Liam Scales

His positional sense is absolutely terrible. Add that to the fact that he's too slow, too slow on the ball, his passing always goes behind a player and not to feet or in front of them. He wins a few duels in the air but they always go back to the opposition.

Right now it's nothing but BR's ego that is keeping him in the team.

Teams are deliberately letting him have time on the ball which is laughable in itself.

 

McInness said in February we let the player have the ball who we knew couldn't hurt us and quite happy to, he meant scales!

 

Ah, I * that. Came on and we were all over the shop they got the 3rd and all over the shop till penalties. Worse than I was remembering then, extra CB to shore up the defence was flung in, naecunt knowing what the plan was except an extra CB being on and we were so much worse

 

100% he meant him. Literally the only people who defend Scales now are Celtic da's on facebook and people with their Irish blinkers on. The boy is pish and that should be that. Honestly thought I was happy for him to be a squad player but I don't even know if I'm for that anymore. Even through his purple patch I wasn't keen but understood that there was no one else.

I think us fans just have certain players they can't take to and Scales has always been mine

 

The dallying thing was summed up well first half the crowd were on him and he took an age. Then a minute or so later because of the crowd reaction he plays a good one over the top for Kyogo making the keeper save it from a difficult angle..

We definitely need an upgrade, think we'd all agree on that but he's clearly playing with much less confidence than he was in the first half of the season..

 

Clearly hit a deceiving purple patch early in the season, but he's went from Maldini to Houdini.

Shame tae because there was some moments in the match where he looked strong and aggressive with decent positional sense to absolutely calamitous and so slow on the ball.

 

Spot on as well about his aggression..

How often first half of the season did we see him flying in to a challenge or over covering the left back spot and taking everything. Was our most dominant player at both ends in the air..

Now he's very timid looking in everything he's doing. There's no real conviction to any of it..

 

Mate, I was 5 rows up from ground level behind the goals at the huns end - I genuinely could not believe how quiet our team are - genuinely not once did I hear at the very least a raised voice from any of our backline - apart from Hart.

We absolutely need controlled aggression and leaders of men, especially in the backline and the heart of midfield.

 

* poor for a back 4 of internationals with a decent amount of experience bar Scales maybe..

And you can tell that's the case by our defensive line sometimes and the fact that there's no communication with centre halves going for the same ball..

 

For me, we need a seasoned pro in the backline, someone who can actually organise a defence.

 

Behind the goal at Hampden is miles away right enough, over in the Taylor thread he’s had criticism thrown for saying too much to other players.


Honestly just think at this we need a consistent backline playing consistently. It’s mad that this far into the season we’ve not had the chance to play a consistent back four. The first choice ones have only became available, all season we had AJ injured at first, then CCV, then the Rocky, then Lagerbielke, Phillips playing. Then Taylor out, AJ again,.. can’t think of any other season that’s happened. How many times we seen in the one game a different CB subbed on, a full game together was the most consistent run at one point

 

You see it a lot, an extra defender flung on in the last few minutes thinking it’ll shore things up and rarely does it happen. By that point, generally, it’s backs to the wall defending anyway with balls constantly just being lumped into the box and a proper defensive structure is out the window, so it’s always going to be tough for any player coming in to a game like that.

9 times out of 10 it’s an attacking player coming off too so you’re sacrificing a penalty taker if the worst does happen.

Get the thinking behind it but don’t like it personally. Would rather stick and trust the defenders on the park to see it out.

 

CCV would have been out last season more if Ange hadn't have played him until we had the league wrapped up.

Johnston was out a fair bit, Juranovic too, same for Taylor and Starfelt. Probably this year is worse but not sure it's exceptional. Just CB position seems so much worse with so many names in the frame. We bought Lagerbiekle injured did we not and I'd bet Nawrocki came with an undisclosed injury.

We've actually been lucky at LB.

 

Aye thought at the time, "that's not a bad idea bringing him on at this stage" 30 seconds later they had scored and were a penalty taker lighter due to the sub.

Tbf the way Scales was playing on Saturday we could have brought another 4 centre half's at that point and he'd still have probably cost us a goal

 

The Nawrocki sub actually made sense. They were going long and it was causing us problems. The issue was that they had scored before he even had a chance to get into position I think.

 

Forrest was injured so taking him off made sense. 3rd CB was just bizarre.

Could have put Ralston on in place of Forrest and retained our shape and still had a more defensive setup.

Can't remember seeing that sort of sub before. Made no sense to me.

 

Still not convinced Nowrocki is a better option. Welsh maybe, but he's been out too. Really not sure Rodgers has had much option.

 

Welsh is every bit as bad on the ball as Scales is and he is awful in the air.

He's never the answer and it's only due to Rodgers stubbornness or petty point scoring that he's ahead of a Swedish international

 

Lagerbiekle definitely feels like he's only ahead of Kobayashi. We've really squandered a lot of money in the CB position to end up no stronger. No idea what's going to happen there in the summer.