Scottish Cup 4th Round

I think if White was brought on at HT we'd have had more joy getting to those goal kicks, they were going a couple of inches over Sheerin's head all game but White would've got to them. I like Sheerin but he needs the ball played to him in and around the box, not just inside their half with his back to goal, or hit over his head. The game wasn't suiting him and he was struggling to get involved

Hopkin needed to change the way we were playing or get White on who was more suited to it. That's my concern with his management, he sticks to his rigid game plan and doesn't adapt to how the game is being played.

Just saw the goal on Sportscene....DJ appears to be on his knees in the net when it goes in when he should have been charging out to punch it clear and taking any and all players of both sides in front him with it. There was also another chance in the 1st half when he was frozen to his line while Gordon and a Morton player were coming towards him, he should have been taking control then too.

No wonder there was only 500 Livi fans there yesterday... Never looked like scoring even if we were playing now, the team is woefully short on confidence and the fact that a player who hasn't played all season looked our best player is fairly indicative of where we are right now.

Wonder if Hippo will get a game against Sevco, he loves scoring against them. Still don't get why Hopkin kept him sitting on the bench yesterday when we were only a goal down, and brought on Knox instead!

Nope, that decision was odd. His Sportscene aftermatch comments were odd too.

He said we created a number of chances...agreed, nothing odd so far.

He said we gave the two new guys a start with only a day of preparation from when they came in...agreed, not too odd because we were all looking for them to start to freshen the line up & change things up a bit.

He said we also brought on 16 & 17 year olds late on to give them a run out....WHY???? when there were guys on the bench who have sparked us into life before? We needed a goal, what kind of pressure does that put on the young lads?

He said it just wasn't to be.....sorry but I don't buy into this predestined garbage; don't tell me "it wasn't to be" when the truth is we weren't clinical enough in front of goal & we defended appallingly for their goal & when we need to chase an equaliser we turned to the two most inexperienced guys on the bench as a management decision. Don't tell me "it wasn't to be" because it was there for the taking, we just didn't take it.

Sounds like he wasn't that bothered about the cup game and just gave the young lads a run out as he had accepted we were out.
Wouldn't think the board would be too happy about that, next round could've been an earner if it was an Premiership team away.

Either that or we've still the same problems with substitutions we had when Burchill was here, poor timing in using them and bewildering choices of the ones being used. White made an impact but should've been done sooner, the other two didn't improve us at all.

Yeah, that is my take on his comments too

The Scottish Cup is a distraction we could do without. it would have been a good moral boost to have won yesterday and to keep the feel good factor of the last few days going for a while longer but our focus needs to be the league.

Yes the focus has to be on the league but another round of the cup with a tie against one of the crowd pulling sides would have been useful on the financial front

we already have two crowd pulling teams in our league, three last year and we're still in the shit financially. Getting Aberdeen or Celtic wouldn't make a difference to us this year. Anyway there's no guarantee of getting a crowd puller but our luck would see us draw Linlithgow Rose, who would bring 3000 to our ground,whip us and put our confidence at an all time low. Im glad we're out of it

Winning a cup last year didn't do us any harm, in fact i'd say that cup run gave us the boost we needed for our run in. I don't buy that distraction theory, only the team being knocked out comes out with it. Cup games give the fans and players a bit of a break from the serious league stuff and ease the tension a bit, that wee break was good for us.

The way our home att is dropping we sure as hell could've done with a decent cup pay out.

AMF wrote:we already have two crowd pulling teams in our league, three last year and we're still in the shit financially. Getting Aberdeen or Celtic wouldn't make a difference to us this year. Anyway there's no guarantee of getting a crowd puller but our luck would see us draw Linlithgow Rose, who would bring 3000 to our ground,whip us and put our confidence at an all time low. Im glad we're out of it

Well we certainly wouldn't get Aberdeen....but Hearts would either bring a decent support or have a decent crowd at Tynie that we'd get a share of...and Celtic even more so.

As was pointed out on numerous occasions this week, when Exeter played Man U a few years ago the money from the tie and the replay saved the club financially, so to suggest getting a big club this year would have made no difference is a bit naive.

Frankly, losing to Rose would be less embarrassing than losing to Cowdenbeath.

The addition of Fotheringham and to a lesser extent Stanton was a real eye opener.

Fotheringham was supposed to have been unfit and yet hardly stopped running for the whole 90 minutes; was worried about him getting booked after the first 20 minutes but feel t hat was more due to his flailing arm rather than the actual tackle. Otherwise he had the makings of a powerhouse in the defensive midfield; he also seemed eager to stamp his authority on the others and was particularly "direct" with Knox (I think) about his "show-boating" when we were already a goal down.

OOne thing he did seem to get really frustrated about is the almost total lack of running off the ball being done by many of our other long standing players; he would get the ball and look for options but most just stood still waiting for the pass rather than continually running into space and catching their defence out. Those that did move were generally too predictable and easily closed down by the opposition. Stanton was a bit of an exception here; particularly in the first half

Defence wise I was particularly worried about Gallagher and Gordon; both seemed to want to take at least 3 or 4 touches on the ball before looking for options; after the first fifteen minutes Morton had cottoned on to this and pressed on them immediately they got the ball - in most cases leaving no option but to pass back to DJ to hoof up the park. If we're going to try passing the ball around the defence it needs to be one touch stuff leaving the opposition no time to react and close us down. Whilst on the subject of the defence neither Neill or Longridge seemed to go for the attacking option most of the time; instead preferring to put the ball back to one of the central defenders to eventually pass back to DJ.

I thought bringing White on for Sherrin was the wrong decision as the White/Buchannan has hardly ever worked.

Likewise bringing on Knox and Currie when we're already one goal down can only mean we weren't bothered about continuing in the cup. Don't think there can be any debate on this point actually; no matter how promising they've looked in the past no reasonable person could expect them to turn the game around; with Hippolyte and Gibbons on the bench we had more experiences and physical options.

All in all, and as frustrating as losing to Morton is, I will be very interested to see how the new guys inject change into the team and hopefully we can sort a bit out (just wish the next game wasn't Rangers away).

Good post D but disagree about White being the wrong option, he should've been on at HT as Sheerin wasn't working out and White made an impact when he came on.

Sheerin has worked with both White and Buchanan but the White/Buchanan pairing has worked well too, his pass to set Buchanan up in the St Mirren game was the best assist of the season, superb.

Our 3-0 win over Raith, and 4-1 win the week before over QoS was both White/Buchanan pairing when we scored all or most of our goals. Against Queens Buchanan came on iin 64 mins, White scored in the 67th min, then Buchanan scored 2 in the 75th & 85th min.

I agree that White should probably have been on a lot earlier; on Saturday I didn't notice us winning one of DJ's clearances (as opposed to goal kicks although that probably wasn't much better) in the first half and only one in the second which, for a change found an unmarked Danny Mullen, before White came on - by winning I mean getting to the ball and being able to control it before being robbed.

Saturday unfortunately highlighted the biggest issue we've had all season and that is the lack of a wide option.

We looked threatening when Longridge went down the flank, but that was it. Longridge and Mullen often had no support and the attacks petered out from that.

Knox tried to do something down the flank and I suspect a more experienced winger with more weight would have had more joy against a makeshift right back.

Up front I thought that both starting strikers weren't great. Sheerin had some early success throwing his weight around, then the Morton defence worked him out and he disappeared. He'd be better off as an impact sub for the last 10-20 mins.

Buchanan lacked effort and quite often made no runs off the ball. When he did get the ball, more often than nought, he was caught in possession.

When White came on, he was winning headers, distributing the ball to other players etc. It's just a shame we couldn't get the effort from the other strikers.

Its painfully obvious that we need a wide player

Also, does anyone know what happened with the Jason Esposito registration?

Nope, not heard a thing about Esposito since his initial supposed signing and waiting on International clearance to officially register in January.

Although Fotheringham's set pieces were good, decent effort from his free kick and corners were hitting our players, could do with varying them a bit, they were all hit to the back, or edge of the box for Gallagher to header back in. Would like to see some put in for us to attack the ball, same as the one Morton scored from. His first game though so on the whole he did well.

Yep would agree with most of the summeries on Saturdays game.Though when are our defenders going to learn about snuffing out corners and set peices.it seems that opposing teams know how to play against us and its so frustrating to hear fans saying oh i saw that coming every time one of those ends up in the back of our net.Anyway thought Fozzy showed some glimpses of what he can do and Stanton done ok,think he,ll get better once hes up to pace.Slightly better than last week ,gonna be difficult over the next few weeks as long as our goal difference doesnt take a hammering hopefully w,ell still be in with a chance of getting out of this mire.Cmon strikers geez a break.

Don't forget the "keeper" Troy; DJ was posted missing at the goal; looked to me like he went into the net to wait for the ball to arrive!

Yes Bertie.Having seen the goal again i totally agree with you about DJS positioning.I realise Djs taken a lot of flak on hear recently but surely part of his training and coaching is to organise his defence in certain situations.He,s the last line of defence after all ,but some of his decisions are absolutly mind numbing.Great shot stopper but sorry he couldnt organise a piss up in a brewery imop.

Having watched the goal I have to say that it was a really well placed bullet of a header. Pity one of our defenders hadn't got to it first.
Sometimes you have to give the opposition a bit of credit too.

Granted Orco...but it was a free header because he moved to it, our defence and in particular our keeper given how close to goal the ball was, should also have been moving to it, then it wouldn't have been a free header and if our keeper had done his job properly the ball would have been heading (no pun intended) away from our goal instead of into the net. So while the corner taker and scorer did well they were helped in no small way by our poor play

You got in ahead of me Bertie i was thinking along the same lines. Sorry Orco,fact was they took their chance albeit due to a defensive lapse to allow the Morton boy to ghost in and we didnt take ours when it presented itself.Hopefully theyl learn from it in future games.

Bertie, Troy, point taken. Unfortunately shit happens and by God we've had our share this year with single goal defeats in close games.