DMAA

You almost had me there

Yeh but you’ve got to remember I’ve only been saying 2017 for 8 months ?

Haha

Seems to be a player who's you'd want at least 200-300k for. If we let him go you can guarantee he'd end up at one of our rivals. I'd say offer him a 1 year extension, look at loaning him to a top flight club for 6 months (Partick would be ideal if they stayed up), and take it from there.

On the one hand they've won all 7 home games in 2017 (4 have been against the top 6) scoring at least 2 every time. On the one hand they couldn't score against Aberdeen and needed an undeserved penalty to score against Hearts. Could be the wheels have finally fallen off and they've lost their swagger so we've caught them at a good time. We certainly have more to play for.

Oil McBurnie would be a great signing. However looks like he’s keen to stay in England if he can find an opportunity. https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-transfer-news/oli-mcburnie-opens-up-future-12511744

Lafferty has also done as much as humanly possible to win back the affection of the Rangers fans by successively scoring against Celtic and Hibs and goading their fans.

This couldn't have gone much better for us. Hibs have probably been favourites up until now, but Lennon slating his players and basically saying he can't put up with them any longer will surely affect their performance.

Compilation of the coordinated incompetence by the men in the black over the last couple of games https://we.tl/s-u5msX3fG6d

True, but I’ve little hope of Celtic taking a point against Aberdeen. The only only planning Rodgers is doing just now involves Thomas Cook, McInnes on the other hand will be a man on a mission.

Great to see Lafferty and Naismith doing us a favour!

Well when you googled Steven McLean you find out that Celtic and Aberdeen both hate him too due to apparently similarly inexplicable decision, so he must be very incompetent that he's managed to annoy so many clubs over the years.

Will never happen. Rooney doesn't strike me as the type to take a £130k wage cut to come and tussle with Scottish defenders. I don't mind a few headlines linking us to him. It's good PR to be linked with worldwide names like Rooney as opposed to the next big thing from Accrington Stanley.

Exactly. The worst thing about it was that their own commentator had stated the obvious, but they've gone out of their way to contradict him in the match report. They really aren't trying at all to heal relations with the club.

Wes Hoolahan is a player who would improve the squad. But we can't afford to be spending so much of our wages on players who are on the way down and have no re-sale value. It's time to spend our money more wisely.

Quite remarkable how the controversy over the penalty has been ignored by the press. I’ve checked every report and only the Evening Times suggested it wasn’t the right decision, and only Sky really acknowledges there was “controversy” around the decision. The BBC claim he was “caught late”. The press and journal claim “McLean got there first”, the Aberdeen Evening Express claim he was “barged”. The Daily Record and the rest made no mention at all of it just said a penalty was awarded for a challenge. Update, Glasgow Live, ESPN & the Sun have also said it was clearly the wrong decision. You can understand the non-glasgow press being so clearly biased but shame on the BBC.

A few things can turn it around. One of the big ones is growing our own assets. Our youth teams appear to be getting on well. If we produce just 2 or 3 top players, they could be a huge help to closing the gap either by improving or squad or by making us a lot of money. Look at Kieran Tierney. He has cost Celtic nothing other than the standard youth player costs and he's now being called a £20m player. For every 1 of those Celtic produces we need to be producing 2.

I think King is being fanciful describing Celtic's dominance as a "house of cards". They have £30-35m in the bank and a valuable squad with several £10m+ assets (players). We on the other hand have a fraction of their income, lots of loans to repay and a squad who are battling not to finish 4th. I don't like saying it but it is going to take major incompetence on Celtic's part (involving Brenda leaving) and a miracle worker on our side (let's go Gerrard) to stop 10 in a row.

I do agree with that, it's quite remarkable he's only manage 1 goal. I was just cutting the guy some slack because of his style, we don't know how many assists he's had from knock-downs etc. Most of his senior games to date were played between the ages of 18-20 with probably a good few subs appearances. We'll see tonight!

King is right though about Celtic's reliance on European success. Celtic's expenses last year were £76.5m, compared to £33m for us. Obviously some of that is due to participation in so many European games but even accounting for that, they are spending a lot more than us. A little less luck in the qualifiers and they'll be making a significant loss and cutting the cloth. However I think King is till overly optimistic because I think Celtic are in a much better position to deal with a big drop in income than Rangers ever were.

To be fair that's to do with the kind of striker he is. He was signed as a target man who is good in the air and brings the goalscoring attacking midfielders into the game (GMS, McGinn, Stewart, Christie). I've played in a team where one of our best players was a big striker who didn't score. He just beat the oppositions centre backs to the ball every time and lumped it over the top for one our fast wingers to get onto.

A more counter attacking/defensive option would be to swap Holt in for Cummings and move Murphy up top with Morelos. It does feel like a Jason Holt kind of game and Cummings looks off the pace.

I didn’t have him in my team but I wouldn’t mind seeing him play. We’re not consistent enough with dead ball deliveries and it make all the difference in close games.

It would sum up our season if we rolled back on one of the best things we've done this season and got comfortably beaten tonight in a 4-2-3-1.

The diamond has worked twice against Aberdeen this season so I don't see why we should change from it. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/42227914 I'd go with, Alnwick Tav Bates Alves Halliday McCrorie Docherty Holt Murphy Morelos Windass (Cummings if Windass not available) Candeias and Dorrans could slot quite well into the diamond too. I know it's very unlikely, but switching to the diamond for the Aberdeen games with McCrorie in the holding role was something Murty was widely praised for. Martin starting ahead of Alves is baffling and I hope it changes tonight.