Watching the game back over.

This for me all day long

When you watch either old Rangers games or even just your Man City etc we had/they have 4 or 5 players in the box for attacks.

Were lucky if we have 3 in the box on attacks.

That's why I hope we switch to a 4231 when we get extra recruits in.
Jack and Kamara are not likely to get into the box too often.
Our set up doesn't lend itself to flooding the box, as it stands.
 
I quite like the idea of a so called ‘false 9’ but we need a much more attacking midfield to help with this and Kamara AND Jack are not those guys. Certainly not both anyway. We need to be a bit less cautious about loading the box when we drive forward. We hugely increase the odds of the ball breaking to one of our players if we do that. We can’t just put all expectation on one guy to get the goals. A false 9 and plenty of interchangeability makes marking men more difficult. We’ve got to start sharing the goals around too.
 
We were in complete control but until we learn to kill the game with another goal we will be vulnerable, it is an area we need to improve
 
Good result but why do we play with no urgency? I think it gives the opposition belief that they can get a result. It encourages them.
 
"Morelos punted to get an out and out goal scorer"...

I'd like to hear your take on what an out and out goalscorer is, especially if Morelos doesn't fit your criteria of that description?!

Tbf Morelos has more to his game than his goals. His little touch through for Kent being an example. But he (on form) does get a lot of goals and we'll do well to get a single player as prolific as him.

He's strong enough to play up front as a lone striker and he's good enough to hold the ball while reinforcements arrive. Last season I think Stevie made a disastrous mistake in trying to play the same way with Defoe. JD will get you goals but he needs the service, Morelos doesn't.

Alfie's problem is that his form is in the shredder and if he can't regain it we'd be better off without him.
 
We played well enough, and at time some of the play between the attacking players was really good. Was it sustained over the 90mins? No, but we also were very comfortable. It was game one, we will get better with more games. As Gerrard said it isn't always going to be pretty. However, we do need to work on getting more bodies in to the box, this should hopefully come.

A solid professional performance which I will take every week.
 
Listen, a win at Pittodrie is one thing, but you should have seen how excited posters on here got at Celtic’s amazing home win yesterday...

Cannot believe Rangers fans actually watch a Celtic game. ffs I don't even watch their highlights or any of their goals. Other than their results I genuinely could not give a damn unless they are getting a good skelping in Europe.
 
Tbf Morelos has more to his game than his goals. His little touch through for Kent being an example. But he (on form) does get a lot of goals and we'll do well to get a single player as prolific as him.

He's strong enough to play up front as a lone striker and he's good enough to hold the ball while reinforcements arrive. Last season I think Stevie made a disastrous mistake in trying to play the same way with Defoe. JD will get you goals but he needs the service, Morelos doesn't.

Alfie's problem is that his form is in the shredder and if he can't regain it we'd be better off without him.
Form is temporary, class is permanent.
 
We played well enough, and at time some of the play between the attacking players was really good. Was it sustained over the 90mins? No, but we also were very comfortable. It was game one, we will get better with more games. As Gerrard said it isn't always going to be pretty. However, we do need to work on getting more bodies in to the box, this should hopefully come.

A solid professional performance which I will take every week.
One stramash going their way and it's points dropped. We need to put games to bed
 
What a different game it is. Sitting on the edge of my seat in a state of abject terror or at least high anxiety, it’s hard to see things as they are. After a second run through some players I was screaming at on occasion at the time were actually doing better than I realised. The sheep had one first half shot. The goal mouth scramble was their only other moment. I looked closely at this and to be fair we marked our men well at the corner and really it should have been McGregor’s ball all day long.
We were utterly in control, even in the second half and only some uncharacteristic poor touches or passes stopped us adding more. Still think we’ve got to commit more players forward into the box to create more options. We have no forward aerial threat either. We’ve got to show more urgency to go for a second - we looked to happy to accept our one goal advantage - always a mistake. Otherwise never seen a game at Pittodrie where we looked so comfortable, and though that seemed to be the case at the time, it took a second watch to realise that fully.

It doesn't matter how many times you watch the game. In that first half, the goal apart, how many actual chances did we make?

Not one.
 
Haven't watched it back but from my one-viewing perspective, we were certainly in control and to be honest I never really feared losing a goal like I usually do.

The thing that stood out to be me as 'concerning' was that switching from defence to attack seems to totally bypass Jack & Kamara, they don't contribute to the attack most of the time and that would almost be ok if that was done to allow others to attack but it's not as if anyone else is bombing forward while Jack & Kamara are keeping the back door shut. Too many times it seemed like we weren't attacking as a team and as a result, you're relying on the person with the ball either performing some magic and getting by some players or having one passing option which requires an amazing cross/pass for the attack to work.

There was one point where Tav was trying to hover on the wing before crossing the ball as he only had Morelos to cross to, but nobody else was pushing into the box so he crossed it anyway to our 1 player in among 4 or 5 Aberdeen defenders.

Now, I'm not really concerned as this sort of stuff can and will improve with some more match sharpness and 1 or 2 quality additions.
 
Biggest concern for me is the lack of bodies we get forward and into the box.

We seem intent on passing the ball into the net when teams get bodies back in to defend. We have no real aerial threat which lets us put crosses into the box more regularly

No point making crosses if Alfies the only one in the box. Andy Robertson has 3 to aim at hence his ridiculous assist rate. Likewise TAA.
 
Last season we threw away loads of points from winning positions, 1-0 up and killie and Hearts and we lost both 2-1, that's 6 dropped points.


Also 2-0 up against Aberdeen and 2-1 up at St Johnstone and drew both games that's another 4 points dropped.


So 10 points all in which we flung away which was probably the difference between us winning and losing league.


Looks to me like not holding onto points from winning positions was more a problem last season than breaking teams down.


Saturday was a big step forward in that regard.
 
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I am by far a tactician, but I thought Moreles played deeper a lot more than normal.
He did. I think he was trying to break the sheep up a bit and create space for us to go for another goal.

It didn't work and tbf that really isn't his job. It's ok for him to do it further up the pitch but we need midfielders who will do what Alfie was doing on Sat.
 
Last season we threw away loads of points from winning positions, 1-0 up and killie and Hearts and we lost both 2-1, that's 6 dropped points.


Also 2-0 up against Aberdeen and 2-1 up at St Johnstone and drew both games that's another 4 points dropped.


So 10 points all in which we flung away points which was probably the difference between us winning and losing league.


Looks to me like not holding onto points from winning positions was more a problem last season than breaking teams down.


Saturday was a big step forward in that regard.
That’s a very positive way of looking at it. The point is though, no matter how well we defend, we are always at the mercy of a mistake, a refereeing cock up or just downright bad luck. A two goal cushion can protect against that. One goal can’t. Why wait till we lose a goal in say, the 78th minute before the cavalry charge starts. Do it immediately we score the first.
 
For our dominance/possession, Joe Lewis had a pretty quiet afternoon.

That's my concern. I just hope that our inability to really kill teams off with goals does not f.uck us up again.

In and around the box - big improvements needed - and quickly!!

Final third ruthlessness and clinical finishing is a concern.
 
It has to be remembered it was the first game. I dont care how many friendlies they play and who against, they are no more than warm ups to prepare for the real thing.

We got off to a good start by winning at one of the tougher away games, yet there has been a lot of negativity.

A lot of games are won by 1 goal and I'm hoping by the positive reaction to our new defender, hopefully that bodes well.

Very rarely will the team dominate for 90 mins, especially away from home.
 
That’s the match I watched, never ever in trouble, a couple of our attacks a wrong decision made which could have made it more convincing.
As easy as it gets at Pittodrie.

You're not wrong.

But 1-0 isn't safe. If they fluked that goal line scramble in, we were in trouble, because we weren't creating many chances, at least not until the subs made Aberdeen come out looking for an equaliser.
 
You're not wrong.

But 1-0 isn't safe. If they fluked that goal line scramble in, we were in trouble, because we weren't creating many chances, at least not until the subs made Aberdeen come out looking for an equaliser.

That’s a bit like saying Taylor miscuing his goalline clearance into his own net.
 
It was a comfortable win - the reason I know this is because the first time they were in our box I was praying don't trip him up. This must have been after 30 minutes. :D

For all our possession the lack of chances created was glaringly obvious again - pretty, neat football with very little oomph in the final 3rd.
 
Unfortunately at the moment our best players are the providers and don't really have anyone to provide for

Absolutely - any time Barisic and Tavernier have the ball in the final 3rd players should be breaking their neck to get on the end of the inevitable cross. Sadly, that isn't the case.

Barisic alone must have put 3 or 4 brilliant balls in the 6 yard box and not one of them had any takers.
 
It's just our style. It's a little safe and boring at times.
It's the main difference between us and he mhanky mob is they look to play the game in the opponent's half and seek out goals.
We are happy and comfortable to play in our own half .
The risks with that are obvious...
If our opponents score 1 goal, there's a chance we drop something.
If their opponents score 1 goal, it matters less as they are far more likely to score 2,3 or more goals. They will slip up less because of it.
 
What a different game it is. Sitting on the edge of my seat in a state of abject terror or at least high anxiety, it’s hard to see things as they are. After a second run through some players I was screaming at on occasion at the time were actually doing better than I realised. The sheep had one first half shot. The goal mouth scramble was their only other moment. I looked closely at this and to be fair we marked our men well at the corner and really it should have been McGregor’s ball all day long.
We were utterly in control, even in the second half and only some uncharacteristic poor touches or passes stopped us adding more. Still think we’ve got to commit more players forward into the box to create more options. We have no forward aerial threat either. We’ve got to show more urgency to go for a second - we looked to happy to accept our one goal advantage - always a mistake. Otherwise never seen a game at Pittodrie where we looked so comfortable, and though that seemed to be the case at the time, it took a second watch to realise that fully.
We needed more men in the box when we got things moving up front and Hagi was uncharacteristicly poor with his first touch on at least 3 potentially useful situations. First game and a tough one on paper out of the way, 3 points collected.
 
With the five subs rule there's going to be alot of injury time, if we're only winning games 1-0 and the board goes up for 6/7 mins added, I'll need to invest in some lovely brown pants.
 
I quite like the idea of a so called ‘false 9’ but we need a much more attacking midfield to help with this and Kamara AND Jack are not those guys. Certainly not both anyway. We need to be a bit less cautious about loading the box when we drive forward. We hugely increase the odds of the ball breaking to one of our players if we do that. We can’t just put all expectation on one guy to get the goals. A false 9 and plenty of interchangeability makes marking men more difficult. We’ve got to start sharing the goals around too.
Alfie has been playing as a false 9 since we came back after the enforced break.

What we're playing is a lot closer to a 4231, with Aribo the 3rd man in the 3. Aribo, Kent and Hagi have been getting beyond Alfie much more than they did last year when he was the focal point of everything we did.
 
Biggest concern for me is the lack of bodies we get forward and into the box.

We seem intent on passing the ball into the net when teams get bodies back in to defend. We have no real aerial threat which lets us put crosses into the box more regularly
There was a video on this the other day after the game. Im sure it was David edgar on heart and hand could be wrong. Against Aberdeen we learned our lesson where putting crosses in all the time just didn't work with mckenna and considine. We needed to play through them and it worked
 
What a different game it is. Sitting on the edge of my seat in a state of abject terror or at least high anxiety, it’s hard to see things as they are. After a second run through some players I was screaming at on occasion at the time were actually doing better than I realised. The sheep had one first half shot. The goal mouth scramble was their only other moment. I looked closely at this and to be fair we marked our men well at the corner and really it should have been McGregor’s ball all day long.
We were utterly in control, even in the second half and only some uncharacteristic poor touches or passes stopped us adding more. Still think we’ve got to commit more players forward into the box to create more options. We have no forward aerial threat either. We’ve got to show more urgency to go for a second - we looked to happy to accept our one goal advantage - always a mistake. Otherwise never seen a game at Pittodrie where we looked so comfortable, and though that seemed to be the case at the time, it took a second watch to realise that fully.

Strange that all outlets seem to have them having no shots on target, but this was from Ojo about 30 mins in, and was saved and looked on target.

It is pleasing that for all they were better in the second half, they done f all with it, flung a couple of free kicks in and thats about it.
 
Listen, a win at Pittodrie is one thing, but you should have seen how excited posters on here got at Celtic’s amazing home win yesterday...
On twitter it was their 5th goal that had the wankfest. Against a tired humped accies. Big difference against the sheep away.
 
"Morelos punted to get an out and out goal scorer"...

I'd like to hear your take on what an out and out goalscorer is, especially if Morelos doesn't fit your criteria of that description?!
I think he means Morelos head is clearly elsewhere, the lad wants to go the club want x amount for him, to for him to go and get one or two in.
 
It was a good result tried to watch it again but couldn’t watch most of the second half we really should’ve won at least 2-0 it’s too early to say how good we’re going to be but I think it’s glaringly obvious we need more attacking options and sometimes feels we’re too deliberate and predictable in the way we play I’d love to see us mix it up now and again not moaning I’m sure we’ll be more ruthless in the weeks to come
 
Biggest concern for me is the lack of bodies we get forward and into the box.

We seem intent on passing the ball into the net when teams get bodies back in to defend. We have no real aerial threat which lets us put crosses into the box more regularly
Why do we need an aerial threat ? That would result in throwing aimless high balls into box which centre backs love as they are easy to defend .... look across the city they don’t have an aerial threat apart from when centre backs come up for corners same as us look at Liverpool ManCity all the clubs the aerial threat is only from Defenders nowadays the days of big lumps playing upfront are long gone
 
That’s a bit like saying Taylor miscuing his goalline clearance into his own net.

If they had equalised midway through the second half it would have been 5 defensive subs from McInnes and Aribo never gets that chance against an 11 man defence, though.
 
He did. I think he was trying to break the sheep up a bit and create space for us to go for another goal.

It didn't work and tbf that really isn't his job. It's ok for him to do it further up the pitch but we need midfielders who will do what Alfie was doing on Sat.

We've used Morelos in that role against Aberdeen before. In the 5-0 game at Ibrox last season, their defenders tried to follow him and it let Stewart find a ton of room.

They didn't follow him on Saturday, except once. We scored from it, thankfully.
 
Said on the match thread that a lot broke down at Hagi, but you could see why he will be instrumental to any success we have this season. His lovely touch in the build up to the goal for example.
That was frustrating, but I prefer to see him trying things than playing a square ball or a backward pass.
We have too many doing that in midfield already. To me, we receive passes with our back to the opponents goal far too often, nobody trying to turn, just taking the easy option and playing it the way they’re facing.
All this backwards, sideways stuff slows us down, allows opponents to get their shape. It has to be done at times, but it makes us too easy to defend against, if overdone.
I sometimes wonder if the fear of making a mistake is stifling our attacking play, Hagi likes to have a go, I wouldn’t want to stifle that.
Our passing has to improve, at times it’s incredibly sloppy. Passing behind the player just does my nut in. This continually slows us down, all over the pitch.
 
If they had equalised midway through the second half it would have been 5 defensive subs from McInnes and Aribo never gets that chance against an 11 man defence, though.

That’s all if’s and butt’s.

We will not agree on this but I never felt in any danger throughout this game.
 
That was frustrating, but I prefer to see him trying things than playing a square ball or a backward pass.
We have too many doing that in midfield already. To me, we receive passes with our back to the opponents goal far too often, nobody trying to turn, just taking the easy option and playing it the way they’re facing.
All this backwards, sideways stuff slows us down, allows opponents to get their shape. It has to be done at times, but it makes us too easy to defend against, if overdone.
I sometimes wonder if the fear of making a mistake is stifling our attacking play, Hagi likes to have a go, I wouldn’t want to stifle that.
Our passing has to improve, at times it’s incredibly sloppy. Passing behind the player just does my nut in. This continually slows us down, all over the pitch.

That can be one of the most frustrating things particularly at home to bottom end clubs. Sometimes we played a midfield 3 of Davis, Kamara, Jack which is terribly defensive. We don't need three of those players when it should be shooty in.
 
On reflection, it was a very comfortable win. Although it’s easy to say that after the game is over.

We could’ve played without a GK, we had one cleared off the line and a penalty claim turned down.

On another day that’s 3-0.
And on another day it's 1-1 instead of 3-1.
Which is what is so frustrating with this team.
 
We need strikers we have to be blowing teams like Aberdeen away they offered nothing and we did not finish them off. It made it quite worrying to watch.
Jack and Kamara slow the game down too much for me.
 
And on another day it's 1-1 instead of 3-1.
Which is what is so frustrating with this team.

Aberdeen had zero shots on target so I’m struggling to see where that game could’ve been 1-1.

There was not even a situation where we “got out of jail”

It was an utterly comfortable 1-0. We could still be playing now and McGregor wouldn’t have broken sweat.
 
There was a video on this the other day after the game. Im sure it was David edgar on heart and hand could be wrong. Against Aberdeen we learned our lesson where putting crosses in all the time just didn't work with mckenna and considine. We needed to play through them and it worked
Once.
 
Aberdeen had zero shots on target so I’m struggling to see where that game could’ve been 1-1.

There was not even a situation where we “got out of jail”

It was an utterly comfortable 1-0. We could still be playing now and McGregor wouldn’t have broken sweat.
You said on another day right? So you know what that means? It means if things had transpired slightly differently due to chance/circumstance. So on another day Aberdeen might not have had no shots on target. You can't be talking hypotheticals and then hit me with facts to try and justify your point. Doesnt work that way I'm afraid.

So I''m saying with some justification that on another day, just like multiple games last season when we dropped points to the only shots on goal against us, that this could have ended 1-1 instead of 3-1 to us because we didnt finish them off, again. My point isnt about Aberdeen or what they did or didn't do, or how many shots on target they got in this particular game. It's about us. And it's a general point not about this one specific game. But I think you probably already know that.

It wasn't a comfortable second half at all, considering we kept giving the ball away in stupid areas of the pitch, stood off them by miles and hardly won a 50/50 or second ball for the whole 45 minutes. No 1-0 is comfortable for us, not in this league and not at this time. At 2 up or more that's fine going into training mode but at 1-0? Thats criminal and exactly the type of scenario that bit us on the ass time and again last year and beyond.

Against a better/fitter or even just a lucky side with a recognised no 9 we could easily have dropped points due to our laziness and frankly lacakadaisical attitude. Just because it didn't happen this time in this specific game, doesn't mean it won't the next. That game could easily have ended 1-1 if Aberdeen had a bit of luck or an extra bit of quality on the day. But if you dont want to recognise that just because we got a thumping 1-0 win over a dreadful Aberdeen side then fair enough.
 
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