Kieran Balfour is ranked the 5th best player at the club by star ranking has a 6.93 average ranking this season currently and is slowly showing some attribute increases. His 13 Passing, 10 Vision and 13 Decisions make me think he could become a useful playmaker in the future.
Our Reserves won 1-0 v Preston Athletic Reserves on Wednesday 2nd January, a non-player with the goal (Called Willison apparently).
The month has turned again, here are the headline statistic movers and shakers:
A few falls (Andrew Mackay, Kevin Waugh, Murray McCullagh) but a few more people now have a rise of 2 points from their July 1st ratings (Neil McVitie Work Rate & Tom Kelly Concentration) with Chris Barras still way out front with five 2-point rises since the 1st September.
The Stats for the month and overall season are here:
Last Month – http://www.mediafire.com/file/jqpmpl84rutct2z/Summary_Stats_LM_01012019.docx/file
Overall Season so far – http://www.mediafire.com/file/fvmjxsvwvydh9xe/Summary_Stats_01012019.docx/file
The first move of the transfer window has happened – we welcome Paul Cairney to the club
Paul Cairney (31, 5ft 9in) comes in after being released by Peterhead last season. I’m really surprised he’s not been picked up – very good mentals and technicals for this level. He will fit in as the Advanced Playmaker just behind the striker, plus be on set piece duties. I’m not looking at him to contribute much physically, just be the breative spark we need.
This bring us to our new tactic.
We are channelling our inner Barca – Tiki Taka playing to our passing strengths with new boy Cairney pulling the strings. I may change the midfield up to a BBM/BWM to help with keeping things a bit tighter in the middle but conversely make the fullbacks supporting wing-backs so they get more involved in the attacks.
Today’s game v Whitehill Welfare see them in 5th, level with Cumbernauld on 29 points. The scouts don’t rate their squad at all but at this level I’d rather go by results, and they seem to be running into a bit of form (2 wins and a draw in their last 3 games) – it will be nice to play someone who isn’t in form for a change!!
Today is very much an experiment – I’ve done as I said above and changed the centre of midfield and full-backs to wing-backs, plus changed Garden back to Poacher as I could see him being ineffectual as a DLF. Leaving it on Balanced, lets see how things go.
HT Civil Service 0 Whitehill Welfare 0
An interesting start, play seemed very similar to the control possession variant. We had a Waugh goal disallowed for offside. Whitehill looked dangerous on the break. We look like we are making a lot of mistakes though which is worrying – 8 in first half with no key passes. I’ll go back to the custom possession tactic for the 2nd half I think – better the devil you know and all that. Cairney as DLP as he suits that better in centre mid, Churchill as a CM(A) and McVitie as the BWM DM. Barras on for Faye as an IF(A).
FT Civil Service 0 Whitehill Welfare 0 Att 148 (86 Away)
Whitehill started brightly but lacked the cutting edge. Newall was injured by a bad challenge and had to leave the field with a suspected pulled groin (2-4 days) – Fee replaced him. We’ve seemingly forgotten how to score all of the sudden – its a big worry, but at least we get a point – 0-0. On reflection most probably fair. Think we will Gegenpress in the next game – a similar formation but we’ve been training it since July as opposed to just for a few days.
The big game, BSC Glasgow v East Kilbride on Sunday 6th will decide whether we are 2, 3 or 4 points clear going into the next match with Spartans, who are in 7th but have lost 3 of the last 4 games. Thinking i might have to have a look at training – get some more Attacking routines/weeks in there as we’ve only scored 3 goals in 6 games since the start of December. hoping we can also offload some dead weight and get in some more quality for our last 9 game push for the title.
Stop Press – BSC Glasgow 1 East Kilbride 1 – We still lead by 4 points but BSC Glasgow still has a game in hand.