Midfield

Thought i'd start a topic on this rather than introduce the subject on Durnford's defence thread.

We have an abundance of midfielders, but what is our best starting line up, again it possibly depends on who we are playing.

I'd break it down to 3 categories of opposition.

Cat A; Celtic & Sevco we're going to be mostly 10 men behind the ball so obv selection on who are the best pressing, tackling midfielders.

Cat B; Hibs & Aberdeen we'll get a more even chance of getting forward but will still have to defend a lot, so again we'll need good pressing players but have a need for a bit of attacking flair too.

Cat C; The rest, we're all much of a muchness in ability and it gives us more opportunity to stamp our own game on the opposition, and play our own style in attack.

Marv starts as a DM playing just in front of the back 4, but who plays beside him if we're playing our usual 4-2-3-1 formation. Possibly Holt, or Sibbs, Crawford seems to have dropped down the pecking order.

The attacking mid 3 is the area we're overloaded with players, assuming like the CB and DM positions we have certain starting picks with Guthrie & Marv, and Pittman will be a def start, that leaves us with a lot of players vying for 2 spots.
Robbo and Forrest is prob best for Cat A & B games, but in Cat C games, and esp against the likes of Accies, i'd quite like to see us go with Souda and Forrest in that AM 3, maybe even trying Poplatnik in the centre of it instead of Pitts, with either Stokes or Lars up front.

Historically our midfield has been an extremely strong facet of the side. By battling and controlling the midfield it tended to relieve a lot of pressure on our defence.

In principle I agree with you categories but for all the home games vs Celtic of last season we played a strong midfield and almost ended up with two wins. Our games v Sevco were less successful.

To be honest we're getting a fairly settled midfield with Bartley; Pittman; Forrest and Sibbald plus one other (potentially Robinson). I'm not sure they'll change much irrespective of who we play. In principle the idea is that we mix it up in the second half but Holt seems to be resisting the idea of wholesale changes in the second half even when I thought it was obvious to bring on another attacking player when Ross county went down to ten men on Saturday.

The Accies game should be interesting but we cant afford to take them lightly; too often in the past they've managed to hit us with a sucker punch (at their ground) despite controlling the majority of the game. I'd love for us to really go for it and give the likes of Souda and even Kouider Aissa a run out but maybe we'll use that tactic in the betfred games.

Looking at the stats for Motherwell v Hamilton; The Steelmen had 68% of the possession but Hamilton just soaked up attack after attack and hit them with a sucker punch.

In many ways that's the real danger with how Hamilton play; their aim, irrespective of who you are, is to stop you from scoring at all costs then take advantage of a lapse in defence who have been so used to one way traffic for 85 minutes.

Obviously this strategy only works so long as the other side doesn't score early on; hence maybe the aim there should be to hit them at 90 miles an hour right from the kick-off and change to a more defensive format once you're in the lead? Of course that wouldnt please some of the more blood -and-thunder supporters who would like us to grind them into the dust and kick their dug....

Classic Livi away from home that D, Holt kept on saying we needed to sometimes accept a point instead of still trying to get the win and being sucker punched in the 89th min, Accies, St Mirren away.

St Mirren are another one that's quite cute with the fouling of any Livi player who gets the ball and is breaking up the pitch, they're straight in their with a trip, grabbing of a shirt, or just plain swiping the legs away. Gets extremely frustrating playing against them but it works, and they mostly get away with it.

Don't forget the bit where we get so fed up with the spoiling tactics that we resort to booting the ball straight up to Dykes or whoever and we get labelled a long ball team/hit and hope etc.

This is a fairly unique season where we're properly covered in all areas; in previous seasons we may have been stronger in some areas but let down in others.

Yeah don't need to be sticking CB's as FB's, we've got 3 players to cover both LB and RB positions this season, players that actually play that position to a decent standard. Same at CB, we've 4 players who can all have a case for starting there, and do equally good jobs.

Even GK looks covered when McCrorie can't play against Sevco, Stryjek looks like he could come in whenever called upon and do as good, or even better in goals.

Just up front in the striker position we're not yet settled, Lars looks like he could be a decent big target man once he's had a few games under his belt, and Stokes has the pedigree to do well once he's fit, the other 3 could get better as the season goes on too though, we're a bit working progress up front, with plenty potential for most of them to do well the second half of the season, going into next season. The likes of Lars and Stokes could be there a lot quicker though, to give the rest breathing space for development.

Midfield has a wealth of talent at our disposal to choose from, so all in all we're pretty much covered for injuries and suspensions in 3 areas, and will hopefully have at least 2 strikers we can rely on by the end of this month.

We are spoiled for the quality of the midfielders we have. I like to see Pittman, Bartley, Sibbald and Forrest start games but Holt, Crawford, Robinson and Jacobs are also there to be used as excellent back up. I also have no objections to Souda and Tiffoney getting game time. I haven't seen much of Pignatello but I guess if he's been kept on by the management team they must see something there. The big problem I think is who do we leave out.