Luke McCowan

Squad player at best for me. I'm a bit frustrated with him, because he appears to lack pace and stamina, and can't really impose himself physically on a game, quite a few of our midfielders are like that too.

And therein, is the problem with our midfield.

 

This thread just goes around in circles.

He comes on as a sub and does well, and it's "he's got to start". Then he starts and generally doesn't offer much and is back on the bench. Will probably start on Sunday, so hopefully he can show more than he had in other starts but he seems to be best used as an impact player.

For me he falls into similar bracket as likes of Scales and Ralston, he's a decent squad player, no more no less.

Imo he shouldn't be getting games ahead of guys like Engels or Bernardo. Looking at it in terms of the bigger picture and the whole player trading model idea. Mccowan is likely as good as he's gonna ever be. There is far more development and far higher ceiling in Engels and Bernardo.

 

He’s a good squad player who has done well for us so far, and I’ve no doubt he’ll continue to do so.

 

Is he good enough for european ambitions? No, great squad player.

Is he better and offer more now than Hatate? Yes. Should start over him every day of the week.

 

Wouldn't agree there. We were considerably worse when McCowan replaced Hatate on Sunday. We went from controlling the midfield to being complete overran there.

 

Strongly disagree. Thought Hatate was the worst player on the park.

 

McCowan, Engels and Bernardo all started against Livi and McCowan was really poor and was the worse of the 3. I reckon he will continue to be an impact player off the bench or rotated in during cup games or against weaker teams. I would like to see Reo dropped for either or even both Engels and Bernardo

 

He works good as a impact sub and i reckon he is happy with that as well.

I would go Bernardo-McGregor-Engels and see how that works.

 

Id put him above Ralston tbh, I have no issues seeing him start even if he's far more effective from the bench.

 

Needs to be starting games

 

Exactly that. He made a solid contribution last season with 41 appearances and 7 goals coming mostly from the bench. Exactly like Ralston the type of players you want as squad players.

 

A decent squad player, do like his ability to get a shot off, have a pop at goal. But overall, he needs way too much time on the ball for me

 

Id like what your smoking, Hetate was absolute pish and contributed zilch, it was that bad I had given him the praise for the assist until I was corrected. One good game in 10 is starting to now get that McCowan might offer more by maybe scoring a couple within that same period and still not contributing much more.

Mind you never know maybe that 1 game will come soon (dont think * play against Thistle), so maybe Europe.

McCowan Id play.

 

I wasn't smoking anything. Do you think it was a happy coincidence Kilmarnock completely took over when Hatate went off on the 70th minute and McCowan came on?

 

That’s what flopped in the Scottish cup final.

For me it should be McGregor, one of Bernardo or Engels and one of Nygren or Hatate.

We have enough games that you can also rotate McGregor out and bring McCowan in for domestic games, dropping Bernardo back deeper.

 

This.
He was only ever signed as a squad player, nothing more nothing less. He knew that, Rodgers knew that and the team knows that.

And he is good at being just that!

 

I agree 90% of this. The other 10% is where we let ourselves down and ruin our youth development ideas.

McCowan and Ralston are both fine, on paper, as squad players being backup to the experienced and higher calibre players for the bigger games. But when it comes to Ralston, it is a position that needs more growth in it, the backup is a squad player, but ideally needs to be developing to take over at some stage, we need to have gotten rid of Ralston awhile ago in favour of actually giving a youth prospect an actual legit chance and not just waiting for CD to get one due to injuries galore.

With McCowan in midfield, where there is 6 guys, he can "get away" with finding his limit as a squad player as we will need the steady depth to cover, without always needing it to be a developing position.