DC92

I see McAvoy says he'll be available. Although he's still not listed in our squad on the UEFA website, so I'm not convinced.

I don't think Vargas was registered for this round (Tagawa and Lowry were the wildcards). He might not have his visa by then anyway. But you're right, we've got a stronger team to choose from next week. Just wish we hadn't shot ourselves in the foot tonight when we could've just started Haring. In contrast to Beni, Boyce looks sharp and played well when he came on.

Disastrous mistake in the team selection, poor performance, players missing, shite ref and gave up a two-goal headstart, so I'll take that in the end. This really was an opportunity missed though. They're not that good and definitely worse than Zurich, but they've got a couple of decent players going forward and this result gives them the chance to sit in and hit on the break knowing that one goal gives us a mountain to climb again. Hopefully we never see Shankland up front on his own again. I get that options were limited for this game but we really look uniformly hopeless when we try this. We were far better when we brought a strike partner on, as was the case at the weekend.

Starting Beni in this game was a disaster of a decision. Clearly isn't up to speed yet, arguably at fault for both goals and now he's pulled a hamstring trying to stop the second. Rosenborg's gameplan seems to be to sit in, let us pass the ball around and hit us on the break and it's working a treat. They haven't had to work hard enough to score. We've been far too slow and cautious moving forward and they're not leaving any space in behind. The only positive is they look pretty average and if we can get it back to a goal we've got a chance at home. As things stand I'd be more worried about losing 3 or 4. Piss poor.

No Nieuwenhof, Tagawa, Vargas or McKay for tomorrow. Obviously no Gordon and Halkett either, and Boyce and Baningime still getting up to speed and probably won't start. I've seen a couple of journos tipping Cochrane to play at left-midfield ahead of Kingsley. I'm not sure if that's based on some ITK knowledge or if it's just speculation, but I hope that doesn't happen. Playing full-backs at wide midfield hardly ever seems to work. It's understandable if we want to prioritise being solid given we're away and have a few players missing, but it feels like their defence is there to be got at and we'd be playing into their hands a bit if we give them the initiative to attack our own questionable defence. With that in mind, I'd be tempted to try Oda up front with Shankland to give us some pace up there. Unfortunately that probably means putting Forrest in Oda's usual wide right position, but options are limited.

Seems we'll be without Tagawa due to visa issues. A shame given you'd expect his pace to be particularly useful in the away leg.

Looking forward to the "Icelandic big guy who is vaccinated against scoring goals" chucking Rowles aside like an empty tracksuit before tucking away his hat-trick.

One problem they've had is having to spend time and money bringing in players who were already there on loan last season, whereas we could've done nothing this summer and arguably got stronger just by virtue of the injury returnees. It would be very funny if they pay that for Scales, but I expect he'll end up back there on loan.

Aberdeen's remaining business is the main unknown at the moment. They've done well to sell a couple of fairly replaceable players for big fees on top of the European money, so I expect they've still got a lot of cash to spend while we're basically done. Still, at this point I'd rather have the squad mostly in place rather than a big wad of cash with a few gaps to fill. Just shuddered thinking back to Neilson's "you can see we need a few in" comment the night before deadline day last year.

Not implying any inside knowledge. Just that he's back from a long time out with a knee injury and missed a couple of months with another knee injury prior to that. Hopefully he's completely clear of it now.

5 wins and a draw in their last 6 now. Although they have benefited from a red card in 4 of those 5 wins, so maybe they've just been lucky rather than turning a corner. I'm cautiously optimistic, but I've seen Scottish sides going out to beatable opposition so often in recent years, including ourselves.

Rosenborg was an objectively good draw and their league form is poor (despite picking up recently). One thing I've noticed though, despite not scoring loads of goals, is that they typically have a lot of shots - 18 shots to 3 so far today against Haugesund with the score currently 1-1. I think Zurich were similar last year. Bet your house on them suddenly find their shooting boots against us. As long as we can keep it within a goal on Thursday and Jorge Grant doesn't play the second leg, we've got a decent chance.

Wouldn't be the first time.

I only saw the replay once so I don't remember it clearly, but my recollection was that he was off and the commentators agreed (having thought he was onside initially).

Watched on a stream. If it's the one where he had an effort saved by Clark then the replays showed Carey was offside.

Dignitas?

People usually tip the teams that finished the previous season with momentum or are perceived to have done a lot of business over the summer. Often that's not wrong, and plenty of Hearts fans have been doing the same. That said, Aberdeen did wobble a bit after their winning run ended and there were some signs of improvement for us in the last 6 games. I'm sure Aberdeen in particular will have a bit of cash still to spend in the rest of the window. Hopefully they have similar luck to us last August in that endeavour.

From observing here/Twitter/the media in general, there seemed to be a bit of a perception that we're a shambles who'll go backwards this season. Fair enough, we were dreadful towards the end of Neilson's time, the current "management structure" has extremely bad vibes, and it took us a while to start bringing players in. In the meantime, however, it looks to me like we've patiently built a squad that is significantly stronger than last year's. I found last summer hugely disappointing. The early signings like Forrest and Grant felt like squad filler and I was waiting for the European cash to bring us some big hitters, but we did nothing in July and August other than Shankland and Kio (who was shite). The first XI ended up being worse than the season before and then the spine of the team was crippled by injury before the group stages even started. This time Gino and Mikey Smith are the only starters we've lost. The latter was teetering on the edge of "finished" and Atkinson looks like he might finally be coming onto a game anyway. The former is a big loss, but with Oda emerging and Tagawa and Vargas coming in it definitely feels like we've got plenty of pacy options in the forward areas to cope with that loss. Despite last season's failure, we were third top scorers by a decent margin and it was really the defence that let us down. We haven't added much there, but I've always maintained that even a bog-standard centre-half who wins his headers would be a significant improvement. He'll definitely have harder games, but Kent won 9/9 yesterday and looks like he could be the type we need while Halkett recovers. In midfield, we had so many games where we had some combination of Halliday, Grant, Kio and Snodgrass and it felt so powderpuff and sluggish compared to the energetic ball-winning midfield we had the season before. When we restored the Devlin-Haring partnership towards the end of the season it made a big difference to our ability to impose ourselves on games. Beni has returned (for now) and we've added Nieuwenhof who is an unknown but at least seems to be more in the industrious mould. On top of that, Boyce's return and the addition of Lowry gives Shankland and McKay the competition they've been missing, and the way the fixtures have worked out, we may even have Gordon and Halkett back before we play Hibs or the OF. Another right-back is definitely needed and I wouldn't mind a physical option up front to mix things up, but we're looking pretty strong once everyone's back fit and bedded in over the next few weeks. All of that said, it's way too early to get carried away about finishing third. There are still unknown factors (the management situation, the defence hingeing on Kent's ability and Halkett's fitness, injury returnees, Hibs and Aberdeen's new signings, etc.) but I'm cautiously optimistic, much more so than last year.

I'm surprised by that. I think the first hour was pretty even, but we were the much better team in the end. It looked particularly ropy in the first 15, but we mostly settled down after that despite lacking invention in the final third. That last part isn't particularly surprising, though, since Shankland isn't a lone striker, Nieuwenhof isn't a number 10 and Forrest just doesn't have it. But I thought we looked really dangerous after Lowry and then Tagawa came on and could have scored a couple more, while I can't remember us conceding a single chance in that period. Yeah, St Johnstone were poor, but you can only beat what's in front of you and it was far from shite after making those changes. You'd think that second half team, with Shankland and Tagawa up front, and Lowry and Oda wide, will be much closer to how we line up for the rest of the season in these games. There's depth there now as well and we were missing quite a few today. Plenty of cause for optimism imo, at least in the attacking third.

I don't think it's a bad thing in Forrest's case either. He was lively and willing today, but he just doesn't have it.

Very uninspiring stuff for the first hour. Only one winner once we brought the subs on. Lowry was excellent and Tagawa looked lively and dangerous. Shankland and Oda were much more involved after those two came on. Kent had some dodgy passes, particularly early on, but it's a breath of fresh air to see a CB who can actually win a header. Encouraging.

Lovely stuff.

I think it's a necessity that one of them starts, but I'm also not usually a fan of Shankland up front on his own. Bench is strong. Hopefully we don't need it.

Can see this being a struggle. Hopefully that starting XI is the weakest we'll field this season.

Putting aside the rights and wrongs of loaning from the OF and Lowry's merits as a player, we've probably spent over £1 million on fees this summer and the squad is pretty much finished. I really doubt we've got room in the budget to spend another six-figure fee on a young player with sell-on potential to be back-up/competition to McKay. You're therefore looking at opportunistic loans to top up the quality in the squad at minimal cost. If we spend a few grand a week on a loan player and they help us to finish 3rd then it's absolutely not a financial lose-lose. Scales' goal v Rangers ať Pittodrie last season, which was crucial in winning them millions through European football, being a good recent example of that. This also potentially allows us to punt Jorge Grant to some English lower league dross for £100k, so that would be nice.