weeyin

Hadn't watched Cardiff City for a few weeks, but saw Turnbull wasn't even on the bench today. A quick google shows he is "facing 'long-term' absence after surgery" after he suffered a hamstring injury. Never great, but even worse for him give that he had established himself as a first team starter this season, and was turning in some good performances.

Remember what I was saying the other day about never keeping a clean sheet when we start with a Casey/Blaney combo? Still saying it.

THAT'S IT! YOU'VE RUINED CHRISTMAS!! Take your pick...

I'm sticking with the No Michael Stewart option.

If at first you don't beat the offside trap, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, agai... ...Goal!

It's the hope that kills you.

I'm still waiting for McGhee's German contacts to come through with that big defender.

If Microsoft received a fee every time someone cut-and-pasted, Apostolos Stamatelopoulos would have made them a packet. Jack Vale and Tony Watt, not so much.

Exactly. The managers and players were assured it "wouldn't change the way the game was played" - and that turned out to be bollocks.

Yir gettin' Jack Vale for yir dinner - take it or leave it.

As opposed to being absolutely raging if VAR awarded a non-penalty (like against Utd) with the same consequences? I'll take that risk and still scrap it. (Especially as I hate the 0.5cm offside - which was never the intention of that rule, and needs a post-VAR update).

I was dubious of any value of VAR before it was introduced, and it has actually been worse than I feared. As predicted, the number of poor decisions hasn't really changed,. Instead we just get a different kind of wrong with the added bonus of long delays before they're made. When you watch Scottish and English lower league games, the number of dubious decisions is pretty low and rarely controversial. If something happens, players and fans might complain for 10 seconds, but the game moves on quickly and so do they. The very least they could do is put a time limit on decisions. 30 seconds max and if they don't see anything different from the ref by then, their decision stands. I'd be delighted to scrap it though.

I haven't bothered rewatching the Rangers one, but at the time I thought the Rangers player initially fouled the defender by grabbing his shirt, so anything else after that was moot.

The workaround is right-click, open in private window (or incognito window if you are Chrome user).

I think we'll take at least a point of Aberdeen. They were rightly lauded for their impressive start to the season, but I suspected their form would dip around Christmas. They have now gone L D D L D in their last 5, but more importantly, we match up pretty well against them. Of course, Motherwell being Motherwell and the Premiership being the Premiership, if we do pick up 12 points it will involve collecting a win and loss or two we weren't expecting.

I'd say the teams with 3 wins out of 17 are in prime position for fall guys. You'd expect Hearts and Hibs to throw some money at their problems during the window, but neither are strangers to the Championship. End of January will be when we get a more realistic view of things, however, in the top and bottom 6. I'm actually more focused on the gap between ourselves and 7th for now. If we can maintain that then, obviously, we avoid any relegation scraps. Of course, if/when we drop back into bottom 6 then I'll be laser focused on the gap to 11th. We need to be showing the team the Brian McLair OF fixtures to give them some inspiration for the games after this. On a separate note, I've mentioned on a few occasions how I'm not a fan of Casey and Blaney playing together. Just in case I was being unfair I did a quick scan of the results since they signed. We have only manage 2 clean sheets in the league when they were starters. (We did manage 3 in the league cup against Edinburgh City, Queens Park and Partick Thistle). I know there is more to clean sheets than just the defenders, but I'll need some convincing that pairing them up is part of our strongest defensive unit.

That's true, but SOD provides a more of a calm head when things are imploding (like Ross County, Hibs and Dundee). I still think some of our issues on our recent bad streak were made worse by missing a captain vice captain on the pitch. Of course, most managers are loathe to change a winning team, so would not be at all surprised to see the same starting line-up for this, and I'd be fine with that and saving the likes of Sparrow and Watt for appearances in the second half.

If you're in the US, this game is live on Paramount+

I don't think Ox's flap today was quite as bad as his last one. It looked a bit more like a lack of competitive nous. After he missed it, he was complaining about being blocked, whereas a keeper with more experience would have just flattened everybody in front of them. He needs to be a bit more aggressive on those and take no prisoners.

Didn't think Utd's was a pen when I watched it live on the stream. Having seen it on Sportscene I'm even more convinced it wasn't a pen. (Also don't think our shout in the second half was a pen either).

The opposite of when Jim McLean was Utd manager. They'd let you have the ball for 70% of the game and you'd leave with a 4 - 0 defeat.

Agreed. He looked much more like the close quarters finisher I was expecting. Not just from his goals, but he was getting himself in the right positions more often and gambling on where the ball might end up.

Stama narrowly misses out on winning the match ball, but SK now gets to put Jim Goodwin on his shelf. Take your pick...

Just keep throwing that spaghetti against the wall and some it will eventually stick.

Didn't take long for VAR to spoil the game today.