weeyin

Casey's agression and attitude tend to distract from his lack of defending fundamentals. He was a key part of last year's defensive atrocities and, especially when starting with Blaney, is a guarantee we won't have a clean sheet. He is an asset when we have the ball, and great at causing disruption in the opponent's box. Below average when we don't have the ball, or when he's defending in our box. We've started to slip into our old habit of losing soft goals, and that needs to be addressed with some changes in the back 3.

"When you fight the champion in their home town, you need to knock them out to get a draw" springs to mind. Take your pick...

Can't catch a break here. Celtic have illness in the squad and turn in a subpar performance the game before they play us. Now Rangers turn in a subpar performance the game before they play us. I think you've confused us with Hearts there. Before Rangers result today I'd have predicted a hard fought 1 - 1. Now I predict a hard fought 1 - 1 and then a soft pen awarded to them in the 94th minute.

Saving ourselves for the Rangers home win? Take your pick...

If we did that, we'd have none left. And where are the replacements coming from? Recruiting a new hire and waiting for them to complete the multi-year process to qualify for the Premiership? Or do you think that the refs in the lower leagues are already good enough? I'd much rather train up the existing referees to be competent than promote ones that are less competent to the top league and keep my fingers crossed it goes OK. In practical terms, if refs thought they were going to get the sack if they made a poor decision, you know they would just start relying more heavily on VAR and looking at replays even more often. The refs have been poor for a number of years - replacing them with even less experienced refs (who have gone through the same training as the existing ones, remember) would make things worse.

Away win for Scrooge.

Gordon can't mark his own man and cover for the other two's mistakes as well. They make too many individual errors, have concentration lapses, make slack passes, get stranded out of position etc. You can get just about get away with one of them back there, but they just don't work in combination. Two clean sheets total in the league when they both start says it all for me.

It doesn't need to be that harsh as we are already struggling with limited numbers of refs in the Premiership pool. A spell in the lower leagues, plus some additional training, and further assessments would work for me. If it keeps happening after that, then it's a different story. A bit like real jobs.

That's because we're starting with Casey and Blaney, 2 of the worst culprits from last season's debacle at the back. Whether or not you like them as individual players, they do not work as a combo.

Probably helps when they start him. Most games I've seen Hearts play this season, they've kept on the bench for the first hour.

I'm glad Utd didn't defend that well against us.

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).