Tannochsidebear

Clearly this guy is about as intelligent as Scott Brown, and is being guided by his agent. I dont know who his agent is but it wouldnt surprise me to hear he has celtic leanings. As previously stated, this has all the hallmarks of the Scott Brown transfer when he was represented by a bheast. The fact this whole story has been played out in the media will not have come from our club, but from his agent and Hibs clubbing together to ensure this deal didnt happen and we got as much bad press as possible (not difficult in this climate). I for one am absolutely delighted that we have missed out on an over-rated player because we refused to be held to ransom. I am delighted we have acted professionally and not been drawn into the war of words. I am not convinced that Warburton was all that interested in the first place, given we have been linked with Allan for a lot longer than Warburton has been manager. Perhaps someone on our staff had promised the boy we would bid in the summer, and Warburton has ok'd it to a limit, and we have refused to pay what Hibs were asking. I dont believe he was never for sale to us, just that they wanted more money so they could say to their fans they couldnt refuse a great offer. A celtic supporting friend of mine said (before they were linked with him) that he seen a lot of the young Scott Brown in this lad (hardly a lad at 23 but never mind) and when I asked him last night what he thought now it looked like he was signing for them, he repeated that statement but thought there were better players already in place than him. (He also said that Delia would probably play him in the wrong position just like most of the rest of the team!) If indeed he goes on to have a career similar to Scott Brown, I will be even more relieved that we missed out on him. Scumbags and snarlers who can run about kicking opponents are not what I like to watch.

Really SBS, there is absolutely nothing to back that claim up. He supposedly had a good season last year, but didnt stand out (IMO) in any of the 7 games against the worst ever Rangers team. He failed in England, and nobody with any serious pedigree has been in for him this summer until now. This story reminds me of the Scott Brown/Kevin Thomson saga that went on for months and we were nailed on to get both Hibbee Thomson and "Rangers-daft" Brown. We signed the gifted player first and told the thug we would be back in for him next window, but along came the scum with a huge wage and he sold his soul soon afterwards and seemingly has forgotten he supported us previously and was crying on the day he was told Hibs were not selling him to us due to fan pressure (sound familiar?) As with Brown, the world will not cave in if a mediocre player cannot get leave to come to us when asked, and if Allan decides to just get out of dodge to the only club he is allowed to go to by his current employer, the famous celtic feeder club, then I for one will not be the slightest bit disappointed, and thankful that we did not give the rotten to the core club any of our hard-earned.

Thanks for posting Willie, great snaps. Also delighted that the preparation this time round is professional unlike previous seasons.

I hear Warburton would prefer Zaliukas moved on but the player is not so keen to move on.

I hear that two players are arriving from Spurs today on season-long loans.

Was going to post something similar Thinker. The headline is worse than the story, and this comes, unsurprisingly, from the paper Paul Murray lauded. The Rhebel has not been a friend of ours for 20 years or more, and anyone (Directors included) who think it is either neutral or favourable, is seriously misjudging matters. I expect more and more of these stories (never seen one on Delia despite his antics pre-bheasts) to appear the more successful we become.

The new look official match programme is the best in years. The one down-side to it that I readily skip past without a second glance is the two pages given over to Andy Cameron in each edition. His writing is poor, never funny, and is a total waste of space in an otherwise excellent publication full of great articles (the ones with David Mason have been first class so far), great facts and stats and well worth the £3, apart from the above. I know we all have a living to earn, and at least Cameron has no problem with being a Rangers supporter and I have no doubt is a good guy for "entertaining" visiting Directors, but that is money best saved and perhaps spent better elsewhere.

Good to hear both single match tickets and season tickets are continuing to sell well and that Bears are returning to the club in their droves. A full house (or very close to it) for the next couple of home games will let the board know we are back, and hopefully help them to push on with their investment plans, and perhaps allow the manager to add to his squad before the window closes.

On last seasons performances, he wouldnt work hard enough to get into a Warburton team. Although in saying that on last seasons performances Wallace & Law wouldnt have got in either! I know the OP was hypothetical and that is what message boards are all about in many ways, but it would be a no for me, even if he was an out of contract freebie with reasonable wages. I just dont see him fitting into this workaholic system.

Who is he?

Seriously? I would have thought I might have noticed such a superstar in 7 meetings last season! And even if I didn't, you might have thought other clubs would have been battering their door down all summer with seven figure offers. Irony aside, if you rate him highly where do you see him fitting into our side. Left, centre or right of our midfield 3?

Can someone tell me where Allan would play in our system? It is clear we need quality in certain areas, like centre forward and goalkeeper. We have Holt, Halliday, Law, Shiels and others for the three midfield slots, with Eustace in training expected to sign. From what I remember of the little I noticed Allan last season, plus how our midfielders have started, he is not going to improve our starting 11, and so therefore will be on the bench most weeks. I don't want us paying decent money to a scumbag club for a squad player.

I thought the programme was a good read on Sunday. I will be buying it again tonight. I am glad it told me who that was on the cover, I didnt recognise him!

Saturday afternoon footy, what a great idea! You are of course spot on that it is all about the money. My own view is that clubs give the tickets sold number just to boost their season average home crowd, which will then be used to maximise advertising revenue for trackside advertising, adverts in the programme, and official club sponsorship partnerships. Take a certain club in Glasgow that famously gives out crowds of 45-50K when there are clearly around 25-30K inside the ground with the top tier closed etc. That to me is only to save themselves embarrassment at such pathetic crowds for a championship winning side, but more importantly for financial gain. You can imagine the PR blurb coming out from them "get seen by 50K fans every week if you advertise on our big screens" etc

Well they have got SOME of the story right, but missed out some of more juicy bits from what happened with/to this employee. #awomanscorned

The official "attendance" will still be around 49K as it is still based on tickets sold (or given away in other clubs cases!) not actual attendance, as it should be.

No more crazy than the Arabs were to sell two players to their cup final opponents six weeks before the final. Now that is absolutely barking. I suppose it depends if you believe Hibs have a realistic chance of beating us to the title. I dont believe they will get within 15 points of us, so I dont see the point of them holding on to a quickly depreciating asset (due to contract running down) that doesnt want to be there, when they could re-invest the money on players who want to be there and who may improve the squad, giving them a better chance of second place and pole position for the play offs. If it gets to January, we should be signing the boy (if we still want him by then) on a pre-contract, then offering Hibs £75K to take him off their hands early. By that time we should have a very healthy lead in the league and therefore the arguments about not selling to contenders wont hold water. They will look to have been stubborn and stupid in not selling when they had the chance to bring in alternate players and hell mend them, quite frankly.

If the BBC boycotted Dens in support of Jum I am not sure anybody even noticed. They would only go there for Dundee v Celtic games and if this was from a few years ago then Dundee were not even in the top flight at the time. Boycotting the biggest club in the country because one of their scumbag journos has his free pie taken away is an over-reaction of quite some magnitude.

Likewise Zappa, I treat these as midweek games also. Horrible to be having blank weekends so early in the season. Everybody is buzzing for the first proper weekend of the new season, Soccer Saturday is back etc, and we have a blank weekend.

I will give my full Scottish run-down; Prem: Bheasts, followed by Sheep, Hearts. Relegated - Killie. Hamilton to win play-off final. Cham: Rangers, followed by Hibs, QotS, St Mirren. Relegated - Livvy. Div1: Dunfermline Div2: Clyde Scottish Cup: Rangers League Cup: Rangers Challenge Cup: Rangers Get your predictions in and we can have a laugh at the end of the season to see how right or wrong we were!

With respect dB, a fantasy football compiler of values is about as relevant as a Graham Speirs tactical analysis piece. What we will offer Hibs is down to our valuations of the player, not some internet site. I think around £250K for a player untested at any decent level is fair. I certainly wouldnt want to be paying anything like £500K or upwards for a player of that credentials. If the player clearly states to Hibs that he is happy to wait and take his chances that Rangers are still interested either in Jan or next summer, then no matter how Hibs use the media or agents to manipulate the price and claim lots of teams are interested in him, it wont matter if the player refuses to go. Another thing to be consider is that Hibs are a scumbag of a club, and Petrie one of the main antagonists in our demotion, and in no way should we be offering them a premium price for one of their players when they tried to kill us. If it were up to me I would not offer them a penny for any of their players, ever again. And same goes to Aberdeen, Dundee Utd and our city rivals.

I hate Friday night games personally. I love to look forward to going to the match at the weekend. With the football on the friday it leaves a huge hole in your weekend. It also means you are rushing about to get home from work and then out for your bus. Tomorrow will see me have around 20 minutes in the house before i have to go out again. But hey, as long as Rangers get about £2.50 from BT Sport for this hassle, who are we to complain?

While not knowing why the lad has been let go (my own opinion is it is a better deal for Saints than us) these things happen in football and good luck to the lad. Dont you just know however that he will have been getting dozens of phone calls from journalists since news of his signing was released all wanting to know the dirty inside info on Warburton and Rangers, hoping he will say he was badly treated or similar. Hopefully the lad is well advised and stays clear of the hordes of scumbag journos who will be salivating at the thought of yet another negative Rangers story in the offing. More than all that I hope there is nothing to report, and that the lad was treated fairly and respectfully by our management and club in his exit.

Steady on troops. After two cup ties against inferior opposition it is not quite time to annoint a saviour now is it? Yes the football style is more easy on the eye when we are allowed space to do what we want. We have brought in players who look (mostly) athletic, hungry to improve, and with basic skills all in the right places. However we are all comparing this "revolution" with the previous regime who, from top to bottom, couldn't spell football club. I think we are right to give him our support, space and time to try to create a proper football club our founding fathers can again be proud of, but until that Championship trophy and Petrofac cup are in the trophy room, together with some more good additions this month, in January and again next summer, and a couple of good cup runs where we do not lose to anyone we shouldnt, we must try to keep things a wee bit in perspective.

Bluedell sums up English perfectly. A short period of apparant neutrality does not a fair or good journalist make. One wonders why he, given the information above that he is a rugby fan from Limerick, has turned up at BBC Scotland covering football. More curious that Sportsound would put him up in a Rangers debate when he clearly is not a fan or capable of rational thought regarding our club. My thoughts as to the answer to these questions are that he has not the quality to get a good job covering rugby in Ireland (or Scotland or wherever he decides to reside), and has shown his credentials to be a good fit for the rabid infusion of sectarianism that lives at Pacific Quay.