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Tremendous BigAl. Delighted for Smith because if he had lost that one he was sure to be branded as a loser forever in some quarters. I’m sure Van Gerwen did not think he could possibly lose by playing that standard of darts but Smith was just brilliant. A few new stars born in that tournament as well, Josh Rock looks one to watch and the big German was excellent too.

Very sad to hear. Always came across as a genuinely lovely man. On a football level his CV is phenomenal.

This At last, a Scottish signing. His best years may be behind him but we have signed someone with a genuine will to win, tenacity and desire who should grab a few by the scruff of the neck and drive the team on. I'd almost say his character is the most important part of this signing, above what he will offer on a technical level on the pitch. I said this before in a previous post, we are few too easy to play against. We conceded just 5 fouls against Ross County, which is a recurring theme. Time to roll the sleeves up, get stuck in and be a bit more horrible.

Interesting topic BigAl. I've never seen Back to the future.

Noticed that McKenna has been on the bench since the league resumed in England. Putting two and two together but wondered whether he may be earmarked for a January transfer and they did not want him getting injured. Seems strange to have been dropped all of a sudden when he was such a constant on the Forest team sheet.

Forget signings, transfer windows, formations and style of play for a moment. Biggest issue for me is we are far too easy to play against. A lot people say a team is often the mirror image of their manager and with Goodwin it seems nothing could be further from the truth. There’s no one in our team the opposition would hate to be playing against. There’s no one nasty, we don’t concede enough fouls, not enough bookings. He was past it by the time he came to Pittodrie but we need a couple with the Scott Brown mentality.

McInnes signed Logan, Robson and Rooney. Not sure why winning the league cup on penalties is scoffed at like it doesn’t could as a trophy. Are we not classing Argentina as proper world champions because they did not win the cup in the 90 minutes? Pretty sure we would all take a win on penalties in the forthcoming semi final. I’d also argue that the league is no better now than it was 10 years ago, Rangers aside. Utd, Hibs and Hearts are no better than the teams they replaced. The performances in Europe this season demonstrated just that. So far Goodwin has had a fortune to spend and produced very little.

Disappointed with how McInnes left us and Cormack did not appreciate how good a manager he had inherited, I believe he is starting to see it now with the two pantomimes that have followed. Would not begrudge McInnes an opportunity to give Cormack the two fingers.

We were 2-1 up in the 94th minute so on that basis, he got it absolutely spot on, yes. Any team 2-1 down in injury time fighting for the league is going to put you under a bit of pressure in the last couple of minutes but fuck me, I could have stuck 11 traffic cones on the pitch instead of our players and Rangers would have struggled to score TWO goals inside three minutes. Our players bottled it, nothing to do with tactics. Was it bad tactics to cover Roos’ gloves with butter or something?

It’s very harsh to blame Goodwin. I did wonder what he was playing at taking off our three main threats with half an hour left but that had nothing to do with the result and is a different debate. Last night was down to pure bottle and failure to handle the occasion. No way any team should be losing two goals in the 95th and 97th minutes. Saturday was a different story because Celtic were pushing and pushing and will do that to a lot of teams but don’t hang the manager out to dry because his players bottled it last night. That was nothing to do with tactics.

Redevelop the existing Pittodrie since Cormack only wants to build a 15,000 seater anyway. Surely plenty of room at the back of the RDS to build a museum and a pile of hospitality suites. Job done. £30M saved

Some height o a loon that number 5 Surely the next Ash Taylor.

Just signed a new contract at Norwich

Take it easy SeaBass. Despite what crap you might read at times, it really is just a game. 12 teams start the league season but 11 of them lose and the fans still follow their team. I've read in the past of your love for snooker. You'll get 32 players start the world championship and 31 of them lose but people still tune in despite the fact that their favourite will probably not win. Try to enjoy it for what it is, just sport. The Dons have no divine right to beat anyone and just because they are not brilliant every time they step onto the park does not mean they are not trying. Sometimes you just end up second best but there's always the next game.

Panda, I think you and those who blame the performance on tactics/formations/approach are missing the true reason for what happened on Saturday which is mental toughness. You are absolutely right to say that most teams in the premiership would have beaten us on Saturday playing like that but the reality is, we don't play like that against other teams. The reason the record over the last 20/30 or however many years is totally relevant is because the playing conditions remain the same irrespective of the personnel. It's the big occasion, the away crowd and handling the expectation from your own fans. No fancy formations on a tactics board can stop your players from pooping themselves in the Ibrox tunnel. It's interesting that you mention the 2018 semi final. Take a look down our team sheet that day and compare it to the one from Saturday, it's like chalk and cheese in terms of character.

You're being a bit pedantic dude. We have a shite record at Ibrox was the point I was making, sorry for missing out one win in about 60 attempts. If you want to be pernickety, Rangers were a bit of luck away from winning 10-1 on Saturday which is a bit more relevant than two poor refereeing decisions last season. We bought our right back from Notts Forest's reserves and we have just signed someone from Turriff United, again you know my point, you're just being a eejit.

The Livi example is fine Rico if you are happy with your team parking the bus which Livi do quite a lot. They have had so many one nils or been beaten by the odd goal and only managing a couple of shots at the opponents goal. Our fans would just not accept it if we set up to play that way. Regardless of formation and approach, I blame the players. If you play with five defenders you should not be giving anyone 36 shots at goal if you are doing your job. I just think we cannot defend properly and in most league games we can get away with it because the opponents are mince but when we come up against proper teams we get found out.

"It's quick risky but it's fun to watch" These geeks are great entertainment with their tactics boards but the game is played on grass and there is way too much analysing goes on nowadays. The Dons let the opposition have 36 attempts at goal on Saturday, did we have 1 on target, I think? People who think that the reason for the thrashing was that we did not change to a back four for example, are just deluded. Going with a back four would probably have meant one/maybe two changes to the starting line up so at least nine of them would have been the same players. The result would have been exactly the same. We were not beaten because of a tactical masterclass by Bronkhorse nor because of the system our team played, their players are just better than ours and also on the day we were rubbish. We've won at Ibrox about twice in the last 30 odd years and we must have tried every formation and every system. Other than Celtic, every team has a horrendous record at Ibrox as it is a David v Goliath job each time you face them. It's not because of tactics it is because they sign international players and we sign players from england's league two.

There is an awful lot of emphasis placed on formations by fans but for me it comes down to how good your players are and how good the opposing players are. Playing five at the back does not necessarily make it more defensive nor does one up front. There were times when the great Barcelona teams played with no recognised striker but they were certainly not negative in their approach. We have a good team of SPL standard players and when playing a Motherwell or St Mirren we look like a decent side. Problem is the same players are nowhere near the calibre of the old firm players yet as fans we expect them to be. You can get away with doing certain things against poorer teams and still win, against the better teams you can’t. As was said before, we gifted a massive number of chances to Hearts and Motherwell but they did not take them but a better side did yesterday. We will still likely be in the shake up for third but yesterday was a huge reality check. Goodwin’s comment about third being the minimum requirement was just foolish and naïve. With the greatest will in the world, third is the best you can expect with the gulf in resources there is in our league.

Playing five at the back is fine when you are up against two strikers or up against one of the league's shitey teams but I think the risk of doing this against The Rangers is that we will have three centre halves marking one striker and could get massively overrun in the middle of the park. If you look at the last couple of league games, even though we have won them, Motherwell got in 12 attempts on goal, Hearts had 13. We have to be better than that on Saturday or we'll get beaten.

I'm not buying this Rangers in crisis thing with Van Bronkhorse being under pressure. They have dropped 7 points out of 33 in the league this season with 3 of those against Celtic. The European defeats have been against 3 really good teams that you would expect them to lose against most times. This is going to be a big test and I think the fan in the street is sometimes naive as to how big a task it is to win in Glasgow. To put it in context, The Rangers have not lost in 6 home league games this season, they lost 1 of 19 home games last season, zero of 19 the year before, and 2 of 14 in the covid season. Overall that's 3 losses in their last 58 home league games. Compare that to our away record and we have won 15 of our last 59.

On the VAR thing I don’t know why they waste time during the game getting the ref to look at the monitor. If he misses something, the guy in his lug should just be saying you need to give a penalty or number 6 needs to be sent off. Doing it that way also takes the heat off the ref a bit. In the old days, if the linesman told the ref he saw a foul and the player should be sent off he would have just done it so not sure why he can’t just take the word of the video ref.

Amazing the amount of chances Miovski and Lopes have missed this season despite the good number of goals they have actually scored. That’s not meant as a criticism like, just that I can see us running up quite a few fours and fives this season against the shitey teams when it all clicks for them.

You're right about cheap, Rico and the cost was not what I was particularly trying to emphasise and probably used the wrong word there albeit with both McKenna and Ramsay, their replacements did not cost nearly as much as those individuals were sold for. What I was meaning was the ability to just acquire a ready made replacement who can fit in seamlessly. In other industries, people leave jobs and in most cases you hire someone with the right CV and things go on as before but fitba is different which was what I was really getting at and I think Cormack believes the same thing should happen in the fitba world. I don't believe he appreciates enough that we have only managed to produce a handful of real quality young players in the last 30 years and there is not an endless conveyer belt of them.

Situations like this concern me that Cormack may be a good businessman but he does not properly appreciate how the football world and the business world differ. I get the impression he thinks when he manages to sell a player for big money that he has achieved his goal and he can just replace the outgoing player with a cheaper version and things will keep ticking through. We have seen after the sale of McKenna how many crap centre halves we have gone through since he departed that it is not that easy and now we are seeing the same issue at right back after Ramsay's departure. If you keep selling your best players eventually it will catch up with you. There is a big argument for keeping Barron whether he signs his contract or not. Looking at the bigger picture, he is out of contract in summer 2024 so if he stays fit he could play another 60? games between now and then which really could be the difference between bottom six football or Europa Conference group stage football which overall could be more beneficial than cashing in for a couple of million in January.