ascender

Because he's our top scorer and the best natural striker we have? I don't see anyone else banging in the goals for us.

I've used the McCoist comparison before, but only in the sense that he's not afraid to miss a few chances before scoring one or more in a match. We've not seen him up front alongside a big target man, but I've no doubting he'd thrive if he was given time to form a partnership with another striker to play off. As for your second comment, that's just rubbish and has to be very much tongue in cheek surely. Capucho?! Still can't believe how harsh people are being on a 23 year old who has what, 7 starts in the SPL this year and 7 goals to his name? We should be building our team around players like this surely? I'm not saying he's the perfect striker, he's got to work on his overall game a lot more, but he's young. If he was the perfect all-round striker at that age, I'm sure he would be in the Premiership instead of with us as there's not many strikers at that age who are the whole package. Just bemused really by the stick he gets.

I think Boyd has got a few assists this season too though, I seem to remember a couple of knock-downs in Livorno for example? I think people often forget just how young Boyd is and where we signed him from, he was never going to be a complete player at his age. He's our top scorer yet again, what more do people want? As far as I'm concerned, that's one position we don't have to worry about in the starting XI. We could of course drop him for a bit and see how we do, but I wonder where we'd be in the table now if you took away some of his goals? I really don't understand why Boyd seems to get such a hard time sometimes. An experienced centre half has to be the first priority in the January window. If PLG doesn't address our problems there, I think he's skating on very thin ice with a lot of the support and will just make it hard for himself if things do get worse.

Sounds like he'll be looking to strengthen but not go over the top with lots of changes. That's pretty much what we expected I think, all I'm waiting for is for DM to confirm if there will be cash to spend or not.

We need to sign a centre half asap. The current centre halves just aren't good enough and we were shambolic at the back yet again last night. No wonder Fergie isn't happy about it as the midfield bust a gut last night.

We need a decent centre half. With even Ferguson acknowledging the problem, surely the priority is a commanding, British, no-nonsense centre half. While its easy to give Hutton pelters, I think he could improve under someone who can organise the defence and is experienced enough to help young players like him through the game. PLG and DM must sort out our defence as its been woeful for a couple of years now and its going to cost us.

Superb result!

I see that Celtic have come out today and confirmed they'll be strengthening the squad in January. Happy days.

I'd like to see us sign an experienced centre half. Someone who is probably 30+ and is a reasonably good player. But more importantly than that, someone who can organise the players around him and show some leadership qualities, give players a kick up the arse when they need it. Someone who wears their heart on their sleeve. Terrible phrase but you know what I mean. I think our defence needs a Gough/Butcher type figure and our midfield needs a McCall figure. Growing up with the team from the mid 80s onwards, when we were successful we always had a strong tackling midfielder in the team. Even if they weren't the most skillful, they added some bite and drive to the team and that's badly missing just now. Any ideas who they could be in this day and age???

The other thing is that he's not daft. Apart from his pride hurting at seeing Celtic progressing in the CL and splashing the cash, surely he must realise that if we slip any further behind, the club is going to be harder to sell or certainly he won't get as much for it.

I seriously doubt it, was he not the first player PLG tied up on a longer contract? I'd have thought Buffel, Rae and J-Rod would be the 3 most likely candidates to be moving on in January.

As guests of Celtic or Caldwell & Riordan. That's the two stories which came out last night, don't know which is true at the moment.

It doesn't matter what is said, there's always going to be a section of the support who won't want to change as they just can't see the bigger picture. There's no point bitching and moaning about it, we just have to accept that this is the way things are now IMO. I know that's harsh and people will complain about freedom of speech and also what other clubs' fans are allowed to sing about, but until we get our house in order first, that's kind of a crap argument. Every time we sing *** in a song and its heard like on Sunday, it really doesn't make us any friends in the general public and it gives cast iron ammo for our haters and detractors as we can't defend it. Worse than that, we all know that refs have been told to report stuff like this which in turn might end up with the club being punished, so why are we still doing it? I mean, Ibrox has hardly had an amazing atmosphere for the main part over the last few years, so its rich to see people saying that its now crap because the BB has been banned. Why can't we just change some lyrics, bring in some new songs, revive some old songs and move on?

Last night should force Murray's hand, but can anyone see him digging deep to pt some money back in? I can't. You're totally right though, Celtic are in danger of moving on to another level at this rate if they invest the money they make from this season's CL run. Worrying times.

There was lots of mentions of the pope during Sunday's game from our end. What action can the SPL/SFA take then? Warnings and fines or is it straight to docking points, because that's where its going to end up?

We do still need a big commanding centre half though. I still think we missed out when we chose not to go for Webster. Problem PLG has though is that if he buys a centre half, we've currently got Papac, Svensson, J-Rod & Hemdani, so you'd effectively be telling one of those guys they've not got much of a future here.

Yip, its obviously just a starting point. The worrying thing though is that it looks like we can't afford 1M, let alone the 3M which looks more like a realistic bargaining point. Unless PLG moves someone like Buffel on, I can see us missing out on these guys unless they really want to come to Ibrox and we go for them next summer maybe.

We've now notified Hibs of our interest officially, in writing, to which they've responded to say they want 3M each for the players.

Some of the Hearts forums are unbelievable today, many more threads about our behaviour than the actual game. And quite a few calling for us to be banned from away games or get a much reduced ticket allocation.

Lol, oops. Well spotted!

I know, I've felt the same in the past, its just depressing to read papers or come in to work and get slagged off about stuff when you know you were there and didn't do any of the alleged things. I think this season is worse because any of the good work at home games is being undone by the away ones. Most fans of other clubs base their opinion of us on our away performances and unfortunately its the same old stuff week in week out.

Quite a few Jambos have mentioned this today, but I never heard anything on the TV and there's been no mention of it in the papers.

Does is really matter though Gazza? The rest of Scotland won't make that distinction. As far as they're concerned, the Rangers support were singing the offensive lyrics. They came across loud and clear on the tv and that's enough to make it look bad for everyone who was there. Everyone will be tarred with the same brush unfortunately.

We're our own worst enemy, yet again.

Was this not what happened years and years ago though, where Rangers and Celtic took the best of Scottish talent from other clubs. Those other clubs then brought on more young players who in turn moved to the bigger clubs and reinvested some of the cash here rather than it going to foreign clubs and agents. The SPL has gone backwards in some respects, but in others I'd say its starting to prosper. I can't remember a time where there's been so many promising young players at other clubs. One thing that the AM and PLG (to a lesser extent) have both proved is that buying foreign players at reasonable expense, doesn't guarantee results. If anything its shown that maybe we should be looking closer to home as we can no longer afford to sign the better quality European lads.