Pedro Fu(kin Mendes

[Jon 0]

Suprised to see BF come on but do agree he did more than Mendes....

[UCF2008 0]

...and Fleck did more in <10mins than the pair of them put together

[Gribz 976]

...and Fleck did more in <10mins than the pair of them put together

 

And i didnt come on but did more than the 3 of them!

[UCF2008 0]

I think every bear certainly was more animated than Boyd today :fish:

[Gazza_8 233]

I don't blame the players for their poor performances, I blame WS and his shit defensive, naive tactics!

[craig 5,199]

I don't blame the players for their poor performances, I blame WS and his shit defensive, naive tactics!

 

 

But was he really that defensive ? He played a 4-4-2 where the midfield consisted of Lafferty & Davis, both forward thinking players. Mendes could be if he wanted to be.

 

And Whittaker is also a forward thinking full-back. He put out a somewhat attacking team, they just didnt produce the goods, although I feel that if we had scored early it could have been a cricket score.

[Jon 0]

Thats the thing though Craig, we did start the game well then just seemed to drop off and look un-interested.

 

For me, and this is difficult to call as I dont believe anyone was stand out by any means, but Whittaker and PAPAC were our best players. Papac was everywher today and would have been my MOTM.

[Gazza_8 233]

But was he really that defensive ? He played a 4-4-2 where the midfield consisted of Lafferty & Davis, both forward thinking players. Mendes could be if he wanted to be.

 

And Whittaker is also a forward thinking full-back. He put out a somewhat attacking team, they just didnt produce the goods, although I feel that if we had scored early it could have been a cricket score.

 

But what the people are saying who managed to watch the game was that we played defensive ie try not to concede and hopefull we'll sneak something.

 

Those tactics stink especially when we're at home, needing to score a good few goals against an average Aberdeen side. If Eck was in charge we'd have walloped them today.

[Jon 0]

Agree Gav. Hate to say it as WS has come in and steadied the ship and despite many opinions on Eck, he did seem to have more of a knack of motivating players under his limited circumstances.

[craig 5,199]

I am not sure that I blame WS for it today though.

 

Jon, I agree with you that we started the game well. I dont think that it is a case that we dropped off and looked disinterested though. Right now we are a confidence team in that we need to score early or we have ZERO confidence. That happened today. I thought we started very brightly and were playing with quite high tempo but when we hadn't scored after half an hour it was as if the team collectively thought "shit, we are going to struggle to score", lost all confidence and then the drive.

 

Gav, I have to disagree. I watched the full 90 minutes and we did try to attack Aberdeen from the off. However, the only person with decent movement in the team was Miller and, when he got the ball, it was in areas where we couldn't hurt them and, more often than not, he turned and we went 30 yards backwards. Boyd had little movement and Lafferty was playing as LM and didnt really contribute that much in an attacking sense.

 

I honestly dont think that the tactics today were defensive, I thought we started the game brightly enough and were looking for goals. They just didn't come and then the team lost confidence. That isnt Wattie's fault.

 

He had Davis, Lafferty, Miller, Boyd on the pitch and both Papac and Whittaker got forward too. That is 6 of the team in an attacking role. Mendes CAN play as an attacking mid but doesnt (whether that is his or WS choice I dont know).

 

I agree with you too Jon (wow, twice in one thread....) - I thought Papac was our best player today and almost scored twice for us (one nice, cheeky, back heel and then another one from a ball in from Edu). He did get skinned a couple of times by Aluko but Aluko is a tidy player and he had little protection from Lafferty.

 

That doesn't, though, mean that WS sent out a "lets-not-lose" team. I thought at the start of the game that we were right up for it and started asking questions of the sheep right away - but when the sheep answered those questions the confidence, drive, determination went from us. And it has happened all too often this season and not all of that can be attributed to WS.