Kmcalpin

Yes we do have a worrying lack of pace through the middle. As far as Johnson was concerned either by accident or design for long spells he played very deep and as such posed little in the way of an attacking threat to St Johnstone. For quite a spell he played more like a full back, with Chalmers tucked inside. Not surprisingly this caused problems for MacDonald.

Many telling comments today but although we looked tired Saints had a slightly more hectic schedule than we did. Mistakes were made in terms of team selection and tactics but I wouldn't go so far as to say we would have won had we done things differently. The back four and goalie were poor but in mitigation they had no cover in front of them. The midfield was a complete mess. Again they played too narrowly. Ainsworth contributed nothing but in fairness didn't seem to know what he meant to be doing. He's a winger end of. Marvin spent far too much time defending and as such his attacking threat was diminished. Cadden had an OK game but no more and showed his inexperience today - scored a good goal that said. He does need to learn how to defend though and was another who didn't quite seem to know where he was meant to be playing. Clay was largely anonymous but didn't make many mistakes. Keith Lasley now looks to be well past playing at this level. Skippy is not suited to a lone striker role especially when his midfield support is yards back down the park. He played too deep and when he wasn't trying to win high balls unsuccessfully he was forced to play short and end up playing behind others. A final word on Samson - didn't impress me today esepcially with his bloomer. He also doesn't organise his defence and that led to a couple of totally unnecessary corners being conceded. We need to sort out midfield and pronto. In future I'd go with a midfield of McHugh, Cadden, AN Other and Johnson. Not impressed with the ref today. Had no major decisions to make but was very inconsistent especially with throws in free kicks. Anyone know why Tait was booked? We sat near where the tackle was made but saw nothing untoward.

Not sure what to make of Clay. Over 90 minutes I thought he was largely anonymous but didn't do much wrong. In terms of the type of player he is I'm a bit nonplussed. Not an out and out defensive midfielder but then again certainly not an attacking one. Early doors but not sure what he's going to bring to the team.

This won't be a pretty game to watch as St Johnstone will be tough, organised and streetwise - probably the opposite type of team from us. However no reason why we can't get a result at home. Midfield will be crucial and in particular the middle. It'll be interesting to see how lasley, Clay and perhaps McHugh play together. We need to put Wednesday night firmly behind us.

I've seen a figure of 20,165 quoted. By my reckoning a very rough estimate would be £75K + £15K television money. So, apart from group games gate money/TV money and £30K sponsorship I reckon we made about £90K from the tie.

100% agree. Even with 5 men strung across the park we played very narrowly and Celtic tore us apart largely unoccupied wings. Despite having 9, 10 or 11 men back at in or around our penalty box at times Celtic still found plenty of gaps to exploit. That made life very uncomfortable for the 2 centre backs and Samson.

Overall agree with what you wrote but we also had Moult, McHugh and Blyth missing - small comfort I know.

That about sums it up for me. Celtic played well but we made it easy for them by sitting off and allowing them to showcase their skills. We showed no self belief or determination. At one point in the second half, Cadden, surrounded by 3 team mates in midfield broke forward but none of the others broke to support him...that summed up our attitude for me. Tactics and team selection did us no favours.

Unfair to judge Blyth on his record so far...he's hardly played. Once he's had some game time under his belt we can then assess him. Certainly a very different kind of player to Fletcher. There's no point in blooding a whole raft of youngsters now and end up getting relegated. That would be catastrophic. We need a blend of experience and youth; skill and stability/soundness.

I heard this mentioned on Sportsound a week or two back by one of the pundits, it might have been Alan Preston? He said that many small part time clubs continue training over the summer and therefore their early season fitness levels are higher.

Some interesting results last night. As with the group stage, more "big" clubs have been knocked out. Now a cup competition can always contain the odd surpise or two but not to this extent. So whats going on? Are the bigger clubs' early season fitness levels lower than the smaller clubs - quite possible but thats always been the case. However its also quite possible that the bigger clubs are not treating the competition seriously.

Hibs have placed a £5m price tag on Cummings' head - only to scare off timewasters of course in the short term. As with Dundee United, any half decent Hibs youngster is looked upon as being world class. Hibs like United are successful at marketing their youngsters.

Someone at Brighton doesn't seem to be able to read or listen.

Very much so. In fact I'm surprised the club did not mount a legal challenge to the original report and recommendations.

Presumably the £300k offer (or thereabouts) would have included add ons?

He said a few things but this is the relevant quote "It (the penalty claim)wasn't the only strange decision of the afternoon, was it? I've seen the footage a couple of times over and there was an opportunity for a penalty. What it certainly wasn't was a foul by Souly. That was a double whammy. That was another strange one to add to the list."

I have exactly the same question and was a bit surprised that he didn't go under the knife sooner. There's no doubt the short term challenge of the League Cup has affected the medium, maybe even longer, term training regime as Mark McGhee has said.

Absolutely. I reckon we need one new holding midfielder and one new attacking midfielder. If Johnson moves on that cuts our attacking options still further.

From TV footage thats exactly what happened and the ref was 100% right. Coulibaly quite clearly kicked Heneghan first and thats why the foul was awarded against him. Lee Clark should be embarrassed by his post match comment.

Agree with most of that but again much of that weakness comes down to central midfield continuously backpedalling and retreating. Hammell is caught trying to cover 2 men and then the scorer is left unmarked in the box after receiving a beautiful cross from a player who is also unmarked and has all the time in the world to pick his spot. Perhaps Killie had just a just a little more stamina than us yesterday. That said I think they got lucky in that they could have been on the wrong end of a real bleaching if we'd taken our chances.

There was a fair bit of discussion about the league cup /pre season friendlies on here some months ago, with many saying that the latter would be scrapped. That was never going to happen. As you say all thats happened is that the season has started earlier, with a shorter close season. Attendances in the main have been poor but that was to be expected. Its not summer football proper - if it were the whole season would be rejigged to start perhaps in March and run to November or whatever. I too hate the seeding as yes its tantamount to rigging, which detracts from the unpredictability and excitement of the tournament. As far as the geographic group split is concerned I can understand the cost minimisation reason behind it but it does mean that teams are going to face a smaller pool of potential opponents as time goes on; leading to staleness.

Its interesting that the SFA's independent report concludes that the Police, SFA itself and the stadium company were not to blame for the shameful cup final scenes. Neither club was to blame for the behaviour of the fans. Contrast this with the kangaroo court and subsequent report which hammered us after last year's play off final. If this new report is to be made public why wasn't our report made public? I suspect that the contents and recommendations would not have stood up to scrutiny.

A pet hate of mine too. It looked absurd on TV. I can understand why a club may want to restrict away fans to a particular tier of a stand in the name of crowd control but some, like Killie, take it to ridiculous extremes. A common sense approach would be to open up a few more rows a or a limited part of a stand. I've been in some grounds when latecomers have to search for a vacant seat when there are large swathes of seats taped off. As an aside I agree with Lobey Dosser that we really do need to bolster the central midfield. From posters' comments, I'm not sure Clay is the answer.

Killle were criticised by the BBC for their robust play yet they only had one player yellow carded as opposed to our 3???

A good opening day win, although I couldn't make it. It sounds as though we almost paid the price for wastefulness in front of goal. Good to see Ainsworth and Marvin scoring. How did Clay play? Any word about McHugh's injury?