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St Mirren V Dundee Premiership 24/1/15 3Pm Kick Off


shull

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Yesterday was a massive kick in the stones, but we can't blame it all on the officials. Our finishing, tight calls going against us, flat atmosphere and lack of experience were all frustrating factors to our defeat. Harkin's 'tackle' on Tess in the first minute was a shocker. Just a talking to from Steven McLean?? We say it all the time, but if that had been Goodie.....

We were the better team in the first half, playing with confidence and outplaying a Dundee side, that has over achieved this season. I believe that we have better football players, but Dundee are streetwise, something that we really lack. A prime example being when Gary Irvine saw his team were in a dangerous situation, as Naismith gathered the ball in the Dundee box(1st half), so Irvine completely faked a head knock, and the conned ref wrongly stopped play and gave a drop ball. The result being, after the drop ball, a frustrated Naismith needlessly challenges Kevin Thomson(odious cheat) as we have them pegged in. Thomson throws himself to the deck, clutching his back??? and writhing in agony, after next to no contact. End result - from Saints having the ball in their box in a really great position, Dundee have a free kick, Thomson jogs away with a miraculous recovery and grinning and Naismith is needlessly booked. Cheating or clever gamesmanship by Irvine and the total knob Thomson? The answer is both and hopefully Naismith learned from it.

I agree that Kenny McLean got no protection from the ref yesterday and they were blatantly going through the back of Kenny on numerous occasions. Early on Kenny went down far too easily then berated the ref, which I believe influenced the future decisions that went against him. Obviously this isn't right on the refs part, but another example of a situation where a bit more savvy was needed by Kenny. Get the ref on your side early doors(even before kick off), crack a joke with him, friendly chat, pat on the back etc, etc.. don't scream and moan at him(even if he is a twat), as it only results in future decisions going against you. I wonder if Harkins had taken this approach before his assault on Tess??

Another factor yesterday, which has been mentioned many times on this site, is the complete lack of atmosphere at our 'new' ground. When Dundee equalised the place became a morgue and had an air of understandable inevitability about it. I don't know how we can fix this, but a couple of home victories seems like the best medicine. We still wait in hope for one home victory.

Hopefully with a bit more experience our young team can become more streetwise and quickly. There is a blurred line between cheating and being clever, but unfortunately it has always been part of the game. Scottish fans still celebrate Joe Jordon's handball against Wales, a defining factor to us getting to the 78 World Cup Finals. As a kid, I remember watching the master of cleverness at Love Street, Frank McGarvey. He was brilliant at winning free kicks/penalties, winding the opposition up(see Hamish McAlpine),creating space and scoring clever goals.

We still have a lot of positives at our club, Stevie Mallandona being a prime example. As well as his obvious talent and ability, he has a wee bit of guile and cleverness about him that some of his senior team mates could learn from.

The club are now seeking an explanation from the SFA on the standard of refereeing and recent decisions going against us. This will achieve nothing, as it's not going to get us the points we lost back and will give us a reputation of being paranoid moaners. There is no widespread agenda against us, we just need to be 'cuter', week in, week out. We also need a big change in the terrible luck we are having at the moment.

Hopefully on Friday our luck will change and we will focus on being a bit more 'clever', rather than feeling sorry for ourselves, which although warranted at the moment, will achieve absolutely nothing.

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I don't believe in blaming the officials but I have to say we aren't catching a break at all.

We have had 4 controversial sendings off in our last few games. Yes FOUR.

Then there was the Willie Collum show when penalties were 10 a penny. He was so bad he was dropped. I wonder how many penalties he would have awarded yesterday?

Loved the Dundee Utd game as all the talk was about the game. The other 4 have been all about the ref.

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Think the assistant ref, if Irvine was in line with our player, in the second phase, got it right.

I was in W6 and looked across at the linesman when the pass was made. He was a few yards behind the play and in no position to judge whether it was offside or not.

With it being such a tight call I guess there's no way he can give offside if he isn't sure. So yeah he probably did get it right but it was more through luck than judgement.

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If that's the incident on the 6 yard line, I thought he had booked him for simulation (which I didn't think it was) which leads on nicely to him doing the same with Arquin a few minutes later just so he could be seen as being fair and even.

Yep , Greg Stewart stretches and goes over the top and connects with Cheesy , he should have got a red and it was a reckless tackle , I think he feigns injury to try and avoid a card . Arquins two bookings are an absolute joke

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Couple of people have mentioned the stats, and that they show Dundee had a lot more possession (maybe could buy that given the time wasting in the second half) but them 12 shots (7 on target) to our 8 (3 on target).

At the game there was no point that I actually felt Dundee were dangerous or that they were piling the pressure on.

And I thought we had lots of attempts, and a few great chances.

8 attempts seems really light?

Arquin's header in the first minute, Arquin's poor volley, Mallan's shot that was well over, Naismith's missed header, Kenny's goal - all in the first half come to mind without too much effort.

Second half, 4 headed efforts.

That takes us to more than 8. And I'm sure I've missed a few.

I know stats don't always tell the story of a game, but it helps if they're accurate.

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Couple of people have mentioned the stats, and that they show Dundee had a lot more possession (maybe could buy that given the time wasting in the second half) but them 12 shots (7 on target) to our 8 (3 on target).

At the game there was no point that I actually felt Dundee were dangerous or that they were piling the pressure on.

And I thought we had lots of attempts, and a few great chances.

8 attempts seems really light?

Arquin's header in the first minute, Arquin's poor volley, Mallan's shot that was well over, Naismith's missed header, Kenny's goal - all in the first half come to mind without too much effort.

Second half, 4 headed efforts.

That takes us to more than 8. And I'm sure I've missed a few.

I know stats don't always tell the story of a game, but it helps if they're accurate.

Dundee had an awful lot of possession in the first half but mainly in their own half and not threatening.

We were very incisive but missing the killer punch. A welcome change although we did play good football another reason for giving Teale the job and ending all the ambiguity.

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Yesterday was a massive kick in the stones, but we can't blame it all on the officials. Our finishing, tight calls going against us, flat atmosphere and lack of experience were all frustrating factors to our defeat. Harkin's 'tackle' on Tess in the first minute was a shocker. Just a talking to from Steven McLean?? We say it all the time, but if that had been Goodie.....

We were the better team in the first half, playing with confidence and outplaying a Dundee side, that has over achieved this season. I believe that we have better football players, but Dundee are streetwise, something that we really lack. A prime example being when Gary Irvine saw his team were in a dangerous situation, as Naismith gathered the ball in the Dundee box(1st half), so Irvine completely faked a head knock, and the conned ref wrongly stopped play and gave a drop ball. The result being, after the drop ball, a frustrated Naismith needlessly challenges Kevin Thomson(odious cheat) as we have them pegged in. Thomson throws himself to the deck, clutching his back??? and writhing in agony, after next to no contact. End result - from Saints having the ball in their box in a really great position, Dundee have a free kick, Thomson jogs away with a miraculous recovery and grinning and Naismith is needlessly booked. Cheating or clever gamesmanship by Irvine and the total knob Thomson? The answer is both and hopefully Naismith learned from it.

I agree that Kenny McLean got no protection from the ref yesterday and they were blatantly going through the back of Kenny on numerous occasions. Early on Kenny went down far too easily then berated the ref, which I believe influenced the future decisions that went against him. Obviously this isn't right on the refs part, but another example of a situation where a bit more savvy was needed by Kenny. Get the ref on your side early doors(even before kick off), crack a joke with him, friendly chat, pat on the back etc, etc.. don't scream and moan at him(even if he is a twat), as it only results in future decisions going against you. I wonder if Harkins had taken this approach before his assault on Tess??

Another factor yesterday, which has been mentioned many times on this site, is the complete lack of atmosphere at our 'new' ground. When Dundee equalised the place became a morgue and had an air of understandable inevitability about it. I don't know how we can fix this, but a couple of home victories seems like the best medicine. We still wait in hope for one home victory.

Hopefully with a bit more experience our young team can become more streetwise and quickly. There is a blurred line between cheating and being clever, but unfortunately it has always been part of the game. Scottish fans still celebrate Joe Jordon's handball against Wales, a defining factor to us getting to the 78 World Cup Finals. As a kid, I remember watching the master of cleverness at Love Street, Frank McGarvey. He was brilliant at winning free kicks/penalties, winding the opposition up(see Hamish McAlpine),creating space and scoring clever goals.

We still have a lot of positives at our club, Stevie Mallandona being a prime example. As well as his obvious talent and ability, he has a wee bit of guile and cleverness about him that some of his senior team mates could learn from.

The club are now seeking an explanation from the SFA on the standard of refereeing and recent decisions going against us. This will achieve nothing, as it's not going to get us the points we lost back and will give us a reputation of being paranoid moaners. There is no widespread agenda against us, we just need to be 'cuter', week in, week out. We also need a big change in the terrible luck we are having at the moment.

Hopefully on Friday our luck will change and we will focus on being a bit more 'clever', rather than feeling sorry for ourselves, which although warranted at the moment, will achieve absolutely nothing.

Superb post.

Although we have seen an improvement in application and performance since GT took over, we are still far too soft, and naive, and teams know that. Dundee were there for the taking yesterday but instead they played to their strengths, even bent the rules at times, and escaped with the 3pts. We've been like this - soft as f**k and easy to bully - for years but never seem to address it.

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Where do you sit?

I ask because the Harkins incident was right in front of us at the corner flag and every single person in the same section as me said it was a great tackle. We were all laughing because we could hear all the shouts from around the ground but it was honestly a great tackle, not dangerous or over the ball and he won the ball cleanly. Didn't stop us giving him a load of abuse though.

Totally agree with your points on McLean though, he was fouled from behind on numerous occasions in the first half and I think it took the ref about 55 minutes to give a foul for one of these and when he did he failed to book the player.

What you watching, everyone makes a point, the offside, was offside, now you're saying Harkins tackle was a great tackle.........just coz you're a mod dosent mean you're rightbangin.gifthumbup2.gifwhistling.gif

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First half, both teams were poor but we shaded it, should have buried some of our chances. Second half, I felt Dundee were the better team, and we looked flat. Despite this, we can only blame ourselves for not scoring those headers.

The ref is a wank, aye, but had we taken our chances, we wouldn't be talking about him.

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