DC92

Football can be good sometimes.

Good evening.

Feels more like a 4-2 to me.

I think we've now opened the scoring within 20 minutes in 5 of our last 7 league visits to Glasgow. 1 point from 12 on the previous occasions, obviously.

Fair play for being hopeful, but that team is very clearly dreadful.

The thread title should just have been "Aberdeen 2-0 Heart of Midlothian". The lineup is slightly disappointing. I was hoping to see Tagawa continue to get a run rather than Vargas, who maybe has something about him, but has also had a lot more opportunities without contributing enough so far. Hopefully Lowry turns up.

Pretty sure there'll be Germany tickets left tomorrow at least. I know people who aren't bothering because of the price.

3x Cat 2 tickets secured. Relief.

11:45 according to the latest tweet from the SSC.

I was looking for an anecdotal indication of how the sales are going rather than speculation based on information I already know. Of course there will be people who've bought Category 2, but I've not seen anyone say they have.

Has anyone had to go Cat 1 or 2 yet?

We only lost 3 of our last 10 games that season. We just hardly ever won unless we were playing Rangers or Hibs. Anyway, I don't have to think about that now I get to watch Naisyball every week.

He's a mediocre Premiership keeper who makes mistakes from time to time, but I thought he seemed particularly nervy last night. The ball he dropped for no reason was bizarre and would've been the worst goal he's conceded for us by a considerable distance, maybe only rivalled by one at Rugby Park last season. Some people will point to the recent Scotland game, but he's rarely made howlers like that for us. That was likely another case where he knew he shouldn't really have been playing (lack of options notwithstanding). And responding to some other posts, he did make some good saves, but that was the instinctive stuff rather than decision-making/handling.

Aberdeen might be gash, but they do play Hearts at home this weekend. No result has ever been more assured prior to kick-off than their inevitable 2-0 win.

We are a dull, dull team this season. Always feels like game over whenever we go behind despite a reasonable start before that. Clark must have been spooked by the sight of Gordon on the bench. Not great. Still, other results couldn't have gone any better and we're getting close to having a full strength squad again for the first time in about 2 years, so that's nice.

It was already ticked, but cheers anyway! I stopped getting emails from them about 18 months ago. No idea why. Yeah, I saw similar on Twitter after I posted. It's all very likely moot for me as a 10-pointer anyway

I'm not reassured by that assurance given I didn't receive this afternoon's email.

We'll be under real pressure to get points against Hungary and Switzerland regardless of when we play them (unless we've already got 3 points v Germany). Playing the "easiest" game first can also put you under real pressure if you don't win what is likely to be a cagey match, and we'd have less winnable games to come (see Euro 2020). We can now play the first game with a bit of freedom knowing a defeat isn't a total disaster while Germany will be under huge pressure to perform and won't have played competitively together for ages. If we do get anything then there's some margin for error in the other two games.

I don't think it's s bad draw at all. I wouldn't fancy us to beat any of the Pot 1 teams, but getting Germany in the opening game might have been the best possible combination of team and fixture order. It'll be a brilliant occasion and a chance to catch them cold in their first competitive game for 18 months, even if they do improve (which they almost certainly will). Hungary are a good team but have probably punched above their weight in the last couple of years relative to the quality in their squad on paper. A lot of their more impressive results have come against the big teams so they're maybe the most likely to give Germany a bloody nose, but they have also wobbled at times against more mediocre teams. They drew away to Bulgaria, Lithuania and Montenegro in this last campaign, relying on late equalisers in two of them, and they lost home and away to Albania in the World Cup qualifiers. Romania or Albania would probably have been better for us but I'm glad we avoided improving Austria and Turkey teams. Switzerland was a bit of a sore one from Pot 4, but they're in that pot for a reason despite a fairly soft group this time and I'd say only the Path A or Path C winners would've been obviously better options. Basically it's a middle-of-the-road group and if we can't finish 3rd in it then we've no business being in the knockout rounds anyway.

It didn't even feel as if we were particularly good going forward for most of last season. We ran up the score a few times, but they were clinical performances rather than dominant attacking ones. I think the baffling Snodgrass tactic helped that to an extent by encouraging teams to press us high which left spaces for us to exploit. Now teams sit back and let us have the ball because they know Kent/Rowles/Baningime aren't going to hurt them. Ginnelly is also an obvious factor, but McKay is one people don't mention so much. He's a better player than Lowry and was still central to most of our good attacking play last season even if he wasn't as good as the year before. If our problem is breaking down deep defences then surely he's been a huge miss.

So, so dull. But we seem to be consistently getting results against the bottom 10 now. Played 9, won 7, drawn 1 and lost 1 in the matches not immediately after a European game. Feels like Naismith's success or failure will depend on whether those dreary single-goal wins start to turn into more impressive scorelines or dreary draws and defeats.

On last night's evidence, Brown is also behind Shankland in the "bringing others into play" role. He might have a bit of pace, but he was totally hopeless with his back to goal.

With Romania winning "away" to Israel and Switzerland dropping points at home to Kosovo, the former just need to avoid defeat at home to the latter to win the group. If that happens, Romania will be in pot 2 and Switzerland pot 4. Pot 3 is looking more and more appealing.

Belgium will almost certainly be in Pot 1, as long as they beat Azerbaijan at home. Austria will drop into Pot 2 or 3 depending on what we do tomorrow. These are the current projections:

If only we could be like Aberdeen and make a >£5m loss every year.