Ya Bezzer!

To be fair Gauld, Henderson, Slater, Nicholson and Macleod are all good players on at least a par with Cadden. Craig Storie, he plays a different position. The only one I would question is Billy King but he's much more experienced than Cadden and is an established member of the squad. Think with Scotland squads, whether full team or U21s, you judge the manager on the result not the squad he picks. Do I rate Sbragia? Nope but he's in charge for the meantime and thats that.

I've mentioned this a few times as well.

Why when they have David Gray?

How our team will line up on a week to week basis is still highly flexible. I think our midfielders all have something to prove and the return of Moult will also change things, probably Ainsworth dropping out of the starting XI. I can see us starting typically with Moult, McDonald and Johnson upfront and Cadden, Lasley and McHugh in midfield with alterations to suit any particular threats or weaknesses in the opposition.

Dundee were abject in the first half and got a bit better in the second, I'd hardly say they 'came on strong'. I've only seen highlights of both matches but I'd say ours compared favorably with theirs.

See Hibs have brought in Andrew Shinnie on loan. Have to say I'm quite jealous of that, would have been a great replacement for Stephen Pearson.

EL BAKHTAOUI INCOMING!! I think Dundee are significantly weaker than they were last season and we finished above them so we should hold no fears over them. Except maybe El Bakhtaoui getting his debut goal! Apparently they were lucky to get a point from Hamilton and didn't perform well against Rangers, they also failed to get out of their League Cup group, so they are hardly coming at us as a juggernaut of good form. They were missing McGowan and Duffy yesterday, I'm not sure what there availability will be next week but otherwise I think they look like a fairly mediocre team on paper and I suspect the loss of Hemmings and Stewart are going to be big blows. I think we will have enough to get at least a point and hopefully do better than that. Some teams in this league have better players than us, but Dundee aren't one of them anymore.

Some things are better left unsaid.

Wonder why that would be!

Come on Motherwell in tae this mob! Need a second goal though, hopefully we won't sit back this early in the match.

Make that 12 now.

So far the Premiership season has seen 1 home win out of 11 matches! Partick Thistle are the only team so far with a home victory.

Gary Mackay-Steven available so they say. BTW Greg Stewart, who I think is a superior player to Johnson, went down south for £500,000.

We've actually produced quite a few goalkeepers for other teams if not our selves. Max Currie, Jamie Ewings, Ross Stewart, Alan Martin....all playing in the league system.

You can't just arbitrarily decide to loan a player out though. You need to find a club who are looking to bring someone in and where he is likely to get match time. There are a lot of promising young players and experienced old hands at that level already so you need to find the right place for them.

In a way I think this is quite a good fixture for us because there is no hiding and there is will be no sneaking a win or a draw and papering over the cracks. It's perform or die. The key in this match is pretty obvious, we have to keep their full backs pinned back in the full back positions. If we do that Rangers lose a large percentage of their potency. Unfortunately we will need to keep possession of the ball a lot better than we have been doing in order to keep them there, have our wingers in advanced positions and have Tavernier and Wallace thinking twice about playing high up the pitch. We also need a bit of interchanging between wide players and forwards because Rangers are chronic at centre half and are also pretty slow. If we can get say McDonald going wide and Johnson cutting inside that's got to be a good thing. I'm not keen on our current shape or team balance but its difficult to see how to rectify them with Moult out and Pearson gone and not adequately replaced. I think we need to play Lasley here for his experience and someone else along side him. I think Cadden can play more centrally and give us a bit more mobility there as well as being able to compete physically. Ainsworth and Johnson wide and as high up the pitch as possible and give McDonald some support by playing another striker, we've not seen much of Blyth and I'm not sure if he's the right type of player for this match, so I'd even consider giving Mackin a run until Moult is available again. On the other hand Blyth could come in handy at set pieces as Rangers are very poor there. We can get away with our current set up against weaker teams but against Top 6 level teams I think we are going to struggle so I'd go 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1, whatever you want to call it.

My comparison between Clay and Carswell was because I have now seen Clay 4 times and each time I've seen him he's had absolutely no influence on the game whatsoever. Central midfield was non existent against Kilmarnock and again yesterday. You can point fingers at Lasley if you want, he was also poor yesterday, but he's had a stop start season because of his suspension and he didn't play in the first league match. McHugh didn't play yesterday. Clay has had a run of games now so he's the consistant factor there. I said in the build up to the match that St. Johnstone wouldn't let us get away with an absent midfield like Kilmarnock did and I was proved right. We desperately need to improve in this area of the pitch or my season ticket will have paid for 11, 12, 13 x yesterday and that would be a very poor investment from my point of view. Is it too early to judge Clay's worth as a signing - yes. But it's not too early to point out that contributed nothing of note so far. I sincerely hope he does improve for the sake of the team but having seen what I've seen I'm worried, about the signing of Clay and the midfield in general as neither Clay or McHugh (or Lasley) have impressed me. I also do not understand why Clay was signed in the first place when we already had McHugh and Lasley in the squad. We are crying out for a direct, running attacking midfield to replace Pearson. Pearson scored more goals last season than Clay has in his entire career. So far we've got by this season with a little bit of individual pace, a little bit of individual skill, usually against weaker opposition, that won't see us through a full season. I'd expect us to improve in the forward areas when Moult returns but I'm still wondering where the central midfield improvement comes from. If you don't compete in central midfield you'll lose 8 or 9 out of 10 and there's the problem right there. Players old and new will have to step up but I'm telling you right now so far we have been very, very poor in the centre of the park.

Craig Clay is Stuart Carswell all over again on the evidence provided so far.

Heneghan for me. Looked comfortable which as much praise as you can lay on any of our team today.

Well that was a tough, tough watch. Dire performance in front of a small crowd and a flat atmosphere. First half performance was absolutely abject. Second half we improved but only in small spells here and there. Often we were just as bad as the first half. Chalmers failed to convince again, Samson made a howler to cost us the points, Clay remained as anonymous as ever, Johnson was so poor, there was no midfield, no energy, no second balls won, our passing and distribution was uniformly awful, players looked like they didn't want to be out there. We really didn't deserve to take the lead and when St. Johnstone equalized there was only going to be one winner. Will need to buck up significantly from that performance today but it seems fairly plain that outside the first XI we are really struggling. Don't know why Cadden was taken off today, if anything he should have gone into the middle, Ainsworth out right and Clay hooked.

Unlike Kilmarnock last week St. Johnstone have a strong midfield so we are going to have to do better in that area of the pitch. Though we played quite well but central midfield was fairly anonymous. Saints won't let us get away with that like Kilmarnock did. 4 points after 2 matches wouldn't be a disaster.

With all due respect there seems to be a lot of obfuscation there. It's a simple question really, who was our best player on the night? I've voted many players MotM that I didn't especially rate down the years, including Graeme Smith, because on a particular 90 minutes they were the best we had. You are on dangerous ground when you start to ignore reality. As for Samson, Annan Athletic's goal doesn't spring immediately to mind but I wouldn't blame Samson for any other goal conceded this season.

I like that Samson was clearly the MotM last night but some won't give it to him because they just don't like him. What a support.

How many wins did Baraclough get at Celtic Park? Baraclough got a drubbing there, finished bottom six and therefore avoided playing them again. McGhee has a win, a narrow defeat (in his first week in the job) and two drubbings. Nothing to suggest Baraclough would have been any better. McGhee knows the team we have and he knows the budget we have. He's been trying to play down expectations from the very beginning of the season for exactly that reason. At a time when Celtic are putting more investment into their team, we are taking investment out of ours. There was already a huge gap there and now it's harder than ever for us to compete with Celtic in particular. I'm not happy with the result or the performance and there are couple of factors that make it worse, 1) that it was a cup match and 2) that was the second time in a row we've just capitulated at Celtic Park. I hope the players get a rocket up their arse and some questions are asked of their professionalism but at the end of the day if a good team is on form and a very average team is off form these things are liable to happen. We just have to suck it up, I'm afraid and make sure it doesn't demoralise us too much. We have a very tough match coming up against St. Johnstone on Saturday and we just need to forget about this now and not let it put a downer on the start of the season which will so a long way to determining what kind of campaign we are going to have.

I'm not a huge fan of Cummings but he scores goals and Magennis doesn't and there is the difference in valuation. It's also the difference in valuation with Johnson. Cummings has 50 goals in 112 matches and that's what the game is all about.