The trouble with putting all your eggs in one basket is well known. The manager has hyped up our European campaign since May and the fans have been willing to forgive or overlook plenty of problems because of it. We are already out of the League Cup and, should we not do the business on Thursday, the season will be turned into a boring mid-table scrap while we wait on the Scottish Cup. And all before the first weekend in October. This was not part of the plan.
The team in Nancy
But sadly the fact is we are simply not as good as last season. Porter and Reynolds have has a dip in form while Hughes is a shadow of his former self, possibly due to the injury he has been carrying. It can also be argued that from our glory months of November and December when we were battering teams that O'Donnell and McCormack haven't been properly replaced.
We do have other strengths though. Malcolm provides a physical presence, if little else, that we had lacked and Murphy is showing his huge potential. Sutton seems to have the wonderful ability of being in exactly the right place and the right time in front of goal. Mark McGhee might not have found the system to get the best out of our current group of players yet but Thursday night would be a good place to start. We have to attack but our shaky defence will know one slip will almost certainly send us crashing out.
The most famous result in
The fantastic fans
It will be a tense time but a 1-0 win shouldn't be beyond us. And then, who knows!