Mince & Tatties 02

Sorry, I can't be arsed blogging too much today as I've got a lot to do before I'm away on my holidays at the end of the week. Besides, I missed most of the weekend’s action due to sheer apathy, so I'm not exactly a fountain of stroke-yer-beard insights theday. The following is pretty much all I could muster as I sat staring into my mulligatawny soup and contemplating my sweaty cheese sandwich over lunch this afternoon.

1. Alas, poor Aberdeen. Following Raith-gate, we now have Falkirk-gate. Yes, the optimism and hope for the future I felt at 15:06 on Saturday gave way to mild irritation by 15:14, apoplectic rage by 15:43 and a complete resignation by 16:25. As always, Aberdeen started 'brightly', even going so far as to score a goal, but 'brightly' soon turned to 'shitely' as a rejigged Dons side - featuring Stuart Nelson in goal in favour of Jamie Langfield - slumped to another dreadful defeat. The players were kept in the dressing room afterwards for a bit of a showdown, but Jim Spence, who interviewed McGhee just shortly after the pow-wow with the players had finished said it was a pretty quiet affair, with none of the shouting, swearing, hair-dryer-hurling and tea-cup-throwing that they'd get if I was doing the post match team-talk.

McGhee has promised we'll "try harder" against Hearts on Saturday, which doesn't really inspire this correspondent with a great deal of confidence. My advice? Send someone down the shops to buy a copy of Football Manager 2010, fire up a game as Aberdeen and get the assistant to pick the team. Surely he couldn't do much worse?

2. So aye, when are the headlines about "Hibs in Crisis?" starting up? Aberdeen might be pure mince, but Hibernian have now lost 3-in-a-row as well. Nothing wrong with that of course, but Hibs are, where, every non-SPL fans great white hope, the team to split the Ugly Sisters at the top of the greasy pole. Lately they've lost to Rangers (forgivable), where handed their arses on a plate by St Johnstone and got stuck in the quagmire at Fir Park on Saturday where they surrendered any hope we have of getting between and getting it up Rangers and Celtic by losing 1-0. With the heir apparent to the heir apparent (that's Dundee United by the way) also losing to Robbie Keane's first home league goal of the season, the gap between second and third, rich and poor, challengers and also-rans is back to eight points.

At least Hibs are getting a new stand. Which is nice..

3. I've always been a supporter of winter breaks, but would this have helped the weekend’s situation? Most supporters of a winter break say we should stop playing between December and January, but it's practically March now and we're still cancelling games. The SPL fixture between St Johnstone and Rangers was called off (late, but quite correctly), most of the First division fixture list was cancelled, while all the teams in Division Two got the day off. You'd think that the further down the leagues you go, the more games would fall foul of the weather, but you'd be wrong making that assertion, given that most of the games in Division Three where on. Hell, even the Highland League managed one game on Saturday.  Is summer football the answer then?

4. The Scotland squad named earlier today has a serious over-representation of Rangers players. Is that a good thing? What do you think? Personally I don't care too much as long as we win a few games. And as Rangers are now top of the table by a country mile, they clearly have the best players right? Or is that not the way it works?

Anyway, of the 24 named in the squad, seven play for the Ibrox side (Alexander, Miller, Boyd, Thomson, McCulloch, Whittaker and Webster). The only other Scottish teams represented are obviously Dundee United (Kenneth and Dixon), Celtic (Brown) and Hearts (Wallace). Manchester United's Darren Fletcher kick-starts the English contingent, with the remaining places made up from the lower echelons of the EPL (Wigan, Sunderland, Burnley, Spurs and Wolves) and the Championship (Blackpool, Bristol City, Cardiff City, Middlesbrough and West Brom).

The big surprise - aside from the fact that someone from Blackpool makes the squad - is the continued omission of Alan McGregor and Barry Ferguson.

There's much to be made from the fact that neither Ferguson nor McGregor make the squad, but we won't bother making it. Both players were banned for life from ever playing from Scotland ever again following the jolly-up after the Holland game and the two-fingered salute to the world prior to the Iceland game, but that lifelong ban was more to do with the lifespan of George Burley as manager than the lifespan of either McGregor's or Ferguson's career. Yes, as soon as Burley got the heave-ho, and Craig Levein saw what he had to work with, lo and behold, Levein said he's quite happy to have both of these two back in the squad assuming they can keep their fingers to themselves in future and they don't do stupid things like getting the shit kicked out of them outside a nightcl .. oh.

Scotland play a friendly against the Czech Republic next Wednesday, coincidentally enough (or fortunately, or even unfortunately, depending on your view) one of the teams we'll be facing in our European championship qualifiers on the 8th of October this year.

Oh, and we can stop pining for James McCarthy to return to the fold: he's been picked by Giovani Trapattoni for Republic of Ireland's friendly international against Brazil next week.

5. Last, but by no means least, we were saddened to hear over the weekend of the deaths of two of the games finest players, Alan Gordon and Bobby Cox.

Former Dundee captain Bobby Cox captained Dundee to the league title in 1962 and guided the team to European Cup victories against Cologne, Sporting Lisbon and Anderlecht.

Both the official club website and The Scotsman have rather splendid obituaries.

Alan Gordon made his mark at Edinburgh and Dundee's senior clubs, beginning at Hearts in 1961 before moving to Dundee United, Hibernian and latterly Dundee. An obituary comes courtesy of The Scotsman.

Our condolences go out to both Alan Gordon's and Bobby Cox's families.

Jings, a longer update than I thought ...