Hughes first taste of Europe is stale

Hibernian's manager, John Hughes, is fond of saying that his ambition is to get his club "closer" to the Old Firm.

Job done, then, as his team mirrored Celtic's 3-0 loss to Braga with an identical scoreline against Maribor in Slovenia in their Europa League qualifying tie. The 300 or so Hibbys who made the trip in excitement and expectation were left watching a sorry and familar story unfold - a Scottish club in pre-season being rinsed out by European opposition.

Hughes claimed that his preparation for the match was meticulous, but his decision to start without Antony Stokes and Derek Riordan (who had both played parts in warm-up games in Holland) was baffling. Colin Nish is a tryer, but not the obvious choice if trying to keep possession against fitter, technically-competent opponents.

So well done Motherwell, who are bitter about conceding a late equaliser against Norwegian club Aalesunds but have a great chance of getting through the tie. In contrast to his naive counterpart at Hibs, Craig Brown is continuing to show there is still a place for experience in the game.

We're back!

After an interminable wait, Scottish football is back!

The fans are warming up the vuvuzelas as the new season fast approaches. Fair enough, Motherwell have already started, with victory over Breidablik in the previous qualifying round of the Europa League, but frankly it’s best to treat these ties as pre-season games anyhow, given Scottish club’s miserable record in these games in recent seasons.

And hasn’t Neil Lennon started the new season well? With a mere 3-0 defeat to Braga in his first competitive game in charge as “permanent” manager, he’s proving himself to be much better than Gordon Strachan, who got thumped 5 zip by Artmedia in his first game.

Aiden McGeady didn’t play, but purely because he was injured, and anyhow – as Lenny said – the referee was at fault for the defeat.

A season of glory awaits!