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Is it halal for a sheik to have a piggybank?

He's hardly likely to tell the interviewer he can't wait to get rid of them. I'd imagine he'd love to completely transform the squad during this window and the 'Rome' comments are merely to placate and lower the expectations of the support. Managers and players have to lie to the press, it's all part of the job.

Last summer, I went on and on and on about "outside bets" and how filling a squad full of them, many injury prone wouldn't work..... Well, it didn't. This year, I concentrate on reasonable expectations and patience. We'd like a ready made squad of quality first team players. It isn't happening. There isn't the budget, simples. To even compete, we are going to have to get the transfer window, close to spot-on. Bear in mind that Celtic had an awful summer transfer window in 2023. Clement is a good manager and is trying to do the best he can. He is telling us to be patient, it is the only way this can work. We can do that or we can throw the baby out with the bath water and fall further behind. If Walter Smith was here he would be fully behind what the manager is saying. He knows that he wouldn't have been able to do what he did without reasonable to good financial support. If Guardiola had managed at Espanyol, 1860 Munich and Blackpool, he would have won nowt. What we can reasonably expect is to see a team taking shape and improving window on window. It might even be entertaining. Just now, anything else is a bonus.

Aye, we are getting 7M for Goldson apparently. 😂or😭 I can't see us getting him off the wage bill without a payoff.

Clement yesterday "I knew Robby McCrorie was desperate to go in January. I stopped him in January. We helped him to act fast in this window because it’s important with European games to come he trains with his new team at Kilmarnock. We have some players who have come in who are longer term, like Nsiala. He has a lot of talent but he needs the experience and he needs to learn a lot of things. “I don’t expect him to be a starting player. The same with Igamane. He will not be ready to start. He’s never trained or played physically at this level. “He comes out of a holiday too so we need to build him up. We have other players like Barron and Jefte who can get there faster. It is not easy to replace five players and Robby also without money coming into the club" - A lot left to do - Not much money to do it with, unless we can offload - Wants new first team players in to train in advance of European qualifiers

Spain have been by far the best side throughout the tournament but that doesn't mean they'll win it. I think how Kane is used will have a big bearing on it (if Southgate goes with Toney or Watkins, England stand a far better chance of winning). If England win, the likes of Lineker and Wright will be unbearable but on the flipside, especially after last week's SNP drubbing, just imagine how depressed it will make Scottish Nationalists feel.

I think it is a game that is very difficult to call. Won't be visiting the bookies. Here is hoping the Spanish win 🤞🏽🇪🇦

Depending on what you mean by low offers. Like it or not, we are struggling for money and can't continue to "buy high" and "sell low". The cycle / madness has to stop. If someone offers his £500K for Lammers, we ain't selling (and nor should we), if someone offers close to what we paid, we will sell. However, he might not accept a 50% pay cut. I may be wrong, but we are a business and not a very profitable one at that, makes no business sense to sell players at a significant loss just to get them off the wage bill. We may do it for one of two, but not for 10 - 11 players who need moved on and more importantly, replaced with superior quality players.

You'd have to be utterly delusional to think we're getting rid of them all but our support is full of delusional nutters, who love a good moan, so there's no chance of total realisation or acceptance of it.

I agree, but many won't - rightly or wrongly they'll want instant success and want all the "dross", "serial losers" sold / moved on at any cost. We will retain more players than we sell / release and the manager has already stated a couple of his new signings aren't 1st team ready. We have to hope and pray clubs will want to buy some of our players, if they aren't, we won't be paying anyone off, we won't be accepting "low ball" offers just to move players on as we simply can't afford to. So the fans who are screaming for us to "cut or losses" with the "serial losers", "dross" and perma injured players like Tav, Goldson, Lawrence, Lammers, Dessers, Dowell, Yilmaz, Cifuentes, Hagi, Davies, Wright, Matando, Danilo, Cantwell, Raskin et al are going to be disappointed.

I bought myself four bottles (instead of the usual one for a Rangers game of late) of Double Bock for the final, as I expect some dire tactical battle geared for success, not football. The Spanish defence is rather good, whereas England relies on the odd spark from one of their forwards far too much. It is easier to read tea leaves (or coffee ground, as we say over here) than predict this one. Spain 2 England 1 Thinking on this brought back memories of James Alexander Gordon's reading of the football scores on a Saturday afternoon, not least when games were postponed, but results had to be determined for the bookies. The droning voice of an e.g. "no score draw" will probably live with me forever ...

Pretty hard to argue with that one.

Those were just rumours. We really need to shift a few players and time is of the essence.

Some might be suicidal

I'd probably wait until after the first game to gauge how the standing goes. The views are so bad in the two ends, I suspect a lot of people will stand up initially - how it goes from there, only time will tell.

The readers at Hampden look the same as ours but doubt they'll be configured to read our season tickets so it could be paper tickets all round.