A look back at Hibs v St Johnstone

A look back at Hibs v St Johnstone.

Transcript

00:00 Hi folks, welcome back to the Tactics Zone.

00:03 Today we're looking back at Saturday's 2-0 home win for Hebs over St. Johnson,

00:08 Nick Montgomery's home debut memorable for a lot of reasons.

00:12 Young Rory Whitaker getting off the bench, becoming the youngest ever debutant.

00:16 But overall, it was a really interesting game,

00:19 and I think we picked up a couple of indicators of what Montgomery wants from his team.

00:27 Lined up in a 4-4-2, no huge surprise there, that's what he's going for.

00:31 LaFondra and Venti with Tavares back in the team.

00:36 First start since, I'm going to say August 2022. I did write it so I should remember it.

00:41 What's really interesting about watching Hebs at the moment is the movement of the front four,

00:48 not just the front two. So Tavares on the right, Boyle on the left, both naturally wanting to cut in.

00:54 Venti and LaFondra will either drift wide or add some vertical movement going long, dropping short.

01:02 It really causes issues. You can see in this picture right here,

01:06 we've got Venti drifted wide, Tavares makes a great run,

01:11 Boyle holds his run just a little bit, ends up with a shot from the edge of the box.

01:15 And that was typical of what we saw most of the afternoon.

01:19 Boyle's way too good just to leave him standing out on the wing, that's why he's allowed Licence to go where he wants effectively.

01:27 Now if you look at this here, it looks like he's surrounded by St. Johnson players, that's the theory.

01:31 But Fish has picked him out with a pass, he's initiated this line break, it ends with LaFondra getting fouled,

01:37 free kick, and from the free kick, Hebs got ahead.

01:40 So again, it's movement, movement, movement, that is what kills defences.

01:45 Now I know a lot of people hate the term "inverted fullback", it's become this kind of catchphrase, a cliché even.

01:52 But look, Miller is so good at this, he's so good at driving inside and finding space, and he's been given Licence to do it.

02:01 In this little snapshot here, he's already eliminated three St. Johnson players by getting on the ball, playing it out to Boyle,

02:09 and then continuing his run. And he's about to eliminate a fourth, driving into that space.

02:15 He's helped by the fact that Martin Boyle is very, very clever as a winger.

02:19 He knows that if you go wide, you're creating space inside, so when Boyle switched to the right, when Yuan came on,

02:24 he stayed right out on the touchline, encouraging big crossfield passes, and leaving Miller to run into the gap.

02:31 Hebs had really good passing percentage completion on Saturday, and that doesn't mean everything to everyone,

02:42 but part of it came from them playing quite close together. The front four looked quite narrow at times,

02:47 and that was clearly a deliberate ploy. And you can see all four here have overloaded that one side of the St. Johnson defence,

02:55 and this ends with LaFondry's delicious little flick, and Venti scoring to make it 2-0.

03:02 Overall then, still early days. Clearly, St. Mirren on Wednesday night is going to be a really interesting and more difficult test.

03:09 But I think we can see glimpses already of the way the attack is being envisaged by Nick Montgomery.

03:17 Hope you've enjoyed it. Thanks very much.

03:19 Hope you've enjoyed it. Thanks very much.