League Cup 23/24

[RicoS321]

Okay first half. Fairly dominated things in possession with no real good chances. Beautiful finish from Miovski after great play by Devlin. Those two and Morris have been the stand outs. We're using Morris early and it's paying off because of his pace. I think he'd struggle to replicate that against top flight teams given his deepish starting position. Would like to see Duncan move inside and Polvara off. Polvara been okay but it's getting a little congested. I think Duncan could get further forward. No young lads on the bench unfortunately, so it'd have to be Hayes. If MacDonald gets some minutes, it'll be interesting to see who comes off. Might give us an idea of the potential defence for Thursday and onwards. Would be harsh on Devlin to make way and also harsh on Morris if Devlin moves to wingback too.

Edit: Duk been poor. Maybe give Sokler a half.

Edited August 18, 2023 by RicoS321

[tlg1903]

15 minutes ago, RicoS321 said:

Okay first half. Fairly dominated things in possession with no real good chances. Beautiful finish from Miovski after great play by Devlin. Those two and Morris have been the stand outs. We're using Morris early and it's paying off because of his pace. I think he'd struggle to replicate that against top flight teams given his deepish starting position. Would like to see Duncan move inside and Polvara off. Polvara been okay but it's getting a little congested. I think Duncan could get further forward. No young lads on the bench unfortunately, so it'd have to be Hayes. If MacDonald gets some minutes, it'll be interesting to see who comes off. Might give us an idea of the potential defence for Thursday and onwards. Would be harsh on Devlin to make way and also harsh on Morris if Devlin moves to wingback too.

Edit: Duk been poor. Maybe give Sokler a half.

Decent second half, turning the screw a wee bit though we look vulnerable on the counter 

[redordead]

Utter baws. Firing it sixty years to a striker that hasn't won a ball all night.

Doubt hacken are shitting themselves.

Created nothing against Stirling. 

[DantheDon]

Good to get off the mark and get a win, but sounds like improvement is required. Didn't make it comfortable by conceding. I'll leave it to you folks who were down there to give us the proper analysis though. 

[tlg1903]

Och we are through.  Credit it where its due, Stirling were very gutsy and well organised. 

[RicoS321]

That was ropey at times. Thought Duncan was poor tonight and a bit of a worry ahead of Thursday. The defence in general looked shaky, Devlin aside. Rubezic was way off it before going off, MacDonald much better although may have been at fault for the goal (couldn't tell). Clarkson was good in the advanced role again. Really not sure what our best eleven is, nor what formation. Miovski probably motm tonight, his movement excellent throughout and he scored a goal. Morris did well again, it's easy to criticise his final ball but playing wingback makes it much harder and often deflection for a corner is the best you can hope for.

[OrlandoDon]

1 hour ago, RicoS321 said:

That was ropey at times. Thought Duncan was poor tonight and a bit of a worry ahead of Thursday. The defence in general looked shaky, Devlin aside. Rubezic was way off it before going off, MacDonald much better although may have been at fault for the goal (couldn't tell). Clarkson was good in the advanced role again. Really not sure what our best eleven is, nor what formation. Miovski probably motm tonight, his movement excellent throughout and he scored a goal. Morris did well again, it's easy to criticise his final ball but playing wingback makes it much harder and often deflection for a corner is the best you can hope for.

I don’t agree. Morris got into plenty of good attacking positions, beat his man quite a lot, but more often than not his final product was poor. He’s a modern day Darren Mackie, all pace and little else. If we want to be a better team he’s a squad filler at best. For the Hacken game I’d prefer devlin at wing back with Macdonald slotting in to the back three, devlin will get assists and probably goals too.
From the first three games I think we see Mackenzie Duncan polvara and morris should still be coming off the bench. Maybe they’ll develop further but right now we’re not that good starting these guys. Also don’t really see a lot in Barron to be honest.

As for today, I thought shinnie and ruby were poor too. Just a one off for them, we know what Shinnie is like and first two games ruby looked solid. I also think duk was poor, took him a couple of months to find form last season, perhaps same again? Although he’s not carrying the weight he did this time last year. 
Ultimately we are through to the QF and it’s a win, home draw please!

 

[BigAl]

Just home

Never in doubt

Could and should have been more convincing 

Few of the young Albion crew going to be nursing sair faces in the morning. Bit of a bit more than they could handle after the game 

[Reekie_Red]

Didn't see the game, but read a few reports. The one comment that stands out is Robson commenting on Albions decision not to water the pitch, thus reducing our opportunities to run it. I'm sorry, but we are a pro team who until recently used to train at Balgownie. We should be able to adapt our game to different pitch conditions fairly easily. If all it takes to have us struggling is to forget to water the pitch, we are gonna struggle this season away from home 

[Jute]

1 hour ago, RicoS321 said:

That was ropey at times. Thought Duncan was poor tonight and a bit of a worry ahead of Thursday. The defence in general looked shaky, Devlin aside. Rubezic was way off it before going off, MacDonald much better although may have been at fault for the goal (couldn't tell). Clarkson was good in the advanced role again. Really not sure what our best eleven is, nor what formation. Miovski probably motm tonight, his movement excellent throughout and he scored a goal. Morris did well again, it's easy to criticise his final ball but playing wingback makes it much harder and often deflection for a corner is the best you can hope for.

Have to disagree on Morris. Most decent wing backs can get a cross beyond the first man more than once a game. He can’t. He is fast but that’s it. We need better than him. 

[manc_don]

Only caught the second half, but up until we scored the second, we looked comfortable. We make a couple of subs and then we’re all at sea and they pull one back. Our left is shite, so hopefully McGarry helps resolve a bit of that. Sokler really should have scored what was essentially an open goal, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt that the ball was at an awkward height. Duk didn’t do much, but our midfield was powder puff. Excellent strike by Clarkson though, some power behind it. 
 

We’re through to the next round which is the most important thing, but christ, Häcken will not be fearing us in the slightest. we’ve so much still to do transfer wise, but I suspect it’ll be too much to do.

[RicoS321]

8 hours ago, Jute said:

Have to disagree on Morris. Most decent wing backs can get a cross beyond the first man more than once a game. He can’t. He is fast but that’s it. We need better than him. 

We do need better than him, that's not in doubt. My point is that it's a lot harder for a good cross to come in when your starting position is much further back against a deep lying defence. You can either throw it in early (which Duncan tried all night and only got in one good cross), or take on your man. The problem with starting so deep is that when you take on your man the left centre back (or left back in a four) just comes out to narrow the angle, which blocks the lofted square ball into the box. You've either got another player to take on, a cut back if it's on, or batter the ball across. The latter almost always gets cut out for a corner, which happened to Morris several times last night. Morris stood a couple of balls up to the back post last night that nobody got near too.

The point is that the mythical good cross is extremely rare in modern football (probably only two or three in any given game from both wings combined). It's one thing that fans seem to latch onto as if it's really simple and should be happening every single time a player gets out wide. The other often mentioned one is corners beating the front man, yet you turn on any level, whether it's Modric, Messi or Mackie, it very regularly doesn't beat the front man (I saw it numerous times in the last world cup final for instance). Good crosses require the player crossing getting the ball nice and early, before the defence is set, or for a player to make that space on his own, drawing players out that would otherwise block the cross. Both rely on good movement from the front man to which Miovski is good at (Duk not so much). I watched part of the Hun game the other night, and they've probably got the two best crossers of the ball in our league in Tavernier and Barisic and they probably got two between them, both from deep and very difficult to execute (think Tavernier scored from a Barisic cross). The rest were dealt with by a defence that was deep enough to header clear.

Morris isn't good enough for numerous reasons, but accurate crossing is a difficult skill that is about a lot more than simply lumping it in (what Duncan was doing). Morris took responsibility last night (and to an extent against the Tims), it is very easy just to throw the ball in from deep and pretend that's you done your job. The improvements he needs to implement are his awareness, concentration and coming inside on his wrong foot (and shooting!). Crossing will generally be a numbers game for him, as it used to be for Hayes back in his day (he'd get nine shite ones before setting up a goal).

[OxfordDon]

QF: Ross County v Aberdeen

I'm too lazy to type the others.

[RicoS321]

Name's on the trophy 

Edit: so let's see if you heathens stick to just one thread when we get to the final. 

Edited August 20, 2023 by RicoS321

[Jute]

 

[RicoS321]

On 14/08/2023 at 09:08, RicoS321 said:

So now that we're a big European team we start disrespecting the league cup? The equivalent of putting out a second string team in my opinion.

As agreed, could we keep all league cup correspondence to one thread. Can't go glory hunting with separate threads just because we made it to a quarter final. 

[dons8321]

10 minutes ago, RicoS321 said:

As agreed, could we keep all league cup correspondence to one thread. Can't go glory hunting with separate threads just because we made it to a quarter final. 

Semi-final on Sat 4th at 5:15pm.

[OxfordDon]

13 minutes ago, dons8321 said:

Semi-final on Sat 4th at 5:15pm.

Where's the thread?

[Panda]

1 hour ago, RicoS321 said:

As agreed, could we keep all league cup correspondence to one thread. Can't go glory hunting with separate threads just because we made it to a quarter final. 

Outrageous suggestion.

Someone get the Hibs v Aberdeen thread started so we can begin discussing the late kick-off, how many tickets we'll sell, and if we should demand the east stand out of principle.

[Panda]

Semi-final on Saturday.

Hopefully no-one is reckless enough to start a new thread for it and ruin our cup hopes.