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A complete joke. Not surprised though. The League Cup rules are available to view and they categorically state that at the last 16 stage, the 8 highest ranking clubs will be seeded to play the 8 lowest ranked teams from the previous season's league positions. In other words, if Rangers beat us, they should be playing any one of 8 Premiership clubs. But this farce ensures that instead, they're potential opponents are 2 Premiership and 6 Championship clubs. You couldn't make it up. Well, the SPFL clearly have! To suit The Rangers. Let's hope we beat them to make this academic. But it still won' make it right. One quick glance at a Rangers fans forum there - and there are threads including how they're always 'persecuted', why they're always treated with contempt and cheated by the SFA, the media, the SPL and the SPFL...and 'what can we do to punish the clubs on our return to the SPL? - for voting us out of that league'. We didn't vote you out - you were liquidated and ceased to exist! We just didn't want a new club gate-crashing the top flight or second-tier - when natural justice dictated that you should start at the bottom! (And it should've been lower that the 4th tier).

Wouldn't be surprised if he was back tracking because the bid got rejected.

Why were the Rangers permitted to delay their first round match in the first place ?

What is sure is that Kilmarnock will pose a bigger threat than Celtic this weekend. Then we have even harder games. It is one challenge at a time. Celtic will win this league by 20-30 points. It is impossible to compete with a club of their stature over 38 games.

What made you think "MAHNIOOOOOO" is a person? Could be a chimpanzee mating call for all we know!

Peterborough have had a bid rejected for both Mckay and Meekings (Pete O'Rourke Sky Sports)

So if it's us that will be a yes and if it's them then it will be a no? ()

Gender reassignment, eh...

Official reason is Commonwealth Games. Hampden is out of action, so game was due to be played at Airdrie, but their first round game was at home, so the stadium was unavailable. There were other stadia (Firhill and Fir Park, for example) available, but these appear to not have been considered. There will have been opportunities to play this midweek too, but again nothing.

So, according to the SPFL website, the Huns are seeded by default. And they wonder why no one takes Scottish football seriously? They should be forced to remove the 'P' from their name. Of all the things you could accuse them of, being Professional is not one of them.

Tue 16th Sept @ 7:45pm

Good point. Celtic seriously miscalculated by resting 9 of the players who faced ICT in the clash between the league champions and the league leaders last weekend.

Getting back on topic.......... I wonder to what extent ICT were waiting to see if we would be getting the £100k Champions League windfall to determine how much we can afford to increase the wage bill by? Celtic's failure is a severe financial blow to the smaller clubs like ours.

They won 4-1 an o.g, trialist scored a couple and i think Callum ferguson got one. Not entirely sure tbh. The Trialist might've got 3 but i forget. We scored a pen to make it 1-1 15 to 20 minutes in. Then ict made it 2-1 before half time then pushed on i the second half to make it 4-1. Good game of football though. Boths teams playing some nice stuff. Inverness city's number 2 tonight is worth a look at if you ask me

If Mr Deila can intone that he has 16 very professional players then that is good enough for me. The players he had on the park were not quite as dynamic as ours in terms of the fact that we won but they also played as well as they could and that's a top team Celtic had out. On his day and game Kris Commons is a dynamite player. The movers and shakers in the history of the past hundreds of years were people who I assume dwelled on the positive and put aside negative thoughts. They kept the positive visions they had in the forefront of their lives and did not allow doom, depression uncertainty, etc. to cloud their forward-thinking momentum. So, all I would say is .."why not say something positive and forget to qualify it with negative comments. That's much more inspiring and a heck of a lot more fun to read.

I don't like to disagree dad, but I'm not having this. Mulgrew, Commons and Griffiths are all established Scotland players. Ambrose was at the world cup, Zaluskas, Pukki, Bitton and Johansen have all played for their countries. Even one of the subs (MacGregor) has just got a call up so this was no "severely weakened" team. Celtic have a massive squad who I presume train together day in day out in various permutations. In the second half, we passed them off the park. Not my point of view but that of a significant portion of the media - usually grudging in their praise who are recognising that the style of play, regardless of the manager, is attractive and beginning to show signs of being successful. If you think that this is as good as it gets because that's where we are settled at and others will progress as far can I suggest that this team are still learning, we have Foran to return if required and we will improve. Perhaps you recognise this point in your final sentence, but they seem opposing points of view. You are correct in saying that Brill was excellent, but had we converted chances from Tansey, Ross and Christie (all of which were narrowly missed) and got a stonewall penalty in the first half, your score analysis would have been turned on it's head. There was criticism of the performance against Dundee, but I'm not sure that you can call it significant. We drew against a team that set out to defend for 80 odd minutes and did so very well. We didn't lose the game and had the lions share of pressure. The only thing lacking in the performance was a goal. Is that worthy of "significant" criticism? On the subject of eating humble pie, does that really need to be done? We are all ICT fans here. Sure Hughes was "given time" by some last year and this years judgement point seems to be slipping from October to Christmas to the end of the season, which is where it should have been all along. Even if we lose to Kilmarnock on Saturday, my personal viewpoint won't change. It certainly won't change any more than it did about Butcher's team that was dismantled by St. Johnstone at a similar time of last season, although that display showed how tactically limited we were at the time and was more worthy of concern than any result this season. I'm glad you enjoyed the game, so did I. However, I wish that more than 5600 or so had enjoyed it. We (the regulars, the committed fans etc.) need to be shouting this from the rafters to get more bodies into the stadium to get behind the team, bolster the finances and allow us to kick on. One final point, remember the last time we played a "weakened" Celtic team - we got cuffed because we didn't have the belief that we could beat them. Sure do now.

Smashing result for us today. Celtic reserves or not I don't care. We've played their supposed B sides before and been well and truly smashed and I was expecting more of the same today truth be told. These games are freebies really and you don't expect to get much from them but in the end I thought we were well worth the three points today. Our defence coped well with Celtic's attacks and when they did get through Brill was able to keep them at bay with some smart saves from Ambrose, Griffiths and also the help of the bar. Our midfield two of Tansey and Draper dominated midfield the latter spending most of the game bench pressing the Celtic players into submission. Williams again had a very good game on the left, Christie was a bit quiet compared to recent weeks but Watkins turned in a stunning display and Mckay worked his damnedest but ultimately got no personal reward however his pressure inadvertently let to the goal. I didn't think we played as we did against Motherwell last week for the entire 90 minutes today but that was probably going to be a tall order. To begin with we continued to pass, move and receive well continuing the good work from Fir Park. As the first half wore on Celtic came into things a lot more and we seemed to pass and, erm, stand still. Players weren't offering themselves for the ball as they had been doing and this seemed to coincide with the momentum of the game switching. Watkins, who had been tormenting the Celtic left flank was suddenly redundant on the right side of the pitch and couldn't get involved for a time. Ambrose coolly placed a side footed lob towards goal but Brill was alert to tip it over. Celtic then had a fantastic flowing exchange of passes that carved our defence apart and let Commons or Pukki (I think) in but fortunately they couldn't find the back of the net. Briton had that wicked shot crash off the bar after he easily spun away from his marker. It was a cracking effort but just before this we looked like we had a clear penalty turned down by Madden. We started the second half well and started to press Celtic a lot more than the latter parts of the first half. Whilst we still played some of the Hughes style short passing game we also weren't afraid to go direct when we got a chance which was pleasing. However Celtic probably had the first good chance of the half when ICT conceded possession in the Celtic half and the ball was worked to Griffiths who thumped a low drive at Brill who held on to it well. Whilst it was a routine save I was concerned it might slip through his grasp. When we took the lead it was no surprise it came down the right as Watkins had started to influence the game again down that side. His direct run led to a dangerous ball being fired across goal. Mckay and Zaluska both went for it and, I'm not quite sure what happened, but it looked liked it bounced off them both and then into the net off O'Connell who was racing back to help out. After that we started to sit much deeper and conceded possession to Celtic whilst we were content to hit on the break. Celtic struggled to break us down and we should have increased our lead after some shambolic defending from Celtic allowed the ball to drop at the feet of Christie but his placed effort curled wide of the goal. Whilst the rest of the game was largely Celtic probing trying to find a way through we had the best chance of the final few moments when Williams led a counter and crossed to find Nick Ross but, having waited for Zaluska to go down, his shot to the keepers left was at a nice height for Zaluska to desperately stick up his hand to palm it wide. A fantastic result but I do hope we are more clinical in the weeks ahead and that we also get some chances for Mckay to convert. He seems to ploughing a lone furrow right now and our attack could be doing a bit more for him i feel. The defence however looks rock solid and Raven, a player who I wouldn't mind us trying to replace if we can get someone better in, showed some fantastic touches today. Not as good as my MotM Watkins though who royally roasted a Celtic player on the touchline with a Cruyff turn. Looking forward to the visit of Killie next week.