der Berliner

Point is, they get doubled up and tracked, while the likes of Hagi and Cerny are not. Hence they start scoring. Now that you say it, Dessers for a hat trick!

Yeah, it deserved six. But there you go ...

Matondo's deal includes (according to Germany's equivalent of the Daily Mail) a option to buy for Euro 1.2m, which would still be too dear for them, unless they get promotion.

5 mins of highlights from last night

Word is that Ridvan is in Turkey and in talks with Besiktas, who want to pay us 2.5 m, while we are looking for 4.1 m. Reliability level: vague. Nicola Katic has joined Plymouth Argyle on loan till the end of season. Done Archie Stevens is off to the Pars on loan. Rumour from North Africa: Mouad Dahak - attacker/left-winger, 19, from Union Touraga, Morocco Reliability level: 👻

Rangers in heavyweight chase to land Nicola Bertola According to The Daily Mail, Koppen has had his eye on a cut-price swoop for Spezia centre-half Nicola Bertola, however, the technical director has been dealt an early blow in the race for the towering defender’s signature. The report claims that Inter Milan are also considering Bertola and it would be an uphill battle to compete with the Serie A champions. At 6ft 4inches tall, the Italy Under-21 international would be more than capable of coping with the demands of Scottish football, even if his statistics suggest that he is more refined than that. Currently playing in Serie B, Bertola would jump at the chance of playing regular European football and in front of 51,000 fans every other week at Ibrox. He also ticks every box needed for a club trying to kick-start a player trading model. Moving on in-form Ben Davies, who was refereed to as a “brick wall” this week, on a permanent basis and then replacing him with Bertola is how it should be done. Yes, he is young, but he has played in all of Italy’s top three divisions and has been a near ever present this season for Spezia. Bertola is also out of contract in the summer which means that Rangers could afford a player who, under contract, would be out of their reach. If Inter follow up their interest, the giant stopper would probably be sent out on loan to start with and this could be Rangers’ best chance of nicking an unlikely deal. https://www.rangersnews.uk/news/rangers-could-replace-brick-wall-defender-with-nicola-bertola-as-nils-koppen-eyes-italian-transfer-swoop/

Given the draw and the injury situation ... some achievement. Tonight was not pretty, but we got through it. Hope we can reshuffle the squad for the EL phase now.

Someone needs to take a grip in midfield.

Any talk about Dessers shall be shelved till the summer ... 😎

Brilliant Dessers, holding the ball up and wins a corner, from which a well worked goal is scored. 😜 BTW, I think McCausland can do the wing back shift, he's often tracking back anyways.

Doesn't that also depend on who flanks and supports the respective centre-forward? Our problem nowadays is not Dessers, or any other single centre-forward, but the lack of support he gets from people. In terms of goals that is. For it is not that Dessers is not assisting his fellow players. It's 18 goals and 5 assists this season, 22 and 9 for last. 40 goals in 89 games for us, plus 14 assists. We can all argue about how he doesn't do this or that as someone else did, but as long as we don't have any answer to our main problem, it doesn't matter who we play as the lone striker. Perhaps we simply need to get Kent back, so the penalty-king can follow up on his mission? Speaking of which ... sort of curious, isn't it? The lack of penalties we get this season.

Snatched from FF ... 100% those criticising dessers missing the occasional sitter seem to go very quiet when he continually scores goals out of nothing. He's hardly picked up a knock since coming here and us numbers are very good cosnisdering Dessers - 53 goals/5200min - goal involvement every 98mins Igamane 16/1460mins - goal involvement every 81mins Danilo 20/1791mins - goal involvement every 90mins For added context Kyogo had 104 goals/assists i 10743mins - goal involvement every 103mins.

For those wanting to see the incident again, here's the clip from SS. The last 6+ clips shown are always the same from the angle of the ref, who make it look like the deliberate attempt that Walsh saw from his perspective. The one from the side showed that there was a push and Diomande's arm comes around flailing because of it. Did it struck him? The reaction of the player tells a lot ... since, in this day and age, he'd have gone down clutching his face in faux agony. I overheard the story told by the reporter that Walsh officiated the EL game of Union St. G, sending off 4 players, one/some will thus be suspended next week. He probably wasn't aware of this at the time, I'd assume ... While I can understand not wanting to risk the result, he might have subbed Diomande and Raskin off for Curtis and/or Rice for the last 10 mins. Lovelace did quite well when he came on, setting up Dessers for the deciding goal. These boys, much like Igamane and Nsiala, are not afraid of something spontaneous, and do things more instinctively. Our "veterans" like to think and keep the ball too long, hence, the oppositions can react much easier.

Davies and Dowell have contracts till 2026 and 2027 respectively. If someone in England wants them, they can have them for a decent enough fee. And not 250k or the like. Hopefully our new CEO sees to this. Speaking of loan-players, Cifuentes is due back this summer and has played quite a few games for Aris Saloniki this season. They have an option to buy (think I've heard that they don't want to take it up, but it is still 5 months to go). We paid some 1.2m for him, IIRC.

... and add the VAR lot to this. It wasn't even worth a yellow. Anyway, three points at a rather difficult venue, satisfying 2nd half, lots of chances (on either side), but those out there showed character. When the going gets tough ...

Well, that sounds a bit cynical and is premature too.

They hit the woodwork three times now? While we squander chance after chance ...

What a Pröpper time to score!

Top performance from Butland so far, or they would be out of reach. Those last few chances for us put some glimmer on a dire performance. Watching Hagi come to the field, he looked very much like someone not wanting to be there. Alas, he turned it on for the last 5 mins.

I hope you've got the sound turned off?

beyond parody again ... and much to do with no physical presence too.

Finally a clear 4-4-2 😎

You may sleep tonight below the stairs as penance, like Mr. Potter. On a sidenote, having watched a few clips from the Sir Walter era, it was quite sobering to see our squad sheet today ... with only 4 Scots, all on the bench.

Yilmaz is a name like Smith or Miller in Turkey, AND, more importantly, football was introduced to Turkey before they had surnames. Thus, by tradition, Turkish players use their first names on their shirts, much like commentators do. If there are more than one, the first letter of the surname appears too. Aside from this, the formal approach to a Turkish man would be "Ridvan bey", but "Mr. Yilmaz" in English. His wife would be called (i.e. don't know her name, if he has one) e.g. "Ilay bay". So it is quite normal that we call him Ridvan. On a sidenote, our Brazilian striker is actually Danilo Pereira da Silva, and we all know what is written on his and his compatriots' shirts. And I am quite sure that this is just a traditional Brazilian footballer thing.

We knew they would make a big noise, but it was unbelievable It’s the best support I have seen that’s for sure, I only wish we could be playing Ibrox next week. Christian Eriksen