With the winter break over, we are now into the second half of the season, and the next match is against St Mirren.

After reviewing the match against Stranraer, Friday’s game showed us that it is difficult to break down a team who are playing two banks of five across the box. No surprise given how we (and Celtic) play.

With the need to defend against a quick counter-attack this gives us only five players who we can really commit to attack, and that means everyone up front is playing against two defenders.

And when we add so many new faces, our attack suffers as strikers take that extra second to look around to see what their new team mates were doing.

Even our top players were all a second off the pace, but because they are usually two seconds faster than everyone else, they still managed to keep Stranraer on the ropes.

I’m really looking forward to seeing young Nathan Patterson in a Premiership match, but he is still learning, and though he looked the part against Stranraer, I just trust Tavernier more (at the moment) in the top European matches.

However, with three or four matches without Tavernier at the back, we could perhaps see how good our new youth system truly is, and the more players who progress through the ranks, the more likely it is we can snatch the best up and coming stars from other top clubs.

….and that is something that would be really great to see.