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Robbie Neilson Tactics


Walter Bishop

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1 hour ago, colinzeal said:

We fell short and we were never winning that game. That said, bringing Halliday on for Boyce was a dreadful substitution and clearly showed we had no intent of going to  try and win the game. 
 

 

Spot on and told every one including Rangers we were looking for a draw.

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Just now, 151 said:

Was very very strange the way we went at it. We looked to be taking the game to them in spells of the first half. Second half we done absolutely nothing it was strange. 

 

Not sure what the plan was at all. We offered nothing. Shite to go all the way and then that's what we show in the final. 

 

We have had a brilliant season but as far as cup final performances go that was shocking. 

 

I think that part of the difference is that Rangers really looked up for it, even when they were being largely unsuccessful at penetrating our defence. They harried and fought for almost every ball, allowing us no space. We were flat, but they had a big hand in that. We needed to take the game to them, physically. I know he wasn't on for long but Halliday showed what we needed when he took on Bassey - it would be a gamble with Collum on the whistle of course, but we needed more of that.

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Riccarton3
3 minutes ago, 151 said:

Was very very strange the way we went at it. We looked to be taking the game to them in spells of the first half. Second half we done absolutely nothing it was strange. 

 

Not sure what the plan was at all. We offered nothing. Shite to go all the way and then that's what we show in the final. 

 

We have had a brilliant season but as far as cup final performances go that was shocking. 

Was it noticeable Rangers increased the tempo of their passing and movement?

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1 minute ago, Australis said:

Imagine if we had managed to get out of our own half and won a free kick near the edge of the zombies box.

 

Kingsley might have given us a chance.

 

 

Our set pieces were woeful today. Not only did that deprive us of scoring opportunities, but it also impacted on the psychology of the team.

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1 minute ago, bawheed said:

Spot on and told every one including Rangers we were looking for a draw.

Robbie was the only one who never noticed.

 

God that was gutless crap today.

Imagine if we had a plan.

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1 hour ago, jambos are go! said:

Boyce going off was a body blow to our game plan. Crucial player for us.

Eh? Boyce offered very little and was taken off because he was blowing out his arse after an hour. 

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3 minutes ago, Malinga the Swinga said:

Did we not hit the post or did I imagine that? I mean we lost but your just wrong.

Hitting the post is not hitting the target

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ford donald
21 minutes ago, A_A wehatethehibs said:


I mean they don’t deserve any credit whatsoever. A squad of 5x the budget won a game they were the vast overwhelming favourites to win. It’s a chicken shoot. They’ve got £30m-40m a season to spend on wages and we’ve got £5m. How does that deserve credit? If they’d won the Europa, 100% credit and a big achievement just getting to a final. But an OF club winning domestically? zero credit due

 

Disagree.. No point being bitter,we never turned up today.

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Der Kaiser

I get the keeping it compact tactic we did. But we sat so far back that there never really felt like a dangerous counter attack was coming from us. We seemed happy to let them have possession but whenever we won it we very rarely looked capable of doing something with it.

Mostly we hit to Simms to bring it down for Boyce which worked for the first 20 minutes but appeared useless after that.

 

Creativity in Midfield was missing for me. Devlin and Haring put in a shift but going forward they don't offer much. McKay didnt have a good game and we really needed him to have a good one today.

 

No shots on target though.....that's hard to swallow.

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4 minutes ago, Nunya Business said:


And getting bent out of shape after losing a game to a team that made it to a major European final isn’t going to win us the cup next year, is it?

 

Feel free to feel upset about the game, just realise some people are a bit more pragmatic about it. 

 

You're mistaking "bent out of shape" with being disappointed at an opportunity lost.

 

Saying that "everything's fine" is not particularly pragmatic, it's just head in the sand behaviour.

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Just now, Riccarton3 said:

Was it noticeable Rangers increased the tempo of their passing and movement?

 

Certainly for the first 10 or 15 of the 2nd half yes. After that it was spells of 5 yard passes to and fro and we were always yards off our men allowing them easy possession. I felt we should have been 10 yards higher aswell - we were camping our own half out for pretty much the entire 2nd half. 

 

There's nothing worse than coming so close or the feeling of being robbed - Hearts kept us from those feelings by offering so little. I had a good day out at the 1874 bar and left feeling like it was the warm up for the real thing next week. It didn't feel like we were cup finalists today. Hard to explain really but I know what I mean. 

 

Brilliant season but we have been losing finalists too many times in recent years - we have to start taking these games and going at them. 

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We looked like 11 players who had been thrown together for the first time and told to get on with it.

 

There were no tactics, no plan A and no plan B.

 

Brechin or Dunfermline would have created more chances against the zombies today.

 

What the hell was our tactics in a one off match.

 

 

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1 minute ago, Australis said:

We looked like 11 players who had been thrown together for the first time and told to get on with it.

 

There were no tactics, no plan A and no plan B.

 

Brechin or Dunfermline would have created more chances against the zombies today.

 

What the hell was our tactics in a one off match.

 

 

String a line of defence along the back, force them wide, mop up crosses, draw them out and beat them on the counter.

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Half the team just back from injury. Not happy with the subs but we probably did the best we could have for 90 mins with the squad we had.

 

I think it was worth a gamble in the last 15 though instead of sitting in for ET. 

Probably thought their fitness might be suspect, like many were hoping, it wasnt

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simplesimon
8 minutes ago, Dazzle said:

Eh? Boyce offered very little and was taken off because he was blowing out his arse after an hour. 

He was linking well with SImms and working his Rse off.  Half of Simms knock downs fell to Boyce, after he went off they all fell to Rangers players.

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Famous 1874

Imagine not criticising Neilson after that day. 
 

We’ve had a fantastic season back up in the top flight but that was piss poor today. Can praise Neilson throughout the season but admit when he has got it wrong, like today. 

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Tommy Brown
9 minutes ago, EH11 2NL said:

Hitting the post is not hitting the target

A duffed shot trundling in to the keepers hands or an open goal that ends up a bawhair out of reach.

Which one is the better chance?

 

Disappointed  Simms wasn't busting a gut to get in on the attack though, he was jogging in.

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Weakened Offender
14 minutes ago, redjambo said:

 

Even in the first half, where we were roughly on a par with Rangers, we offered them at least 2 gilt-edged chances which they didn't take. And it went downhill from that in the second half, even more so in extra time. In no way did we look "comfortable".

 

I thought we looked comfortable for 80 minutes. Don't get me wrong, I wanted and expected a wee bit for us to look more than comfortable but they were just too good. 

 

Rangers were a missed sitter away from winning a European trophy on Wednesday. That's how good they are. I honestly believe they are a better side than the 90s Rangers. There's no superstars in that team. They just play high tempo, good football. It's disappointing that we did not hurt them much but that's the difference in the levels between both sides. 

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Bull's-eye

Better team won today and if we had a few more players extra on the pitch the outcome would have been the same.

 

Was a very predictable outcome because Rangers are a very good team and squad and the tactics we set up with worked extremely well.

 

Good sides adapt and they adapted.

 

It's not a crime to give Rangers credit and I couldn't care less what anyone thinks about that tbh.

 

Rangers are a very very good team.

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The Hogfather
10 minutes ago, redjambo said:

 

You're mistaking "bent out of shape" with being disappointed at an opportunity lost.

 

Saying that "everything's fine" is not particularly pragmatic, it's just head in the sand behaviour.


There’s a difference between “everything’s fine” and what I actually said though. Enjoy your evening. 

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Tommy Brown

We all seem to see football  differently.

I text mate that Boyce was to go off, but was our best player up to that point.

 

We did very little after he went off.

Others say he done nought all game.

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1 hour ago, colinzeal said:

We fell short and we were never winning that game. That said, bringing Halliday on for Boyce was a dreadful substitution and clearly showed we had no intent of going to  try and win the game. 
 

 

 

For me, the tactics were spot on from the start and I couldn't have been happier with our starting team. 

 

Where it went wrong was the first two substitutions.

 

It should have been Woodburn for Boyce (who worked incredibly hard) to try to keep the same shape. Halliday had to play wide right at first which isn't his game.

 

Later the decision to replace Mackay with Ginnelly was crazy. MacKay should have stayed on and if Gino was to come on it should either have been for Cochrane with a rejig or for Haring/Devlin with Halliday slotting in.

 

Instead we played with just two up top and everyone else defending. That gave Rangers complete control. The front 3 was essential in pressing their defenders and ensuring the game was played in the midfield not entirely in our half.

 

Rangers have better players and much more strength in depth but if Robbie had stuck with his original game plan, we could have created a chance or two in the final quarter instead of being backs against the wall.

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Bongo 1874

A few poster's showing who they favour in Glasgow, honestly this thread makes me want to puke. 

 

We had a good enough team. 

Edited by Bongo 1874
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Just now, Weakened Offender said:

 

I thought we looked comfortable for 80 minutes. Don't get me wrong, I wanted and expected a wee bit for us to look more than comfortable but they were just too good. 

 

Rangers were a missed sitter away from winning a European trophy on Wednesday. That's how good they are. I honestly believe they are a better side than the 90s Rangers. There's no superstars in that team. They just play high tempo, good football. It's disappointing that we did not hurt them much but that's the difference in the levels between both sides. 

 

Apart from disagreeing with your "comfortable" assessment, I have to grudgingly agree that Rangers are and were the better team and it showed on the park today.

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1 minute ago, Famous 1874 said:

Imagine not criticising Neilson after that day. 
 

We’ve had a fantastic season back up in the top flight but that was piss poor today. Can praise Neilson throughout the season but admit when he has got it wrong, like today. 

How can anyone be happy with that today.

It was pathetic, no plan, no plan A and no plan B.

 

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1 minute ago, Nunya Business said:


There’s a difference between “everything’s fine” and what I actually said though. Enjoy your evening. 

 

Yeah, you too, Nunya.

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1 minute ago, Tommy Brown said:

We all seem to see football  differently.

I text mate that Boyce was to go off, but was our best player up to that point.

 

We did very little after he went off.

Others say he done nought all game.

 

I'm not a fan of his, probably because he always does things to show that he could be so much better if he worked on his game, but he did well today, particularly in his partnership with Simms. There was no way he was going to last the game though.

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Weakened Offender
2 minutes ago, gnasher75 said:

 

For me, the tactics were spot on from the start and I couldn't have been happier with our starting team. 

 

Where it went wrong was the first two substitutions.

 

It should have been Woodburn for Boyce to try to keep the same shape. Halliday had to play wide right at first which isn't his game.

 

Later the decision to replace Mackay with Ginnelly was crazy. MacKay should have stayed on and if Gino was to come on it should either have been for Cochrane with a rejig or for Haring/Devlin with Halliday slotting in.

 

Instead we played with just two up top and everyone else defending. That gave Rangers complete control. The front 3 was essential in pressing their defenders and ensuring the game was played in the midfield not entirely in our half.

 

Rangers have better players and much more strength in depth but if Robbie had stuck with his original game plan, we could have created a chance or two in the final quarter instead of being backs against the wall.

 

Halliday for Boyce was a weird one but in all honesty Woodburn hasn't done enough up here to deserve cup final minutes. 

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simplesimon
3 minutes ago, Australis said:

How can anyone be happy with that today.

It was pathetic, no plan, no plan A and no plan B.

 

There was definitely a plan A and it got us close enough to invoke plan B, which was not good enough

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henryheart

Jim Jefferies and Billy Brown at last night's book launch explained their approach in 1998. We had been stuffed every time we played Rangers that season and set out to play defensively with the aim of looking to sneak something in the last 15 minutes. It was all about not making mistakes and taking our chances if and when they came.  Neilson faced exactly the same dilemma. Rangers have stuffed us convincingly this season when have played more openly and we could not afford to follow the pattern by conceding 3 goals, which is our average against them this season. He used exactly the same approach as was taken in 98 and I thought the plan worked very well until the 70th minute, when we started to tire, but overall the defensive play was brilliant and we got to 90 mins without conceding. Very few teams manage that against Rangers. Our problem was lack of match fitness for key players meaning we ran out of steam and didn't have the energy to support the forward play. Had it not been for a one in a million strike we might have hung on to get penalties and from there you never know.  

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1 hour ago, Bozi said:

Get to feck 

 

What a surprise the arseholes are out quickly 

 

Halkett, Souttar, Boyce and Devlin were struggling for fitness, as the game went on their lack of gametime started to show. Boyce going off was a turning point, losing a 2nd so quickly ended it 

 

Nielson was 30 minutes away from true legend status, take your negativity and ram it

This, all day long. 
 

Funny to see so many formerly familiar names poking their head above the parapet for the fist time in a long time. 
 

Must have been somebody else’s tactics got us to the final and the group stages of European football. 

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simplesimon
2 minutes ago, Weakened Offender said:

 

Halliday for Boyce was a weird one but in all honesty Woodburn hasn't done enough up here to deserve cup final minutes. 

Looking at our bench, he was the only potential match winner.  He might have actually been interested today if he was given the last 40 minutes.

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9 minutes ago, Bull's-eye said:

Better team won today and if we had a few more players extra on the pitch the outcome would have been the same.

 

Was a very predictable outcome because Rangers are a very good team and squad and the tactics we set up with worked extremely well.

 

Good sides adapt and they adapted.

 

It's not a crime to give Rangers credit and I couldn't care less what anyone thinks about that tbh.

 

Rangers are a very very good team.

Some sense amongst a deluge of garbage 

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Rick Sanchez

I could come on and say a lot about Neilson but all I'll say is...

 

I'm ****ing sick of going into games in Glasgow and knowing we're playing for 0-0 and bringing Ginnelly on late on. It was as obvious as it is every other time he does it.

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2 minutes ago, Weakened Offender said:

 

Halliday for Boyce was a weird one but in all honesty Woodburn hasn't done enough up here to deserve cup final minutes. 

 

I think this is exactly Robbie's mindset. He wanted Halliday to get on asap as he was unlucky not to start. But he shouldn't have come on for Boyce. We changed shape at that point and started worrying more about Bassey attacking (Robbie's explanation) than about pushing him back. Woodburn is the closest to a straight swap that we have and has done OK in recent games. Ginnelly was the other option.

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Pasquale for King

We’ve all seen us lose finals but that was one of the worst today, no shots on goals in two hours. 
 

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Malinga the Swinga
27 minutes ago, EH11 2NL said:

Hitting the post is not hitting the target

The post said, we never had a shot. The words 'on target' were not present. Try again.

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Just now, Pasquale for King said:

We’ve all seen us lose finals but that was one of the worst today, no shots on goals in two hours. 
 

 

It has been mentioned by quite a few folk, but that's the damning statistic that should be held up to all those who are excusing today's performance. Even against a better team, as Rangers undoubtedly are, we should have done better than that. We hardly troubled them, especially once they found their feet.

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Malinga the Swinga
14 minutes ago, gnasher75 said:

 

For me, the tactics were spot on from the start and I couldn't have been happier with our starting team. 

 

Where it went wrong was the first two substitutions.

 

It should have been Woodburn for Boyce (who worked incredibly hard) to try to keep the same shape. Halliday had to play wide right at first which isn't his game.

 

Later the decision to replace Mackay with Ginnelly was crazy. MacKay should have stayed on and if Gino was to come on it should either have been for Cochrane with a rejig or for Haring/Devlin with Halliday slotting in.

 

Instead we played with just two up top and everyone else defending. That gave Rangers complete control. The front 3 was essential in pressing their defenders and ensuring the game was played in the midfield not entirely in our half.

 

Rangers have better players and much more strength in depth but if Robbie had stuck with his original game plan, we could have created a chance or two in the final quarter instead of being backs against the wall.

What if Mackay was injured?

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Just now, Malinga the Swinga said:

What if Mackay was injured?

 

Was he?

 

My main point is that we struggled much more when we only had Simms and Ginnelly up front and everyone else defending on the edge of our box.

 

If Mackay was injured, I would still have wanted 3 attacking players to occupy their defenders and make it much harder for Rangers to build attacks.

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Jambof3tornado
1 hour ago, Badonde said:

What’s this bollocks about the difference in budgets! It’s a cup final ffs.  We didn’t even try to win that game.  Not good enough from the players or neilson

Aye budgets dont come into it right enough.

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10 minutes ago, Pasquale for King said:

We’ve all seen us lose finals but that was one of the worst today, no shots on goals in two hours. 
 

Right  up there with 1976 & 1996. 

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John Findlay

We used the same tactics today as JJ used in 1998. The difference they worked in 1998 as we got a penalty in the first minute. After that it was backs to the wall until Adam scored from Amaruso's mistake and Goram failed to keep his shot out. We got away with it in 1998, today we didn't.

If you think I'm talking crap then watch 1998 whole game again.

We had shipped eleven goals to them in four league games this season and managed to score three.

If Simms scores in the first half, then we were in with a real chance of lifting the cup. He didn't, and our chance was gone.

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Malinga the Swinga
2 minutes ago, gnasher75 said:

 

Was he?

 

My main point is that we struggled much more when we only had Simms and Ginnelly up front and everyone else defending on the edge of our box.

 

If Mackay was injured, I would still have wanted 3 attacking players to occupy their defenders and make it much harder for Rangers to build attacks.

I have no idea, but then again, no-one has. 

Think the main reason we lost, and it will stun some, is that they are a better team.

I mean, it hurts to say it but that's the crux of the issue.

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Weakened Offender
10 minutes ago, Pasquale for King said:

We’ve all seen us lose finals but that was one of the worst today, no shots on goals in two hours. 
 

 

This is how I see it too. 

 

We were comfortable against them and we looked OK etc but we never did enough to cause them problems and when they scored, we crumbled like a team that knew they wouldn't win. 

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best in the land

Didn't really expect a win today tbh it was just hope of a miracle.

Hoped for a better performance than that though too many just didn't show up.

Though I'm not a fan of Neilson we've done better than I expected which is partly down to poor opposition outside the arsecheeks.

Annoying though that Nielson thinks we were outstanding for 90 minutes we were pretty poor throughout, but especially from the second half.

Outstanding and no shots on target.

Have no confidence in Neilson taking us any further than he has, certainly not got the bottle for silverwear.

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Malinga the Swinga
Just now, John Findlay said:

We used the same tactics today as JJ used in 1998. The difference they worked in 1998 as we got a penalty in the first minute. After that it was backs to the wall until Adam scored from Amaruso's mistake and Goram failed to keep his shot out. We got away with it in 1998, today we didn't.

If you think I'm talking crap then watch 1998 whole game again.

We had shipped eleven goals to them in four league games this season and managed to score three.

If Simms scores in the first half, then we were in with a real chance of lifting the cup. He didn't, and our chance was gone.

Yep, pretty obvious you need the breaks when you play Rangers/Celtic.

The teams with best players tend to win the most trophies, it isn't rocket science.

All the geniuses on here who reckon differently are either deliberately stirring things up or live on planet FIFA.

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Naisys Tackle
5 minutes ago, John Findlay said:

We used the same tactics today as JJ used in 1998. The difference they worked in 1998 as we got a penalty in the first minute. After that it was backs to the wall until Adam scored from Amaruso's mistake and Goram failed to keep his shot out. We got away with it in 1998, today we didn't.

If you think I'm talking crap then watch 1998 whole game again.

We had shipped eleven goals to them in four league games this season and managed to score three.

If Simms scores in the first half, then we were in with a real chance of lifting the cup. He didn't, and our chance was gone.

 

We basically played the same as the Semi against shitey Hibs. 

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17 minutes ago, henryheart said:

Jim Jefferies and Billy Brown at last night's book launch explained their approach in 1998. We had been stuffed every time we played Rangers that season and set out to play defensively with the aim of looking to sneak something in the last 15 minutes. It was all about not making mistakes and taking our chances if and when they came.  Neilson faced exactly the same dilemma. Rangers have stuffed us convincingly this season when have played more openly and we could not afford to follow the pattern by conceding 3 goals, which is our average against them this season. He used exactly the same approach as was taken in 98 and I thought the plan worked very well until the 70th minute, when we started to tire, but overall the defensive play was brilliant and we got to 90 mins without conceding. Very few teams manage that against Rangers. Our problem was lack of match fitness for key players meaning we ran out of steam and didn't have the energy to support the forward play. Had it not been for a one in a million strike we might have hung on to get penalties and from there you never know.  

Hearts looked quite comfortable today for the 1st 45 mins , Rangers looked severely hung over.

But the second half was terrible from the start and Rangers were comfortably in total control from the outset.

It's not like we went toe to toe with them for 70 minutes and ran out of steam , it just didn't happen. There is/was absolutely zero creativity/pace in the team.  

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