DMAA

Wouldn’t be surprised if Olusanya causes us issues. Fast striker who is decent on the break.

It used to be completely against the run of play when teams like this scored at Ibrox. St Mirren are well worthy of this lead. Mortifying stuff. The timing of the 49ers talks is surely the only reason Clement is still in a job.

Excellent news. I’ve said for years fix the recruitment and you fix Rangers. An oversimplification of course, but our recruitment is consistently somewhere between mediocre and atrocious while other clubs, including Celtic, do a lot better. Access to a proper scouting network would be great for the club. Of course there are things we need to protect but you have to accept a level of risk here because Celtic are well on the way to endless dominance.

If we had a better system he would have

Bold move not adding Jamie McCart to the list

Difficult to keep the faith that we are on the right track when we’ve spent the majority of our budget poorly yet again though. According to Transfermarkt we spent 7.2m euros on propper and Bajrami. Another £1.5m on a loan fee. That’s huge money for us. Large transfers in particular need to be on young players we back ourselves to develop, like the Red Bull model.

Style is critical to the whole thing though. It’s much more important than simply signing a mix of young, experienced etc. My understanding of this kind of thing is that for each position we have types of player with certain attributes that we sign to fit a pre-defined system. A player with attributes x, y and z has a very high likelihood of succeeding in our chosen system and we recruit accordingly. For example, I think we should be targeting centre backs who are aggressive and dominate in aerial and ground duels primarily. Have we ever had a success at centre back who didn’t tick those boxes? Propper’s stats clearly showed he wasn’t those things. The wide forward positions should be either goalscorers or creators/dribblers or ideally both, and left footed for the right wing and right for the left. Cerny fits this but we have a very low chance of keeping him. Our major permanent signing in this position was a very weird profile. No real outstanding strengths. Mediocre across the board and almost rock bottom statistically defensively, aerially and physically. It’s just a bizarre style of player to spend so much on for the position. If you consider him a 10, the same point applies. I could go on to other positions but you get the idea.

This is what we have wanted for years but I do not feel that we have seen too much evidence of it. What type of player are we buying for what style? Propper was a personal contact for one, and really quite a key signing.

Regardless of whether it can be forced, up until now I think the majority of fans didn’t want a manager change. At least not a clear majority. I think it will be quite clear to the board now that they can’t hide behind that anymore because yesterday has given a few a reality check after they got carried away with a half decent run of results there.

Set pieces are going to keep hurting us this season. Need to sign players who fix that in the summer.

Which is scandalous. We’ve seen enough domestically.

The stats say he’s more of a 10.

Intriguing signing. Only have limited stats available because he plays in Scotland but here’s what they say: - Great numbers for goals and shots - Great numbers for assists and xA and chances created - Involved a lot in the game, lots of touches, loses the ball quite often and not a dribbler - Defensive stats a mixed bag. Great numbers for interceptions, blocks, recoveries and possession won in final third. But very poor for ground and aerial duels, tackles and fouling. All in all it looks a risk well worth taking. The only thing I'd say it's yet another signing who is well below average physically and defensively so we do need to start counter-balancing that with physical players who can help us out defending set pieces. Fernandes hopefully fits into that category to be fair.

He does. I’ve long thought that our Europa League form can’t continue. I thought Gerrard had cracked it by building a team that was solid and could control a game a bit, even out of possession, and was more physical and aggressive than most teams. As those players have moved on and been gradually replaced by a different type of player I have expected the results to trail off but they’ve kept coming. I think the Ibrox effects accounts for some of it.

Unbelievable. It was a tougher set of fixtures than Celtic had.

And breathe! Amazing to get the result and finish 8th. Unbelievable. We need players back and to sort out our tactics though. That was a poor performance and we really rode our luck.

Referee has lost the head and made several embarrassing decisions in a row now. USG play acting at every opportunity too

Would have been a miracle if we’d kept a clean sheet because we have had zero control of this game. Very nervy end to the game now.

It’s about half an hour now I’ve been counting consecutive passes and I think the most we’ve managed is 7-8. Very rare we manage more than 3-4. It’s painful to watch and we are fortunate USG are so bad.

And a second for Man Utd too!

Our ball retention is diabolical. Hard to watch.

Huge money for them if they got that.

They’ll only be turning that down because they will be confident they can get a better offer. They’ll have to sell this window or next. It shows the predicament we have the best young talent though when you have to spend so much for someone who won't necessarily improve your 11 today. It does look like he could be a future star though.

Found some more stats on Fernandes On Fotmob. He has very good numbers for duels won, both in number and % won. Fbref didn’t have those stats specifically and it gives some reason for encouragement.

Small sample size on fbref but here’s my take on the stats: - Pretty good in the air. Wins a lot of headers but loses a good bit more than average too. - Comfortable carrying the ball out from the back. - Good pass completion but a basic passer, keeps it simple and doesn't have much range. - Average defensive stats across the board. Doesn't look strong or aggressive from the stats. Reminiscent of Davies actually with high success % challenging dribbles but very low challenge rate. Basically, he only makes a challenges when he's going to win it. Very low numbers for blocks. Very much a project signing I think.