Diego Laxalt!

Taylor has the second most assists in the league for us.

He's got 5. Christie has 6.

We're a * mess.

 

Think we all called it the very first game, played out his * and was a good watch. Needs played with a left winger to overlap and play off.
But aside from that, we all called it that he would regress after a month or so.
The coaching, the game management, the setup, none of it is remotely existent - players now just go out and do what they want most the time.

 

All true.

But Taylor, for all his limitations, does seem to get into better positions in the final third.

Taylor at least provides overlapping runs and provides some service to our forwards... he's put quite a few on the plate for Edouard recently.

Laxalt offers practically nothing going forward. I have to say I'm really disappointed with him.

 

Agreed. Don’t rate Taylor much but he probably gets the nod ahead of Laxalt at the minute for me.

St Mirren stopped Rangers by deploying two LBs on that flank nullify the threat of Tavernier. I just wonder if Lennon would consider playing Taylor at LB and Laxalt at LM. It means our starting XI is weakened but would nullify Rangers main threat.

 

In the right set up I think Laxalt could be a great asset, but since he came into the team and we listened to the fans and dropped Taylor, the left side of defence disappeared to add to the disaster of playing a four foot smurf on the right side.

Up until we dropped Taylor we may well have been struggling, but it went down hill rapidly after that as both flanks were cruelly exposed.

I reiterate that I think as a player Laxalt is miles ahead of Taylor, but the team isn’t better because of him.

Look at Sevco, individually they wouldn’t be classed as great players, but each of them has a role in the team and as a unit they perform to the best of their abilities and it is currently working well for them.

Taylor infuriates me as much as Christie with the ridiculous amount of hitting the first man with their cross balls, but he is a better defender than Laxalt in the current set up.

We lost a right back and left back in Lustig and Tierney (remember how the fans said Lustig was done?) who ran through brick walls for the team. We have not replaced that attitude and ability. Therefore the centre backs are exposed further because they know they are on their own in there with no protection on the flanks.

Until we find a proper defensive full back for both flanks we will continue to play like drunk baby giraffes with broken ankles in defence.

The first thing we need to do is tighten the defence. If we stop shipping goals we don’t lose games. It’s not rocket science. Once we do that we can increase confidence in the midfield and forwards who can attack more safe in the knowledge that they have competent cover behind them should they lose the ball. Again, this is not rocket science, it’s basics.

Edit - the decision to let Hayes go was stupid in the extreme. The guy grafted his * off when called upon. When I think of the insane amount of money * away on projects and duds and we didn’t keep him on for one vitally important year it angers me.

 

It’s frightening and worrying that when he came into the team he looked Fit, strong athletic
A few weeks training with us looks weak and unfit

what the * do we do in training

 

Personally, I’d just tackle him hard and send him flying off the pitch in the first minute. No enough of putting a marker down in this squad.

 

One of the reasons I don’t hold out any hope in the January window in terms of new arrivals, is that it doesn’t really matter who we sign. We’ve taken good players and made them look like poor players collectively and individually.

If you don’t get the basics right in terms of training, fitness, tactics.....it’s largely irrelevant what players are in the mix. It could be Tierney, Taylor or Laxalt....it isn’t going to make much of a difference to anything at all.

Merry Christmas everyone

 

Stare at laptops then play Ker-plunk

 

Nonsense mate a Tierney for a Taylor or Laxalt would make an absolute massive difference to that position , defensively and offensively
Like swapping Volkswagen for a Porsche

 

You seen Tierney tonight? He's been outstanding

 

Having a Porsche is no use if you maintain it like a 1992 Ford Escort, and then drive it like and Artic Lorry.

That’s what I’m getting at. Diego Laxalt is clearly a well accomplished, talented player who should be a massive upgrade on Taylor. He isn’t playing like that though, and that’s down to training, coaching, tactics, and fitness.

Good for Tierney. He doesn’t play for us though, which was kind of my point. No doubt guys like McGregor and Edouard could go elsewhere and play brilliantly too. They’ve had a * season for us because of the aforementioned issues, not because they’re poor players.

 

Tierney would still make a huge difference to our LB area

 

Well clearly I disagree. Excellent players have been very poor this season. They haven’t turned into poor players though.

Tierney would be the same in this side, imo. An excellent player playing well below par.

 

He's still a far better player than Laxalt/Taylor & therefore by default he would be better than them, that can't be argued with.

 

I agree with much of what you've said. This goes beyond the players.

However I do think we'd be better off if we had Tierney at LB.

We are very poor in the fullback areas. And even if Tierney was playing below par, he's got other qualities that Laxalt and Taylor don't have - leadership and responsibility. The sort of attributes that drive others on.

 

Well, you aren’t necessarily a better team just my sticking a better player in the same position. Teams are very rarely an exact sum of their parts.

I think we would be a bit better with Tierney, but I don’t think he would make some sort of massive difference. We’ve been too poor in too many areas this season, and have too many good players playing poorly for me to believe another one would make much of a difference.

 

I think we would be better, just not massively so.

I’m pretty certain that Tierney - much like McGregor, Edouard, Christie, Laxalt etc - would have struggled over the past few months for us. All good players, all playing poorly because what’s going wrong is much more systematic than any individual player.

 

He would have still made a massive difference to the LB area by virtue of the fact that he can beat a man & deliver dangerous, pinpoint crosses, something Laxalt & Taylor fail to to regularly if at all.

 

Aye, I do think the main problem was midfield.

But regarding LB, I simply think Laxalt is not the answer in any case, he just doesn't do enough going forward. He never offers an overlapping run, never hits the byline and doesn't take a man on. I don’t think he's much of an upgrade on Taylor who I do not rate at all. That's a worry.