They're all practice matches. If scoring in them doesn't count then neither does not scoring. You can't have it both ways.
Under a less defensive manager, you’ll win the league. With Jack Ross, expect a further season in league 1
Looking at the squad their are a lot of players in contention, after a patchy pre-season. It will be interesting to see JR's starting line -up and tactics against Oxford. As many have already said he needs to ditch the over cautious approach of last season, and go for it, but this is a tricky first hurdle, followed by a visit to Ipswich, (we seem to cop one of these regularly), and I would take 4 points now tbh, but would not be happy with anything less.
I don't get this notion that Ross is a defensive manager. He demonstrated at St Mirren and when he first arrived that his inclination is towards attacking, passing football. He had to change things based on players becoming unavailable because of injury, lack of form, or leaving. You can't successfully play attacking football if you don't have players who are capable of doing so. Ross moved away from his preferred approach out of necessity and yet still managed to steer us to a cup final and almost to promotion. That demonstrates that he's good manager.
How many St Mirren matches did you watch ? I saw most games home and away last season and we sat too deep and tried to hang on to a lead. Hope he proves me wrong but setting up not to lose and being a big scalp at this level = trouble.
I wouldn't want to inhibit McGeady tbh plus he won't play more than 65% of games imo. I'd rather have someone like Willis who's done it before and may bring in a different mentality. We need a captain who can get onto the referee's case as well, we were too polite last season.
But you have to think about why he was setting up like that. After Maja left, the ball wasnt sticking up front and the whole dynamic of the front four changed. The ball was coming straight back at our midfield and defence and so he had to solidify which meant sacrificing more of the attacking potential. He tried playing 442 in an effort to give us more up top but that's archaic and leaves you in a position where a three man opposition midfield can just play around you. You can't play attacking football if you don't have the players. He had to do what he could with what he had. And he did it well.
I thought Maja was weak holding the ball up, but we all have different opinions , Wyke held it up better for me.
Maja got hold of the ball, turned, and engaged defenders. Wyke has the turning circle of something very large and slow and could only lay it off which meant that we couldn't get bodies into the final third. The whole key to last season was that we had to change the way we played when Maja left. Honeyman, Gooch etc looked much better players during that period because the system suited them.
Maja was strong back to goal, turn, shoot, but he was appealing at bringing others into play. He simply didn’t do it. What kind of striker do we want? Folk loved Maja but he was a striker only. He didn’t do much else, was selfish and always looking to shoot. I like that in a striker personally. The reason I ask? Cos folk are giving Grigg **** for doing nowt outside the box. Anyone who tells me Maja was a very good footballer, rather than a very decent and clinical striker, I can’t agree. He was raw as an uncooked pork chop away from goal.
The thing about Maja was that you could see him being taught how to hold off defenders and he went from not having a clue to being good at it in the space of less than a year, the lad has a brain. Sorry to pick on Wyke specifically but I don't think you could teach him **** all.
Do we need a back to goal striker? The way we should play, surely, given the ability of Watmore and McGeady is down the wings and balls into the box, high and low. Does that not then suit Grigg, more of an instinctive thing? Remember when folk are slating Grigg we didn’t half resort to hoofing it into the box, Grigg was never gonna thrive on that. With better balance of a proper RB and a bit more mobility in CM, I’d hope we can play a bit faster and more urgent going forward and that may bring Grigg to life. I won’t blindly defend Grigg, but I think he deserves a few games before we fully judge. He’s always been a top scorer in this league and things may be different if we play a bit higher tempo.
I think Ross will get the 20 clean sheets he is targeting. Portsmouth and Peterborough will challenge us for sure. If any of the seven new teams step up, it could be much like last year. We need McGeady, Watmore, Hume to stay fit. Will last year's 1-1 become this year's 1-0, or will it be 0-0.
It's easy to forget but we had some dreadful luck with injuries last season. Maguire, McGeady, Watmore, etc ... ... key players at key times. Without them we'd have gone up, no question.
He wasn't defensive at his previous club tbf. We lost Maja, McGeady, Watmore, Wyke, Grigg, Maguire, etc at various stages of the season. Even Sunderland supporters forget that. Nevertheless our scoring record was decent and lessons will have been learned. Luton went up by attacking, scoring and then pushing the opposition back. We relied on our iffy defence to protect a lead
