The season proper is finally here! Are we going to see all of our potential optimism go out the window? I don’t think we should really judge the new team too much against the champions, but I obviously want to see a plan and a system and obviously a positive result. There are signs that Goodwin has the team building some good understandings and can see a lot of potential. But it is hard to judge the team against the opposition they’ve faced so far. I’m expecting it to be a bit of turbulent first couple of months, although Celtic aside, it’s a decent draw to start with.
 

Edit: Coulson has signed, so does he go straight into the XI?
 

Does Ramirez start or is it straight into the thick of it for Miovski? Personally I see the latter, I still get the feeling that Ramirez might move on regardless. Can’t see him being happy being a bench player. Obviously CB and C/M pairing is crucial for this one, can’t let them sit in front of us.

Out

bed

bed

bed

3-0 Tims (no dons scorer)

54 minutes ago, BigAl said:

Anyone having a pop at the manager or individual players on thd basis of this afternoon is fucking clueless.

Do they seriously think this was a season defining game.

Our season starts next Saturday.

We were always on a hiding to nothing out there today.

Trust those critising today will be as quick to praise when we start collecting points 

 

 

So do just forfeit these games if season starts next week.
 

Actually it started 3 weeks ago. 

Richardson looked suspect in games in league cup and today just confirmed it. Polvara also was clearly not good enough prior to today but had to play because Goodwin chose to take a player on loan from these cunts. 

All 11 Celtic players who started today were playing together last season.  We started with 4 players out of 11 from last season, and out of those only McCrorie and Hayes were regular starters.  Miovski arrived a week ago, Coulson and Roberts 5 days ago, and Lopes is still yet to turn up.  Give it time.

Keen for more detail. How was Stewart? Roos? Coulson?

And let’s be honest, regardless of the wrongs or rights of the Scales situation rasellik have easily 11 if not 15 players better than any of ours.

Woukd Scales have made a difference today? Is he the reason, the sole reason, we lost today?

No.Stewart and McRorie did ok today.We were disjointed further forward,but not totally unexpected with the newbies. If Scales doesnt become an option to buy in January,then maybe send him back,as long as there are good replacement options,....which may be why we loaned him in the first place.

  Roos did pretty well,some good saves,Stewart very good,seemed to be in the right place more often than not, and Coulson better than expected

   Question marks over Polvara and Richardson,but still too early to write them off.

Edited July 31, 20223 yr by Elgindon

8 minutes ago, OrlandoDon said:

Keen for more detail. How was Stewart? Roos? Coulson?

Roos was better than anticipated with some good saves, although some of his distribution was poor.  Coulson looked decent for someone who has been here less than a week.  Stewart's first name is "Away by".

Given the Richardson concern and the lack of center mids, as much as it doesn’t help mccrorie, get another mid in to play next to ramadani then mccrorie can slide to right back. Add that player, Ronan or McGrath, plus dunne after we punt bates, then I’d be happy with that squad. 
recall someone saying coulson was a right footed left back, does he play right back??

37 minutes ago, Madbadteacher said:

And let’s be honest, regardless of the wrongs or rights of the Scales situation rasellik have easily 11 if not 15 players better than any of ours.

Woukd Scales have made a difference today? Is he the reason, the sole reason, we lost today?

Some would have you believe we would.

1 hour ago, Jute said:

So do just forfeit these games if season starts next week.
 

Actually it started 3 weeks ago. 

Richardson looked suspect in games in league cup and today just confirmed it. Polvara also was clearly not good enough prior to today but had to play because Goodwin chose to take a player on loan from these cunts. 

I forgot the word "league" in my opening sentence.

 

There's some angry, angry Dons on here. 😬

It sounds like it wasn’t the worst performance, although it’s hard to judge from the comments here and on Twitter 😂 

Expected nothing from today, they are champions, same team as last season that were pretty damn good. Disappointed? Yes, unexpected? No. We’ve a lot of new players but we also know there’s still a bit to do in the transfer market. Not being able to play our preferred XI is not ideal and this does highlight that. I would hope as the season progresses we make it a bit more competitive and give a better account of ourselves. 
 

Will wait for the highlights to form an opinion, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought I’d wake up to. I will say this though. A couple of Tim mates that were at the game were actually quite impressed by some of our players. They saw potential in our team so it does give me hope.

header first goal .. amateur

3 hours ago, ayrshire_don74 said:

polvara is hopeless poor planning and recruitment bites us 

To be fair to Goodwin, he had a hell of a lot of recruitment to do. Also, he loaned Scales before the fixtures were announced and before Barron got injured. It's not a ridiculous gamble to hope that we might play the Tims a few weeks down the road when we had signed another midfielder or defensive cover. It backfired as a result of us playing them in the opening game really. 

Polvara is a young lad who was signed by Glass (I seem to remember a suggestion that it was him that had seen him before, rather than our recruitment team, but not sure how true that is). Goodwin has done exceptionally well to get rid of all of Glass' signings in a single window bar Polvara (Ramirez and Bates are clearly gone, but not gone), and so the recruitment criticism is a little harsh. Of all the signings made so far, Duk is the only one I think looks gash, with the rest (Richardson was decent in the second half today) under scrutiny, but with no massive concerns yet. We should expect a few of them to be duds, and a few more just to keep the first team ticking over and hopefully one or two will turn out good. It shouldn't be forgotten just how big an exercise has been/is being undertaken this summer. I think it'd be fairly naive to expect anything great this season. 

Polvara would benefit from a 6 month loan to a Championship team.

1 hour ago, Slim said:

Polvara would benefit from a 6 month loan to a Championship team.

I think so. At no point has he looked any better than Dean Campbell. But unfortunately we'll need him here until January I expect.

We had, I think, eight players who had never played against Celtic away before in the starting line-up. 

Add to that we are at least three players short of our strongest XI (Scales, Barron and someone of the ilk of Connor Ronan all go into that side, and McCrorie also improves the midfield).

Therefore, the hope is today was the worst we'll play all season and it's only improvement from here.

 

We were shell shocked in the first 30 minutes, but actually could have been level at half-time. And you have to say that we generally defended quite well, besides the obvious mistakes that cost us. Another team crumbles - and I don't just mean a Motherwell or Hearts. Let's not forget Rangers were 3-0 down at Celtic Park under similar pressure.

My biggest concern about the whole game was actually how little we offered in the second half. We ran out of ideas, the story of the last four years. 

Again, caveat above about not being full strength, but St Mirren up next. While they're no Celtic, they're no Raith Rovers either. 

5 hours ago, Panda said:

We had, I think, eight players who had never played against Celtic away before in the starting line-up. 

Add to that we are at least three players short of our strongest XI (Scales, Barron and someone of the ilk of Connor Ronan all go into that side, and McCrorie also improves the midfield).

Therefore, the hope is today was the worst we'll play all season and it's only improvement from here.

 

We were shell shocked in the first 30 minutes, but actually could have been level at half-time. And you have to say that we generally defended quite well, besides the obvious mistakes that cost us. Another team crumbles - and I don't just mean a Motherwell or Hearts. Let's not forget Rangers were 3-0 down at Celtic Park under similar pressure.

My biggest concern about the whole game was actually how little we offered in the second half. We ran out of ideas, the story of the last four years. 

Again, caveat above about not being full strength, but St Mirren up next. While they're no Celtic, they're no Raith Rovers either. 

A balanced view Panda.

Some folk don't like that reasonable approach. 

Hope you don't fancy a career in journalism as you'll never make it either that non sensationalist approach to it 😉 

A tough introduction to Scottish fitba for these new boys, have to say I was fearing the worst after three minutes and although it was only 2-0, we never really got a kick.  In fairness, as others have said, some of the new players have only been in the door a matter of days and it was asking a bit much to hit the ground running against the champions away in the first game.  It's the home games against the St Johnstones, Motherwells and Ross Countys that we will get a better idea of whether this team is better than last season's shambles.

Stewart looks a right good player.

The only person I would criticise straight off is the one that allowed Lopes to get Duk written on the back of his shirt and they should get sacked straight away. 

 

55 minutes ago, wokinginashearerwonderland said:

The only person I would criticise straight off is the one that allowed Lopes to get Duk written on the back of his shirt and they should get sacked straight away. 

I mean, he is the new Jet, so it's quite fitting (unlike his strip). He shouldn't have been on the pitch yesterday, he's nowhere near fit enough. Ramirez is wanting away, but as an attacking threat he offers a lot and should have been the player coming on if we were trying to get back into that game. We effectively let the game go by taking on an overweight player, who couldn't keep up with play. Miovski doesn't look match sharp yet, but that's a different thing to Duk's "breathing oot his airse".

Hayes needs to get into cormack Park today and practice simple 12 yard shots ! And bojan & duk need to be doing extra sessions. Our ball retention was pathetic fkn pathetic 

Edited August 1, 20223 yr by The D.O.C.1903

Let me also add that it could & should have been 5-1 to timmy! So yes we were utter dog shit 

I think the blame for polvara for the second is a tad harsh.  It's not like jotas finish wasn't a fucking worldy.  Richardson was all over the place the 1st half but I thought he was a lot more solid second.  Coulsen looked far better than I was led to believe he was as a defender and also looked good on the ball at times. Stewart was great, looks a really shrewd bit of business and he's gonna grow into the captaincy. I was surprised Kennedy came off and not vinny, he really struggled to get into the game whereas Kennedy was doing far better.

As others have said  the game got away from us in the second half but its not like chances were queuing up for the tims. We lost to a cheap header and worldy and the game would have been very different without the cheap header.  Overall I thought there was more than enough positives to justify optimism about the squad and the season ahead.  

 

7 minutes ago, tlg1903 said:

I think the blame for polvara for the second is a tad harsh.  It's not like jotas finish wasn't a fucking worldy.

Also worth noting that Ramadani was way out of position, giving Jota the opportunity to run at Polvara, who just got done. But, yes, you would get away with those against Hibs or someone.

By the way, did the referee (on the orders of Sky no doubt) wait until Celtic had finished singing YNWA before starting the game?

At the time I thought it was a hell of a long wait, and having just watched a replay we actually stood there letting them sing their song before we were allowed to get going.

Dunno if this link will work but: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMNqSUMdm/?k=1

16 minutes ago, Panda said:

By the way, did the referee (on the orders of Sky no doubt) wait until Celtic had finished singing YNWA before starting the game?

At the time I thought it was a hell of a long wait, and having just watched a replay we actually stood there letting them sing their song before we were allowed to get going.

Dunno if this link will work but: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMNqSUMdm/?k=1

Pretty rank if so. We should ban the BBC from Pittodrie.