as a very good achievement and at least 2 to 4 places above where I though we would be at this stage in the season. 

However play like today next year and we will tumble back down the the table pronto. 

I would have given 9 points for season so far had we won today. But need to drop it to 7.5 after that debacle. Robinson gets 8 points because we are 3rd with a bottom 4 budget and transfers in general have been better than a lot of seasons past. 

Best player is between Gillespie and Gallacher. But will choose Gallacher just and honourable mentions for Polworth, Donnelly and Long. 

[Guest Moomintroll]

Must do better.

[Pet Jeden]

2 hours ago, Snifter Pee Rot said:

Safe to say its a league of 2 then 9 and 1 cut adrift floating like melting pack ice (Hearts)

We've been floating like something a lot more unpleasant than pack ice.

[kingjoey]

Well past “half time”. Most teams have played 21 games of a 38 game season.

[LIVIFOREVER]

31 minutes ago, welldaft said:

Basically. We are sitting 3rd yet I would struggle to think of a game where we have dominated and been comfortable winners. Maybe St Johnstone and St Mirren at home but almost all other games have been average. 

All that said it would churlish not to acknowledge 3rd place as a very good achievement and at least 2 to 4 places above where I though we would be at this stage in the season. 

However play like today next year and we will tumble back down the the table pronto. 

I would have given 9 points for season so far had we won today. But need to drop it to 7.5 after that debacle. Robinson gets 8 points because we are 3rd with a bottom 4 budget and transfers in general have been better than a lot of seasons past. 

Best player is between Gillespie and Gallacher. But will choose Gallacher just and honourable mentions for Polworth, Donnelly and Long. 

Gallagher.