RicoS321

ICT also won 4-1 versus third in the table Stenny. They're on a very decent run of form and could potentially still make the playoffs even with their 15 point deduction. It would be mental if they gained promotion whilst still in administration.

Not to mention goals for Fyvie and Megginson. They owe us big time.

Aberdeen should always be separate from the rest. We don't want our match day threads soiled by some filth about the scum or diet scum. Edit: although I would have no issue with a thread for the semi final being created.

It was a swipe at the James Wilson we had a few years back. Jambo JW was fairly quiet up here in the last game. I actually think Bobby Wales at Killie looks the better player, but he's a year older.

Fantastic. Well deserved. Nobody called James Wilson should be allowed to play professional football in my opinion.

How does it work, given premier have both semi final games? Do premier get to choose one game that is exclusively theirs, then the BBC have to take the other? Or do premier just take both and the BBC picks one too? In other words, is there a chance they both show the Tims? I take it there isn't any upside for premier to choose our game, because they'll get a portion of viewers from other parts of the country/world that aren't accessible to the BBC because of the 8 billion Tims? In that case, they get all our viewers, plus the Tims not using Scottish cooncil telly.

It's too late for that. Edit: I just checked, he's never played in Europe, so I doubt if he's played against Thelin.

Surely to fuck the national cup semis should both be on at 15:00? Fucking 12:30 on a Saturday is a pain in the fucking ringpiece.

Really? Someone who had actually seen him play wanted to sign him? Seems unlikely.

Thelin. Although I don't think he was long in the door (maybe hadn't even started) and I'm fairly certain it was the recruitment team presenting that one to him. Ambrose and Molloy would have been his first experience of our recruitment approach - a fine illustration of our 50% strike rate!

Duncan was only 20 last season, hopefully he's improved with game time. Agreed about Okkels, and the option to buy is something we should be looking for in all loanees, unless they're effectively emergency loans like Dorrington. Yep MacLennan or Kennedy is about right. He's diligent and a good team player (although Duncan was also reliable doing the tracking back), with the odd moment of good skill. He's had a good cross for an assist and a good finish for a disallowed goal. I'd say that players like Okkels are very easy to come by. I was hesitant about offering hoilett a deal at the end of last season, and he was much better than Okkels.

I held it last month, did you not get your invite? It was very well attended, from across the globe.

You're not supposed to tell us the answer to the quiz. It doesn't make for a fun evening.

He played one more game in the league and scored one more goal, two more games in the cup but one less goal, 10/34 for Ambrose, 10/31 for Miovski. Roughly the same, basically. Difficult to say what that tells us, other than data doesn't tell us much about a player! In theory, we should have been able to take data from Ramadani and Miovski, and populate that back into other data in the Hungarian league to get a good feel for what works between the two leagues. Because that is the key issue we have when scouting. We could look at actual performances of Devlin and McGrath and have a very good idea what they offer in the SPFL playing against SPFL players, but we can't make those same assumptions when buying foreigners. The other difficult is knowing whether they were just good because a team could carry them, or if the quality was of their own making, which you can get a fairly good idea of when buying in Scotland. I seem to remember that Ambrose's YouTube reel was even fairly gash, but I could be wrong! Are there reasons, such as failure to settle in the city, extreme nerves etc that could have effected him? Possibly. Or is it more likely that the Hungarian league, for the most part, is at a level below SPFL and that a player like Ambrose could manage 10 goals at his peak, whereas Miovski was being under-utilised by his teammates abilties and had acres of development potential? I'd guess the latter. It'd be really interesting to hear how the club used its data, not only to find Miovski, but to feed it back in to find Ambrose. What sort of quality checking occurred beyond the data by watching in-person, and looking for areas where we see opportunity for improvement. I'm hoping the club can really build on their recruitment strategy, but it does feel a little like data-based guesswork at times! A bloody difficult job, certainly. An interesting comparison for Ambrose might be Rudden for QP at the weekend. When he was coming through for Partick, he looked very good: scoring goals, making a nuisance of himself and being strong and aggressive. Dundee (I think) took a punt on him to make the step up, but he never managed it. He was always lacking the pace over ten yards, the touch to take it down quickly and bring others in, or the quick feet that might win him space. A good all-round performer, that could be made better with fitness coaching and so on, but with a limited ceiling at Championship and maybe lower end Premiership with a lot of work. I think Ambrose has a similar ceiling. The couple of good layoffs he had at the weekend were after 2 seconds to get the ball under control, and safe offloads to a guy in space - something Rudden could easily have done at the other end. Only one of the two scored their only chance (although Ambrose did well with his header).

He's just a crap signing, which is entirely expected in the world of football transfers. We have them every season. I'd say that he has significantly less footballing attributes than Calvin Zola did. It's a problem, because every year we have a young player who doesn't get minutes on the pitch because we have to keep trying the guys we've invested in (both financially, and the manager/cub's reputation for signings). The problem isn't necessarily Ambrose, it's the fact that we'll (hopefully) ditch Ambrose in the summer, only to replace him with another attempt at finding the next Miovski. That keeps Boyd firmly on the bench, fulfilling a quota. It might be a different player, like Emslie or Marshall or whoever, of course. I've been the first to say that Boyd isn't ready for the first team, so perhaps he isn't the best example, but he's the one who we've designated to be benchwarmer this season. The opposing argument would be that if they are good enough then they'll get a game. However, that assumes that there is no period of grace whatsoever, that they should hit the ground running and that they won't improve after getting used to the pace and physicality of first team football. But that is exactly what we afford all our dud signings every single year. I mentioned it many times under McInnes, and we haven't really had a settled platform to work with since then, that we need to set targets and quotas for young players coming into our first team (and preferably publicise it and ask for fans' support and patience). Whether that be minutes on the park, or number of homegrown players, it needs to be formalised so that the manager knows what he has to work with and how he's going to build his squad at the beginning of each season. It may also help to plug the drain of young talent going to warm benches down South if they can see a written-in-stone path to first team appearances up here. Again, Ambrose getting on wasn't a massive issue, it just should have been later in the match, to give our young lad the best opportunity to learn from the experience on the park. I remember McInnes would bring Bruce Anderson on for fifteen minutes if we were playing well, but he'd immediately take off, say, Cosgrove or whoever that could have helped him into the game. He'd be playing up front on his own, with balls flying over his head, against 6ft5 defenders. There seemed to be no plan as to how we could gently coach these young lads into the first team, and that appears to still be the case. Hopefully Thelin has bigger plans in this regard in the coming seasons.

So you don't think the draw is fixed, but then go on to show the unlikelihood of us not meeting hearts in a semi? Sounds exactly like a fix to me. I think it's clear to everyone in Scottish football that the establishment is trying to separate the dandies and the diets in order to set up the dream final.

Tims v Dons at 6am on a Tuesday

The difference being that both of those lads had some defining attributes that could be worked on. Morris obviously his ability to run towards the byline and cross. Gueye, the fact he's a unit, good in the air, has some degree of skill and quite quick if he actually gets up to speed (although I'm still not entirely convinced by him). Ambrose doesn't really have any defining features. He takes three touches to control a ball, has strength, a little maybe, but doesn't use it, slow and an unintelligent footballer. Okay in the air in the box. African Tommy Wright basically. However, he's here at a time when we've cut out a lot of the rot in the squad, which wasn't the case when Morris and Gueye were at their worst. Getting rid of those two was as much about getting numbers out the door so we could freshen up. We've sort of managed to do that, but Ambrose has to be top of the list to leave in the summer, alongside Besuijen, Jensen (Richard!) and McGarry. I don't think we're writing off Ambrose too soon, the long term manager regularly doesn't include him in match day squads and only gives him unnecessary minutes when 4-0 up against championship sides.

Ambrose is dogshite, if we're going to the bench for him this season, then we've failed, or our squad has been hit by the black death. He should have been sent on loan in January, and should be nowhere near our bench just in case Jimmy is tempted like yesterday. The only other criticism would be that Nisbet was still buzzing around and full of energy when he was taken off. He would have brought Boyd into the game nicely - he's been playing like a captain in there recently, telling others where to be and geeing them up. Give him another ten minutes and then bring Polvara on for him. Clarkson, Morris and Shinnie were all really struggling later in the game, and the extra sub would have been fine. Give Ambrose the last ten if you must, to keep him involved, but he's done nothing to deserve minutes otherwise. No major criticism, just I thought that we didn't give a young player the support he needed, which is something I regularly criticised McInnes for too. I think it shows in our relatively poor conversion from youth to first team.

All three are better than Ambrose, who is clearly a Russian asset, spying on the Dons for Putin's favourites (the Huns).

Emslie with a couple, so far, for Cove Hun today. No chance on earth that they looked at the lad and thought: you're not as good as Ambrose.

@OrlandoDon is right though, bringing on Ambrose does ruin a nice day out, the guy is honking. He's not a young lad coming through, he's had his chance and proven he's a terrible footballer/competition winner. As mentioned earlier in the thread, at least give Boyd ten minutes alongside an in form Nisbet to help walk him through the game. Gueye was a fun addition at least, but Ambrose shouldn't be playing professional football. That aside, a great performance against a poor side. Clarkson again was great, Knoester, Shinnie and Nisbet too. Not convinced Dabbagh is any better than Sokler, but worked hard and two good goals after a fresh-airer. Boyd doesn't look ready for first team action. Polvara looked decent (and in response to your earlier post OD, we have to have an attacking number ten and just leave Polvara alongside one of the other midfielders), Milne was fine and Gueye was Gueye. Great win and through to another semi.

Very interesting lineup. The good thing about Shinnie left back, is that you can move him central if required, and potentially make a more attacking sub. I reckon he'll get a goal from left back today though.

If I'd known it was Considine, I'd have stayed at home to watch it. Queens v Livi would be a great final. Although I'd grudgingly settle for us versus Livi.

Didn't realise it was on the BBC today. They're determined to witness us in another cup upset. Car broken, so just about to get on the train. Thankfully I checked this morning as the later train has broken down. Expect a punch up with some queens on the train like. 4-0 the Dons. Topi, Nisbet, Dorrington and Nilsen with a misplaced pass that trickles beyond the keeper (he's unlikely to actually shoot).