Tannochsidebear

Walker is in no way shape or form anything like as accomplished a player as McKay. And that is before you take into international caps etc. I doubt there is even one Jambo who thinks Walker is anywhere near the same level as McKay. Our negotiations have always been suspect, well before our current guys got their jobs, but this is an easy one to compare so should be easy to manage. Hearts should be told that no way are we going over the £475K we got for McKay, and if they reject that, we look elsewhere (not going to find anyone anywhere near as good as McKay for the same money of course)

If we end up paying more for Walker than we received for McKay, then Dickson & Robertson should be sacked as that will be quite simply the worst piece of transfer negotiation business I have seen since we paid off Bob Malcolm in full on transfer deadline day so he could go and sign with someone else an hour later.

Union Bears should have a fund-raiser to pay something towards this. It was their display, and their hangers-on that caused this. (not excusing the bampots that thought that was acceptable behaviour, and not saying it was UB members that done it either). All card displays in the Broomie front should now be stopped. Spoiled it for themselves.

Haven't heard these rumours but not surprised. I heard a story while in Lux that senior players weren't happy with the fitness training Pedro brought in. Players were knackered by match day due to the amount of running he had them doing with 75% of the season gone, they had never encountered anything like it anywhere. I wonder if KM will now get the Barry treatment for daring to question a bold foreign managers methods? Or will we see this for what that was a decade ago, experienced players knowing the manager is getting everything wrong and questioning him to try to turn around the dismal performances? It's well known I don't like Miller in our starting 11, but I have never questioned his professionalism, fitness or effort. If these rumours are true, it surely shortens Pedros reign yet further.

Strange one given how they done us over by bribing the Russians to take a fall in 93 to give them the best chance of progressing to the final, that we would consider having a game with OM. I hope they are not very good just now, or well behind us in terms of pre-season fitness, or this could be ugly!

Good release, but like others have said it should have named and shamed. It should also have asked Bears to avoid any advertisers that use the Rhebel, and named the biggest 10 advertisers that keep them afloat. Name and shame the journos. Name and shame the advertisers.

Either the Killie in March or Dundee in April look perfect choices. Neither should be moved for tv, weather "should" be improving by then, plenty of notice for everyone. December bookings are always problematic with work & family parties etc, and January is financially difficult for most. Looks a no-brainer to me that these two dates are put to the vote now and get everything all booked up to allow those coming from further away plenty of time to get travel plans in place at a cheaper cost. Thanks again BH for taking the lead, much appreciated.

Not a bad shout and I hope you get some momentum for this. I dont do friendlies so I wont be going to any, and in any case I fly out to Rome that day to pick up my cruise ship for a 11 day cruise!

Thanks for that dB, some balance is only fair. I really dont care about results in pre-season (Progres was NOT pre-season, it was a vital European tie) and I care even less about closed-doors games which didnt even cost fans money to attend. All I want to hear from these games is that match sharpness is improving, new players are settling in better, and nobody got injured. Of course it is better if we wipe the floor with our opponents and our strikers are all getting goals, but that is not the main aim of these.

If I can just pick out a couple of points from your above post, one i agree with and the other I dont. The use of Miller (including man-marking Brown in the 5-1 humiliation) has been staggeringly poor. He is either a central striker (best coming off the bench for the last 20 mins or so) or he doesnt play. Like Jig before him, it seems we are determined to find a place in the team for him cos he's a nice guy, irrespective of his playing ability restrictions. That had me really worried about Pedro when I saw how he was using this player. I am not sure he is going to be the guy to give youth a chance. Barjonas, Beerman & Aiden Wilson have been jettisoned back to the youths when they should be pushing on this year in the first team squad given their assured performances at the tail end of last season. It seems Pedro just used them to prove a point to the players he was wanting rid of that he was going to play kids in front of them, but now that he is bringing his own experienced players in, three of our brightest youth players are not even training with the first team squad now. Of course this may change as he gets rid of the unwanted squad excess, and hopefully it does, but the early signs are not good for our youth development into the first team action.

Sheffield is a definite goer, 30th July. Just heard my RSC has booked a bus to go to it.

I'm fairly sure he meant the Timmy moon-howlers in the media and on twatter, not anyone here!

Nope, we should definitely charge for them as we need to plug the gap in expected income that the Luxembourg fiasco will have cost us. Obviously at modest levels (no more than £15 for adults) but we cannot afford to bring a side to Ibrox for a friendly, paying their expenses and fee for the match, and getting no matchday income for it. Personally, I would prefer that we arrange all our pre-season games as closed doors events or away games that we get a fee for attending. It doesnt impact on me personally as I wont ever go to a friendly again, home or away, as the games are garbage, non-competitive, rotating subs for the last half hour, and generally a waste of time unless you are only going "fur the swally!" which is of course perfectly acceptable as long as you dont then moan about how shit the game was!

Its not necessarily child abuse Club1872 are hinting at, it is the tax evasion of wrongly reporting turnstile income during the 70/80's when it was common knowledge that celtics crowds were always declared lower than the number who attended because the club were paying directors/officials/players/managers direct from turnstile income instead of through PAYE. However, we are also going to have to get down and grubby with these scumbags as they have no low bar in how they will fight to get at us. If we have to claim that the cover-up of child abuse led to a sporting advantage because they would have been banned from recruiting their own kids if it was known they harboured abusers and therefore wouldnt have been able to bring through a lot of players for free but would have to have paid for them from other clubs instead, then so be it. THE GLOVES ARE OFF.

The income received from a European run, even say 3 rounds of qualies, was essential to our budget, planning, future seeding, everything the club stands for and has been desparate to get back to for the last 5 years. Failure to beat a really poor team OVER TWO LEGS is not a blip, bad night, or any such write-off. It was his second most important remit for this season, behind closing the gap at the top and ensuring a clear second place. I was happy for Pedro to use this tie to bed in his players and use it as a pre-season friendly. We should have been able to rest our entire first team and play our under 20 side who would beat the part-timers no problem. We used to send our U20 to play Linfield's first team and still beat them comfortably. Progres were that level of side, and should have been brushed aside in both legs without breaking sweat. The nature of the capitulation was most worrying, not the fitness level, not the integration of team harmony, but the attitude of these players and that comes down to the manager. He has been gushing at pressers saying he has been working hard with them in pre-season and they all know what he wants. He has weeded out those who dont believe in him and vice-versa, and been heavily backed by the board in providing all his transfer targets were purchased at the earliest possible moment. Why Pena and Herrera were both involved in full training but didnt start (in Pena's case not even benched) when they cant be that far behind the others, and certainly would be no less fit than our opponents, is another question for the manager. Going on from a few gutless performances last season since his introduction, including a OF cup semi final and the most humiliating OF home defeat, the evidence is there for all to see that this guy IS the dud that a lot of us worried he might be when news of his impending appointment was leaked. The information I got from someone very close to the inside track and the Directors (who knew we had lost the BTC on Tuesday) is very scary as to the real appointment and recruitment process which hired Pedro and all the subsequent players. We can give Pedro all the time that even his staunchest supporters want to give him - it is NOT going to turn around and Stevie Wonder can see it. It seems to me the main reason for keeping him is to avoid the embarrassment of binning him after backing him so much this summer. Unfortunately you dont have to be Nostradamus to predict therer will be further humiliations before the board are forced to act. I didnt want the board to sack him on Tuesday, I wanted him to resign in disgrace. £420 for a 22 hour day with Rangers Travel Club to be rewarded by the most gutless performance anybody there has ever seen, or will ever hope to see. I will always be there to back the team home, away and in Europe, but I feel I can write in here amongst my fellow bears what I feel in my heart about the current situation without being branded negative or not wanting us to do well. I have been walking about totally depressed since I got back. Many tims that I discuss football with and would normally be giving me stick if we lost to Motherwell or Inverness didnt even slag me about this as they knew this was worse, much worse than anything they could ever do or say. That tells you everything about just how bad this was. Pedro should not have seen another sunrise as Rangers manager. Perhaps his agent can arrange the pay-off from the 10+ commissions he has "earned" from our club since April.

Well blow me down with a feather duster! A C1872 statement with balls that doesnt pussy about playing with clever words. Our haters will hate that and demand further action - BRING IT ON !

Indeed, missed out the best signing of the lot by a mile doh! I think the point I was making still holds though!

The ones in bold all played in our worst ever result in our 145 year history. So basically you are saying, lets wait and hope Pena and Dorrans can carry a team on their backs between them? Make no mistake, that was Pedro's team (undercooked I will give you but so were our opponents) that humiliated our name on Tuesday. It appears he has done nothing to work on these "transitions" that he so loudly proclaims his teams will excel at. the cold truth is he played 7 defensive players against a team who were always going to play 10 defensive players, left our sole striker totally alone, made subs that only weakened our team, and generally looks like Ronny without the roar! We can defend Pedro all we like, give him all the time we want to, but in the end I will stick with what was said on his appointment, he wont last a year. His CV was nowhere near good enough to get on a long list never mind a short list, never mind appointed, and this is bearing out with humiliation after humiliation after humiliation. But of course after every defeat we can always rely on some good Rangers fans being staunch and defending the indefensible, hoping for better days, while surely deep down (maybe not even that deep!) they all know what even the dogs in the street know, that this appointment was all wrong and cannot possible end well.

I heard this yesterday that the deal was done, £475K was definitely the fee but with add-ons. Another PC disaster in my book. We didnt make any effort to reward the guy to the same wage as others who were not as good as him, and therefore he was left with no choice but to believe the club and the manager didnt want him. It's allright though, we have Dalcio! Anyone know what the loan fee was to Benfica for getting this guy on loan for the year - bye bye McKay money!

Well I have left this until now as I have been far too angry to put into words what I witnessed in Luxembourg last night. I'm not much calmer now to be honest but here goes. Our opponents made one tactical change from last week, they doubled up on Nico when he got the ball. That in effect negated all of our attacking options. I dont understand why we played a back 4, and two holding midfielders who hardly ever crossed the halfway line. Add in the keeper and you have 7 out of 11 that are not involved in our attacking play, against a 10 man defence. Even amateurs will be fairly confident of 10 beating 4. Of our attacking 4, Nico was double teamed and none of his teammates were in good enough positions to allow him to play quick passes before the double marking got to him. If anyone can tell me where Miller was supposed to be playing I would be grateful. Candeias and Dalcio put together are about 25% of a Barrie McKay on a bad day. Neither beat a man all night, nor contributed one good cross from their very wide positions, that in itself were no help to either Nico or Morelos. Morelos had virtually no supply all night, but I didnt see too many good runs off the ball or a desire to get involved. The subs were just a re-hash of the failures they replaced. Our play was predictable, boring, sluggish, lacking in fight, desire or ability, and we were saying after about 15 minutes that all it would take was one mistake and we could be eliminated. I have seen some defence of last night (better than what was on show on the park!) that mentions the early part of the season, new players, etc. I understand Progres are at the exact same stage in their pre-season as us, and are trying to blend in 10 new players into their side. So both those arguments are invalid. Our side have a real problem with fight and desire, and a real confidence problem as well. As soon as we get into trouble we hide, bottle it and lose. The 5-1 capitulation to the enemy at Ibrox 2-3 months ago should have seen Pedro removed IMO as it was totally unacceptable how the side set up and played. Those of a more forgiving nature told us it wasnt his team but together with his completely unimpressive CV and lack of improvement he got out the side, it was a huge gamble to give him a huge transfer budget instead of resetting the clock and starting again. Pedro got all his first picks we are told, so it was his side. Pena is in full training and must be as fit as anyone else and needing games. As his biggest outlay purchase, I dont understand why he has failed to make even the bench in two games. I dont expect much if he is like the other purchases. I got it confirmed pre-game yesterday that every single purchase we have made under Pedro has come from the exact same agency. Every single one. We accused MW of doing the same thing with his English duds, but Pedro has done the very same, but at a more expensive level. It is without doubt the worst result in our 145 year history. It was not a one-off like Berwick, it was a second leg of a European match, and we got the warning last week of how our opponents would play, and their pedigree is the worst side we have ever played in competitive action. If the manager doesnt quit after overseeing the worst result in our famous history, then what will it take for him to walk? Or is it all about the pay-off (again!)?

I have heard the actual interview where he said that and that was not how it came across. He was gushing with praise when talking about us, and had the audience (it was in a Sky studio) mesmerised by it.

I hope you guys are right as I thought that was one of the worst debuts I have seen at Ibrox from a new signing and was really disappointed. He never wanted to take the player on after the first time when he did a wee fancy through his own legs and put it out the park and fell over. He bottled it from a couple of challenges in the second half also which never endears to a new fanbase. He did look to have some awareness and pace so perhaps it was just one of those days for a winger that nothing comes off. I hope it was just nerves or the big crowd that got to him and that he goes on to be the player we all hope he can become for us this season. We really need a creative wide player if McKay is bombed out.

Agreed, one of my absolute favourites that one!

Straight swap seems fair to me. A hugely talented youngster in exchange for an experienced but getting on a bit old pro that they no longer want.

I think your spot on with this sadly. I was hoping to give PC a clean slate and I will persevere with this and try not to be too critical, but I think my previous statement that he will not last a year may be accurate. There is always a danger with pre-season games that we look too critically at them, when they are all about getting an improvement in match sharpness and getting ready for the league season starting. The problem we (and PC of course) have with this is that European football (and the related income) is so important to us that we cant afford to not hit the ground running even this early in pre-season. If we can get these 4 Euro games out the road (are we really shitting ourselves about Limmasol?) without any injuries and progress into R3, we will be in a much stronger position in terms of confidence, fitness, team harmony and understanding. We really have to just ignore the quality of football in these games and ensure we win the games first and foremost.