yesterdays game

[darrenshedtastic]

1st half
both teams feeling eachother out. both teams with really poor quality all over the pitch. gave falkirk abit too much space at certain times and never pressurized them enough as we should have. when we did pressure them we won the ball back quicker in decent positions. we probably had the better two chances of the half (Fyvie and Mcdonald) a poor half in terms of entertainment.
2nd half
not much different, both teams seriously lacking the quality in the final 3rd. only chances for united came from their defender trying to give us a chance with a sliced backpass and mcmullans rubbish cross hitting the bar/post. they had a few half chances but both teams poor.

ratings
Lewis
didnt have much do to. collected a few crosses well. (6)
Toshney
distribution was shocking at times but his defending for once was decent in the main. (6)
Durnan
solid as always. won his headers and dealt with loy easily enough. (6)
Quinn
wasnt on for long enough (-)
Robson
solid in the 1st half but the boy harris seemed to get the better of him a few times in the 2nd. (6)
Fyvie
probably one his better games for us imo. does need to release the ball quicker at times but solid enough performance (6)
Briels
went about his work quietly and unnoticed. do like briels in the team for his aggression. (6)
King
helped out toshney alot and dealt with their attacking left back well but on the ball didnt make much of an impact tbh. (5)
Stanton
shows little spells of good play but then will disappear for abit. much more effective as a central player (5)
Mcdonald
should have scored with chance in 1st half but had no real service all game. linked up well with mcmullan/keatings well at times and worked hard (5)
Mcmullan
disappointed in him last few games. the drive and pace he showed in earlier games seems to have gone. looks scared to take anyone on anymore. made some decent runs then stopped making them. (4)

subs
Edge
came on and was solid as ever (6)
Keatings
came on and worked hard but didnt really get much service. (3)

falkirk
they looked very very low on confidence and should have been put under more pressure by us. i think if the game was at tannadice then we would have been right at them but due to being an away game and on astro we were abit more cautious. they look a shadow of the team that was decent last season. their left back (gallacher) looked decent at times but should have been tested more defensively.

tactics/performance
442 when we had the ball. 451/4411 when we didnt.
king on the righ with stanton on left with mcmullan and mcdonald up top when we had the ball and once falkirk were in possession one of the strikers would drop in and mark kerr.

i actually think our performance wasnt too bad DEFENSIVELY!. yes we were rubbish going forward and should have put them under pressure more. but defensively as a team we were solid enough and didnt give away any big opportunities to falkirk. considering the two games we played there in the league last year we had no points and got pumped in both. ill take a draw,, not happy with a draw but content enough.

where does this leave Ray??
the entertainment level is soooooo bad. morton next week needs to be a win with a comfortable win to get us back on track and give some hope back to some fans. the next two games are massive for united. lose both and bye bye ray. win both and were in a decent position.

FTD

[ianharab]

Never mind Darren the manager thinks it was a really good point , he obviously no watching the same team as the rest o us

[darrenshedtastic]

the only positives i can take from it that aree...

clean sheet
not losing at a venue we lost twice at last year 6-1 on aggregate.

if that was last year any of the falkirk games away i would have took a boring 0-0 but after the last few performances we really needed to put pressure on them more than we did to give us a boost again and stick falkirk even further down.

[offshore_arab83]

Well done as usual Darren