Motherwell v Hearts - the battle for 6th

[Rory Breaker]

Rory?

Absolutely spot on Johnny


Sick of hearts ruining my weekends. Glad I’ll be giving it all a break till August after this Saturdays match.

hopefully get my enthusiasm back soon enough.

[Zizou]

It’s all this shite about trying to control the game when football is objectively better when it’s off the cuff and the players are allowed to be creative.

Not just a Critchley thing. We’ve played that way for years and it’s fucking shite.

[Socko]

I do enjoy 6ft5 goalies trying to play pinpoint 20 yard passes to a full back and giving away goals arbitrarily.

[Nive la France]

Was working early doors last weekend and stuck on the Man U - Leeds 18s on for something in the background.  Man Utd won 13-1, and seven of the goals came directly from defenders losing the ball at the edge of their own box

Even at the highest level I'm convinced it causes more problems than it solves. Barely ever leads to play progressing up the pitch. This combined with stricter offside, rigid tactics, and players not taking risks by putting quick balls into the box makes most football utter shite to watch nowadays. Hate to say it, but PSG were a breath of fresh air during the week. That Georgian lad is exactly what football is trying to kill.

[Floyd]

Was working early doors last weekend and stuck on the Man U - Leeds 18s on for something in the background.  Man Utd won 13-1, and seven of the goals came directly from defenders losing the ball at the edge of their own box

Even at the highest level I'm convinced it causes more problems than it solves. Barely ever leads to play progressing up the pitch. This combined with stricter offside, rigid tactics, and players not taking risks by putting quick balls into the box makes most football utter shite to watch nowadays. Hate to say it, but PSG were a breath of fresh air during the week. That Georgian lad is exactly what football is trying to kill.

I used to hate watching PSG back when they had the likes of Neymar playing for them, but now they’re a must watch. They just play good fast football which is so easy on the eye and is what you want to see.

I’m not suggesting for a minute that we’ll ever be at that level, but I’m fed up of us knocking the ball around the back with no intent of getting forward.

[Billy Butcher]

Hearts are in the Goldilocks zone which makes this style of football 10x worse. Not one of those players is good enough to pick apart a defence and the coach isn’t good enough to either figure it out or get it across to the players.

You end up with a situation in which the better sides swat us aside and the ‘worse’ (debatable) sides let us have the ball all day and we can’t break them down or lay a finger on them really

[pondlife]

PSG pretty much have two of the best overlapping full backs (wingbacks, whatever) in the world, that helps! We have Forrester, and of course Jamesy, he's a bit better.

They have a ridiculous interchangeable front three in the Georgian, Dembele (when he's not blowing chances), and that young lad Doue. They're all fast af, and can go either way.

They are a great watch. Unfortunately they do tend to rely on Marqhinhos at the back, and he has a real knack on how to lose.

[Del-icious]

At the highest level it is effective because players can do the advanced things you need to be able to do to make these tactics work.

A big thing is having players who can take the baw in very tight areas, turn and get the pass out to an advancing player in space. It all needs to happen at pace as well. The best teams can afford players like that but it doesn’t necessarily translate down to what teams like us can attract. You watch a team like us trying to do it and it’s so fucking slow that teams can just shuffle left to right as the ball goes sideways and you never unlock any space at all.

You still get managers thinking this is the way to play football with players who aren’t intelligent or technical enough to do it. “We are a team who play football” seems to be the phrase you hear a lot (from guys like si ferry) when really what it involves is aimlessly passing the ball side to side with not a lot else going on, very rarely are you seeing “modern” tactics flourishing at teams in Scotland and if you do it’s quite rare.

It’s like being more direct is frowned upon and makes you a shit tier clogger team when it is often the way that gets the most out of the players available to you. Teams won’t get the ball out to wingers quickly who will take on a man out wide anymore, mainly because a traditional winger doesn’t actually seem to exist anymore tbh. Another issue you’ve got there when the players at youth level are being taught to be these sort of system players when teams in Scotland are absolutely awful at playing system football so only a very select few players are going to be good enough to get noticed and move on to a higher level.

It’s a complete mess that’s caused by shite managers/coaches following like sheep and not having ideas of their own.