DMAA

As promised I’m back to celebrate at 9 ? what a performance!

Right, I won’t get to watch the game till 7 so I’m switching off my phone. I’ll be back at about 9 to celebrate.

Do you still think we play a 4-2-3-1 ? Arfield will be alonside Jack and Davis. Hagi and Kent will be behind Kamberi.

I'm happy with that team. Braga will press us relentlessly and they would have got joy out of pressing Katic in my opinion but Edmundson can be trusted on the ball. We will also be relying on route one a bit tonight and I think Edmundson is our best long distance passer and that could be really important tonight. The other big call is Aribo missing out. I think it's harsh but given we are likely to be going route 1 a bit you can see the sense in going with Kent. I would probably still have gone Aribo because he is fantastic at getting long balls under control and simply has far more quality. But as I say this game should suit Kent. On current form Aribo can consider himself a little unlucky not to start ahead of Davis too.

Sorry there was no match thread, could this be made the match thread?

Absolutely sickening

I've always laughed off the idea of refereeing bias but, far from the decisions evening themselves out, we've had a pile-up of shockers in the very most important moments of the season.

I wouldn't trust us to hold out for a 0-0 at all. We probably don't have the tough tackling, aggressive players to do that very well. The strategy tonight has to be to hit on the counter attack and get a goal, otherwise it will only take 1 goal to knock us out and you'd fancy Braga for a goal tonight. I wonder if Edmundson will be used tonight. On the one hand I doubt it as Katic has European experience and match practice. However, even putting his poor form to one side, I think a team who press so high up the park will get joy out of him. You'd fancy Edmundson to at least cope with the pressing better as his passing and ball control is levels above Katic. Having said that, I think after how well Braga pressed at Ibrox we will see a much more direct style than usual from Rangers tonight.

You’d think if they were corrupt they would do more to try and hide it ?

Factual error? I didn’t say he only played 1 game I said he was dropped after one iffy game, in other words due to one dodgy performance. You like a wee snide comment don’t you.

Are you blaming him for the goal against Hibs just because he gave away a free kick? He had a good game against Hibs and scored a very good goal. Are you disagreeing with me? Katic’s performance yesterday is evidence that he was brought back in too soon. If that was Edmundson people would be saying he should never wear the shirt again.

I think Gerrard was right to drop Katic after Aberdeen and wrong to drop Edmundson for one iffy away game. Edmundson deserved a spell in the team before Helander got back. And by bringing an off form Katic back in too soon he’s probably damaged his confidence further.

Yeh I don’t feel this was a particularly fair criticism of Gerrard. Davis has often been identified as one who can help us see out a game.

Yes he has, but his performance and lack of goals, even including those, still merits stepping back and asking some questions.

On Morelos, I have been eating humble pie for the first half of the season because his goalscoring has far exceeded my expectations. I have often pointed out that he looks very raw at times and technically poor. But he was outstanding in Europe and for most of the first half of the season. But now that he has gone 7 league games without a goal, a closer look at his record is required. He has scored 29 goals this season, but really I think the 4 against part timers St Josephs in a round we should never be in are a bit of a gift for him. In Europe, he has been great until Braga. Domestically, he has scored 15 in 28. Now you have to say that is no more than a decent record given the number of chances he gets as our only striker. Scrutinising it more, you discover that 10 of those 15 were in games we won by at least 3 goals, in other words games which were pretty straight forward. And only 1 of the 15 were in games won by a single goal. In the 7 games we have drawn or lost domestically he has only scored in 1, and as we know he has been guilty of spurning big opportunities in some of those. Not least against Celtic. I don't know what to make of it all. He has proved me wrong time and time again with heroics in Europe. Yet he proves me right at other times, giving the ball away so cheaply, failing to link up properly with our midfielders and missing countless easy chances over the course of the season. For now, I think his suspension is a blessing in disguise. We get to go with the on-form Kamberi without needing to "drop" Morelos. If Kamberi gets the chance to score and takes it, this potentially gives us the pretext to keep him in the team and send Morelos the message that there are consequences to his recent profiligacy in front of goal.

First and foremost we should be playing the players who are on form and dropping those who aren't. For me, there's no excuse for not starting Kamberi when it's clear he is hungry to impress and, more importantly, has the abliity to match the hunger. As I've said for a long time, Kent and Katic are the most overrated players at Ibrox and more fans are waking up to that now although they still have staunch fanclubs. Lots of others are underperforming but have more credit in the bank. But we need to use our squad more. Edmundson shouldn't have been dropped on the basis of one dodgy game, he deserved a proper opportunity. Others like Stewart deserve a chance too. Dropping Kent alone would make a big difference to our play in the final 3rd with the existing formation with Aribo and Hagi behind Kamberi. Aribo showed us how good he was in that position in December and bizarrely he's been sacrificed and dropped back to midfield or dropped altogether for Kent's benefit.

Who knows but the change in form is staggering. We went to Parkhead as favourites in my eyes. We had been the best team in the league and the goals for and against showed it. But I do still wonder if the wheels came off due to so many starting 11 players being injured at the same time; Helander, Tav, Barisic, Jack, Morelos. We lost of mojo and now can’t get it back.

I’ve only seen the highlights and the most concerning thing was there weren’t many. Our best player at the moment seems to be Flo Kamberi who was robbed of a good assist by Morelos who should have buried the game. I think Gerrard bears some responsibility here for starting favourites like Kent ahead of players who are producing much more.

For three years we’ve been pretty much led to believe there are no natural number 10s out there we can sign of the required quality at the right price. We’ve signed one now for £3m less than we paid for Kent.

And it goes way beyond just not attending Ibrox, as we all know. I compared the word count on their match reports of Rangers and Celtic's away European matches last season and it was shocking. Celtic's match reports had something like triple the word count consistently. If only we could get a "word count" of the free radio advertisement they get. They must spend at least 5 times more time talking about them than us, and that's before you even begin to compare how positive or negative what they are saying is. They've shown their true colours since they have been given this excuse. It isn't a popular view on here but I still think we should take that excuse away and deal with the matter in other ways. I totally understand why that's unthinkable for others but the stand-off has gone on for too long and the BBC are getting away with not fulfilling their charter to cover us, I'm not seeing any prospect of them facing any consequences whatsoever for their actions as things stand.

A bizarre idea from the beginning. The "need" for a BBC Scotland channel was imagined up by nationalist zealots and imposed on us all.

I watched the first half this morning and Katic was very good. He had a number of interceptions and attacked the ball well and I don't remember him making any mistakes. I wouldn't mention Tavernier here. He played his part in our come back, albeit not a big one, and wasn't guilty of mistakes like others that I can remember.

What do you mean she flagged it?

No debate here. Hagi created chance after chance and then took matters into his own hands with a quality solo goal which turned everything around.

It's a cost benefit analysis though. Would we have been justified bringing in a quality back up left back? If we had we probably wouldn't have been able to afford Hagi. I have always said I would prefer we went for quality over quantity and that means bringing in individuals who can carry his teammates at times. Think Ferguson, De Boer and Arteta in the same team as Bob Malcolm and Maurice Ross in 02/03. The latter two played 30 odd games each that season.