DMAA

A bit of a sucker punch really. Frustrating to lose even though it doesn’t matter. A good workout and a few good signs.

The stats did say he would be good at that!

Off the ball there was definitely a diamond at times. Cantwell was behind Sima and Lammers, and Jack was behind Lundstram and Dowell.

it’s been a mix between 4-4-2 and a diamond hasn’t it?

I like Souttar’s ability to break the press with his dribbling. Some better play now.

When we have the ball it’s basically just a countdown to either losing it or a long chipped pass over the top to their defence.

Looking out of our depth so far. How close is this to their best team?

Stats guy on Twitter, Joost, has Danilo performing at almost exactly the same level as Gimenez. I’ve got a good feeling about Danilo. https://twitter.com/joostvanderleij/status/1619066905243062272?s=46

Good luck Colak. He exceeded my expectations. I wasn’t massively excited last summer with his signing when most were. 29 years old and a track record of playing at a below-Rangers level, I thought it was underwhelming to say the least after how we had ended the season. Ultimately, I wasn’t wrong about his overall quality as a player, but he was a far better finisher than I think any of us expected. And Beale should have played him more when he got over his injury. Morelos did not repay the faith shown in him.

I just meant a full rebuild. So we have had big “outs” that allowed for bigger "ins". I think it is a bit presumptuous to say it's easy to compare because the success of this window won't be clear for some time. We also have no way of knowing how much of a part Wilson played in most of these signings.

Very hard to compare though because this summer is a proper rebuild. January was very good but Beale told us that Wilson put Raskin to him and he agreed and they moved forward. So Wilson was very much involved. I’ve no idea how Cantwell came about but I got the impression that was all Beale.

My understanding is that the manager is also involved up front. So the manager could say, I think we need a target man. Someone who can hold the ball up well, is good in the air etc. Or I need a ball winner in centre mid. And the DoF then does a lot of the work involved in modern recruitment and brings the manager a list and they work through it together. So rightly or wrongly I don’t see it as one sided as you do, and it makes sense to me.

They don’t call the shots though. The final say has always been with the manager. My understanding is that they do a lot of the legwork on transfer strategy partly because the manager doesn’t have time, and they present lists of options to the manager and the work through them together and narrow it down. It’s a collaborative effort and it makes sense to me in terms of the division of labour. I honestly think things would be chaotic if transfers were bottlenecking through the manager only.

Yeh I’m in favour of a DoF role. It just hasn’t improved our performance In the transfer market the way it should have.

The most important thing is to have people who have a real eye for a player. So many ex-pros just don’t really have it, and to an extent I’d say that applies to Gerrard. McCoist too. Celtic had a great window last year without a DoF because their manager had an eye for a player. We had an experienced DoF and had several consecutive poor windows.

So will 2 up front, Danilo and Dessers.

Just need someone to come in for Davies now!

Yes. I’ll take that all day long.

Colak to Parma for 2.5m Sakala to Saudi for 4m On the same night that an ITK has reported with confidence that Danilo is signing. This has escalated quickly.

Don't shoot the messenger but probably worth mentioning that Scott McKenna's name is also being mentioned. Very difficult to see that one. He's into the last year of his contract though.

Turning into a very exciting window indeed if the Danilo rumours are true. Great age at 24 too.

I’m very much on the other side of the fence with Kent and always have been. Not a dud by any means, but £7m was daylight robbery and I said so at the time. Celtic got Jota for £6.5m who was a far better player, everything Kent was made out to be. There was something about Kent that caused people to believe he had far more potential and ability than he ever had. Probably because he produced flashes of brilliance occasionally. It was a very popular belief initially that he would be sold for £20 and was destined for the EPL. Couldn’t believe how many people said that when we signed him. The result was that a lot of people turned on him a bit and felt he was never fulfilling his potential, or worse, not trying. The irony is that because I didn’t rate him that highly from the start, I never doubted his attitude and effort and his performance rarely surprised me. He was fine at our level but not a star, and he was capable of very good performances but simply not capable of that weekly in our league.

Well that I agree with. It doesn't make sense. But it does look that way to me at present.

On what basis are you saying he is 5th choice? Who is our 4th choice?

That’s happened a couple of pages back. Letting him go wasn’t a mistake, he spent most of the past year injured.