[0762]

Most notable thing to note today was our lack of any midfielders on the bench, AS? With 20 minutes to go Henderson and McGinn had both gone and AS could / should have made a change. Again he seemed reluctant to do so finally bringing on Dagnall for Keatings with very little time to go.    I'm sure Boyle or Carmichael, although not the same type of midfielder, could have come on with 20 to go and got around and in the faces of the ICT players. As time went by it was only going to go one way.

Pity Dylan is injured again....he really is fragile. At least Bartley will be back for the replay.....we did miss his physicality against a big side.
Plus note for Thompson today who didn't shirk any challenge.  

In fairness to the referee....he was sh**e towards bothteams.....rubbish+++   

Midweek game up in the Highlands doesn't inspire confidence but we do have the better half of the semi final draw to hopefully give them something to go for.

Just back from the game and good, accurate comments re this match. I thought we played very well and that's another Premiership side that certainly does not look any better than Hibs and we're still unbeaten against these teams!!    We 'let them off the hook' when we finally got to grips with their formation after Dylan's injury. IMO that injury is down to the fools who decided to field him when he's not had enough rest to recover from that type of injury! I predicted that injury happening before arriving at ER and was spot on - it was a Stubbs' gamble, the wrong one!   Also did you hear the persistent whining from a number of ICT players re Hibs physical challenges during this match???? We hit an identifiable weak spot and Warren should've been sent off the pitch for persistent dissent + persistent fouling - he was on a yellow card and this ref, Crawford Allan, backed off sending him off because he knew the guy had a yellow card to his name. The same goes for Tansey - second yellow card  offence on their left side when he unceremoniously fouled David Gray - a refereeing coward and the whole of the East Stand fans rose to tell this inept ref what a tosser he was! He's been at ER before and performed in the same way on numerous occasions. John McGinn given the MOTM award for a decent performance but IMO James Keatings got it with a terrific 'up n at em' display. He put in more work in this match than he's done in the past couple of months lol! And I'd say Stubbs finally subbed a tiring Keatings after a massive verbal assault from fans in the East Stand who were flabbergasted that the manager didn't look like he was gonna use any subs to replace tiring players when ICT were pressing us!!  We've discovered from this match that Stokes and Keatings actually have a better understanding than the Cummings-Stokes pairing although it is still very frustrating to watch Stokes!! Lastly, I can't believe Fontaine missed scoring a goal from a foot off the ICT goal line - a shocker! He had a decent game but what a pleb not to realise 'roofing the baw' is what you do in that situation - ram it home into the net FFS!!
The bigot brothers paired together in the other semi-final (that'll be 'tasty' and d'ya think Rangers will live up to their recent publicity stunt re life time bans in this match? Huhhh!!), so lots to play for and I might even travel up to Inverness to back the Hibs in this tie!