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When the £8mill story broke i was 'pleasantly surprised'. To be fair wasnt sure how justifiable it was. Iv sat down the last few matches to try & watch him objectivley. Hes only 18, has a cracking football brain, set pieces already on point & he is a big laddie. He will be a monster in a few years. The big stand out for me however is if you watch him, the amount of his passes that hit the target are head & shoulders above the rest of the team. If Mika Biereth were in this team this season, the damage we could do with them both being on a similar wavelength would have been fun to watch

A new manager always gets a bit of grace. How long has Simo been there now? A couple of months? At the moment he's lost twice as many games as he's won, and his team sit in 11th. I certainly wouldn't be trading places with them. Are we really reverting to the tired old "we're fourth, so every other team must be rubbish" narrative? It seems some people roll that out every time we break into the top six. The fact is, we’re exactly where we’ve earned the right to be. Right now, we’re the fourth-best team in the league, and whether other sides are brilliant, dreadful, or somewhere in between is irrelevant. Heading into Christmas sitting fourth in the table, with a cup semi-final secured, is a brilliant position to be in. This is such an important point. A lot of our supporters focus solely on what we’re doing, assuming that if the manager selects the “right” team and employs the “right” tactics, everything will fall into place. But football doesn’t work like that—our opponents play a massive role too. Many of the common criticisms and complaints could probably be addressed and explained by the manager, highlighting factors most of us wouldn’t even consider. For example, when we argue that TJ should start ahead of Watt, are we factoring in how McInnes might set his team up to counter that? Or how that decision could create vulnerabilities elsewhere for Kilmarnock to exploit? No, we see TJ come on for the last 15 minutes, play well, and think, “Well, he should’ve started—surely he’d have delivered that same performance over the entire game. Poor choice by the manager.” It’s rarely that simple.

With respect, no one said we would be a better team without him. He is our best player by a country mile. But we arent getting the best of him, mainly due to injuries in the squad, but also because we havent had a settled frontline or midfield. SK also had him playing an advanced role earlier in the season out of necessity. Thankfully thats now behind us. There is no doubting his quality and you can see that in his passing and dead balls. But there is no doubt he would excel even more if he had a fully functioning frontline in front of him.

I'm afraid I've got the impression over the years that Mr McLean doesn't like us very much. Not to a Craig Thomson/JRP Gordon level but enough to make me worry. Was it because his brother Brian only played 25 games in three years with us?

Steven McLean, who coincidentally is our var guy for both Celtic and rangers matches.

I kinda agree with this. Ive not enjoyed watching Miller the same way I enjoyed watching Turnbull, albeit Miller probably has a higher ceiling now. I think its due to the circumstances you describe. Turnbull was the right player at the right time. With Miller, we can see he is a generational talent and needs to play. But I dont think we have got the best out of him or the team. Its why I hope we are able to keep him to the summer. With the players that are going to become available between now and end of season, I think he will be able to showcase his talents more fully.

That decision was nothing to do with VAR, they did their job and told the referee to reassess his decision; as it was a subjective decision they couldn't overturn it, just tell the ref he was an idiot and review it, which is what happened. VAR worked perfectly in this incident.

1-2 Motherwell, Miller to score a dodgy pen and Santa to get booed

The club has said that it has a contingency plan to bring in a replacement midfielder if Lennon Miller goes next month. When he does depart the team will unquestionably miss him and I'll miss watching him. He'll be a loss. However, I think our tactics and midfield set up are heavily influenced by shoehorning him into the team, playing in a way that otherwise wouldn't be our preferred set up, other things being equal. His departure will allow us to set up differently and perhaps more effectively for our level, if SK takes that on board. My somewhat rudimenatry take would be a physical and mobile defensive midfielder; a No 8 or box to box type like Harry Paton; and a No 10 like Sam Nicholson. More sophisticated derivatives than my basic model would be possible.

The problem was that his first substitution was a negative one by bringing on Davor for Halliday. That shows you are looking to hold what you have and gives McInnes carte blanche with his attacking substitutions. Sparrow for Paton was fine. But the other sub shoulda been Maswanhise so McInnes had to keep an eye on the back door. This isnt hindsight either, as me and my mate both said the same at the time when we could see the direction of travel. Its one of my big bug bears with SK (who I still wholeheartedly support) but he need to learn from his mistakes, and in game management is still a big minus for me at the moment.

My night was completed when after the Mariah Carey song at half time it was announced ove4 the tannoy it was a special request for me!!, my mate's lad knows the announcer so they played wee trick on me as they know I hate that song 🤪🤪🤪

This game is exactly why the pint of Bailey’s was invented.

Subs should have been at 60 mins. Starting Watt was right call but Maswanhise and sparrow should have been on at 60 mins. one of the worst refereeing displays I’ve seen for a long long time but we should have taken care of business long before we got into that position.