DC92

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.

Pre-international break sackings are pretty common and this one also roughly coincides with the end of the first round of fixtures. Gone after we get gubbed 4-0 on Sunday imo.

Obviously I like Shankland as a player, but he's only likely to be useful against the dross in qualifying. Nisbet is similar. I don't see there being much use for either at the tournament proper. Stewart I've seen less of, but maybe he adds more of a chaos factor with his height and mobility? If he stays fit and keeps up his recent scoring rate he'd probably be my pick. Tommy Conway might be an outside bet if he keeps developing.

Their group was no easier than normal and they won it easily, scoring freely and playing some great football. They were well on top against Belgium until the penalty award and Spinazzola's injury but saw the game out fine. They had to dig in against Spain but ultimately they beat them the same way any team beats Spain. They were the better team for the majority against England in the final. They did make heavy weather of the Austria game but it's rare for a team to go through the whole tournament without the odd scare. In fact, it's hard to find many recent tournament winners who haven't gone through any (Brazil v Turkey 2002, Italy v Australia 2006, Spain v Switzerland/Chile/Paraguay 2010, Germany v Ghana/Algeria 2014, France v Australia/Denmark 2018, Argentina v Saudi/Australia 2022). Their win was much more alike the teams listed above than a Portugal team that didn't win a game until the semis or a Greece team that was built entirely on not conceding.

Nah. Italy were a really good watch at that tournament and scored some brilliant goals. Loved watching Spinazzola and Chiesa down the left in particular. They an out of steam a bit towards the end and had to rely on their defence more but it's a nonsense to say they shitfested it.

I think their underperformance under Martinez is way overblown tbh. They were excellent in 2018 and came up against an even better team in the semis. At Euro 2020 they skooshed their group, beat Portugal in the 2nd round and again narrowly lost to the eventual winners. They did underperform at the World Cup but the quality of the squad was definitely on the downturn by that point. Lukaku also missed about 4 sitters in that Croatia game.

Someone post the gif of him faceplanting.

Hutton's peak for us lasted from about September-November 2007 when he was genuinely brilliant. After that he was ok but not Hickey's current level.

Grant should be starting imo. Lowry has only played well off the bench so far.

We have scored 5 goals in 7 games and are 4th.

Literally nothing has happened.

I should say that the "3-0" here refers to the number of subs made by each side at half-time.

Maybe the most hideous line-up we've put out all season. It is actually physically impossible for me to imagine this combination of 11 players putting in a display that is anything other than eye-bleedingly shite. 3-0 Hearts.

I haven't been paying much attention. I take it Hibs fans think they're good now?

Yeah, that's definitely what it means, rather than being a criticism of those in charge of the club. Fans of any club are entitled to point out when they feel the running of the club is not in keeping with the quantity of money they are putting in. See the amateurish handling of the management situation as the latest example.

This was how he came across for most of his playing career with us. It was one of my main concerns about him as a manager aside from his lack of experience.

Jesus Christ. If that's the problem then we'd be better off bringing Neilson back.

He'll get the 3 games pre-international break at an absolute minimum. Annoyingly, that includes a derby. Embarrassingly for the board, this run is probably about as bad as the one that got Neilson the sack. He had a fair bit of credit in the bank as well.

Devlin as a #10 was inspired stuff. It was like watching prime Ryan McGowan under John McGlynn. Glad we persisted with it for an hour.

McAvoy must have been back in charge today.

Steven Naismith is a really bad manager.