DMAA

Bad timing mate

These kind of games are games Ryan Jack would start in when fit. There will be questions asked of Aribo out of possession here.

I’m very happy with this line up. Hagi finally gets a start and Roofe plays in arguably his best position at CF. Morelos didn’t deserve to walk back in to the first 11 so I’m glad he didn’t. A big game for Aribo too. He’s still regaining his sharpness but he is key to bringing creativity to our build-up play.

This might be a bit of a digression, but President’s Brie (French) is the best Brie in the supermarket.

How would that game have ended last season, without Roofe? We needed at least one more natural goalscorer this season and now we've got one. Hopefully we'll eventually have one on both sides of the CF like Liverpool with Mane and Salah.

Yeh I know what you mean. St Mirren and St Johnstone are well organised sides who have been difficult to play against on their own ground this season against us and them. Really big games.

8 goals in 11 league games for Roofe, and look at his goals per minute ratio. His signing has been a game changer for me in that for the first time since Naismith we have a proven goalscorer supporting our main striker.

I saw the last 10 minutes of the first half and almost all of the second half. I thought we were pedestrian in the first half but actually very good in the second. It is so hard to break down a team playing like that and our intensity was excellent, and credit to management who made the right changes at the right time and won the game. I’m delighted for Itten to get that goal too, that has to be a huge boost for him. He deserves a lot of credit.

Roofe is just such a crucial player. Our most important forward because time and time again he gets the goals.

I love Defoe. I’ve no worries at all about him.

Strong team

Haha. I couldn’t remember what they were wearing but I did remember thinking at the time that white was a strange choice when there were better options. Even blue was a better option as we went through a period of wearing blue socks.

The socks was the strangest bit, there was no clash and no obvious reason not to wear black, or even red for those who are nostalgic about the 60s, 70s and 80s.

There is no shame in the fact that rotating away at grounds like that are a risk. They haven’t been beaten by more than a goal against Rangers or Celtic at home in at least a couple of years I think. We needed a Barisic free kick to win it last time and we were at full strength that time. Football isn’t that black and white, some clubs make themselves very hard to beat on their own ground with a good manager.

One to make people feel a wee bit better

I’ve gone with Goldson because I think he was good and was let down by others. His goal was really good. For that second goal we concede, Balogun again takes an unnecessary risk bringing the ball out and again he gets caught, Zungu completely fails to track his man and stay goal-side, the ball comes in the box and Goldson is frantically trying to defend against two men while Balogun just stands there in no mans land and Zungu is on the wrong side of his man. Arfield shows more urgency than Zungu and tries to cover for him but he misses the tackle.

I’ve shared this a few times but it’s my favourite stat, because rather than a simplistic look at assists or even expected assists it only counts good chances. Even the xA stat can be a little bit deceptive because you can build it up with lots of mediocre chances. But what this shows is exactly what I see, Hagi has the vision and passing ability required to really put chances on a plate for people. Kent is below Kamara on this stat. Kent of course contributes in other ways and I’m not taking away from that, but this stat sums up pretty well my longstanding complaint. I like my creative players to put good chances on a plate regularly, even if they are anonymous for spells.

Hagi’s game time has been very limited since September. I find it really frustrating, Kent isn’t exactly on fire so there shouldn’t be the huge reluctance to give Hagi a chance. He has proven end product, all the stats show that. He has 5 league assists from almost half the game time Kent has had, who has 3.

Good can and should come of it too. I thought the complacency was clear in the team selection and in the performance and work rate and that needs to go from both management and players for the run of games we have coming up. Perth and Paisley are very difficult away days this season despite the fact they don’t look it on the face of it. Celtic will very likely win a trophy this weekend too and I think there’s a good chance that will cause them to become complacent again and believe that they will come good.

I’m not going to overreact, even though it is a total embarrassment in the context of Celtic having gone out and the cup being there for the taking, we have handed the media the narrative that we are serial bottlers. But I think the gaffer and players learned some valuable lessons tonight. Well I hope they have. You can’t go to a ground like that and not work as hard as them, and you can’t go to a ground like that without some of your most important players starting. I will be very glad when Helander comes back too. Balogun has done a good job but IMO we are stronger at the back with the big Swede.

I think they were complacent. They should have known this would be one of the hardest domestic games we have, because it always is for us and for Celtic. We lacked urgency and it seemed they had more desire for it.

Nowhere near enough time added on here

That’s atrocious

I was just thinking we weren’t looking like scoring at all. Goodwin knows how to organise his side.