craig

Not sure why he would leave - Liverpool are such a well run club. Fenway Sports are a great company and know how to build sports brands. He is well on the way to achieving a dynasty there, much as it pains me to say it.

I'm not ruling him out at all. I'm merely providing balance. We have had Nicky Clark who was banging goals in at that level too. You've claimed that Shankland is "10 times the player" and I've asked if that is based on what you have actually witnessed. Yes, Robertson went from a QP player to being probably the best LB in the world. However, there are far more examples of players heading south and being flops than there are Robertson's. Picking an example to fit your agenda doesn't mean it is so. I think we can do better than Shankland. I watched him against Dundee earlier in the season and, whilst he scored, he didn't impress me much at all. Not good enough for us IMO. A cheap squad player ? Perhaps

Have you honestly seen that much of Shankland, and saw that much of Clark when he was banging them in at QotS in order to make that judgement ? It is just as plausible that Shankland has found his level in the Championship and would be a flop in the top league. And Defoe may get nothing more out of him than we already see. At 2 million (assuming that number is accurate) I am not convinced.

The way we didn't regret signing Nicky Clark who had been banging goals in for QotS in the lower leagues ? Point being.... there are no guarantees and some of the numbers I have seen thrown around for Shankland (someone suggested as much as 2 million) I would be saying thanks but no thanks. At that price anyway.

Because Liverpool don't care about the FA Cup. They were more concerned with the World Club Championship and the league. For Liverpool this season, the FA Cup may as well be the Carabao Cup.

Surprises me too that Jack isn't being spoken about that way because, as I said above, he along with Morelos & Barisic are our most important players - the one thing with Jack over the other two (Morelos & Barisic) is that Jack is Scottish, and his wife's family are massive bluenoses - perhaps other clubs already know he is happy where he is. Another thing with Jack is that he does that "dirty work" that often goes unnoticed - similar to what Stuart McCall did. However... don't jinx it by saying it Bill - because the loss of Jack would be massive to us, similar to Morelos & Barisic.

I think that Barisic is one of our top 3 key players, along with, for me anyway, Morelos and Jack. He offers balance on that left hand side that Flanagan can't. And Halliday, whilst he will never let you down, just doesn't offer as much in an attacking sense. Barisic scares opponents and makes them have to think defensively rather than offensively. It also, as Frankie says, gives an unpredictability to our attack - when Barisic wasn't playing, or was off-form, opponents let us play down the left side and just shut up shop on the right, because the left offered little threat..... but with Barisic there we have threats down both flanks - and given we play a narrow 4-3-3 it is very important for the full backs to be offering attacking threat. I don't know who we would get in to replace Barisic if he left that would offer as much as him - I have to admit that, despite being older than Tierney, I would be disappointed if we let Barisic leave for less than they got for Tierney because, as far as I'm concerned, Barisic is a better player, both defensively AND offensively. I wouldn't let him leave, for any price, in January because I think he is THAT important to our title aspirations. We would still get excellent money for him in the summer - at least two more EL games and likely to be first choice LB for a Croatian team that are always easy on the eye could very well see his value increase further during the summer.

Thankfully we dodged that McInnes bullet - how lucky we were !!!

He's up in court today apparently.

To be fair, he is 39 years old and a very wealthy man who doesn't need the work - in 30 years time he will be 69 - wouldn't you rather be retired and enjoying life at that point ? I know I would and I don't even have the money to be able to..... but with his wealth I reckon I would already have just retired

Listening to it now. Only 12 minutes in - but listening to these two is actually fun.

Some of the stuff on there is good IMO. I like when they have the "Who are the People" where two players go up against each other and have to guess RFC players from pictures placed on their foreheads.... some of it is hilarious.... Every single time a picture of Katic comes up the player describes him as "loves a broken nose" and every time a picture of Morelos comes up the description is simply "mad".... without fail the guessing player gets these two players immediately

Still looking mate ? Where would you prefer to work ? I could always send your CV to some of my contacts and see if they can help you out ?

Aye, get it together Ian, just not good enough ! Just kidding mate

Not only that but this season is absolutely pivotal. King, Gerrard and everyone else don't want them to get 9IAR because the pressure on making it 10 would be extraordinary - however, if we can win the title this year then that run is broken and there may be slightly less pressure, allowing the use of youngsters to come in. The other thing is that, as Gerrard builds his squad and makes it much stronger and putting teams to the sword more often, it will eventually result in comfortable leads which allows the youngsters the odd 30 minutes here and there. Along with that, we can bring youngsters in for full games given the starting XI is so strong - we haven't had that for years where you can actually carry a player or two. I suspect that many of those complaining about a lack of rotation would have been bemoaning when Morelos was left out of the Celtic game at Ibrox earlier in the season... among other games too. For me, play your strongest team every game if you can - the only time to drop someone is if they are out of form or to strategically ensure they won't miss important games through suspension. This season is too important to play around with rotation - even the weaker teams still make things difficult.

Nobody made it a big deal ??‍♂️

Because Bearger posted the exact same thing at post 357 ?

Barrie McKay can't really be considered a Rangers youth product though as he came to us from Killie at 17

True, but their record is still fairly significantly better than ours. And lets not forget that McGeouch was also with us and left.

They can still look at Tierney, Johnston though. There are more from their Academy that have broken through than ours - and the discussion we were having wasn't about "recent" - it was in general - we were talking over years, back to even Barry Ferguson.

I would normally agree - however, the issue with this is quite simply.... Scotland, plus UEFA. No team in Scotland will pay us significant money to take our players. And if any of our better youngsters sign cross country agreements then the standard training fee is a pittance. The only reason we got 600k for Gilmour is because Chelsea wanted to ensure they got him, otherwise the fee would have been, I believe, less than half of that.

The investment into youth development isn't as much as you would believe. A couple of years ago when DK and the 3 Bears took over there was an overhaul in the youth department which, believe it or not, had the club using the latest technologies (such as the GPS vests at all age groups for U12, I think) and having better, more qualified coaches, more of them as well as better players.... but by spending less than they had been spending prior to DK taking the reins.

Exactly this. In speaking to someone within the club that is their main frustration - very few of our youngsters see the progression into the 1st team - they pointed out the likes of Forrest, McGregor, Tierney across the city, which is a fair enough example.... however, as I also pointed out to him... those players broke through when Celtic had absolutely zero competition and it was much easier to do so - when winning the league by 30 points they could have playd their whole youth team for a half dozen games with no impact. What will be more interesting to see is whether Celtic maintain that now that they have a genuine challenge. I personally doubt they do.

Where do you get the "looking likely to follow Billy Gilmour" ??? I was speaking to Leon last week and there was no real inclination either way, he was very guarded. The only thing I really got was that he wasn't overly excited about going to Germany - he is very much a "home kid" - I believe he has travelled in the past and got homesick.

"Viewing of the SPFL has risen 8% on last season, and 47% on the 2017/18 campaign, showing the appetite our customers have for Scottish football." Aye, because it is all about the Rangers