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This team just continues to mess with us. Are we good or not? In that first 45 minutes we've been excellent. It has been long balls, but there's been at least some thought behind it rather than aimless punts. The front two are causing the back line problems, and the midfield three are pushing up quickly to get on the second balls. It's not pretty football, but it's been effective. It's not a case of us just taking the one chance that's fine our way; Solker and McGrath have had big chances either side of the goal. Only concern is we're inviting Rangers to make crosses too much, and our back three haven't dominated as much. Really, Rangers probably should have one too.

Could also be a 5-3-2, which could be long balls into the channels to the two front men, although at least we'd have people to actually chase those punts. If McGrath and Clarkson aren't too detached from the front two then it could be alright. Good to see McGarry on the bench too. And Milne, who I thought we had loaned out!

Had a good home record as had a habit of scoring quite handsomely at Pittodrie early in the season, but were shocking away from home - only won two league away games in Goodwin's time as manager.

Stats, miniskirts, etc. Robson's highs are still better than any high Goodwin managed. But the performances v Celtic, Kilmarnock and Hearts in particular match up with Goodwin's December and January failings that ultimately earned him a meeting with the FMB. I'm not for a minute calling for Robson to be sacked. I think he deserves until January at least and we'll assess it then. But those highs of winning at Ibrox and Hampden, and encouraging away showings v PAOK and Frankfurt, are like a boxer getting beat up but managing to throw enough punches to convince the referee not to stop the fight. There could be the peculiar situation where we fall further behind third place, turn in some more terrible performances, but win the League Cup. Could the board sack the manager two weeks after he's won a trophy?

According to Burrows on Twitter, not yet. We're also not quite getting 19,500 tickets.

According to Steve Agnew he's in contention.

Philippe Clement hasn't been tested yet. Slapping aside Hearts, Hibs, Livingston and St Mirren is to be expected. Lunchtime at Pittodrie is when we see what he's actually about. Unfortunately I have no idea what Aberdeen will turn up. Will it be the passing version that is organised, defends well and creates good opening for Miovski? Or will it be the two passes then a punt up the park version? If Team A turns up we've got a chance. Team B, no. It's mine, Jim Bett and Xabi Alonso's joint birthday on Saturday so was looking forward to this, but they moved it to the Sunday and the three of us have dinner plans that day now, so won't be going.

Unless I'm confusing you for someone else, you have not spent a single day of your life at the BBC, so have literally just made all that up and convinced yourself it must be true. You also know fine well I can't reply to any of it.

No, they don't. The BBC are currently banned from Celtic press conferences (not a secret, pretty common knowledge), their "clout" hasn't sorted that one, so it's not enough to demand an interview with Doncaster. I could actually tell you a few things about Doncaster and the BBC, but maybe not on a public forum. Doncaster would just release a statement, and that would be it.

He actually has a two-year notice period. So if they want to get rid of him, they have to wait two years before he actually goes. To get him out straight away would cost close to £1m in compo. Not worth the hassle I think most clubs will say. He's also a very convenient scapegoat.

Neil Doncaster tends to reject interview requests which is why you rarely hear from him. The only time you do is when he's got good news to announce like a sponsorship deal. An absolute cretin of a man who should have been punted years ago.

Actually appears the club have messed up here. I didn't realise it went from 200 loyalty points straight to general sale, with fans able to buy four tickets per account. So if you haven't been to a game since the 2014 final you can buy a ticket plus three more for your pals who aren't even registered, while loyal fans who have been all season but didn't realise they went on sale at 5pm are going to miss out.

General sale started at 5pm. Two hours later and only a handful of tickets left. Either club have held a significant number of tickets back, or everyone realises our name is on the trophy.

Aberdeen emailed me and said "As a supporter with 200+ Priority Points you have access to tickets etc etc" and I thought "nice one, I have over 200 loyalty points. What great news to wake up to." Went to the website. I don't have 200 loyalty points. Have complained to the club, and was delighted to hear an hour ago the person who made the error has been sacked. Bought my cup final ticket through a supporters club.

Are they both genuinely shit or is Robson just not picking them? We'd be saying MacDonald is a waste too if we hadn't already seen him play last season. I would say though that we should make another stab for Mattie Pollock. Just three substitute appearances this season for Watford, he was tweeting about Aberdeen the other day when we made the cup final which - as everyone knows - is his way of saying he wants to sign a three-year deal. Other than that we don't need to sign anyone. Squad is fine as long as no-one gets sold. Robson is learning and improving on the job all the time. Save the transfer cash and put it towards improving the transport options to Kingsford ahead of the new stadium being built. Is the rest of the £25m going to be in add-ons? It troubles me that our future manager Andrew Considine is now learning from Craig Levein.

Frankfurt v Aberdeen: 55,000 (2,300 reds) Aberdeen v Helsinki: 16,316 Aberdeen v PAOK: 16,089 PAOK v Aberdeen: 22,000 (744 reds)

I'd say no to that, but what I would say is Robson's attempts to manage the fitness levels has been hopeless. He waited until 3-0 to change anything, making three subs between the 78th and 81st minutes. Shinnie - Barron Polvara - Duncan Hayes - Duk Essentially, three like for like subs (position wise), a "freshen up" for the last 10 minutes, which turned into 20 minutes. Maybe Duk went into a front two, I can't remember in all honesty. At 3-0 the game is gone. Miovski, who has ran after scraps all day, is about to go on international duty. Take him off. I'd even go so far as to suggest one of the demoralised back line should have gone off too.

I only wrote that three days ago. Today was pathetic, like watching a different team. The first half pretty much everyone in the back line, including the two wing backs, were just beaten so easily. Just too static - Yang, O'Reilly, Kyogo and Palma's movement was too much for us. Now they'll do that to a lot of teams, but we were astonishingly bad. The problem was we never had an outlet. Every clearance went back to Celtic. Very few passes were being put together. There's no use having Clarkson sitting in the hole trying to spray passes to Hayes and Polvara, whose movement and pace aren't there. On Thursday, PAOK offered a different threat in that they attacked from wide, which suited Aberdeen as Devlin and Mackenzie could go meet their wide men while the back three covered. Today Celtic came through the middle and overlapped, which we seemingly were not prepared for. In the second half, we actually improved somewhat. We tried to push a higher line and tried to press higher. We were still poor going forward, but defensively Roos wasn't having to bail us out as often. But the penalty is followed by us just falling apart. To go from 2-0 to 6-0 in such a short space of time is frighteningly bad because we shouldn't we getting turned over like that.

Barry Robson's record in three games at Celtic Park 0-4 0-5 0-6 Progress.

Yeh, would have dropped Polvara or Hayes and played Barron, but Rico made such a fuss about it that Robson has placated him. If we lose today I want Rico out.

I don't know if they work outside the U.K.

Like I said, they've started once together this season. I certainly haven't seen enough to suggest they can't play together, you say you have. That's your opinion. But how many they started under Goodwin is irrelevant really. Oh, so he can play in more than one position? Not necessarily, you can also pick a style that suits the players you have. He wouldn't necessarily play the same role as Duncan on account he's a different player with different attributes. i also explained the 5-4-1 against PAOK didn't necessarily stay as that and in a few games now we've shaped into a 5-2-2-1, which for me I think Clarkson could excel in. He wouldn't spend 90 minutes camped as a wide midfielder. Him and Clarkson didn't work against Hibs because we had three players all dropping deep and we became too congested. That isn't necessarily down to the individuals, Polvara didn't really go on and offer anything different. Ultimately though, like I've already said, it's essentially a hypothetical argument we're having here.

I disagree we've found Clarkson's best position or how to utilise him best. I think if you ran a poll on this site you would see a split if opinions over where exactly he should be playing - whether Barron is in the side or not. Your argument is essentially "I don't think it'll work" rather than "this has been tried repeatedly and hasn't worked". So it's a bit of a hypothetical argument. We've 100 games between now and the end of the year and I'm sure at least once we'll see both play together, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

You might be right. There may not be a system that allows Clarkson and Barron to both co-exist. However, how many games have the two actually started together? I'll tell you, one. There's been three other occasions this season where they've played the last half an hour together. You can't come to a conclusion from such a small sample size that the two can't play in the same team. The two individually haven't even played enough games to have nailed down a position that we know is best for them. It took about three years to do that for McCrorie. To answer your other question, the 5-4-1 is actually fluid into a 5-2-2-1 which it was at times on Thursday. Duncan was receiving the ball in areas of the pitch where Clarkson would have made better use of the ball, one example would be his passing would release an overlapping full-back. Even if he's quiet in a game like Miovski was in the semi-final, he can produce something that Duncan can't.