[Matchday] St Johnstone v Celtic Sunday 4th October Sky Sports football kick off 12Pm

Griffiths starts that move, gets involved again mid way through and finds space to finish it off.

Absolutely exceptional contribution to the play at such a vital time.

I don’t get why people try to overcomplicate it. Play Griffiths and Edouard, let them open space for each other.

Both start, contribute and finish attacking plays. You simply cannot defend against a team with two strikers doing that.

 

Im convinced that dirty orange * wasn't giving a foul on klimala was expecting him to pull it back when he buried it ,*! . Another terrible performance we are in desperate need of someone in the middle of the park with a bit of guile\imagination to create something far too many happy to play the safe square passes if rogic ain't gonna be on the pitch then we need to go shopping tommorow.

 

Exactly. They were destroying defences together last season in a way we havent seen so far this season.

 

Christie seems to think he us the man with the guille for us in the middle of the park and sometimes he does it but he let's himself down with his shoot on sight and overhiting free kicks needs to be more composed in the role

 

Yep....paddy showed real desire to score and it seemed to go un noticed, as ye said probable a bit trivial but it would be nice to see a bit of recognition for the extra effort.

 

winning ugly wins Leagues , will take that all day Long. Absolute delighted with Pat&Griffs contribution 3 points back down the road

 

Feels even sweeter now .

 

Ooooh the pain,

Love it !!!

 

Honest mistakes : ref let them get away with multiple professional fouls particularly Davidson who was only booked after his 4 pr 5th cynical, bookable prof foul.

 

Might be guilty of reading too much into things here, but found it a bit strange that so few players celebrated the 90th minute winner yesterday. Anyone else notice that?

Christie in particular didn't even celebrate, he just turned and walked away. Don't know, maybe it'd be different if the fans were in and there was more of an atmosphere etc

 

I saw the Christie thing aswell. Found it very strange. Face was tripping him

 

Christie was probably raging he never scored it..

 

I don't think it's reading too much into things to be honest.

There are too many instances now that indicate isn't as United as we'd like.

Languid performances, not celebrating goals together, Ntcham turning away from Lennon while being subbed, Christie and Édouard not acknowledging each other at the corner when he passed.

Contrast yesterday's goal celebrations to the Hamilton game last year when it was a 10 man pile up



Obviously with no fans being there they wouldn't be running to fist pump at a crowd of empty seats but a united squad would be running over and celebrating with each other.

 

Hes the most selfish greedy player I've seen in a while. Like him though but im sure he wants off.

 

Just watched the Unique Angle video. I did notice that only a few folk, mainly those involved in the goals. Why didn't everyone join in? Sometimes the disappointment of the overall performance or even that of individual efforts leads to this, and it was overall a disappointing showing.

As for the game itself. If I didn't have a vested interest in the game, I would have switched off at half time. And I assume many of those who didn't have an interest would have done exactly that. St Johnstone and others are entitled to play these games as they see fit(1 goal in 10 hours of football) and its up too us to find a way of dealing with that. However, that type of game yesterday, will do nothing to promote Scottish Football in a good light.

Another game where opposition have been so negative and spoiled the game. And yet again, they were allowed and facilitated by the referee. Advantage when there isn't any. Persistent fouling greeted with a wee word to "don't do it again", only for it to be repeated. Constant fouls unpunished and constant inconsistency in application of the rules. Ntcham was booked, lets call it for a block. Wotherspoon swiped at Frimpong legs, before dragging him to the ground, booked. Ali McCann 30 seconds later with similar, no booking. And yet again, Murray Davidson was given 60 minutes to boot everything that moves, before being booked. Just as the centre half at Dundee United did a couple of weeks ago, Ian Vigurs and Tait at St Mirren. Week after week we see this same scenario played out. We then had the challenge on Klimala prior to the 2nd goal. Luckily for Walsh the ball ended up in the net, because I would love to know the reason why he wouldn't have sent the guy off. Every week its the same thing. Celtic player gets the ball, shove in the back and or pull of the arm or jersey. Then after they play the pass or move the ball on, one final shove or rap of the ankles to top it off. Big Speccy Levein mentioned it on Radio Scotland months ago and classed it under "getting tight" and" letting them know they are in a game", that is what teams need to do apparently. And referees need to deal with it far better than they do at present.

I could go on, but I'm * sick of the sight and frustrated that teams trying to play and entertain are being held back by this shithouse stuff. Does nothing to promote our game.

Anyway the game. We have a pattern of struggling to find a way through low blocks and every * behind the ball tactics. Killie, Dundee United, Riga and yesterday, to name a few. We aren't settled in a few areas with regards to formation and still trying to bed in a few players.

I want to address the formation. Taylor is a full back, who needs a wide player to combine with in order to be able to create. And because it hasn't worked, we then overload the burden onto Frimpong. Our play then becomes lopsided and predictable to defend. Taylor cannot do(hasn't shown yet) what Frimpong does. More often than not, the play ends up inside and easy to deal with. In order to try and play passes forward, we drop the likes McGregor, Ntcham, Brown or Christie deeper, players you would expect to be able to make the pass into the forward. When we drop two of the players deeper, we end up with 5 bodies (3 centre half and two mdifielders) far away from the areas where we can cause trouble. In the situation like yesterday, we need more from Ajer,Duffy and El Hamed to further the play. Ajer is more than capable of progressing the play and stepping into the midfield. He doesn't do it enough for me. Again yesterday, his over reliance on his right foot hampers our play at times. Too often his body position closes off the left side of the field and to the detriment of our play. We also don't need 3 back to mark nae *. Would like to see Ajer step into the midfield (he did do it on occasions and was involved in the goal) and push McGregor further forward, when we have the ball. It should also us to put more players further up the field and in positions of danger. Allow us to get support to Eddie and the supporting striker, who are getting crowded out at present.

The solution for Taylor is either to change the formation or not play him. Taylor does offer good defensive cover and attributes, but when you spend 95% of the time in attack then its not of use. He can deliver good quality into the box, but we can't get him into those positions to do it.

I've mentioned in other threads about formations. I would like to see 3 bodies up front against systems like yesterday. We have player like Eddie, Mo El, Klimala, Forrest and Chrisite who can give us good combinations with 3 up. Eddie in his early days with us, was constantly dropping wide left. Griffiths and Ajeti I would prefer to remain central.

 

I like Christie I think he is a very good player for us. He is still a player with plenty more to come I think at 25. But he certainly has some significant areas in his game to address. Case in point set piece delivery. His quality from set pieces is at best sporadic. Why he seems to take every set piece when he is on the field I do not know because the percentage of good deliveries he puts in is not very high.

 

On the up side obviously is the fact we snatched 3 points but boy that was a poor performance for most of the game. The first half was a total no show. They made no attempt to score and we did little to nothing to suggest we would break them down. The second half was not much better until the last 10 minutes or so when Rogic and Griffiths came on. Then we finally started to really get at them and look like we might get a winner. Two other points from the game for me was despite a poor team performance was another gusty and relentless performance from Frimpong who got absolutely no protection from the referee despite the constant fouls on him. Then there was the referee who was a disgrace. Murray Davidson for example 100% should have been red carded. Got away with a clip on Frimpong not long after Turnbull got a yellow for basically the exact same tackle.