DMAA

He obviously still doesn’t trust Barisic defensively. Jones in for Ojo is a surprising one though and so is Morelos over Defoe. Not our strongest team imo.

That would require Aribo to move into the more attacking position. That’s an option but probably too defensive, I think it’s very unlikely Ojo will be dropped. This will be our first game of the season playing s team who won’t just park the bus though so Ojo might do better with the additional space.

My thoughts exactly. Barker reminds me a lot of Kent, he absolutely tormented us that night at Easter road but what came of it? Nothing. I have to admit I like him as a player though. I think he has a patchy injury record though

Barker is excellent at beating a man and lightning fast but badly lacks end product. I wouldn't have opposed the signing on a free a year ago but I'm not sure there's much space for him in the squad anymore. It's certainly not a vote of confidence for Jones if he does sign. I do prefer him to Jones though.

Yes I was agreeing with you

17 games before he got an assist, and even then it was a pretty basic pass to Morelos who still had plenty to do from outside the box. The Kent obsession is ruining it for Ojo, I feel sorry for him. I’m looking forward to the window closing so that people start backing the players that are actually here.

I think it would take something big and very clear cut for a neutral to care, like evidence of an attempted cover up or something like that. I'm not saying it would or wouldn't be, just that I think there is very little chance of any pressure being put on the BBC to change. You need a bit of a smoking gun even to get BBC headquarters to intervene.

I honestly think that a club complaining about bias by the BBC will always look paranoid to the general public.

Those results are pretty shocking, these are tiny teams. It really does make you think when we talk about bringing youngsters into the first team, the gulf between youth and men's football is clearly bigger than many of us appreciate.

Arsenal you say. I see Grezda is starting. Planning a swoop for the next big thing are they. Well the country should know that the player has never asked for a move. He is living the dream for a marvellous club and has loved every millisecond of it. And whatever Arsenal’s opening bid is they will have to quadruple it for the club to even consider it. And even then he should really be holding out for Man City.

Possibly not. AEK were poor but difficult to break down. But that was a balls up from them as you say and you can't count on those every year. And Lennon actually had a better record in Europe, he got to the last 16. Rodgers flopped in Europe. As much as we want to concentrate on ourselves if they qualify for the groups it's a huge blow.

It's frightening how much control they have over the post match narrative. I'm the first to condemn pitch invasions, I hate them. But everybody knows they were the norm in such circumstances last season, everyone was doing it. I was shocked at the lack of action on the issue to be honest. But why does it only become a big story now? Scott Brown and Celtic's players did the exact same thing at the exact same ground and there was no dilemma over whether to speak about non-football matters or footballing matters first. The damage to the disabled fans roof is a helpful excuse for them but it doesn't account for such a major negative side story.

Hope you enjoyed your Guga @JohnMc, you must have good family connections getting hold of one of those!

My thoughts exactly. It's impossible to judge Lowe from displays against us but he's not exactly that dissimilar to Barisic, prefers to play as a winger and not the strongest defensively. In terms of Barisic, I like the idea of him more than what is often the reality. He's fast and wants to get to the byline and is an excellent crosser but my word he looks nervous on the ball. Always played the boring, safe pass backwards at Killie and most of pre-season. Starting to worry me now because I was optimistic on him and expected to see a rejuvenated player after pre-season. The raw ingredients of a good player seem to be there but time is running out for him to find some confidence.

I expected better results from Legia tbh. This is a very good draw compared to other possibilities. Unfortunately Celtic avoided Young Boys and will be strong favourites to see if Slavia Prague and bag another huge cash windfall. The task of overtaking them gets harder every time they make the groups so here’s hoping for a another screw up from them.

We haven’t properly, I said at the end of last season our big signing needs to be a number 10, someone who walks into the team in the position beside Arfield. Where we are now there is debate over that. I thought the Helander money should have gone there. Having said all that we are far stronger than last season and should really expect to increase our points total significantly. It seems people maybe have forgotten what our team looked like for the first half of the last campaign. In centre midfield our starting 3 was normally Ejaria, Jack and Coulibaly. Halliday and McCrorie got plenty game time too. It got to a point when we had to play Coulibaly and McCrorie in the 3! Our centre midfield was pretty grim in short, no goal threat and a dearth of technical ability and we lost points as a result of this. Aribo, Kamara and Davis are an enormous improvement and even the return of Docherty offers a significant attacking upgrade over what we had for a chunk of last season when really big points (and the league cup) were lost. In defence we were overrated by our own fans quite frankly. We conceded too many and the fact we all knew the Hibs equaliser was coming at Ibrox in December speaks for itself, we lost late goals too often. Whatever the starting CB pairing turns out to be we won’t have fatigued centre backs this season and we won’t have the slowest player in the league for cover (cost us that Jones goal at Rugby Park). Up front we have Defoe from the start of the season and he’s bedded in properly. I think Morelos and Defoe both have the biggest impact when they come on off the bench fresh and I think this alone is worth a good number of points. Morelos had to play every minute he could for us last season and he must have been very tired at times, he’s not exactly the fittest player in the world either but last season Lafferty wasn’t trusted and when Defoe came in he took months to get up to speed. In the attacking midfield positions we definitely have concerns but they are maybe being overblown. We have changed formation and the new formation is more effective. Arfield is twice the player in this position and the impact of that on the team is huge (by the way to draw conclusions about his impact on this positions from the Progres away tie instead of the 6-7 league games last season is mental). Jones isn’t good enough and doesn’t suit our new style (apologies in advance to the positivity police). I can only see him having a real impact when subbed on away from home when we are winning and playing the counter attack. Stewart can be good but doesn’t seem fully fit? Murphy isn’t ready which is a blow. On ability alone I’d say he’s an upgrade over Kent and Candeias but he’s no use until fit. Ojo I think will be an upgrade in terms of goal creating and scoring but it’s an unknown at this stage. Hastie is a very good backup addition but it’s not clear he’ll have much impact for now. The positive spin I would put on all that is that Arfield and Ojo (playing centrally) should be an improvement over Kent and Candeias (playing wide) in terms of making and scoring goals. The formation has proven hard to defend against. And secondly Stewart, Jones, Murphy and Hastie are all a massive improvement in terms of cover, we had next to none last season and that surely cost us points. That’s before you begin to talk about the impact of the fact it’s Gerrard’s second season and the lessons he and the management team have learnt. We have every reason to be optimistic we will be significantly improved.

Has to be head over heart with these kind of moves. Middleton would strengthen Hibs against Celtic and and weaken them against us by his absence. It’s pragamatism, even if it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. And by the way even though their fans are the way they are, there’s a big difference between Petrie and Lennon and now Rangers supporting Leanne Dempster, the American guy and Heckingbottom. The previous regime wouldn’t have even asked the question. We’ve signed young talent from Hibs in the past and will have a better chance of doing so again if mutually beneficial loans like this are arranged. Put yourself in Dempster’s shoes, she’d rather do business with us than them.

This is exactly what I said in the preview, and why I was predicting only a modest victory. We should have got that and didn’t but I find it incredible that there is so much concern over this one game.

Apparently not

If we get through it’s: Pyunik/ WolvesLegia Warsaw/AtromitosFCSB/Mlada BoleslavHaugesund/PSV Eindhoven Which I would suggest will be: WolvesLegia WarsawFCSB (Steaua Bucharest)PSV Eindhoven So basically a very hard draw. I would fancy our chances against Steaua and you’d hope we’d have a decent shot at beating Legia but obviously we’d be major underdogs for the other two.

It won't be great but it will certainly be better than the 3rd tier in England. Having said that Sadiq got games for NAC Breda so...

Glenn Middleton very close to NAC Breda move. They’ve been relegated so will be challenging at the top of the second tier. Have to say that’s surely a step up from Doncaster for him.

I should have caveated my comments by saying I had to dip in and out of the game last night so wasn't able to pay full attention to the full game. However I watched the final half hour this morning without interruptions and Ojo definitely finshed the game strongly. He kept possession well but crucially he set up tap-ins twice from brilliant runs. He should be sitting on 2 assists after that game because imo those should have been converted. As you say he is at Rangers for a reason though and my view on Ojo currently is qualified by lots of things, not least the fact that these are not league games, but I see more quality than I saw in Kent and I think Rangers and Gerrard are exactly what he needs to improve the weaker aspects of his game.

I think this is pretty harsh. Your job in that position is to provide clear cut chances for the striker. Once the game opened up a bit Ojo could have had 2 fantastic self made assists but for two last ditch goal-line clearances, and probably a bit of lazy positioning and finishing from Morelos, both should have been goals. His right foot is very poor and can make him look raw but all in all I think Ojo was one of our better performers and has solidified his place as a starter.

I’m annoyed about the lost coefficient half point or whatever it was, that’s important for us right now and we’ve just thrown a gimme away there. On the other hand I don’t think there’s any reason to panic, these performances are common away from home at this stage in Europe. Having said that there’s merit in the point about lack of end product, we decided not to recruit a quality “marquee” player in the no 10 position for some reason.