Panda

Ignore all the above. I was probably drunk. The boy is rubbish. Totally unrelated...

Meanwhile, Oxford United have got planning permission for their stadium (also a 16,000 capacity). Estimated to be somewhere between £130m and £150m.

Has a very good scoring record though (for his age/position) and very highly rated; the talk is one of the Old Firm are actually tracking him, so would be a bit of a coup to get him ahead of whoever it is. As much as we all love Shayden Morris - the beautiful cup winning bastard he is - I think we've all said we need to upgrade on him if we want to progress and this guy looks the business.

Good summary here of tonight's Q&A with Jimmy Thelin

I used a laughing emoji, but actually, sadly, it's probably not far from the truth.

Noticed a bit of a spat between fans and a politician on X. The general argument appeared to be the SNP are saying Aberdeen can build at the beach whenever they like, but they still have signs up at Kingsford advertising they'll be building the stadium there. I'm all for a new stadium, but if we're still planning to build it at 16,000 capacity then I'm happy enough with all the delays. However, it's nuts we still have no real plan or timeline between ourselves and the council over what we're doing. Just "we meet regularly with the council/club". What do they discuss, because little to no progress is ever made.

Kevin Nisbet played the last half an hour last night for Millwall in their cup win over Newport. By all accounts he was pretty lively - though they're League Two, and he did miss a sitter. He needs to walk that thin line of getting minutes and a bit of form and confidence, without impressive Alex Neil enough to make him want to keep him.

Just watched some highlights of Bilalovic. Definitely a bit raw but very similar to Morris. A game changer at the 80-minute mark I'd say. Half a million is a hefty price for him, but I'm up for it. Just need a midfielder now and we can all relax.

Appears Lazetic deal agreed according to Italian journalists, just his visa to sort out. Here's him in pre-season training. He also played, and scored, in the only pre-season game I can find any info on - a Milan Futuro v Milan U19s game, which I reckon is enough to describe him as an "on-form striker". Hopefully arrives in time to get some minutes v Morton.

Similar to the Hearts game. Looked good in flashes, but were outfought, wanted too much time on the ball, and our number nine had another poor game. And yet, like Hearts, although we were second best we could have got something from the game. We appeared to think Celtic would sit off us and we'd get space to play, but they were aggressive. Every counter attack we had they were racing to stop us while we were labouring out. Milanovic, Keskinen (who was much better than v Hearts) and Aouchiche all had their moments, but we need to sharpen up. I'd be more worried if that was our strongest team. New striker coming in, we do have options to replace Nilsen (whether we use them or not I don't know), we need to decide what position Shinnie is going to be, and two young right-sided centre backs won't be the norm all season, Gyamfi still to get fit. There's still hope.

season ticket *holder* I meant to say, obviously.

What happened? You had booked a space Monday, but it got taken off you because a season ticket phoned on Wednesday wanting it? Hope you're feeling better soon anyway.

I think it'll be 1-1. Which at this stage we probably wouldn't be too upset with. Is Rubezic suspended due to his midweek red card? Something tells me there's been a rule change regarding just being suspended for the competition you were sent off in. Not that I think he's in line to start. More that if Thelin wanted to recreate his Scottish Cup winning tactic, then you're potentially asking Milne and/or Dorrington to go the full 90, and they don't tend to do that often, so he'd probably want Rubezic on the bench in the absence of Tobers. There's only Molloy as back-up. So I tend to think we'll play a four with Nilsen being asked to sit very deep to essentially make it a three/five at times.

Gyamfi and Tobers out until mid-September says Thelin, a bit more than "a few weeks" he said before the Hearts game. Tobers we can cope with as we have Dorrington and Milne (but may mean Rubezic hangs about). But either Molloy or Devlin are going to play more at left-back, or we'll need to sign another one.

It reads to me as nearest cities to the Highlands, as his intro was saying being based in the Highlands is the issue. He could have worded it slightly better, but I don't think the writer - who knows the Highlands and Islands more than most on here - is unaware Inverness is a city.

Yes, and then they got spanked by Ajax and laboured to a 1-0 win over St Mirren. Of course we need a big performance. But there are better times to get Celtic, and right now at the start of the season, at home, with Celtic not quite at it, is a decent time to face them.

Will always cheer for any non old firm club in Europe, because I know none of them will ever win it, and every coefficient point they get benefits us. Plus you'd need to be really bitter to begrudge Hibs and United fans having a decent European trip to Belgrade and Vienna. Good on them. Most of them will be cheering for us too when it's our turn. Old Firm being in CL has no benefit to us. They get all the money but hardly any coefficient points. Don't really mind them doing well in the Europa league (as long as they don't get close to winning it). As for where we actually want to be ranked, you only want to be 11th or 12th (or top 6, but that's unrealistic). Being 11th or 12th means guaranteed group stage football for the Scottish Cup winners, but no guaranteed Champions League place for Celtic or Rangers. So that's the sweet spot. Lot of work to get back up there.

Dylan Lobban impressed at left-back by all accounts (usually a right back?). Nice to know we have a future option there.

Noticed Liverpool and Crystal Palace both played double header friendlies in pre-season. Liverpool played two games back-to-back v Atletico Bilbao, Palace did the same v Augsburg. Fans only had to pay the price of one ticket. Would love to see us do something like that. Think we had a day when we essentially played two games v Cove and Turriff (?) on the same day, but it'd be nice to give everyone a taste of Pittodrie. The only issue would be if St Johnstone have enough players to field two separate teams.

Luca Stephenson looking less and less likely. He's played in every Liverpool pre-season friendly, including 90 minutes in one of their friendlies with Atletico Bilbao yesterday, so a sale now would be strange considering they clearly rate him highly. Talk is it'll be a loan at best, and Dundee United are more likely to be the destination since he was there last season so no reason for Liverpool to give him to us unless they want him to get European experience.

That ends any speculation about Dabbagh returning.

Aye but apart from all that, I think he still has potential It may be that he's not good enough for this level. His best period for Portsmouth was in League One, and since then he's had injuries so quite possibly isn't even as good as he was then. However, I don't think we've seen the best of him yet. As above, what level that best is, we'll see. Gueye was also written off, many on this forum were happy to return Nisbet to Millwall in January, and I also remember Nilsen being described as terrible after his debut (which was against League Cup group stage opposition). If we sign Lazetic, I actually would expect they would end interest in Nisbet or any other striker until at least January, and we'll go with Yengi, Lazetic, Boyd and one of Sokler/Ambrose with the other either sold or loaned out. So Yengi is here to stay.

Nisbet has only just began training again after his injury (last Tuesday to be precise) and Alex Neil had promised to have a look at him before deciding on his future, so he won't be leaving any time soon. And plus he's not fit enough to come into our team at the moment anyway. I wouldn't write off Yengi just yet. The chances he missed - they happen to all strikers. The problem for Yengi is he has no credit in the bank yet. I thought his performance was an improvement on Ipswich, and hopefully Celtic is another improvement. Interesting that Boyd was first on though ahead of Sokler.

Celtic won't be any more fired up than they usually are, so them being "out for revenge" makes it no more likely they'll win. If anything it might lead to it being in McGregor or Johnston's head all afternoon and they end up making rash challenges. You could argue, with Celtic (like us) not playing many competitive games and there being a bit of turmoil at the club with injuries, Idah under pressure, the manager criticising the board, the struggle to sign players - we're getting them at a good time. The cup final formation makes us more solid at the expense of not creating very much. However, I'd like to think with Tierney still struggling to last 90 minutes, that we can get at them down their left with Milanovic or Morris. I watched them against St Mirren and it's McGregor, McCowan and Engels hovering outside the box that's their real danger at the moment - with Jota injured and Kuhn away, again can Forrest go at it for 90 minutes? So we don't really need a five to quieten their wingers or to try and force them to play inside like we did at Hampden. I tend to think we'll stick with 4-2-3-1 and try give our front three another game together.

Re-the lack of friendlies, I do see the other side of it. A couple more friendlies may or may not have made the difference v Hearts. But we still would be saying we need a striker, an energetic midfielder, and that we missed a left back. And Yengi might still miss those chances and Knoester & Shinnie still make those mistakes for the goals. We're not going to be a full strength (we hope) until the end of the transfer window anyway. I think a lot of the complaints from Barry Robson used to be he had no time to work on things with the players once the European group games hit, because it was game, recover, travel, game, travel, recover. So, if you play a lot of pre-season friendlies, you have fewer valuable time on the training pitch. So Thelin has obviously prioritised that. And like I said, I don't think we looked unfit, and at times we knocked it about well, and while over the 90 minutes Hearts were better - there's every chance we could have taken something tonight but mistakes did us in. I'm disappointed we lost but I didn't see enough tonight to make me worry too much about the season.