SENTINELCELTS

Morning,all.

I won’t trouble you with an in-depth review of the match, as MAHE covered it in yesterday’s article and we have widely dissected the game since on the site. Especially in JOBO’s review accompanying the POTY ratings. But to have so much possession in the first half and still be hanging on grimly for a half time bollocking and pep talk tells you much of where it went wrong for us.

To go ahead with only three minutes remaining yet still concede the equaliser TWENTYONE SECONDS later tells you a lot of the rest of it.

For all the fact that few of us can think of a single player of theirs who would be an addition to our squad, they still managed to cut through us at will. For all the fact that we would much rather have our manager than theirs, he still spotted that we would be weak on our left by playing Taylor as an auxiliary midfielder, and that the long ball every time could cause us problems.

Shades of the 2002 Scottish Cup Final, in that respect. 

How many second balls did we win, how many did they win? They countered fast and in numbers, we fannied about at the back and let them reset. In fact, and I allude to this in the headline, we could have been dead and buried from those very failures just after the restart. And at 2-0 down, how many of us would have bet on a recovery from there? For me, it was a pivotal point in the match.

Buggering about near the edge of their area, we switched the ball back to Taylor, who failed to control it and ended up on the floor. They broke in numbers with Bahrami shaping for the cutback for their second. At that time they had a four on one break, and that goal looked inevitable. Cam had no room for error, knew he couldn’t concede a penalty and knew he couldn’t allow the cutback either. And knew too that he was on his own!

He coolly made the interception, and a huge sigh of relief went up from every one of our fans, no matter where they were watching. We knew the significance of that moment, and so too did the players. Within a matter of minutes, we went from a goal down to being a goal up, and suddenly the game looked there for the taking. 

But enough already about Sunday itself. It was if anything indicative of too many performances recently, where as we have often mentioned, the result came about because we got it right in one half rather than in both. It’s a trend which is becoming a habit, and certainly not a pleasant one. It is one that we have to break. 

Certainly it is just peachy to have players out there who can overcome otherwise poor performances with a few flashes of excellence, but that is rarely enough in an individual sport never mind a team sport like football. Certainly it is just peachy to have a man in goal who might already be my favourite of all time. And certainly it is just peachy to have a top manager at the helm. 

But when that manager is leaving us open in the same manner, game after game, when he is having to write his half time bollocking in advance, when he still can’t see past having CalMac and Hatate along with one other as his starting mids, despite their clear poor current form? 

Every manager needs a system, we know that. But 100% rigidity to any system when it clearly needs tweaking at times is not a clear pathway to success. Ask Big Jock about Dukla Prague in 1967 as an example, where he knew what was required to get us through to Lisbon. It was against everything he believed football to be about, but he explained to the players what was required and they went out and did the necessary. 

Pragmatism is not a sign of weakness. Nor is it an admission that your system is a failure and is unworkable in practice. It is a sign that as a manager you recognise that it will not be enough against a particular opposition on the day, that your squad is big enough to cope with a new face on occasion, and with players that are more than up to the job. 

We face Sunday’s opposition in their own midden in sixteen days. We have three winnable games before then. It would be an excellent use of our only free midweek before February if BR had the players trying a couple of new ideas in training. It would be an excellent use of the midweek if we could actually perform in all six halves of those matches, and obviously again at Ibrox. 

It would be an excellent use of Sunday, in fact, if we showed that we actually learned anything from it. 

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Above article by BMCUWP