St. Johnstone (1) v. Airdrie (0), 05/11/04

AIRDRIE UTD

St. Johnstone

FIRST HALF A worse 45 minutes of football will be hard to find anywhere, even Albion Rovers v. East Stirling on a cold January midweek played in a gale would be more appealing. THIS WAS FIREWORKS DAY FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!! Oh, the irony. Airdrie failed to mount a single attacking threat to the St. Johnstone goal, well at least not one that the baldy assassin Darren Sheridan or Gorilla ‘Gwant Mitchell’ Mensing didn’t strangle at birth. It will be interesting to see how badly bruised young Stephen MacDougall’s legs are. St. Johnstone for the record were not much better but in fairness they did have the game’s, and league’s, outstanding player in Jason Scotland. Despite being well marshalled throughout by Neil McGowan, he did manage to give his marker the slip on the half hour mark, working a neat one two with Stevenson on the edge of the box before gliding past McGowan and beating Robertson with the finish for an all round not bad goal. That failed to lift Airdrie from their inexplicable slumber and Mike McCurry made his only good decision of the game by blowing for half-time.

MATCH UP St. Johnstone went with a 442 formation to match Airdrie’s. Monster Mensing had the job of stopping MacDougall with assistant fullback Stevenson in close company. Barkey failed to provide a spark on the right as the more mobile Stanic thwarted any thoughts of a break down their left. Midfield was a straight up battle between Sheridan and McKeown. McKeown didn’t get anywhere near the supply of chances to his strikers as you’d have hoped for. Lovering was used as a battering ram down the left as St. Johnstone sat back on that side to thwart MacDougall’s pace. Lovering did win an enormous amount of flicks but unfortunately for him his team-mates were sometimes lucky to be second to every ball throughout the match. It was a tough match from the start. St. Johnstone have upped the physical side of their game considerably and Airdrie didn’t expose a lack of pace in their rearguard. Mensing and Sheridan in particular are vile ‘anti-footballers’ who escaped lightly. Sheridan was guilty of two move killing tugs at MacDougall in the first half, as well as some fruity challenges but didn’t get booked till well into the second half. Would be wrestler Mensing didn’t seem interested in playing football, that would expose an obvious weakness, but how many players could he get a way with actually throwing about like ragdolls?

SECOND HALF Airdrie did start the second half much, much brighter than they did the first but in reality only really created one clear cut effort as MacDougall and Hardie combined on the left to cross deep for McPhee. McKeown had a blast the frightened Cuthbert but that was about it. Robertson was tested a couple of times late on as Airdrie lost their sparkle long before the end. It had been a tough bruising encounter that Airdrie seemed ill prepared for. In the end the twenty minute spell at the beginning of the second half was a case of too little, too late.

GOING FORWARD After beating a weak Dundee side it was going to be hard to break up that side without seeing it’s capability against possibly stronger opponents, what manager would? But there were a few things that troubled me a bit. One was the use of Barkey on the right wing. Barkey had a spell there last season and it didn’t work out in the end. Today it didn’t work. He didn’t provide much of a threat at all going forward. I see Barkey as a ‘holding’ midfielder, no more, no less. I think he can diligently do a job in there. McKeown was way too deep to ‘connect’ with the strikers as was Hardie. There was just too much distance between our midfield and strikers. We just didn’t get close enough to get that killer ball in behind big Rodney that the Bs could buzz onto. Would Barkey playing a holding role behind Docherty McKeown and Hardie work better with the option of bringing on wingers MacDougall and McLaren work?