BobbyBiscuit

No, I'm absolutely not saying that.

I think we should take a cap off all those who called off. Don't see why the guys who actually wanted to play for their country should be penalised. Look at what it meant to both McKenna and Shinnie.

Nicky Maynard plucked from a team not long to be relegated to League 2. Josh Parker plucked from fuck knows where. There are success stories from the lower leagues in England and there are those which just don't work out and you wonder why the manager has signed the player and what he has seen in him to believe he would be good enough for us. Each signing should be based on how the individual performs for us and everyone deserves that chance. One thing which does hamper us is the lack of quality in the lower leagues in Scotland which used to be a very successful area for us; the likes of Archibald, McDougall, Weir, Stark, McKimmie,, Grant, McQueen and Irvine all signing from small(er) Scottish sides. There aren't players coming through the "big" sides of their quality never mind in the lower leagues. However, if we do want to improve, then I think we have to change where we shop, or at the very least, mix it up a bit.

I was disappointed in that film. Didn't show enough footage - particularly in terms of Celtic and Scotland. The History Channel are having a football fortnight. A lot of new documentaries, a decent one on Italia 90 with Butcher, Paul Parker, Lineker, Toto Schillachi, Roger Milla and Lotthar Matthaus. They are also showing One Night in Turin which I've recommended on here before. Watched a "Head to Head" programme last night which was Platini vs Zidane - Linker, Ryan Giggs, Matthaus and Jermaine Jenas debate who was the best player out the two. There are others coming up - Maradona v Pele and Beckham v Bale

Sad, sad news. Met him just the once but even from that one brief meeting you could tell he was a good guy who loved the Dons. Never knew until yesterday that he was playing for the reserves aged 14, 1st team debut at 16, that's something else that and a sign of how good he was and how highly regarded he was by his coaches. RIP Tattie

Do you want them to show it live when it's not actually being played?

That's not a great squad. A lot of players there who are much of a much-ness. Some decent players, but not going to win a world cup. Probably not going to come anywhere near it. Very little creativity in the team bar Alli. No outstanding, dominant centre back. Same for goalkeeper. So I can't see them keeping the goals out at the other end. They'll rely a lot on their full backs getting forward into good positions for crosses, as the tournament goes on that just won't be enough. Out in the round of 16 to Colombia

Double jeopardy rule (or law, to be precise). Jones made an attempt to play the ball, but happened to bring him down, therefore it's a penalty and a yellow (if the ref deems apt). If no attempt was made to play the ball with the player through on goal it would be a penalty and a red. Or something along those lines.

Bryan Robson would have been captain of England then. Butcher only in his absence, which admittedly would have been quite a lot....

Italy and Holland aren't there because they are piss poor - if they were there they would have the same chance as England to win it - fuck all. England's squad is as poor as I can ever recall. I'm looking forward to the World Cup, the last one was really enjoyable, but it's a month of football, it can never exactly be bad, can it?

Is Ball versatile though? The only time he's looked passable is in the defensive midfield position. I would rather we got someone better - he's done ok recently in fairness to him but he's a footballer who looks uncomfortable with a ball at his feet, and for playing in the centre of the park that's pretty criminal. I would hope we can do better than Ball.

If Shinnie is earmarked for midfield then we need a pacy, overlapping left back to come in. We miss the threat from the full back area when Shinnie isn't there - although yesterday's exception was rather nice and welcome. Considine can then go into central defence once McKenna leaves...

This is pretty much how I see it. Frustrating that we end up only 9 points behind Celtic when so many points were surrendered so meekly. I know many will say that if we were closer to Celtic they'd have kicked on and that is probably true, but we have to at least ask the question and see if they can cope with that pressure. I hope the club takes the attitude that we can contend for the very top of the league and aren't merely content with competing for 2nd spot. Always going to be hard for us given the disparity in budgets of course, but we have to aim for the top. Yesterday was a great result, and a good team performance. Hopefully that shows the players they can do it, and it gets that monkey off McInnes's back too which is a good thing. Big summer coming up for us, I hope we show a wee bit more creativity in terms of signings.

Would it make you feel better if the teen was on more than the minimum wage?

And to you DD. Think i'll stick Gothenburg 83 on later and enjoy with a few glasses of red, thankful that our club reached those heights and thankful that the team and management are all still with us after this last week

Huns linked to John McGinn, coincidentally before they play McGinn's team in a match the huns must win...

Clearly not the case in either instance.

Exactly Manc. Performances, in the main, have been pretty sub-standard across the season. So, on one hand it would be only right to say that in those circumstances it is an achievement in itself to still be in with a chance of 2nd. On the other, you could also say that even a slight improvement in performances and therefore results would have seen us at least apply a bit of pressure on Celtic and at least having wrapped up 2nd place. But we have a manager and too many in the support who don't think like that. Happy to be second. Brendan's team are too good, we can't touch them. We can't get close to them, so we'll aim for second. A few players this season have really carried us through and credit to them. Too many individuals have not pulled their weight this season. The horrible period of McInnes flirting with the huns, two really poor cup exits and wilting against the OF continually means I'll also be relieved when this season is over. Good recruitment is essential this summer, DM has admitted that he bought poorly last summer, a repeat of that is unthinkable if we actually want to challenge for silverware.

It's incredible the number of players you see slipping on surfaces these days, it's almost as if they haven't just had a half hours warm up on the same surface.

Christie could easily have halted Tavernier's progress as well, fuck knows he wasn't doing anything else last night. Stewart, again, should have been played behind the striker when he came on, putting him on the wing gives us nothing and wastes his abilities.

Also, I had said on the way up to Pittodrie last night that it would be a gift if the huns play Halliday at left back. And they did, and yet we never exploited it. We always went down the other wing, trying that floaty ball in behind Tavernier which he got wise to pretty quickly. Why didn't we switch GMS to try to get him running at Halliday? Pretty simple stuff, baffling we never attempted to make more of it.

Cosgrove did well, he's still a bit raw and needs coaching but I think he's showing promise. I wouldn't want him to be first choice given the style of football that will mean but there will be games where he will be very useful for us. Thought we showed far greater intensity last night than we have against them previously but we dropped out of it when McLean got his knock. A draw was probably fair; haven't seen a replay of it but I thought Lewis was slow to react to the second ball at their goal, but ultimately last night was the same as a lot of matches this season - we just don't create enough chances these days.

Fannying about with the defence and general set up/make up of it is exactly what killed us against the same opponents earlier this season. It's our home match, play to what we're comfortable with and go at them. McInnes has proven time and again that as soon as he gets "too clever" with his tactics/line up it goes horribly wrong. But he's also proven when we stick to our tried and tested it is successful more often than not.

Shite news. Fingers crossed for him, got no doubt he'll battle all the way.

Have to say TC that Mason was a superior player to Richardson (as good as Rico was, and they were obviously different types of player). Mike Newell was an absolute carthorse for us. Looking at these teams, we've not had a fantastic amount of success with foreigners over the years.