buster.

Less balance when there are so many injuries.

Injury situation is concerning. I think Grezda might as well be out injured because I doubt he'll be getting a start this week. All change again on the Left Flanagan & Kent Barisic & Grezda Wallace/Halliday & Middleton

IIRC Tommy Wright is one of the few, who in the past has made a point of complimenting the Rangers away support. But generally, you are right.

St.Johnstone might appreciate our fans when counting up the takings. Over 7,000 at the game today when (last w/e prior to Xmas) attendences tend to drop off. Compare that to under 6,000 when Celtic visited their ground for a Sunday league match in October.

It might be 'petty and ill-informed' but the thought of Cosgroves long boatrace when Alfredo got his second today gave me a warm glow inside ! ....

Motherwell came towards the end end of a brutal August (for games), a week prior to the Celtic match with Wallace making up until today his only (short) appearence of the season. Today comes towards the end of a brutal December, a week prior to the Celtic match with Wallace coming off the bench again. Main difference, it was us who got the late goal and went away happy.

Six points this coming week and I'll have the conversation

League stats Morelos 11 goals and 4 assists Tav 6 & 8

Feels good to come out of that with 3 points but it's fairly clear that our team won't be winning the league this season.

Grezda is going through the motions

We need tempo but haven't got the players in the midfield to do it in their half. St.Johnstone tactics are our kryptonite, more especially given lack of options.

Lack of squad depth/quality exposed along with a barren run in front of goal. I make it 2 goals in about 550 minutes. If we don't improve in the second half, we'll lose more heavily.

It's a balance between getting better value out of what we already have, youth and if possible, bringing in a little quality to address the 'middle to front' issue. Last year, we made good use of the winter break and came out of it bouncing (Jimmy Nicholl being a big part of that IMO).

Was speaking to several ITK'ers yesterday and the new team is set to be............. Alnwick Polster............Halkett..............Cooper..........Brown MacKay-Steven......Kamera.......Davis...........Jones Shankland.........Sol

For once, I don't think they'll be able to force this one. They still have several good options for the position but with Rogic goes what has been their experienced 'Joker Card' on many occasions.

Edit Wrong thread

Jack is an excellent player to have in the squad. A good team is about balance and that's up to the manager to sort out. A very good team needs quality and as well as balance. A VG team that wins things needs mental toughness on top. Jack gives the manager a particular option that is often needed in modern day football and he offers a degree of relative quality within the Scottish game but the balance is lacking wrt quality when it comes to a creative midfielder further up the park. Is Jack mentally tough?....I think he's got potential but I'm not sure he's reached that point in his career yet.

Cardiff 1 - 5 MU Last time Man Utd scored five in a competitive match prior to yesterday evening, Louis Van Gaal was manager.

I gave SG a call to tell him I'm available and ready to jet into Glasgow if he's light in midfield.

A Rangers striker has just put side into lead at Easter Road. Latest:........ Hibs 0-1 Livingston, (Ryan Hardie)

That sounds encouraging but they will probably have Christie to take his place.

The crux of all this will be if/when the legal process between Celtic and the Victims goes to court.

If Celtic bothered that much at a human level they wouldn't have the name of a bookie on their shirt.

The difficulty for him is dealing with what I'd call unreasonable expectation levels. So far I think the general impression is that he has delivered on those expectation levels (EL group qualification put a lot of credit in that particular account). Hence, he has stayed ahead of the curve. The real test for dealing with the media would come if the curve overtakes him.

I don't think we'll be able to the type of business that will instantly instill the necessary consistency of winning league matches and you have to be careful to spread limited budgets between winter/summer windows, as well as keeping an eye on the wage bill. We can forget about the reported 50K p/wk on Pena & Herrera but the club needs to pay it or the pay-offs. Now is when the football operation (recruitment) need to show their worth because we will obviously need to address the middle to front issue. I think we also need to work harder with the players we've already got. IMO Lafferty and Grezda both are currently lacking confidence and could step-up considerably. There was a moment in the game at Easter Road when Grezda picked the ball up around the half-way line and started towards the goal (not unlike some of the highlight Utube videos from Osijek days) but he got to the last third and instead of trying to make something happen, he stopped and passed the ball backwards. As for youngsters, IMO McCrorie should be a regular starter.