Jump to content

On reflection


KillkieBoab

Recommended Posts

18 minutes ago, KillkieBoab said:

Like other Killie fans I was gutted that we lost last night. However, my almost sixty years of supporting Killie have taught me that it is unwise to say things too soon after a disappointment. A look through these pages today shows me that many others disagree.

Ask yourselves how you would have felt if we had held on to win 1-0 or even 3-2 last night. My answer to that is that I would have been delighted to watch my team put in a thoroughly professional, hard-working and entertaining performance. Towards the end of the 90 minutes my thoughts were that our MOTM was either Stuart Findlay or Mohamed El Makrini and, as it turned out, both were to make serious errors.

Mo's foul was more a tangle of legs with the Dons player and he would have been better served just seeing him away from goal. That though, is easy to say in hindsight. Likewise Stuart did not need to clatter Ferguson just had to stop him crossing the ball. 

What I am saying is that one mistake from either player was the difference between a great result and a shattering defeat.

As I have done many times before I will put the disappointment behind me and concentrate on the generally fine performance from the players last night. Let us all get behind Alex and the lads for the very demanding six games between now and the split and with a little luck this can still be a decent season.

COME ON THE KILLIE!

The performance was one of the best in years. And the stadium was rocking at times.

Will take a while yet to get over such a sickening loss though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, KillkieBoab said:

Like other Killie fans I was gutted that we lost last night. However, my almost sixty years of supporting Killie have taught me that it is unwise to say things too soon after a disappointment. A look through these pages today shows me that many others disagree.

Ask yourselves how you would have felt if we had held on to win 1-0 or even 3-2 last night. My answer to that is that I would have been delighted to watch my team put in a thoroughly professional, hard-working and entertaining performance. Towards the end of the 90 minutes my thoughts were that our MOTM was either Stuart Findlay or Mohamed El Makrini and, as it turned out, both were to make serious errors.

Mo's foul was more a tangle of legs with the Dons player and he would have been better served just seeing him away from goal. That though, is easy to say in hindsight. Likewise Stuart did not need to clatter Ferguson just had to stop him crossing the ball. 

What I am saying is that one mistake from either player was the difference between a great result and a shattering defeat.

As I have done many times before I will put the disappointment behind me and concentrate on the generally fine performance from the players last night. Let us all get behind Alex and the lads for the very demanding six games between now and the split and with a little luck this can still be a decent season.

COME ON THE KILLIE!

Great post I like everyone else been on a downer since last night but agree with everything you say. We are definitely improved on earlier in the season even if our league position doesn't reflect this at the moment. Hard to take last night but the overall performance was very good imo, just came unstuck through a couple of unforced errors and a bit of bad luck.

Edited by Gaffer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fully agree...if you were at the St Johnstone bore draw in December last night was completely different. 

All 4 goals were preventable, but it's over now. As I always say the bad days just make the good ones even better. 

The last few games Hearts away, Rangers home and last night for all the wrong reasons will stick in the memory for a long time..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One of the things stated in the annual report accompanying the accounts is that the board is concerned about the reliance on loaned players and wants to address this going forward.

And rightly so. While we all probably agree that quality loans - Eremenko, Stewart, Bachmann et al - add a lot to the squad, there has also been a lot of loans who have added little. This was most prevalent in the Clark era but also this season we have had Sow, Johnson, St Clair and Millar. 

We need to be bolder in promoting our own young players to the exclusion of this type of player. They're not all going to be instant successes but we're never going to find out unless they are given the chance. Unless we blood young players in the first team, we're never going to be a "selling" club, the exception being the odd outstanding young players like Liam Smith. 

At the moment, the likes of Connell and Taylor are on the bench without much indication that they will get a run out. We need to get them on the pitch to see what they can do.

Not producing young players also puts more pressure on external recruitment. We can talk about managers being great tacticians, motivators and coaches but, at our level, an awful lot can be achieved by great  recruitment within our budget. Again, there are many recent examples of money being less than well spent. There is a big onus on JF to get this aspect right.  

As for last night's match, I think criticism of AD over substitutions is harsh. I said at the time we should replace Burke with a defender and I stand by that. But we didn't see out the match and lost a goal early in ET which was a double scunner, so it was to the team's credit that they levelled and went into what seemed a winning position.

I've no argument with bringing on a defender, although I would have left Brophy on in case the match went to penalties. Johnson or del Fabro? Johnson, Broadfoot and Findlay played together at Pittodrie so I can see the logic. On the other hand, del Fabro is more experienced. 

If you had told me beforehand that we would lose 4-3 AET I wouldn't have been too disappointed. It was the manner of the defeat - the late goals in ET and the defensive mistakes which led to them - which is gutting. 

It's another test, or opportunity, for AD to prove he is worth the job longer term. He will need to lift the team for a big test on Sunday. He has the option to give a chance to younger players. Remember O'Hara played at sixteen in a winning team at Celtic Park, our only win there in the last 65 years. Be bold, man - nothing  to lose.

Next week sees the AGM and the board will want to play up the financial year to May 2019 and the success on the pitch, while the shareholders will want to highlight the more recent past, the present and the future. 

I hope that the atmosphere will be open and constructive and the board not defensive and secretive. We have been in a lot worse positions in recent years but the feeling is that the club is at something of a crossroads, having botched the last such moment last year. To repeat the errors would be hard to forgive.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think you're being harsh on Johnson ... anytime I've seen him he's been ok and imo it's unfair to throw him under the bus for the og last night. Millar came in after a successful loan last season and it never worked out for him or us this time around.

Nothing wrong with subbing Brophy off as we just went a goal up with 3mins to play and he was knackered.  However doing it straight after the goal did nothing to disrupt the game .... should have waited until the ball went out of play.

Problem we have is depth of squad and I think we need to bring in a couple of guys just to add experience on the bench to see out the season ... even if they might not be 'perfect' fits.

 

Thought Makrini had a good game wide left and Kiltie did ok when he came on.  

We are at least showing some fight and passion which never looked like returning after the way we played in November and December.  We beat RC, Hearts and Rangers and drew with Aberdeen before the two defeats from Hibs and Dons .... even in those defeats we have decents spells of pressure and should have taken something from both games.

 

The future might not be so bleak as we thought 3-4 weeks ago.

 

Mon the Killie......

Edited by chubbs
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The despondent response was the sheer manner of the result yesterday. We had played so well, showed immense character to be on the verge of beating Aberdeen twice in one game but imploded in the last mins of normal time and fatally extra time. The players gave their all and it was hard to take that unlike a moment of brilliance we threw it away. 

On reflection it still hurts as we could have made a hampden trip and just seen where it took us. For all our success in the league in the past two seasons we have never made it past the quarter finals of the cup since we won it. 2012 was great but we would love another day out as we generally are not a cup team. 

We need to pick ourselves up and get on with things. Football and life is all about that. These things happen but as hard as it is we can't dwell on it as we can't change it. Got a massive challenge for top six. One that I feel is just too much to ask in the last 6 games before the split especially as we could well be 7 points off it come Sunday. First and foremost let's get safe, finish as high as we can and plan and deliver good recruitment in the summer, good preseason to kick on next season and hopefully get that trip to Hampden and that top six finish

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Over the last 5 or 6 games AD has managed to wring every last once of graft out of this group of players. Walking out of the St.Johnstone game it looked like the only way was down, yet there has been a significant turnaround in not only application and effort but also organisation as well. When any team puts in the kind of shift we have done over the past few games it suggests that they are playing for the manager and buying into what he wants to do. 

Since switching to a 4-4-2 during the Celtic game we have looked like a totally different team, and gone from not being able to buy a goal to scoring regularly. In 4 matches against top half sides in Aberdeen twice, Rangers and Hibs we have more than matched each of them. That is a credit to both the management and the players themselves. Last night we were 2 minutes away (twice) from beating a team we haven't defeated at home since 2010. Aberdeen were given more of a game than they were in even Steve Clarke's (five) unsuccessful attempts to beat them at RP. 

Sometimes when you have a manager who the players clearly enjoy playing for, and they are giving their all, combined with generally the right tactical set up (and he has altered it when necessary ie Aberdeen away), it is worth more than simply changing manager (again).

The big test is now how we manage the more winnable games coming up against the likes of Hamilton, St.Mirren, Motherwell and Livi, and yes Aberdeen again. With a similar level of effort we wont be far away. 

I'm not saying that AD is definitively the man longer term just yet, but I hope he is, not just because I reckon there is a potentially good manager in there, and he is a really decent guy, but because it will offer the club as a whole greater stability moving forward if we are in the position off the back of a positive run of results to make it longer appointment.

Edited by Jedi2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, chubbs said:

I think you're being harsh on Johnson ... anytime I've seen him he's been ok and imo it's unfair to throw him under the bus for the og last night. Millar came in after a successful loan last season and it never worked out for him or us this time around.

I certainly didn’t throw him under the bus for the OG, just think that he is one of a group of loanees who haven’t added much. 

He’s been fourth choice CB all season and has started just four times. 

When he’s come in it seems he’s done okay but could we have tried out Barlow or Lynch to see what they have to offer? 

The more we can return loanees having developed them and given them first team experience, the more likely big clubs are to send us their best prospects. 

A loan such as Johnson's or St Clair's doesn't seem to me to benefit anybody and maybe holds back our own.

 

Edited by skygod
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, KillkieBoab said:

Like other Killie fans I was gutted that we lost last night. However, my almost sixty years of supporting Killie have taught me that it is unwise to say things too soon after a disappointment. A look through these pages today shows me that many others disagree.

Ask yourselves how you would have felt if we had held on to win 1-0 or even 3-2 last night. My answer to that is that I would have been delighted to watch my team put in a thoroughly professional, hard-working and entertaining performance. Towards the end of the 90 minutes my thoughts were that our MOTM was either Stuart Findlay or Mohamed El Makrini and, as it turned out, both were to make serious errors.

Mo's foul was more a tangle of legs with the Dons player and he would have been better served just seeing him away from goal. That though, is easy to say in hindsight. Likewise Stuart did not need to clatter Ferguson just had to stop him crossing the ball. 

What I am saying is that one mistake from either player was the difference between a great result and a shattering defeat.

As I have done many times before I will put the disappointment behind me and concentrate on the generally fine performance from the players last night. Let us all get behind Alex and the lads for the very demanding six games between now and the split and with a little luck this can still be a decent season.

COME ON THE KILLIE!

Completely agree with all of that.

I don’t want to run through the list of players we have lost since the SSC team who lost to the Dons in the 2018 replay but we are only a couple of good signings away from being a good side.

Before anyone lays in with the “board have known that for a while/terrible transfer window(s)” abuse I know all of that and completely agree.

Aberdeen have more big game players and winners than we do. We chucked it away on Wednesday but it’s hardly 3-0 at Somerset is it?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...