Hibs 3-2 Rangers, Scottish Cup Final: Six things we learned after Gers' awful defeat

This could change our transfer plans

Well, "of course it will" is the answer to that - we won't need to sign as many players for the squad and won't have as much money. But were Joey Barton, Niko Kranjcar et al waiting on the outcome of the game before they decided to make the move? Time will tell. But there's no doubt that having European football now, even if we had to qualify, would've made Mark Warburton able to sell the club much more efficiently.

The defence weren't all to blame

OK, nobody in the back four exactly covered themselves in glory (even Wallace, the only one who defended reasonably, was invisible going forward) but the rest of the team were pretty poor too. Gedion Zelalem was indecisive in possession as always, Jason Holt had a poor game, Martyn Waghorn looked unfit, Barrie McKay didn't get on the ball enough and Wes Foderingham could've done far better for the first goal.

It's no coincidence the defence are suddenly poor without Dominic Ball. Halliday and Holt simply don't offer any protection to the back four and leave them helplessly exposed. Sure, the defending itself was poor as well, but they got no help whatsoever either. A thirty-six year-old striker was doing more defending than our supposed defensive midfielders. Whether it's the players or the team shape, Mark Warburton desperately needs to sort it out. Jordan Rossiter, Matt Crooks - over to you.

But we should still probably have a serious think

The defence weren't ALL to blame. But they were pretty terrible. Danny Wilson was the better of the two centre-halves, but only because Kiernan was so utterly, utterly awful. He was poor against Celtic too - if we're going to upgrade one of our defence, it should be him. His marking of Anthony Stokes for the first goal was laughable, and then he failed to learn his lesson and get tight to him for the entire rest of the game despite him being the obvious dangerman. He can be a good player but he's cast serious doubts over his future at the club in recent weeks.

Kenny Miller more than deserved his new contract

A few eyebrows were raised when Miller was invited to stay on for another year, but he was probably the only player who came out of today with any real credit. By far our best player, and should still be a useful asset even if we upgrade next year.

Let's not go mad here

Obviously, we've never invaded the pitch after winning a big cup. We haven't seen all the footage and it's not yet clear, but some of the condemnation of the pitch invasion has been wildly disproportionate. Hibs fans were giving some aggro, aye, but it doesn't seem like any players or staff have been harmed, and the only people who got chinned either invaded the pitch to celebrate a win or invaded the pitch to confront other pitch invaders. If you do that you risk getting chinned. This is known. The English FA Cup final's on now, go and have a watch of that and see if that's how you want us to end up.

Let them underestimate us

It's a pisser having to wait til we can get back in Europe. It's infuriating. But let Hearts and Aberdeen tsk-tsk over James Tavernier's defending and the journalists who've watched us three times this season consider Hearts and Aberdeen to be superior teams. We had a shite game. Every team has shite games. True, we should never, ever be *that* shite but it does happen. We'll be back, and we'll soon forget about the past few horrible years when we're in a title challenge and not having to bother checking the Hearts and Aberdeen results at any point of the season. We're back now. If everybody thinks we're a long way off challenging, so much the better.