Panda

Myself and @RicoS321 held a zoom call with Barry Robson this morning and we've agreed on this for tomorrow. We also discussed speeding up the pie queues and introducing Fish & couscous, and bratwurst mit kase, into the half-time selection, after some European scouting this week.

Decent performance that frustratingly should have been a draw. Agree Jensen and Gartenmann look good. I'd be inclined to play MacDonald ahead of Rubezic though. Clarkson just couldn't get it going tonight. At points he was getting in the way of others players, like me trying to play fives. Was a brave call from Robson to take him and Shinnie off, but it worked and Barron was excellent when he came on. Is there a set-up to get Barron, Clarkson, Shinnie and Polvara all playing at the same time? Maybe at the expense of McGrath who has disappointed so far and could see Miovski getting frustrated with him tonight. Devlin though. Aye I fucking like him. Cracking signing. As for the match experience. Police marched us through a forrest for about 20 minutes to get to the away end. It was just bizarre looking out into the trees and seeing random coppers standing there keeping an eye on everything. Afterwards, though, with it raining heavily, it wasn't fun being marched back through that forrest.

Wrong thread probably buy can't find the "where are our former Dutchmen?" thread, but interesting to note that Jay Gorter is playing in the first team at Ajax. By the looks of things he replaced the first choice off the bench at the start of the season and has been playing ever since.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/66836361 Here. Same tactics Robson used the last time we were at Tynecastle too.

If you haven't watched last night's Sportscene, then at 6pm there's a snippet of it going up on the BBC social media that shows how alarming our long ball strategy was yesterday.

Not that I'm tipping us to win, but it wouldn't surprise me if we put in a credible performance in Frankfurt because the way we're set up under Robson is suited to playing a team likely to dominate possession. It's when you give us the ball we embarrass ourselves. We'll press them, hound them, the likes of Duk will find space to run on the counter. Be a bit like the Celtic game which was our best performance of the season. Frankfurt would be better just letting us have the ball, laugh as we try and pass it at 100mph, make mistakes, and then just pick us off.

Well we didn't lose the game today because we had lost heart in the last 10 minutes. I think the effort was there. Any notable strategy, tactics, ball control, defending, movement and trickery were all missing.

Thing is, I disagree with all this. We were up for it, we just - like we did under Goodwin - had no obvious game plan. We had two attacking tactics today. The first: Collect the ball just inside the Hearts half, launch it to the front two, and hope they can turn into Dennis Bergkamp and take a touch, turn the defender, create a yard of space and then add a sublime finish, all while hoping the defender stands and watches them. The second: Anyone who gets the ball within 30 yards of goal, take a shot. I've been defending Robson and urging people to give him time, but this is no way to play. We have players who can actually play football and we don't need to be shelling the ball forward from the first minute.

Guys, I think I have a problem.

Far too rushed. This playing with intensity isn't working, we just give the ball away. Slow it down, pass the ball properly, let Hearts (who are just as poor as us, goal apart) run themselves into a frenzy, and we've got the front players to make clever runs and open them up. Instead it's kick and rush followed by pot shots from the edge of the box.

Team as expected. Strong looking bench too. Head says 1-1, but I've also £1 on 2-0 to the good guys. I genuinely can't see us losing today. I think, for all the worry that we're not as strong as last season, our first XI looks better than theirs and we'll be right up for it today.

I don't mind the rule, people should be allowed to change, but I do think there should be a limit on the grandparent rule. Say a maximum of two in your squad. We could have Barnes, Anderson and Adams all using that rule. I think that's a bit of an overkill.

I was being sarcastic based on recent posts on this thread. For the record, I don't think we should give up a place at Euro 2024 in order to preserve our unbeaten run.

If we qualify it'll be nice to know we finished top two and all, but we shouldn't be considering actually going to the Euros. Playing some top nations will only hurt the confidence ahead of the World Cup qualifiers.

Snap to being in Glasgow and the standing section. Feel you need both of the above to be winning at life.

To be fair, Uefa rules say you can't charge away fans more than €25, so Frankfurt fans will also pay £21.50 at Pittodrie. But still, they're charging £13 for the standing section. Our unofficial standing section is £28.

Prices for Frankfurt away. Seated £21.50 Standing: £13

That's how they do it, threaten to cut your legs off so when you only lose your fingers your think you were lucky. Or something else less traumatic...

Nice and cheap ticket prices from Aberdeen for the group stage. If anyone from the club says they've had to put the prices up to maximise income due to a lower capacity for European games, just you remember that Dave Cormack wants to build a 16,000 capacity stadium.

So was I. But again, what was the reason for signing players late? Did they miss out on first targets? Did it take time to negotiate with clubs, players, agents? Did Robson perhaps want to delay in players (maybe he was waiting on Scales and Pollock, and only when they couldn't happen could we move for Jensen and Gartenmann)? If you're going to criticise them for not doing a good job, then you need to know why they couldn't do it. And none of us do. I wasn't meaning you, but many Dons fans have been criticising the club for either not getting the deal done or for "throwing all the eggs in one basket". Burrows was hitting back at fans criticising him and the club about it on Twitter.

Unless you've been shadowing the recruitment team for three months, then no-one can answer this as we have absolutely no idea if they messed up on transfers, didn't do their due diligence on players, and if everything else that goes into making a transfer happen was "amateurish" or not. At the beginning of summer we were praising the club for getting MacDonald, Devlin, Clarkson, Shinnie and (I think) Sokler all signed up before pre-season started, while clubs such as Hearts hadn't signed a single player. Then as soon as Teklic didn't happen, suddenly the recruitment team were getting criticised.

Should also be said, Gartenmann can also play right back if we wanted to play a four.

Or Dadia?

Just like they did in the first leg aye?

A diamond midfield is very much a thing. Especially when you lack wide players and want to play two up front. So play Clarkson as a 10, which Goodwin tried to do and failed with?