Dumbarton v Stenhousemuir

[BallochSonsFan]

McLean is terrible in the air. When he's in the mood and he has the ball played into feet then he's a dangerous player. 2 problems there - we rarely play the ball to his feet and he rarely looks interested. The tactics part? Can blame Farrell for that. Rusty clearly has ability and I'd like to see us play the ball to his feet and to deliver better for him around the box. He's not going to win headers or chase lumps up the park. Play it to feet and he'll either turn or hold the ball until he has help. Attitude? Thats 100% on the player. When things aren't going his way, Russell McLean's head goes down and he's basically an empty jersey. Thats something that if Declan Byrne is fit and available then we can sort out. We just drop him. With such a small squad and so many injuries, we're struggling to even put a team on the park.

Ally Love is having to play deep because of the same injuries. He wasn't playing well before our January/Feb injury problems hit us. The worse he plays then the more he starts arguing with refs and opponents. Ally Love playing well and scoring a few goals doesnt get involved in the daft stuff nearly as much as Ally Love failing to hit a coo's arse with a banjo.

Injuries are a massive issue for us with the play-offs in mind. I'm not surrendering the title race, but it would take a Stirling collapse and for us to somehow take advantage for it to re-ignite. Right now I'm more worried about the play-offs. We've just about got our strongest back 4 available in McNiff, Grant, Buchanan and Lynas. Midfield is an issue. Blair and Gray would obviously be starters, but we're missing the other 3 players who could justifiably claim the 3rd place (Wilson, McKee and Carswell). We're missing Orsi. We're missing Byrne. Wallace and Maclean look to be carrying knocks but are still playing through them. Having no real bench to speak of means that we can't rotate players or take them off before slight knocks become full injuries. Wallace was dead on his feet yesterday long before the final whistle. 

Its a horrible way for the season to become unstuck, but it points to some serious questions about the impact that the pitch has on our players picking up knocks and the fact that we've had to run with such a small squad. The state of the pitch limits the football that we can play on it, which is an issue for the likes of Orsi when he's fit. As bad, if not worse, is the impact it has on knocks becoming injuries. As for the size of the squad? We gambled on Gemmell (not without merit - a guy like Gemmell could come on with 20 minutes to go and give us game intelligence and a different threat against tired defenders) and unfortunately it didn't pay off. But even with everybody fit, we're running a very small squad that would always struggle if more than a couple of players weren't fit. Right now? We're missing 5 players who would all be capable of starting games.