MJC

It’s to be expected that Falkirk and every other side we face for that matter will look to pressure Ward as they will believe there is that error in him. And I don’t see us not conceding tomorrow so we need to help ourselves out by doing the business up the other end. These are 100% the type of games that we need to be winning and make home advantage and our good play count.

Of course we have every chance but it will be very, very tough and you can see them drawing us into a battle like they so often do. That will almost certainly be Robinson’s aim to get physical, get in our faces and disrupt our rhythm. My fear is that we just aren’t clinical enough and are ropy at the back and this is the type of tie that I reckon will be decided by a single goal or else on a penalty shootout. St.Mirren have already beaten Hearts and Kilmarnock on penalties in this competition and they’d be confident of doing the same to us should it get that far. On the other hand maybe we will finally find our shooting boots and we will sweep them aside 3-0 like we did with St.Johnstone in the Scottish Cup Semi all those years ago…

It’s a wee while away yet but I already get the gut feeling that this one is going to be a sickener for us. But we’ll cross that bridge nearer the time. I love Hampden and am more than happy to be going there for the SF. I don’t care if it’s half empty and therefore how it looks to the viewing public or what it does for the reputation of Scottish football, I’d much rather play a Semi Final there than at an Easter Road, Tynecastle or a Rugby Park type venue.

Club confirms over 7,000 now sold. I’d expect us to comfortably clear the 8k mark by the time the game comes around.

8000(ish) is about what I’d expect us to shift for this one as that has been roughly the amount we sold for our last three Semi Finals (last year, Aberdeen 2018 and Rangers 2017).

This will be a tough one but I think we might just get that win. On paper we are better than Falkirk but they’re no mugs and will make it a battle. 3-2 to us with us getting a late winner this time.

I’ll wait until the international break is over. Hopefully we don’t pick up any more injuries in the meantime and we can get some players back. What I would say though is that no result would surprise me from this game.

The only way Ward won’t start this one will be if he picks up an injury, which of course going by our luck on that front is always a possibility. He is clearly the managers first choice and he is seen as the better at playing the style JBA wants us to play, regardless of what happened on Sunday. We have to win this one, no two ways about it. We have one league win to our name and that needs to change otherwise all of our improved play and the undoubted good football we have played so far will become more and more in vain. And at home, against Falkirk we should be winning this one and anything less will be unacceptable.

Wise comments. I (really) couldn’t have put it better myself.

And he also had an excellent, yet almost forgotten save at Tynecastle with just about the last kick of the ball to rescue us a point that day. Granted he had cost us with the equaliser but similar to today we were done by that point and it wouldn’t have been a surprise if Hearts had won that 4-3. The goalkeeper is always going to be the most obvious target if he makes a mistake that costs a goal, but as a team we just don’t look capable of defending a lead.

Yes of course.

Losing like that is a lot more frustrating than losing 4-0. Its frustrating because yet again we have been in a good position only for poor game management, poor defending and poor goalkeeping to undo it all.

Correct and it’s been a recurring theme all season, we struggle at the back and look likely to concede any time balls are put into the box. Welsh was a big loss today but we knew he would be. We also need to learn how to properly manage a game when we are in the ascendancy because we are continually losing points from winning positions. It’s all well and good blaming Ward, and yes he does need to take the blame for the second today as well as Tynecastle and vs Killie at FP. Teams will know that Ward has a mistake in them and will then seek to bombard us at the back, but we don’t do ourselves any favours in terms of combatting that. Again, Halliday not brought on late on. Why? We’re probably not getting 90 mins out of him anymore but he’s an option for late on to tighten things up yet he’s never brought on. It’s just so, so frustrating.

It’s yet another case of “what might have been” in what has been a season of “what might have beens”. For all we do play some entertaining stuff we are incapable of actually making it count and that is why, here we are, 5th October and we have ONE solitary league win to our name. And even that only came about thanks to a stoppage time goalkeeper blunder. If we are being honest Aberdeen should have beaten us last week. We are largely ineffective up front, though credit goes to AP for today and the less said about the backline and goalkeeper the better. Fur coat, no knickers.

Jammy fuck all. We have shown for weeks now that we are a bombscare at the back and today we have finally been punished for it.

And there it is 3-2 Celtic

Matter of time now.

That looks like AP injured yet again.

I like Ward but you just can’t justify keeping him in goals when he is continually costing us points.

Take the point right now. Can’t see us holding out though.

Reasonably good first half and dare I say it, deservedly level. Long, long way to go yet though and it’s hard to see us not conceding again.

Game over.

McGinn comes back in Still no Just. So we can assume that he won’t be involved with his national side in the next week then?

The first of the two wins over Rangers came completely out of the blue, nobody expected us to win that one. Celtic go into this in poor form and by the sounds of it quite a few of our fans actually think we are going to go there and beat them. That scenario never ends well. We are playing some good football this season and I’m enjoying it, that won’t change when, not if, we lose against Celtic tomorrow but we need to be much sharper in the final third if we are to make our good play properly count going forward. I’m not going down the nonsensical route of trying to kid myself and others that “games against the OF don’t matter” because of course they do. I just don’t believe that this team is capable of going to Celtic Park tomorrow and getting anything.

Heard it all before I’m afraid. ”There for the taking” ”We’ll never have a better chance” ”They’re playing shite we’re playing well” And I’ve yet to see us ‘take’ either one of the Old Firm when they’ve supposedly been there for it. Maybe if we had a goalscorer as I said like a Higdon, KvV or Moult to take the chance that you need to take when it comes we’d be in with a shout, but we simply don’t have that in our side. And at the back we are weak, even weaker without Welsh and were very lucky not to have been a couple of goals down against Aberdeen at half time last week. We would not have got away with that against Celtic, regardless of how poor they are by their standards. Too many of our fans are getting carried away with themselves.