Bladepicker
Paul Coutts Fan Club Founder Member
Yesterday hurts. Woke up after the shock of it and the happiness of taking my lad to Wembley for the first time has worn off and I'm angry at how we threw that away. But in reality it's nothing new, we have been absolutely awful in the second half of about 90 per cent of our matches this season and the stats back that up.
This is down to a number of reasons and I'd put them all at the door of the manager.
Failure to get the second goal when on top - we just seem to not be quite good enough to get that second goal, though some of our bizarre non shooting tactics don't help. The fact we are on top and yet we don't seem to create 'spells' of sustained pressure or shots has been a season long issue.
The bizarre and unforgivable lack of fitness of our better players. Hamer is fucked after 70 minutes, Campbell is brilliant but can only do 60 minutes ala Mousett and we just look really leggy. That's something we saw from Wilder's teams last time (Fleck, Mousett etc) so I'd question the conditioning he has in place.
The tactical decisions. Whether the points above are the driver for this I don't know but the way we say after about 60 minutes we will make subs, sit back, keep shape and hold onto what we have is criminal, obvious and plays into the opposition's hands because they know it is coming. This worked against the poorer sides and when we had Soutter who was a class above but as soon as Robbo came back in and against the best sides it hasn't worked. Yet again, in the biggest game of the season and probably the past 8 years or so, we did it again.
Recruitment. Not much needs to be said on this as we can all agree, when we were crying out for a really good, imposing leader at centre half in January we spunked 10 million pounds on an absolutely awful striker who seems to not have many actual qualities other than a purple patch of goals at one club and a really hard shot (sound familiar Rhiann?). We cannot give him money to recruit again, we just can't.
Rewind all the way back to QPR at home, first home game of the season and a time where the manager had decided starting Robbo ahead of bloody Souttar was the right call. This second half capitulation set the blue print for the season with this team and we've not tried to address it at any point. The fact it's come to bite us once again at the end is no surprise.
It's on the manager. All of these second half issues sit firmly at his door and we need to change it before we are changing manager in November and then scrambling for more fucking play off heartache ala Coventry.
This is down to a number of reasons and I'd put them all at the door of the manager.
Failure to get the second goal when on top - we just seem to not be quite good enough to get that second goal, though some of our bizarre non shooting tactics don't help. The fact we are on top and yet we don't seem to create 'spells' of sustained pressure or shots has been a season long issue.
The bizarre and unforgivable lack of fitness of our better players. Hamer is fucked after 70 minutes, Campbell is brilliant but can only do 60 minutes ala Mousett and we just look really leggy. That's something we saw from Wilder's teams last time (Fleck, Mousett etc) so I'd question the conditioning he has in place.
The tactical decisions. Whether the points above are the driver for this I don't know but the way we say after about 60 minutes we will make subs, sit back, keep shape and hold onto what we have is criminal, obvious and plays into the opposition's hands because they know it is coming. This worked against the poorer sides and when we had Soutter who was a class above but as soon as Robbo came back in and against the best sides it hasn't worked. Yet again, in the biggest game of the season and probably the past 8 years or so, we did it again.
Recruitment. Not much needs to be said on this as we can all agree, when we were crying out for a really good, imposing leader at centre half in January we spunked 10 million pounds on an absolutely awful striker who seems to not have many actual qualities other than a purple patch of goals at one club and a really hard shot (sound familiar Rhiann?). We cannot give him money to recruit again, we just can't.
Rewind all the way back to QPR at home, first home game of the season and a time where the manager had decided starting Robbo ahead of bloody Souttar was the right call. This second half capitulation set the blue print for the season with this team and we've not tried to address it at any point. The fact it's come to bite us once again at the end is no surprise.
It's on the manager. All of these second half issues sit firmly at his door and we need to change it before we are changing manager in November and then scrambling for more fucking play off heartache ala Coventry.
Last edited:
