Scottish Cup Quarter Final 2019

From The Dung Heap

An analytical look at The Dons & our opponents

The Ibrox Club - Pittodrie Stadium

Scottish Cup  - 3/3/2019

How the fuck are we winning on Sunday?

I’m breaking this down into categories and giving some hope for the Pittodrie faithful.

Home vs Away

Both teams are stronger at home. Given we’ve made an arse of our last few games at our place,
it’s kind of worrying that we’re the hosts. It shouldn’t concern us too much though. The Ibrox club
are significantly weaker away from home.

Away from Ibrox their goalscoring record drops and goals against shoots up.

Goals for: 1.59

Goals against 1.05

xG for: 1.62

xG against: 0.99

Compare that to the impressive home numbers

Goals for: 2.38

Goals against 0.46

xG for: 2.22

xG against: 0.70

So going by that, we should score and we’re lucky we came out of the hat first. A replay isn’t
something that we should be looking for so if we’re level going into the last 10 minutes, I really
hope we have the balls to go all out for the win.

Our home form…

Goals for: 1.71

Goals against 1.29

xG for: 1.39

xG against: 0.91

Passing

Good god get the fucking ball out to the wing.

Here’s a selection of pass maps for teams that hosted the Ibrox club and won.

Killie at Rugby Pugby

Livi at Spaghettihad

Us at Hampden (technically a home game for them but we won and I’m a sucker for gloating)

You compare that with the narrow, confusing pish we served up at home recently and it’s
chalk and cheese.

Hamilton 0:2

St Mirren 2:2

Get, the ball, fucking, wide. That’s where they give up goals from.

Cosgrove’s first for us in the 4:2 game came from Stewart crossing from wide.

Kennedy;s goal for St Johnstone started out wide.

McAuley’s for Hearts eventually found its way out wide.

And one thing I’m noticing watching these is just how many mistakes they make in front
of their own box.

Worall gifts Brophy the ball for his at Rugby Park

Goldson ballses up the clearance for Kennedy’s for St Johnstone

McGregor lumps it straight to a Rapid player for their goal against them in the Europa League

Goldson makes a boob of the clearance for Miller to score at Dens

Ejaria loses it on the edge of the box form McAuley to score

So chances are someone’s going to make an arse of it. If we aren’t all toppling over each
other because we’re all playing in a fucking conga line from the centre spot to the penalty spot
then there should be something to exploit there.

Corners.

Now this pisses me off. “Git ih ba’ in ih fuckin box Makinnes!”

Shut up cunt! We’re one of the best teams in the league for turning corners into shots on goal.
Stats below.

Team Shots from corners percentage

Hearts 37.7

Killie 37.7

Aberdeen 36

Celtic 33.1

TRFC 32.1

Hibs 27.7

Livi 26

Motherwell 23.9

St J 27

St Mirren 22

Dundee 17.4

Hamilton 16.5

Idiots.

Our opponents usually get and give around 30% of corners into a shot on goal. Will that 6%
make a difference? If it does then I’ll sure as fuck be gloating like hell about it.

Morelos

Can he stay on the pitch?

If so then we’re looking at around 3 or 4 shots from him in the average game. 0.67 goals a game. He’s scored 7 in his last 3 so he’s either on hot form or there’s a drought incoming. A regression to around 1 in 2 is normal so I’m not expecting him to be on the scoresheet, especially seen as he’ll probably be washed and changed by half time. We usually concede around 8 shots on goal but the Govan guttural achieve just over 12 in away games.

In the 4 away games (including the semi) they’ve managed 17, 15, 8 and 14.

The game they scored 4 goals? Of course it was the one where they had 8 shots on target! Hoachy bastards! The other three they managed 1 in 14, 1 in 9 and 0 in 17

Will they be as lucky to convert as many chances this time round? I doubt it.

Cosgrove

Well he’s been 2 games without hearing that sweet swoosh the ball makes when it hits the
net and he’s going to go another game without hearing it I’m afraid. If he does indeed net to
end his drought you would be able to hear anything for sheep screams of elation and weegie
wailing. 0.62 goals a game should mean he’s back amongst the goals though and with there being
an average of just about 12 shots on goal given up by the bastards in red white and blue, Sammy
should surely be able to get in about a fair number of them. We average 13 at home so 12 is a fairly
attainable number to expect. 4 shots and he’ll grab a goal. Get Dario G set up on the CD player right
now!

Crossing

McGinn, GMS and McLennan have been pretty ding lately but if we need width then it’s coming from
them because… we’ve got no fucking full backs!

Player Cross accuracy % Avg Crosses per game

McGinn 42.9 5.67

GMS 27.1 3.83

McLennan 48.6 3.66

On that you’d want McGinn and McLennan starting. GMS is crocked (fuck you Foster) so it looks
like it’s going to be them anyway.

Line Up

With no full backs it’s difficult. Considine would offer width but Ball in the middle instead of Shinnie
would leave us a bit more solid at the back. Shinnie seems to prefer the middle so Consi wins that
one. It also leaves Ball to slot in at RB instead of throwing a possibly not ready Halford in at the deep
end. It’ll make or break his Dons career if he is though.

Lewis

Ball McKenna Devlin Considine

Ferguson Shinnie

wide as fuck > McLennan                     Stewart McGinn < wide as fuck

Cosgrove

That’s probably about as good as it gets. The experiment with the back 5 to counteract the front 3
didn’t really work last time. I guess we kept them down to the least amount of shots they’ve had
against us this season, but they scored 4 goals so…

Get it wide. Exploit their mistakes. Hit that cunt Jack. Wind Morelos up as much as possible.
And give the away end the big “get it up you” when you score.

Job done.