weeyin

If you don't think we have a plan B you haven't been listening to Jens or the players. He has been training the players to adapt to low blocks, high presses, being kicked, long high balls etc. It doesn't mean, however, it always works. There's a reason no team in the league wins every game. We need every player to be on it, and sometimes they are not.

Also why I enjoy watching the lower league Scottish and English games.

The OF are subjected to the same delays, but it's at least worth the wait for them. Of all the issues, I think removing the spontaneity of a goal celebration is VAR's biggest crime. It's literally what we pay our money to experience.

I agree with that. He needs a club where he has complete freedom to implement his ideas, allowed to bring in the players he wants, and patience from the fans. Neither of the OF sides would allow that.

No surprise that the VAR review quickly turned into the VAR Justification Show.

I think Priestman was just knackered. He was everywhere,

Another VARiation of points dropped. Take your pick...

Offside isn't ruled on clear and obvious. It's ruled by the hand drawn lines by officials who decide what angles and thickness to use. Which is even worse.

Must have brought their super-thin lines into the booth for that one. The Rangers issue lines would have been 2 yards on.

Let's wait 15 minutes for VAR to check

If Just has a good World Cup and raises his profile even more, we might receive an offer we can't refuse.

We're not exactly strangers to top of the table finishes.

Ref analyst on the US telly said it should have been a red because Tripper made no attempt to play the ball and the Barca player was very likely to have been able to reach it if he wasn't pulled.

Possibly. And he has had better players at his disposal. Hard to argue, however, that his predecessors massively underperformed. And I still believe we beat Denmark because the talented players ignored the tactics. 3 moments of individual brilliance instead of grinding out a 1 - 0.

Clarke took a dysfunctional team in a dysfunctional setup where nobody wanted to play for the national side. He turned it around into a squad that started qualifying for tournaments again. He did it using his own methods, and those same methods managed to get us to this year's World Cup. As the last 2 Euros showed, the same approach fails miserably in the finals, and for me he should have been punted after the last Euros. While he is in charge, though, there is zero reason to imagine he will change anything that got him to the finals and kept him in a job - and that includes remaining overly loyal to some mediocre players.

I don't have any complaints about his loyalty. He might well have been off before his injury, but gave us another year after his recovery.

We might pip Hearts into 3rd, though.

Ah, so was I.

This was the year we took up the option, I believe. He's out of contract in July.

It says we have opened talks, but I expect that happened with all the players once we knew we had secured top 6 and more idea of our budget. If he wants a move, this summer would make sense for him.

Only in the UK it seems. I was reading an article in The Guardian earlier in the week (because that's how I roll) that was pointing out how a number of the English teams became unstuck in Europe because: 1. They relied too much on scoring goals from the chaos at set pieces 2. European refs were penalising their fouling in the box at those set pieces I'd love to see our refs clamp down on it too.

I'm starting to think he might know what he's talking about.

Of course we can build. JBA has been revolutionary for us, but the style he plays is very common across most European leagues with teams big and small. The fact that it's unusual in Scotland speaks volumes about our approach to the game, but there is no reason we can't find a replacement who adopts a similar style. As I have said before, you only need to watch the "wee" teams who regularly beat Scottish sides in the European qualifying rounds to see how common our style is. In fact, I predict 2 or 3 other Scottish sides will be recruiting to copy us next season.

Especially considering we had a complete overhaul of our style and tactics at the start of the season. Earlier in the week JBA and SOD talked about "the journey" from where we were in our draw against Clyde and narrow win at Stenhousemuir. To come from that to (semi) serious title chat has been far more rapid progress than most of us could have hoped for. The next test is how do we sustain and build.

AI is great until you ask it a question on a topic where you have some knowledge. Then you quickly realise it's just a fancy google with a chatty interface. When I bought a new phone last year, I couldn't find a setting I was looking for. I asked ChatGPT and the response was "that model has not been released yet". I replied that it was released 3 months ago, and the next response was "You are correct", and then gave me the answer I needed about the setting. I certainly wouldn't trust it for anything critical.