craigkillie

There have only been 7 occasions of a club beating one in the semi and the other in the final, and only 4 of them came with both games at Hampden. Hibs in the 1901/02 Scottish Cup beat Rangers in the semi and Celtic in the final. The games were at Ibrox and Celtic Park though - semis weren't at neutral venues in those days, and the final was supposed to be at Ibrox but had to be moved because of the first Ibrox disaster. St Mirren in the 1925/26 Scottish Cup beat Rangers in the semi and Celtic in the final. The semi was at Celtic Park and the final was at Hampden. Killie in the 1928/29 Scottish Cup beat Celtic in the semi and Rangers in the final. The semi was at Ibrox and the final was at Hampden. Hibs in the 1972/73 League Cup beat Rangers in the semi and Celtic in the final. Both were played at Hampden. Aberdeen in the 1976/77 League Cup beat Rangers in the semi and Celtic in the final. Both were played at Hampden. Aberdeen in the 1982/83 Scottish Cup beat Celtic in the semi and Rangers in the final. Both were played at Hampden. Aberdeen in the 1989/90 League Cup beat Celtic in the semi and Rangers in the final. Both were played in Hampden.

They have never beaten any version of Rangers at Hampden.

Celtic's subs made them much worse, and came at terrible times. The only one that improved them was taking Yang off, and that would have been true even if they hadn't bothered to bring someone on for them. Ultimately at the end, Roos was utterly terrible in the shoot-out and Aberdeen hit several bad penalties, while Celtic, Hart aside, were pretty much spot on with theirs.

Examples have literally been given earlier in this thread, but it's a bit of a needle in a haystack situation to try and find these things because they're rare and in most cases hardly memorable. People don't tend to go around with big lists of all the refereeing decisions ever made in their head. If the officials think a goal might be scored then they're supposed to hold off on giving the foul or offside decision. I don't see how this weights things towards Celtic here. If he had followed your approach of not bothering to follow the proper guidance for these situations then he would have just given Celtic a free-kick straight away rather than allowing for the possibility of an Aberdeen penalty.

They absolutely can and do overturn subjective decisions if they think a mistake has been made. In this particular incident they presumably didn't think there was enough evidence that the referee was wrong in his original decision of a foul. This is how VAR is supposed to be used, we should only see a referee being overruled when he makes a clearly bad decision.

This is just simply wrong. The referee has to make a decision on the pitch and he shouldn't award a penalty if he doesn't think a penalty is the right decision. Robertson sees the potential foul and believes it is a foul, but allows play to continue because there is a promising attack. After the challenge on Hoilett stops the attack, he then goes back and gives the original free-kick. That is his way of indicating to VAR that he thinks it is a foul. VAR can then check the full incident, since play was live throughout, and there is a potential penalty to check. They will first check the free-kick to see if they think the decision is correct, and if they believed Robertson's decision was wrong then they could then roll on to look at the penalty decision. That is the correct procedure here.

I'm talking about posters on here, it's Clarke's job to know so that's different.

It wasn't even close to a foul on MacDonald, it was just shit defending and he knew it.

Unless the Euros go extremely badly or extremely well I'd expect Clarke to want to have another go at the World Cup.

This is the biggest problem with Gauld for me, nobody actually knows how he's doing in general because we only ever see and hear about the good bits.

It seems clear to me Clarke had a look at Turnbull and didn't really fancy him, hence him basically disappearing from squads of late.

I actually thought it was different to those types of ones, I thought it was a genuine overstretch for the ball from Hoilett rather than an attempt to buy the contact.

If the SFA are willing to go to those lengths to get an Old Firm final for marketing reasons, then it's obviously been the worst conspiracy of all time given that they haven't played each other in a Scottish Cup final in 22 years and have been drawn together in the semis on several occasions in the intervening period.

The correct way, as specified in the laws of the game, is for the referee to make an on-field decision. If he thinks it was a foul then he has to give the foul.

We are definitely entering Gauld territory now that we're down to sort of 7th choice in the attacking midfield positions for a squad place.

I think we would already know about it if the play-offs weren't happening next week.

You are correct that he gave a free-kick rather than a penalty, but he didn't do so before the Carter-Vickers challenge. He deliberately held the whistle because the ball was in an attacking area, which I would say is the right thing to do given the presence of VAR - it's similar to the assistant always delaying their flag. Therefore VAR absolutely was entitled to look at it, it's literally the whole reason for the referee's initial delay. However, they would need to overturn the original foul decision before they checked for the penalty, and that's hard to do even for one as soft as that. I think ultimately Aberdeen should have had a penalty, and there was a bit of justice done when they scored a couple of minutes later.

I've listed what I think would have been our planned 23-man squad if everyone had been fit, plus my prediction of the extra three if it goes to 26. I think finding replcements for Ferguson AND Armstrong is quite challenging, since we basically have no other attacking midfielders who have been used over the last couple of years. Fraser seemed an obvious replacement for Ferguson, especially since he can also offer RWB cover, but what do we do for Armstrong now? Turnbull hasn't been involved in nearly 2 years and it isn't happening for him at club level, Anderson was obviously called up but doesn't seem to want to play for us. Jack is obviously on the fringes, but does that leave us one attacking option short in a 23? And if it's a 26 he's already on my list anyway, so we're maybe looking for someone who hasn't been involved before. And if Hickey doesn't make it, that changes things again. I think McCrorie becomes a very interesting option now that he's playing regularly at club level and can also cover midfield too, which might let us pick another attacker. GK (3) Gunn Clark Gordon/Kelly DEF (9) Hickey Patterson Ralston Hendry Porteous McKenna Hanley Souttar/Cooper Tierney Robertson MID (8) Gilmour McGregor McGinn McTominay Armstrong ???/Jack Ferguson Fraser Christie McLean FW(3) Dykes Adams Shankland Extra (3) Taylor Jack/??? Brown

Steve Clarke has picked loads of "left-field" players (Dykes, Adams, Brown, Hendry etc). However picking a 22 year-old with 23 senior games under his belt, who hasn't kicked a ball since January, and who has displayed zero evidence of actually being good is less "left-field" and more "wildly risky". Feels a bit like when Donald Love played a couple of games for Man Utd and folk decided he must be good.

Dalry would do the job I reckon.

I reckon Kilwinning is probably wealthier than Kilmarnock on the whole now.

Dallas and Greg Aitken are full-time VAR referees and don't referee any matches on the pitch any more. I don't think they are "head" in any way though, it's just that they are "specialists".

Fucking hell. I pride myself on my grammar and I think old age really does turn your brain to mush.

I assume your point is about the inability to mystically predict the scorelines of those matches, but it's also a terribly constructed sentence.

The clubs could have considered not voting in two "guest teams" and would have had 4 fewer league games. That might have helped.