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Craigieboy

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1 hour ago, offday281 said:

Can we Put this one to bed 

1. Guff92 hates McKenzie and will pick up on it if he has a bad game and stay silent if he has a good one

2.  McKenzie has filled a number of positions under a number of managers without ever tieing down a position of his own 

3. Jones and Stewart are better attackers than  McKenzie .  McKenzie  probably does a better defensive / protecting job

4. McKenzie   has just signed a 2yr extention so I guess we can look forward to 2 more years of discussing how every midfielder past present and future or fantasy would be better than him 

If Jones join Kilmarnock than McKenzie sub of right winger back up to Burk start first team 

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3 hours ago, offday281 said:

Can we Put this one to bed 

1. Guff92 hates McKenzie and will pick up on it if he has a bad game and stay silent if he has a good one

2.  McKenzie has filled a number of positions under a number of managers without ever tieing down a position of his own 

3. Jones and Stewart are better attackers than  McKenzie .  McKenzie  probably does a better defensive / protecting job

4. McKenzie   has just signed a 2yr extention so I guess we can look forward to 2 more years of discussing how every midfielder past present and future or fantasy would be better than him 

Last time Rory had a good game I said “Rory had a good game” funnily enough. 
 

Mckenzie doing a job defensively is another myth. Seen him s**te out a tackle many a time. You’d be lying if you thought otherwise. There’s a difference between making a tackle and running around looking like your going to make a tackle. Running around, he does, very well.

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38 minutes ago, Guff92 said:

Last time Rory had a good game I said “Rory had a good game” funnily enough. 
 

Mckenzie doing a job defensively is another myth. Seen him s**te out a tackle many a time. You’d be lying if you thought otherwise. There’s a difference between making a tackle and running around looking like your going to make a tackle. Running around, he does, very well.

Guff92 talking...…..well I guess Guff!

However he/she is entitled to his/her opinion....even though it is at odds with several experienced Managers, all who have coaching qualifications and have seen Rory as an integral part of their team. It seems that they are all wrong and Guff92 is right.

But , hey, football is all about opinions and we all will not agree. But I do think that a Manager who has been in football for a long time knows better than me. 

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15 minutes ago, CBFC said:

Guff92 talking...…..well I guess Guff!

However he/she is entitled to his/her opinion....even though it is at odds with several experienced Managers, all who have coaching qualifications and have seen Rory as an integral part of their team. It seems that they are all wrong and Guff92 is right.

But , hey, football is all about opinions and we all will not agree. But I do think that a Manager who has been in football for a long time knows better than me. 

Integral? Really?

As someone posted above.... When we were flying sitting top of the league he featured twice (2times) as a sub. And if you want to use that theory, it was literally last week when the bedwetters were upset at the thought of tish returning. Who, by your method, was seen as an integral part of Steve Clarke’s squad. So which is it? Only one of those two players showed up on Saturday. 
 

I’m not the only person who thinks this so stop singling me out, it’s boring. I was quoted by name, I am simply replying. If you don’t like it, that’s your problem. 
 

I’m not saying we should rip up Rory’s contract, he’s a squad player. He just isn’t very good at left midfield. Stop getting upset and making things up in your head to suit your narrative. If we had better players like jones/Stewart or anyone at all creative, Rory wouldn’t play, would he? 

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2 hours ago, Guff92 said:

I’m not saying we should rip up Rory’s contract, he’s a squad player. He just isn’t very good at left midfield.

(Fair warning:  don't waste your time with the below if you don't put any stock in stats).

It's fair to say our entire left side is weaker than our right.  Can't speak to the new full back or winger of course, but Waters does not appear to naturally overlap (or has been instructed not to), which pretty much cripples our left side when playing with McKenzie on the left who will drift inside.  A couple of times against Hibs in the first half McKenzie dropped the ball to Tish, moved in, got it back and played it wide to where he expected Waters to be to find that Waters was either not up with play or hadn't moved at all (to be clear, McKenzie is hardly innocent there, you don't get to play the ball to fresh air and escape blame no matter the circumstances).

If playing McKenzie on the left (or really anyone who's going to move inside), the fullback just has to be instructed to overlap or there's nothing stopping the Hibs fullback just following McKenzie inside, meaning no one is finding space.  Contrast that to our right side, where Millen was doing entirely the right thing and holding behind Burke who was mostly trying to push his fullback to the goalline at the junction of the 18 year box, meaning if he played it back to Millen, he had all the time in world to get a cross in - and did it pretty well on a good few occasions,

However, I've tried to explain McKenzie's value to you a couple of times by describing movement and space, so I'm going to try again with a couple of hard numbers (only fair since you've been talking goals and assists) - expected assists and key passes.   You know what an assist is - where you play the pass that leads to the goal.  Expected assists are passes that should lead to a goal - in other words creating a good chance.  You'll not be surprised to learn that Burke is top of the list for us there, with O'Donnell second and Rory McKenzie third.  What might be more surprising (to me as well to be perfectly honest), is that while most of Burke's expected assists come from set piece delivery (61%), only 29% of McKenzie's do.  To be clear, that's not to say he's better than Burke in that regard - Burke's expected assists trend about three times that of McKenzie overall.  The bulk of McKenzie's (45%) comes from counter attacks, with the remainder coming from build-up attacks (attacks where we've been in possession of the ball and the opposition has transitioned successfully to defensive shape).

His expected assist stats also correlates well with his key passes (a main pass that leads to a shot - this is distinct from an expected assist as it doesn't account for it actually being an expected goal), with 20 last season, second only to O'Donnell who had 30 (for more context Burke had 13).

Strangely enough going back to the previous season's stats McKenzie's expect assists are twice that of Jordon Jones (which I was surprised to see as I thought Jones was more effective in that regard than most on here), though in fairness everyone that season is dwarfed by Steward and Burke who had about 4 times that of anyone else.  Can't find any key pass data on the modern fitba patreon database for that season though.

Why his expected assists and key passes don't translate as well into actual assists are likely down to positioning and the nature of the chances - namely that same stat that most of his are coming from open play rather than set pieces and from the left hand side generally - if you've ever looked at cross stats the results of outswinging crosses dwarf those of inswinging because it's much easier for strikers to attack the ball than the defenders (which no doubt contributes to both Burke and O'Donnell's expected assist stats), but that's pure speculation on my part.

The point isn't that the guy should be immune from criticism, he has plenty of flaws in his game (I still suspect most are mental rather than technical in nature), and he was far from his best again Hibs, but he does offer things to our team that you're not noticing.

Edited by Lorielus
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Mental the amount of folk that judge the team as a whole based on the first game of the season and its the usual suspects that are easy targets for folk moaning, don't want to get into it because its the same pish every year but having watched Motherwell tonight - who have been in most peoples top 6 prediction would suggest you's chill out. There's not a lot between any of the teams bar the OF, its marathon not a sprint look at what st Johnstone did last season looked in relegation trouble and ended up in the top 6. Back the team, wouldn't be making many assumptions especially when I think a lot of our play and chance creation comes from the fullbacks and neither of those though to be the starters played against Hibs. 

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4 hours ago, Bbk said:

Looking like it's a minus for a player to have their surname beginning with the letter M for some people on this forum ie mckenzie,Macdonald and millen for instance!

Magennis

4 hours ago, Guff92 said:

I ’m not saying we should rip up Rory’s contract, he’s a squad player. He just isn’t very good at left midfield. Stop getting upset and making things up in your head to suit your narrative. If we had better players like jones/Stewart or anyone at all creative, Rory wouldn’t play, would he? 

Not necessarily true

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5 hours ago, Lorielus said:

(Fair warning:  don't waste your time with the below if you don't put any stock in stats).

It's fair to say our entire left side is weaker than our right.  Can't speak to the new full back or winger of course, but Waters does not appear to naturally overlap (or has been instructed not to), which pretty much cripples our left side when playing with McKenzie on the left who will drift inside.  A couple of times against Hibs in the first half McKenzie dropped the ball to Tish, moved in, got it back and played it wide to where he expected Waters to be to find that Waters was either not up with play or hadn't moved at all (to be clear, McKenzie is hardly innocent there, you don't get to play the ball to fresh air and escape blame no matter the circumstances).

If playing McKenzie on the left (or really anyone who's going to move inside), the fullback just has to be instructed to overlap or there's nothing stopping the Hibs fullback just following McKenzie inside, meaning no one is finding space.  Contrast that to our right side, where Millen was doing entirely the right thing and holding behind Burke who was mostly trying to push his fullback to the goalline at the junction of the 18 year box, meaning if he played it back to Millen, he had all the time in world to get a cross in - and did it pretty well on a good few occasions,

However, I've tried to explain McKenzie's value to you a couple of times by describing movement and space, so I'm going to try again with a couple of hard numbers (only fair since you've been talking goals and assists) - expected assists and key passes.   You know what an assist is - where you play the pass that leads to the goal.  Expected assists are passes that should lead to a goal - in other words creating a good chance.  You'll not be surprised to learn that Burke is top of the list for us there, with O'Donnell second and Rory McKenzie third.  What might be more surprising (to me as well to be perfectly honest), is that while most of Burke's expected assists come from set piece delivery (61%), only 29% of McKenzie's do.  To be clear, that's not to say he's better than Burke in that regard - Burke's expected assists trend about three times that of McKenzie overall.  The bulk of McKenzie's (45%) comes from counter attacks, with the remainder coming from build-up attacks (attacks where we've been in possession of the ball and the opposition has transitioned successfully to defensive shape).

His expected assist stats also correlates well with his key passes (a main pass that leads to a shot - this is distinct from an expected assist as it doesn't account for it actually being an expected goal), with 20 last season, second only to O'Donnell who had 30 (for more context Burke had 13).

Strangely enough going back to the previous season's stats McKenzie's expect assists are twice that of Jordon Jones (which I was surprised to see as I thought Jones was more effective in that regard than most on here), though in fairness everyone that season is dwarfed by Steward and Burke who had about 4 times that of anyone else.  Can't find any key pass data on the modern fitba patreon database for that season though.

Why his expected assists and key passes don't translate as well into actual assists are likely down to positioning and the nature of the chances - namely that same stat that most of his are coming from open play rather than set pieces and from the left hand side generally - if you've ever looked at cross stats the results of outswinging crosses dwarf those of inswinging because it's much easier for strikers to attack the ball than the defenders (which no doubt contributes to both Burke and O'Donnell's expected assist stats), but that's pure speculation on my part.

The point isn't that the guy should be immune from criticism, he has plenty of flaws in his game (I still suspect most are mental rather than technical in nature), and he was far from his best again Hibs, but he does offer things to our team that you're not noticing.

I think Waters isn’t as attacking a full back as Taylor/Hamaleinen/SOD were, as Millen is and as Haunstrup appears to be... Since signing for us, he’s made 45 appearances in the Prem and two Cups in Scotland (including his loan spell at St Mirren), however has only managed 2 assists (both coming in the second half of St Mirren’s 3-0 cup win over Broxburn)... It would seem to me that McKenzie has been expecting him to get forward but this hasn’t happened (however, he shouldn’t have passed with Waters not being there). I do wonder if a lack of playing time together may have also been part of the issue as they’ve only played 2 45 minute spells together this pre-season meanwhile their only competitive game-time as a pairing has been a 75 minute spell last March and a 69 minute spell in July 2018 (granted they will have trained together plenty and as such it possibly won’t matter, but I don’t know).

I think it’ll be interesting to see if Haunstrup is more attacking and if this helps us in this sense as the overlapping full back and McKenzie coming inside may help us break down more defensive sides better, as we have struggled with this on a fair few occasions in the past.

I do wonder though if a move over to the right might happen for McKenzie once Burke retires... 

Would love to know where you get your stats from, seems a useful source!!

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