ProfessionalCynic

Bound to. They don't have the bottle.

He'll be plane if Villa beat Rapid.

Though he's also just given away a penalty.

Well, sort of, but he could easily have put McCulloch in a 3-man midfield with Edu and Davis, or picked Wylde instead. None of us would have been thrilled, but none of us would have been astonished either. I think Coisty's made some dodgy tactical decisions, and at least once (the Lafferty injury) been sort of forced into making good changes, but I think he's got to get some credit for today.

He's put in some shocking performances this season, but we do miss Whittaker. He gets skinned alarmingly often, but at least he's normally in roughly the right position before that happens. Bartley seemed to think he was on the right side of a back 3 at times today (and against Aberdeen, where his positioning for the goal was woeful.). Also, he can cross a ball. Broadfoot can occasionally do it; Bartley can't do it at all as far as I can tell. Not a full-back. I think an on-form Whittaker - who we haven't seen this season - is definitely better than Broadfoot: given his pre-injury performances it's an open question and I'd give Kirk a run to stake a claim at least until Whittaker's fit again, and then make a decision. Both are much better options than Bartley, who should not be fielded in that position again.

It's in the 'Edu's new found ability/confidence' thread. I said 'At least you didn't launch into a volley of unmerited abuse at me or anything': I was meaning to respond to you saying 'sorry, replied to the wrong post' by basically saying 'don't worry about it, it's not as if you directed an angry post at the wrong person or anything' - I wasn't suggesting you normally did that.

Ahh. Yeah, reading over it I can see how you got that impression. Ah well, moving on.

Whit? I commented that at least you weren't giving me a hard time when you replied to one of my posts by mistake. It was meant to be light-hearted! I've had this account for a few years, only recently started posting at all...

Why don't you just concentrate on making an impact at Everton? Like it or not, he's currently our only fit forward. He's scored, what, 3 goals in 6 games after basically not playing regularly at club level for years? Sure, he's not set the world on fire but we've actually played quite well when he's been playing and Jelavic happens. Hopefully he can build on that in the next few games.

Business-wise, by far the most important thing for the club is getting Champions League revenue. Winning the league trumps all other considerations. If the board think that Holt would significantly increase our chances of getting that, then he's worth more than £2.2m to us. That said, I'm in the 'can't really see this happening' camp. Love to be wrong.

I'm not sure if that stipulation applies to loans - I think the problem with, for instance, Miller, was that he had been permanently contracted to both Celtic and Derby at the time when he played for them. I'm not sure the rule prohibits a parent club from loaning a player out to more than one separate club over the course of a season, as well as making occasional use of them. Happy to be corrected on that though.

I suppose it's easy enough to just ensure that he can be recalled if that happens.

Could be a sign that we're anticipating getting someone else in for that area of the park. If we need to free up wages there I'd probably prefer that we boiled Big Lee down for glue, but...

I saw that one too. Seems a bit weird to me - he's always looked good enough to play for the first team whenever he's actually fit enough to get onto the park.

True, but there's a big difference, in that second means getting past the likes of Chelsea in the qualifying round, while first puts us up against other champions from 'lower' leagues. Obviously, as history's shown, we're well capable of arsing up such ties, but the 'champions route' is at least in theory a lot less problematic. Winning this league is huge.

Damn. I was going to make that joke.

So if he stays, Everton will pay us £12 million!

It'll just be the media plane around.

I've heard he's on a playing to Liverpool right now.

He's on a long enough contract that if he is throwing his toys out the pram - which I don't necessarily believe, it's just paper talk - we can insist that he's staying until we get an acceptable offer. £5 million is not an acceptable offer. I'd rather we got by with the squad we have and use him if he grows up than give in on this one.

Yeah, I've done that before. At least you didn't launch into a volley of unmerited abuse at me or anything.

With the exception of the Caley and St Mirren games, where he was awful, he's generally been good. I'd agree with others that he's been our best player bar Boca this season (though Aluko and Naismith have both been better for shorter periods.) Likes a shot too. We can use more of that.

I've never seen this guy play, and I don't find this a very exciting rumour, but that is what people said about Aluko too.

I think he's talking about Danny Wilson. Agree absolutely with the point about Ness, he'd solve so many of our problems if he wasn't constantly injured.

I think Wallace has showed some real promise at LM, but he's been mediocre there for at least two games, and I thought we looked more threatening there with Wylde in the side. Papac did look ropey yesterday, but that's the first time that's happened for a while. I think he's still our first-choice LB, though it might not be a bad idea rotating Wallace in there occasionally, since I presume he's the long-term successor.