BrahimHemdani

Now that I've seen the replays I am in no doubt that it WAS a penalty. From the camera behind the goal it looks like he takes the ball as his legs sweep across but that angle is deceptive because you can't see the space between his legs and the ball. When you see it from the side it is clear that he takes the Celtic players ankle, so it is a foul and a penalty kick. The officials were correct regardless of how they arrived at the decision. We have long bemoaned the apparent lack of involvement of the 4th and 5th officials; so I don't see how we can complain if they help out the referee if his view is obscured (even if it goes against us). However, based on the camera replays I would have thought that the linesman, sorry assistant referee, was better placed to make the decision.

.......and you forgot part time journalist. Of course some say he was never a footballer but if you come along to the dinner you can investigate further.

Yes that was extremely odd.

If they had got to the ref then both Halliday and Beerman would have been sent off. If anything that ploy proved counter productive as the ref showed that he was in no way intimidated. They didn't need the ref to beat us; they managed that quite easily enough on their own account. PS. Not often Ian and I are in agreement

The Portuguese was asked about his tactics for the game, prompting a detailed response, outlining what he had hoped his players would execute. "We organised our defending in three ways. The first one was to try to place a high block - if you see they were trying to build from the back - they open the centre-halves and Scott (Brown) is always in the middle. We had three players down there," he explained. "In the middle of the park what we were trying to get them to play the ball to (Mikael) Lustig, block it, block Brown who was making the triangle with the centre-halves, and with this block we could have space to explore after we regain possession. Caixinha had hoped to pressure Celtic defender Mikael Lustig, but accepted his tactics failed "We could not do it in this match because we were a little bit lower on the pitch. In the lower block, we were expecting not to allow them to divide the game. "We just played wide when the spaces were inside. The idea was for our wingers to come inside and fill the space." Despite seemingly thorough planning, Caixinha accepted his strategy had failed to work. "The game-plan is one thing, what we put in practice was a totally different thing," he acknowledged. "So it wasn't our day. We couldn't perform the way we prepared. We expected more from our players but we need to keep going." I didn't see any evidence of a high block or a midfield block. We just seemed to stand back and admire their football in the first half. You cannot give players of that quality freedom to play their own brand of football and expect to get away with it.

We could have stayed at Hampden all week and not scored.

We did indeed play 4-3-3 in the first half and were overrun because we were short in midfield and didn't press them at all. In the second half we went 4-4-2 almost 4-2-4 and made some inroads attacking them on the wings. But our first shot on target was Miller's header after what 70 or 75 minutes. Celtic dominated this match for all but a brief period towards the end when it didn't really matter. As has been remarked numerous times not one of our players would get close to being in their team so the only way to beat them was to get in their faces with a dominant team performance from the start and we failed miserably. Brown was imperious in midfield. It must have felt like stealing candy from a baby for him. Quite possibly the easiest afternoon he's ever had in an old firm match. Sorry to say this was men against boys.

It was 2 on 2 after the corner with Bates up the park. We should have had a third man back.

As I said a few pages back he's a liability in defence.

It's been excruciating and embarrassing. Hopefully can only get better but we need to press them high up the pitch instead of sat don't back and ad.iring their nice football.

Many referees would have sent him off for the second foul. Can't believe he'll reappear for the second half.

Is he playing? I haven't noticed him at all.

Need to get Beerman off. He's one foul away from a red.

I don't get the game plan at all.

Possession 81 v 19 against us a recipe for disaster.

A bit surprised and concerned at this team selection. If Hill is fit enough to be on the bench why isn't he in the team? When would you bring him on; only in case of injury? Halliday for Toral makes no sense to me. Garner is an accident waiting to happen. Tavernier is a liability in defence. Fingers and toes crossed I'm wrong.

Heading off quietly confident. We need to impose our game on them from the start. We have improved significantly under PC so in a one off game we definitely have a decent chance of success. C'mon the Gers.

Yes, not arguing about that, just saying that he could easily be replaced by another average or average+ goalkeeper and it wouldn't make too much difference to us. Alnwick is another of these players who represented England at Under 17 & 18 level then seems to have lost his way a bit. He had some man of the match performances for PV and my only real concern about him is whether his 67 games in senior football over the past five and a half seasons mostly in League One will equip someone who apparently was "was "over the moon" to stay with Port Vale" with the temperament to play in a Cup Semi Final vs Celtic at Hampden. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jak_Alnwick

I didn't see the games but by all accounts he kept us in it vs Motherwell and Aberdeen. However, I don't think he is anything more than an adequate goalkeeper at SPL level and not good enough to make a difference in Europe. We have been fortunate to have been blessed with some outstanding goalkeepers in recent memory: Woods, Goram, Klos and perhaps to a lesser extent McGregor. Unfortunately for Foderingham that's the standard against which he will be judged and sadly he couldn't wear their gloves. Basically Foderingham makes the saves that you expect him to make most of the time and occasionally makes saves that you don't expect him to make; those others consistently made saves that they weren't entitled to make. Therefore they saved us points and got us through cup ties that otherwise we would have lost. Discuss......

Cleared space for your PM.......

Aha, thanks; will amend. Still no way we'll send the first team if we are in ELQ3.

Let's put this another way. How many goals would Kenny Miller have scored for Celtic this season with the likes of Roberts [13], Forrest [11], Tierney [9], McGregor [8] and Sinclair [7] laying on assists? 20, 30?

It's hardly Kenny Miller's fault that we are 33 points behind Celtic. The fact is that for reasons we needn't well on here, they are better than us individually and collectively; and until recently certainly had by far the better manager. I'd suggest that without Miller's goals and assists we'd be even further adrift.

It won't exactly be pre-season for us! It's between the 1st and 2nd legs of ELQ3 should we get that far.

They still had tickets for Hearts when I was up today collecting mine for Sunday.