You can have the ball without actually having the ball :wink:
Grasshopper when you can snatch the pebble from my hand etc :greengrin
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A "neutral" mate of mine came to Fenlon's last game against Hearts.
We started that game very well, didn't play all that badly throughout and were sucker punched by a cracking Ryan Stevenson strike.
He was loving our play during the first half and said to me "I thought you said your lot were *****?"
Worryingly, a feature of our worst teams has been starting games fine but not scoring when on top, then going on to lose.
When Broadfoot left Kilmarnock recently he was moaning like **** that the Italian manager worked day after day on the team shape instead of having them working hard on their fitness.
Looking at Saturdays game is that now paying off i.e. although Kilmarnock didn't have much of the ball we couldn't lay a glove on them then when we made a mistake they sprung the trap and scored their 2nd goal. It was a bit like when you used to watch Scottish teams playing in Europe. Lots of the ball but inevitably put to the sword in the end by wily opponents.
It looks to me like the big difference between this year and last is that Stevie Mallan has not produced that early run of spectacular goals we saw last season. It was his goals that mattered this time last year while our preferred option strikers largely failed to deliver. Whether keepers are wiser to him or not we couldn’t half use a few of his crackers right now.
A free kick from outside the box and that Horgan shot are not chances. Vela’s was a decent chance to be fair but came from sloppy defending as much as anything else.
I don’t have the stats but if you looked at the xG (expected goals) for the game I’m pretty certain Hibs would be less than 1. Meaning we did not create any good chances.
We simply do not have any pattern of play currently. We’re not very good at set pieces either. It’s not good.
Maybe we will play well for 60 mins, get some corners. Exciting times.