St Johnstone v Rangers, 16/09/23 12.30 KO

[RandomGuy.]

Aye, we still reek of relegation to me. Lack of pace in defence is dreadful. McClelland is genuinely less agile/quick than Considine, who remains finished yet gets better every week in comparison to his competition. 

Midfield full of soft "ball players" who have no end product, then up front Kane teies hard but is limited and May/Jephcott seem like theyll be useless unless we're on top.

Carey is slowly becoming Ali Crawford.

Hugely worried by how many goals we concede in the aftermath of dead balls, literally every game just now. Thats not coincidence and should be getting resolved one way or another.

[nelsjfc]

Thought we were okay second half but the worry comes about the lack of an real threat. Got in to plenty of positions that second half but picked the wrong option to often. Worried about the middle of defence too. Like they're running through treacle.

Just about done with Carey. For all his quality, the amount of times he attempts some ridiculous flick when there's an easy ten yard pass on is infuriating. As someone's already said, he's at fault at both ends for the first goal.

 

[perthsaint1977]

Be lucky if we get 15 points this season. Chronic. 

[Muirton Saint]

I wonder how we expect to score goals, we've no speed, struggle to win headers, most players shy away from the ball and we can't even use set pieces properly. We'd be better letting the ball go out for goal kicks than getting a corner.

[AJF]

Looks like that’ll be Danilo out for some time then which is really unfortunate. 2 goals from his 2 starts in the league and he took his goal really well today. 

[PauloPerth]

Bit of a nothing match, rangers comfortable winners but I didn’t think they looked like much for most of the match. If we’d had more about us today we might have got something out of the game as I thought it was there for the taking.

We are still miles away from looking decent. Maclean’s blindspot for Carey is getting annoying. He’ll try to make himself look good every time he gets the ball rather than play the obvious pass. It comes off about once every 10 times if we’re lucky. He gives away possession so often.  And our full backs offer nothing going forward, though I thought Robinson had a decent second half, and for a young lad seems to like bollocking older teammates which shows he’s got a bit about him.

Trying to find positives, Kane is a handful and at least gives us a presence up front, and I think Phillips and Smith give us a competitive midfield and we do win our share of challenges in there. The issue is we are so poor when we get in the final third. Costelloe wasn’t great again but thought he was better today and there might be something there if we stick with him.

The centre backs are incredibly slow as we all know, not much we can do about that, and I can’t remember us ever having such poor full back options in my time watching Saints.

[mizfit]

That was the most vile atmosphere in a long time from that visiting support. 

[RandomGuy.]

In all seriousness, how have they not given that?

[Steve McQueen]

13 minutes ago, mizfit said:

That was the most vile atmosphere in a long time from that visiting support. 

I actually thought the atmosphere was quite quite apart from the 200 or so.

The rest didn't know that words or didn't want to sing that.

[RandomGuy.]

3 minutes ago, Steve McQueen said:

I actually thought the atmosphere was quite quite apart from the 200 or so.

The rest didn't know that words or didn't want to sing that.

Aye it was one of the quiestest Rangers supports i can remember. Usually its fairly deafening when the teams come out but it was virtually silent until the game actually kicked off, and it wasnt until the 2nd that songs actually started en masse.

Assume theres a lack of confidence in their team just now which makes many edgy.

Feels very much like the usual "end of line" stage for a OF manager, in that the fans are edgy and you know if you can get on top of them then the fans will turn on their own team.

[Hayseed]

Our season won’t be defined by games against the ugly sisters. Reasonably happy with the improvement overall compared to Davidson ball. 
Kane & Max were the main positives IMO. McLelland needs to get his act together, at least Considine has old age as an excuse and McPherson needs to have a good look at himself if he’s going to survive. Fresh legs and the game still passed him by.

[Widge]

On another day we maybe grab a goal in that. Maybe we get a penalty, maybe Kane doesn’t take a fresh air swipe 10 yards out and McPherson should definitely score with a free header from 6 yards. 
 

Robinson looked good, but still think he should play forward more. I like Smith, he keeps the ball moving and tries to get it on the deck. Phillips had a shocker today and I think Costelloe looks like a kid playing a man’s game. I can only hope that Wright gets fit quickly as he’d make a difference, same with Brown. For all Dare is good athletically he’s still defensively naive and it will cost us goals. Agreed with the comments on McClelland, he’s not quick at all; however that doesn’t mean he can’t be a good player. Let’s face it Frazer Wright and Michael Duberry were even  slower, the difference being they knew where to play at all times, McClelland needs to pick that up quickly from Considine. 
 

No comment on MacPherson, but I’m done, we need to cut out losses as soon as possible, he just doesn’t have anything about him. 

[johnoswald2712]

1 hour ago, RandomGuy. said:

Aye, we still reek of relegation to me. Lack of pace in defence is dreadful. McClelland is genuinely less agile/quick than Considine, who remains finished yet gets better every week in comparison to his competition. 

Midfield full of soft "ball players" who have no end product, then up front Kane teies hard but is limited and May/Jephcott seem like theyll be useless unless we're on top.

Carey is slowly becoming Ali Crawford.

Hugely worried by how many goals we concede in the aftermath of dead balls, literally every game just now. Thats not coincidence and should be getting resolved one way or another.

Difficult to disagree with this. A lot seems to hinge on the Austrian being the ball winning we need in midfield but so far McLean’s signings have been, apart from Mitov, pretty uninspiring.

McLelland is an absolute bombscare because he’s so slow and his positional sense and use of the ball are not so great to compensate for his lack of pace. 

Robinson was a bit better today but is he really an upgrade on Gallagher?

Looking up top when Clark is fully fit I expect Jephcott to be 4th choice.

Smith is tidy but doesn’t really impose himself on the game although he doesn’t hide and his use of the ball is probably the best we have.

Understand the problem fans have with Carey but not sure who we have to play in that area although with Clark coming back we can go 2 up top.

It was noticeable today when Kane went off we really struggled to keep the ball in attacking areas.

Finally, McPherson. Please can someone explain to me what he is for as in my opinion he’s absolutely hopeless. 

[tree house tam]

Lads we've played both bigots and Hearts with half a squad. We're about to get motoring in a 433, keep calm.

[derektaylor84]

1 hour ago, RandomGuy. said:

Aye, we still reek of relegation to me. Lack of pace in defence is dreadful. McClelland is genuinely less agile/quick than Considine, who remains finished yet gets better every week in comparison to his competition. 

Midfield full of soft "ball players" who have no end product, then up front Kane teies hard but is limited and May/Jephcott seem like theyll be useless unless we're on top.

Carey is slowly becoming Ali Crawford.

Hugely worried by how many goals we concede in the aftermath of dead balls, literally every game just now. Thats not coincidence and should be getting resolved one way or another.

 

We really need get better with attacking throw ins in opponents half/final third. Gave away possession cheaply at throw ins so many times today especially in the first half. 
 

www.youtube.com/@DerekTaylor84

[RandomGuy.]

27 minutes ago, tree house tam said:

Lads we've played both bigots and Hearts with half a squad. We're about to get motoring in a 433, keep calm.

A high pressing 4-3-3 with the slowest defence in the league, full backs who cant attack, a midfield that cant deal with turnovers, Graham Carey playing every week and half our striking options cant play as a lone striker.

Season was always going to be a slog to start with and time/patience needed, but at the same time we also dont have forever.

Need to win at least one of the next two and need to see some improving from some of the youngers ones too.

[tree house tam]

3 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

A high pressing 4-3-3 with the slowest defence in the league, full backs who cant attack, a midfield that cant deal with turnovers, Graham Carey playing every week and half our striking options cant play as a lone striker.

Season was always going to be a slog to start with and time/patience needed, but at the same time we also dont have forever.

Need to win at least one of the next two and need to see some improving from some of the youngers ones too.

Stop being a fucking defeatist. You're draining the life from me.

[RandomGuy.]

4 minutes ago, tree house tam said:

Stop being a fucking defeatist. You're draining the life from me.

Meh, i just cant be arsed pretending we're not the worst side in the league and headed for a dreadful season.

Its not entirely the fault of MacLean, and certainly not the fault of the players signed this season, so theres no point ranting/raving about it, but id rather be realistic and brace for whats coming, than deluded.

[Costanza]

Don’t want to come on here and lambast a guy from my own team but I’m astounded by some of the comments about Robinson so can’t help myself. Slow & ponderous, refuses to play into space, a liability. He’s far from alone in not being good enough sadly but if we are settling for that then f**k me. 
 

I know the reasons for the state we are in and am trying to be patient but it’s very hard to watch your team when don’t really like any of the players. There’s nobody before the game I’m thinking looking forward to seeing them play today. Every fan has their favourite players and will see no wrong in them. I genuinely don’t know who my favourite player is now. It’s just a long list of people I don’t like.

[tree house tam]

27 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

 id rather be realistic and brace for whats coming, than deluded.

Every post is the same though. Sure the players brought in aren't proven but to give them a handful of games, some not even that and decide we are doomed is just pure defeatist. We all knew it would be at least end of September before the new guys got up to speed and most of the half decent injured players would be back training. Yet here you are every week banging the we are doomed drum. It may well turn out that they are all not good enough but you need to at least give the club and players a chance to put out their strongest 11.