Return of the Tinkerman

12.  What does it mean?  Not the number of players SEVCO have on the park at any one time (for once).  Nor the number of stars on the European Union flag (appropriate on the night that the UK commits its final act of self-destruction). No, it is the number of players who started games for United from the Inverness game to the Dundee derby eight matches later.  If you widen this out a bit longer, the number goes up to 15 (if you count Peter Pawlett’s re-enactment of the movie ‘Gone in 60 Seconds’ against Partick as an appearance (I wonder if he got a win bonus that night)) if you look a couple of games further back post the Queen of the South 4-0 debacle (to think I appealed for calm heads after the Alloa game too).  Is it a coincidence that our best run (and the one which appears to be decisive in terms of the league) happened with the same group of players week-in-week-out?  The back 4 hardly lost a goal, the midfield was the same five players competing (only changing due to Shankland’s injury) and lo and behold; when we finally played the two best strikers in the league, up-front, together, we suddenly looked more potent than at any time in the past 5 years.  Revolutionary thinking.

What we saw develop in the team during this run was a real togetherness and resilience which has largely continued since then.  The best example of this was undoubtedly the Arbroath away game.  It was fucking freezing, their pitch was heavy, they tried to boot us off the park at times but we held firm and you could see the players had each-others backs.  Could you have seen a performance like this under any of the last three clowns in the managers chair? Our support that day could see it too, a group actually playing for the shirt with a real cause and will to win is all any supporter asks for and the response in this match at the end was not one of relief, but pride.  It doesn’t matter a jot that it was against Arbroath, the fact is they are the most stuffy and difficult team to play against in the most stuffy and difficult league in world football. The sad thing is how fleeting these teams actually are, especially in the modern game.  As the run went on we started to see certain players start to deliver consistent performances for the first time in their United careers: Paul McMullan, a threat in most games (especially the Alloa home game where he was cleverly switched to the left hand side to exploit a weakness and terrorised the fuck out of them), Sam Stanton, who by the end of the run had become the player who could offer something different to open up teams, both from a central position or, from a wide one.  But, most of all the player who turned most heads and tbh probably kicked our season on a couple of gears was Paul Watson.  See if you said that to anyone who was at Recreation Park or Palmerston they would have fucking pissed themselves laughing at you.  Signed in a blaze of indifference from the media team and to a lesser extent, the fans, mostly played at right back where he was nothing more than functional, he even played at centre half in the East Fife debacle and yet it’s true: the boy has been outstanding since October. Was his name trending on Twitter on Tuesday night after the Hibs replay?  Every second tweet was asking where he was.  Why was he not on the park?  A good source tells me he has an injury which is needing rested.  Why did Robbie Neilson just not come out and say that?  Most people would accept it, injuries are part and parcel of football. I really hope that is true because if not you really have to question the decision to leave him out of the last two games. Did the team, especially the defence really need drastically changing?  In my opinion, yes and no.  To break it down I think you need to look back towards the end of our very good run of victories and consistent team selections.

The Ayr game:  The first 25 minutes of this were as one-sided as we have seen this season. The only problem being that it was Ayr who were giving us the run-around. Again.  Harvie and Forrest down their left-hand side are good players and Liam Smith was getting left 2 v 1 against them due to Paul McMullan not tracking back and we were lucky not to be a couple of goals down at this stage.  Robbie Neilson switched Clark and McMullan which stemmed the tide and also led to incessant moaning from a boy near me who moans about Nicky Clark non-stop during games because of his tendency to drop off the front rather than rigidly staying up within a couple of yards of Shankland.  Now actually, it wasn’t flashy but the switch had stemmed the tide of attacks because Clark was tracking Harvie which meant Smith could concentrate on stopping Forrest.  Not that this boy could see that.  Here, he was demanding that McMullan had to be wide and that Clark should be pressing their centre half when he had the ball.  I had to tell him (politely, normally others around us just tell him to shut the fuck up), that the switch had been made, not out of negativity, but because McMullan wasn’t doing his job which was why we were under so much pressure and that Clark had stopped that and also that if Clark was to charge at their centre half leaving his right-sided berth, they would simply pop the ball past him to the left back who would now be free.  He than retorted that no-one was pressing the centre half and took the huff when I pointed out that it was McMullan’s job now that he was playing up front and once again, he wasn’t doing it (more on McMullan in the huff later). Gradually, we got on top and a quick blitz of goals and a quality Mark Kerr meltdown in the penalty area (he’s good at them) put us on easy street.  One thing though, we were starting to look a bit tired, less up for it and a wee bit predictable. The bench had no game changers on it which meant the same players were increasingly being relied upon.

Dundee game: We looked knackered.  The same 12 players that had been carrying us for about 2 months appeared to collectively hit a brick wall in this one. It’s a pity because when we scored I thought we were going to hammer them again or at the very least take control like we did at Dens.  However, Dundee gave their best performance of the season and comprehensively beat us 1-1.  So there, that was us put in our place.  As a teacher I must say you really can see the roots of the Funster tag developing in their fans from a young age.  The best one I can remember was another time they beat us 1-1 (when Gardyne scored our consolation in 2013) and a laddie said a few days afterwards that it was the most amazing experience he’d ever had at a football match when they drew… I mean beat us 1-1.  Anyway, we took the defeat on the chin and moved on.  This game on December 21^st 2019 was significant, not only for highlighting the reason why Carseview is under so much pressure, but also for being, at the time of writing (2^nd February), the last time we won at Tannadice. The panic button is probably one defeat away from being pushed.

What has happened?

1.       Paul Watson’s disappearance.  Is he injured?  If he is why hasn’t anyone just said so?  Injuries are part and parcel of football and people will accept that as a reason.  If he is injured though, why is he still on the bench?  Is it because we are short of defenders?  We re-signed Kieran Freeman and yet he’s been seen once on the bench (I’m pretty sure he didn’t leave Southampton’s youth academy to be playing at St Andrews Uni or down at the Broughty in front of two men and a dog). Connolly has came in alongside Reynolds and we have started losing sloppy goals.  I don’t want to have a go at Connolly since he comes across as a good sort and is well capable of good performances such as in the first Hibs game where he was excellent (playing alongside Watson) but he clearly fancies himself as a footballer and spends far too long trying to weigh up passes which only succeed in allowing our opponents to get back into their shape, he then often tries a world cup pass instead and makes an arse of it more often than not.  He is also guilty of wanting to wrestle with strikers rather than simply jumping and attacking headers (ridiculous given his size), this happened far too often early doors against the Morton striker Orsi who eventually scored their goal. He is also far too rash at times choosing to charge out to do other people’s jobs for them instead of trusting his team mates and Saturday’s Arbroath winner was a case in point where he made a desperate diving header (when we were not really under pressure) then chased the ball out to the right back area allowing Wighton the space to get his shot in when the ball was crossed.  Watson, despite being about 2-3 inches smaller than Connolly appears to keep things much more simple i.e. he gets the ball and quickly plays it wide or into midfield to boys who are better passers than him, he gets up and attacks headers or, he does enough to put bigger opponents off and finally, he doesn’t appear to be too flustered.  Mark Reynolds form has fallen off a cliff recently as well. Coincidence? Let be honest, Reynolds canna pass water. However, he was part of a defence that hardly lost a goal for about 10 games.  Again, when he sticks to what he is good at, i.e. reading the game, winning headers and clearing the ball, he is a good defender in this league. The nervousness has spread to others as well, Jamie Robson hasn’t looked the same player since getting headbutted/assaulted at Queen of the South and appears to just want to play safe passes all the time often joining in the Connolly and Reynolds game of ‘to me, to you’.  Liam Smith meanwhile has been on the one hand culpable for a few goals recently (posted missing at Arbroath's goal on Saturday) by not defending his post, but also appears to have done something to upset Connolly who refuses to even look at him let alone pass the ball to him, despite Smith repeatedly offering himself, particularly in the Morton, Hibs and Arbroath games.  

2.       Creativity all either in the treatment room or allowed to leave. Two things have stood out recently, our defence has lost cohesion and we have become very ponderous going forwards again.  The obvious huge miss has been Nicky Clark.  For someone who is according to some in our support, i) slow as fuck ii) lazy, content to drop off into no-mans land to avoid doing any work iii) a Championship striker iv) not really a number 10 (I think it was me who said this one) v) not good enough for the Premiership; we don’t half miss him when he’s not playing.  He creates space for others by drifting about, his wee lay-offs and link up play are excellent and his goals took a bit of the burden off Shankland.  He has been the catalyst for our good run.  Losing him has been a disaster, although we should have been able to cover for it. So far, we have not been able to adjust to his absence.  Paul McMullan has also gone completely off the boil.  Again, is he injured?  Robbie Neilson said something after the Partick game (I think) to that effect however, he was back in for the Hibs cup game where he did nothing right.  And when I say he did NOTHING right I mean that literally everything he did he made a total arse of.  I was shaking my head watching it. To be fair to him, he was clearly frustrated too.  However, McMullan then appeared to be in the huff at the Morton game when he came on as sub (tbh, he’s always mince when he comes on as a sub, you can read his body language like a book) then he didn’t get on at Easter Road, although it looked like he was about to come on when we were on top after our 2^nd goal, only for Neilson to change his mind and put Osman No on instead after they went 3-2 up (to be fair, getting snubbed in favour of a 6ft 5’ collection of snapped elastic bands held together by Pritt Stick would piss you off).  When you add in Louis being unwell and Stanton being allowed to leave (see below), it adds up to a recipe for difficult times ahead.  The last few games Peter Pawlett, who is not the most reliable of players anyway, is now our main (only) creative outlet wide on the right, a role he clearly doesn’t want to play, whilst on the other side is a left back playing left midfield who runs about like a mongoose with no real idea what he is doing.

3.       Complacent transfer window.  It was clear after the Dundee game that we needed a few tweaks and one or two needed a rest, maybe a new creative player would have been the answer when the window opened up just to freshen things up a little???  It didn’t happen.  We have instead ended up with a transfer window that in its own way actually has echoes of the one under McKinnon where we were (just) top of the league but clearly needed a couple of players (another winger and a big striker) but contrived to end up with a weaker squad than the one we started out the window with when we ended up with Mikkelsen (who wasn’t great) and Alex Nicholls (who was dreadful) whilst letting our only other winger (Obedeyi) and Cammy Smith go.  Our squad which was too small when the window started was the same size when it ended and was actually weaker. 

This time we needed a winger (Phil Connors flashback) after the Elliot Frear fumbling of the summer, a central midfielder who could put his foot on the ball and dictate games (particularly with next season in mind) and because of Nicky Clark’s injury and Cammy Smith’s impending departure (Phil Connors flashback) a striker-come-number 10 was needed as well. Oh and because we let Sam Stanton go, we also lost another player who could have filled the Nicky Clark void, could have filled in wide when McMullan was injured/in the huff/in the casino on the drink, who could carry the ball past people and actually go between the lines in tight games where you are facing two banks of five (Phil Connors: “Babe, I got you babe.”).  It’s ok though because rather than telling players that they needed to see the job through until it was done, we decided to be affy nice and just let players go because we didn’t need them next season. Although we did sign Dillon Powers who numerically, gave the impression of one-in-one-out when Sam Stanton left and is clearly a player who will be decent in the Premiership because he does meet the criteria of a midfielder who can dictate games (he was very good at Easter Road imho), he was not a like-for-like-replacement and we are badly missing Stanton who was well suited to this league.  When he was allowed to go a similar type of player/an upgrade should have been recruited.  Instead we appear to be relying on two kids, neither of whom have Stanton’s versatility. The whole Shankland thing has been used as a smokescreen and a bragging tool in my opinion to cover up a window that has been a disaster.  He was never going anywhere this January. He’ll probably want to go by the summer though given that he’s going to be playing for the next four months with no support up front.  The whole thing reeks of complacency.

4.       The return of zonal marking.  Easter Road brought another horrific flashback.  When we were defending corners against a bigger, more physical Hibs team, we saw an outer ring of some players who were man to man marking, and an inner ring of Shankland, Connolly, Butcher and Reynolds who stood around the six yard box waiting for the ball to come into their zone.  They were allowing Whittaker, Hanlon, Doige and Jackson to run from near the edge of the box to attack the ball and hoping that they could beat them with a straight jump.  They weren’t even going with the man, purely defending an area. Who the fuck actually thinks this works???  We could have lost three goals in the first half because of this and of course did end up losing two shite goals in the second half because of it.  If a team is bigger than you surely the sensible solution is go man-to-man, match the run and try to win the header, or at the very least, put the opponent off so that they don’t get a clean header.  Connolly and Butcher were moaning like fuck too about the close attention they were getting when we had corners.  Had we done a bit of that we might have still been in the cup because going forward, we looked like a decent side at times.  A lot better than we did on the last two Saturdays anyway, probably because Hibs were more open.

This is negative, I know.  We are still miles in front and in the last two league games we have lost goals from our opponents only meaningful attacks and totally dominated otherwise. We will probably still win the league comfortably and I will be a complete hypocrite and slaver over these players like all-conquering heroes at hospo last game of the season against Ayr United. But I don’t know, I actually wanted to blast over the finishing line this time like Liverpool seem to be doing, not stumble over it simply because other teams are utterly shite rather than us being really good. Utd supporters have gotten really good at seeing patterns emerge in terms of form and particularly style, and can see that we don't look right just now, we lack options and have become slow and predictable again. We have two weeks off now.  Neilson needs to think about what his best team is and what has worked for us this season and try to get as close to that as possible, given the players who are out injured. Stop thinking he is clever with the Tinkerman pish. Ideally, we need Watson, McMullan and Appere back fit to give us a bit more creativity and to free up Pawlett to play in the hole behind Shankland.  Ditch the pedestrian shite which has crept back into our play again. Although knowing Pawlett, he’ll probably fall down the hole that was dug for Osman Sow on Saturday and be out for the season.

Finally, I thought I’d end the blog by talking about Scott Banks and his best bits playing for United.

Pump it up.  The Bipolar Years will be back. Next: The Emperors New Clothes.