Dons vs Tims

[RicoS321]

Lovely night. Perfect conditions. We played well and were unlucky in the end not to get a point. They just had a little bit more quality. When you give up that amount of possession, it only takes one error, and unfortunately Devlin - who had been brilliant up against maeda - had his eye on the man instead of the line. I do think that if it had been Rubi and not Molloy, he'd have dived in to block the shot (or give away a pen!), but Molloy was very good again so it's not a criticism. Nilsen and Shinnie were really good in the middle, and the team was very well organised overall. Doohan and McGarry did well. McGarry could probably have cleared before the goal, he was letting a lot come down that side, but he should have been off 5-10 minutes earlier as he'd put in a shift and was visibly struggling (as was Devlin, but he's played ninety minutes every week and is used to it). Good to see Polvara back, he's going to be an asset in the coming weeks. 

Hopefully back to winning ways at the weekend. 

[manc_don]

Thought Polvara looked very good when he came on, which is exactly what we needed. Is nilsen suspended this weekend? 

[tlg1903]

It was interesting to see Polvara preferred to Palaversa though Polvara was being played far further forward than Palaversa would be.  It's also interesting the extension for Palaversa hasn't been triggered which makes me suspect he would be on a bigger wage if we do and we aint sure he's worth it in the grand scheme of things. 

Despite the loss I'm not very disheartened, I never thought we would challenge long term but we were very unfortunate not to get something from that.... and if Clarkson takes his chance just before they score then we very easily could have won it.  We defo looked far more defensively stable than we have for a while last night which i take the greatest pleasure in.  You could argue the conditions hampered celtics possesion based style more than ours but we didn't really give them much all game and credit to Mcgarry who put his shaky performance against hearts in the bin and turned in a really solid one in last night.  I really did fear for him last night going up against Kuhn but he dealt with it well.  Also huge credit to Doohan, an early stop did his confidence the world of good and looked pretty assured the rest of the game (which eases the mind about Mitov's abcense going forward).

I've seen a few grumbles about Keskinen recently and they are not all without merit.  I was saying to my pal last night he's just not really lit up a game yet but I'm hopeful it's just a get settled in a new league and country thing and he will show us why we spent big on him in the second half of the season.  On wide men, I wouldn't mind seeing vinny get a start on Sat, I thought he looked good when he came on and, like morris, he defo seems to be getting his head up a bit more when on the ball......  Duk on the other hand was far more wasteful and posed little threat bar falling over when losing possesion. 

Looking forward, ST J is a must win game if we are serious about second but then we are off for 2 weeks....   which I think could be a blessing in disguise as after we are home to hibs, away to Kilmarnock, away to utd, home to county and then away to motherwell in the space of 15 days.  That's pretty gruelling but it's the same fixture list for all our opponents and we should be looking to take maximum points from that run of games imo.  I'm not saying there are not tough fixtures in there but none of them are getting a free fixture weekend in the build up to it and we have a better squad than all of them.

[Reekie_Red]

Watched the extended highlights of this game the other day. So.ething that struck out to me was every single Celtic corner, they had someone pushing Doohan into the nets. Looked like the ref picked this up once. But I remember seeing this in the 6-0 and the 2-2 draw as well.

Is this legit? Can they do this? Seems highly suss to consistently target taking out the keeper in every corner kick