ascender

According to the Beeb. Never realised that he was the Ukraine's under 21 coach and you'll never guess who his assistant is.... Oleg Kuznetsov! Check the pic, he hasn't changed a bit! http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/h/heart_of_midlothian/5086380.stm

Lol, there is that! Its all a bit confusing, does this mean he wanted Klos to be our number 1? If he had wanted to sign a young keeper, Klos' injury wouldn't change things, would it?

TBH I'd go for Barthez over Letizi as long as it wasn't going to break the bank. As well as a bringing a bit of character to the place, it would be a good high profile signing and the guy has done it all. I know he's got a reputation for doingthe odd stupid thing, but most keepers do and with him he's been playing at such a high profile of club, that his mistakes are usually pretty high profile. I'd have been pleased to have him in between the sticks for a season or 2 is PLG was waiting to sign the right, young keeper. As it is, Letizi is a bit of an unknown and those that have seen him play don't seem too impressed. But we have to give PLG the benefit of the doubt.

Do I spy a Celtic fan trolling???

So, Rooney is fit to play. At least we won't have to hear about his bloody broken foot anymore, although I guess England will now consider themselves as favourites again. I'm still waiting to see what happens when Rooney plays, its been one hell of a miraculous recovery considering. I can't see anything other than a T&T win tonight to be honest.

The Record say that PLG turned down the chance to sign Barthez.

Bloody hell, went in to my local JJB today and there's a huge section of wall dedicated to the new kit and training gear, t-shirts, tracksuits etc. Well impressed. No sign of the sponsorless shirts, although I noticed they had long-sleeve ones in which is a nice touch. If this is the exposure guaranteed as part of the deal, then it can only be a good thing for sales.

TBH I don't think much of ITV or BBC's actual commentary teams, probably because I think Andy Gray and Martin Tyler are at least 32x better. At least with the Beeb their pundits and analysis are usually quite good and are ad-free.

1. Porno 2. Das Mullet 3. Ronald Any of the above have worked for me.

The problem is though, whether rightly or wrongly, nearly everyone outside of the Gers reckons that its the majority at Ibrox that sing this sort of stuff, not the minority. If we're going to get the message across that the majority aren't sectarian, I think we need to ban it. Sad, but its the only way I can see it working.

I don't think age is a concern for a keeper and he's a couple of years younger than Ronald. I think its just not the sort of signing any of us were expecting which is why we're a bit disappointed, that's all. We'd been expecting a younger keeper with a decent reputation who we could build our team around for the next 10+ years.

News today has Clement begging Lyon not to price him out of a move to Ibrox, so I guess things are still on. Looks like we'll up our bid to 1M.

What a cracking game, real end to end stuff and Ghana are really getting stuck in.

Yes, we were linked with him a couple of years back, but it never came to anything.

I totally agree, but I think some of it will be down to the perceived sectarian problem as a whole, particularly in evidence when we play Celtic. Its often from people who've never been to an OF game, but its a widely upheld view. That's why we seem to be an easy target in the media and for politicians. They say we're sectarian, the country believes them without questioning it. Its another part of the thing where DM hasn't done enough to stand up for us.

Well, my wife doesn't want my son to go to Rangers games because of the sectarian nonsense, so yes, as far as I'm concerned, it can only be a good thing.

Yeah, but just because other songs are as bad/no worse, doesn't make it OK for us to continue. I don't think UEFA are avoiding tackling other clubs about songs and I don't think we've been targeted because of DM. I don't think this issue will go away, UEFA have opened a can of worms and you'll probably see this season that other clubs will be hit. Part of the problem they has is defining exactly what is offensive and I know we've gone through this ourselves before. I still don't think we've helped ourselves though and complaining that we've been stitched up or singled out doesn't excuse the fact that in this day and age we're singing songs which we really shouldn't be. As for DM, like I said earlier, he's been put in a very difficult situation, where he'd have to bite the hand that feeds. Now UEFA are laying down the law, he doesn't have to, so he's probably got what he wanted.

Couple more stories this morning basically confirming that the Letizi deal is nearly done. I still don't understand it but what can you do.

But the warning signs should have been there for years, to anyone with half a brain-cell surely? Its not like we've all suddenly woken up one morning and realised that the songs were considered sectarian/bigoted/offensive just because UEFA told us. We've all known it, the club's known it and the media/general public have known it, as well as taken great delight in pointing it out to us. So of course the warning signs have been there. Some fan sites on the web have openly talked about the need to change, some have been totally in opposition to it. But ultimately its because the club hasn't taken a strong enough line with this, that UEFA are now stepping in. And yes its a "fashionable" crusade for UEFA in these days of political correctness gone mad, but so what, it was bound to happen at some point. Maybe DM was waiting for this to happen so he wouldn't be seen to be the one who had to tell us to change our ways. That way he's not seen to be the bad guy in all of this.

Shockerooni. Never mind Celtic fans, think of all the fabulous memories he gave you in his one and only season playing for you. Well, half the season eh? Reason to be cheerful number 4 - Quintin Fortune is on his way to replace Roy Keane. Actually, I wonder if he'll still come now that Keane won't be here?

We can't be trusted to change the lyrics back to something non-sectarian as not everyone will sing the cleaned-up version, I'd have thought its simple as that. We've had our chance to self-police and while we still do, if we don't do something ourselves, the authorities will start to do it for us and we don't want that. The way I see it is that we are being given plenty of warnings and chances to clean up our act. If we do get hit with heavier punishments, we can't say we weren't warned.

But its only a song. They're not trying to stop us going to games or anything, why don't we just accept it and move on. As for changing the lyrics, there's no way they'd let us go down that route because people will just sing the old lyrics, which is what's caused the problem in the first place. I've said from the start that this is a great opportunity for us to get some great, positive PR, one over on Celtic and also we'd get much more respect throughout Scotland.

I fell asleep 3 times during that game, that's how good it was. Eriksson nearly fucked it up again. As for Hargreaves, he's obviously alright to still be at Bayern, but I just don't see why he was brought on today. I saw the start of the match and reckoned England would thump them, but the second half was dire.

England should thump these guys, the defence is all over the place and the new keeper looks shaky to say the least. Can't believe Lawro and Motty complaining about Gerrard's booking. Its a two footed, off the ground lunge, it doesn't matter if he makes contact or not.

That's interesting, I never thought the shirt with no logo would be available. Maybe Carling are happy as it shows them being responsible in terms of kids not buying a top advertising a beer? Which is nonsense, but in these overly PC times, mightbe good publicity for them.