Callum McGregor

McGregor won’t be taking a break from the captaincy and I don’t think he would want too or needs too. He was not our problem in the game yesterday, yes he missed a penalty but our problem wasn’t losing a shoot out it was not beating a very average team over 120 minutes. Why did that happen? Look at the cup final squad, Aberdeen had a stronger bench than us, more options and people that could change a game than us.

In our cup final 20 players if you take out the two keepers we had

Scales, Bernardo and Idah all start who at best should all be bench options. The bench options were -

- Ralston
- Trusty
- Schlupp
- McCowan
- Forrest (with the amount his leg was taped up before the game questionable he was fit before he came on)
- Yang
- Kenny

James Forrest, who didn’t look as if he was fit is the only one reliable player ability wise who could change a game on that bench.

Yang and McCowan have done it in lesser games on occasion but not with any degree of consistency. Don’t get me wrong Ralston and Trusty are back up necessity options but Schlupp hasn’t really kicked a ball in months, Kenny is untested.

If you go back a couple of seasons we had the likes of Abada, Giakoumakis, O’Riley/Mooy, Turnbull and Haksabanovic (for that season looked decent) all who could impact a game. You had Starfelt starting beside CCV and Jenz to come of the bench. Jenz wasn’t brilliant but he is far superior to Scales or domestically Trusty. The only position we were really light was left back as Bernabei flopped but if we had got that signing right we would have had a team of

- Hart
- Juranovic
- CCV
- Starfelt
- New left back
- McGregor
- Hatate
- Mooy/ O’Riley
- Jota
- Maeda
- Kyogo

with all those 5 mentioned above in reserve, we even tried to get a proper DM in Souza and eventually Abildgaard but that didn’t work out. We were literally about 2 better signings at LB and Centre midfield from a class side.

Now look at the squad, it can’t be overstated how bad that 2023 summer window was and how it set us back.

Even looking at that team right back and both keepers are probably the positions in our full squad we have improved and even right back there isn’t much in it. We are worse at Centre back both in starting and depth, Centre midfield in terms of starting and depth and centre forward both starting and depth.

I believe this summer is the most important one we have had since Ange’s first window.