Tannochsidebear

The best player I have ever seen play for us, he simply IS the Messiah, and will be for the rest of my Rangers supporting life I am quite sure.

A lot of players would still be sulking for not getting to hit the free kick and not bother celebrating or admitting that the other guy was right. Defoe's reaction is exactly what you want to see in a professional, and a team player first and foremost. I hadnt seen that before, but it sums him up quite well.

I was hoping the second leg was going to be moved to the Tuesday but it seems not. I'm definitely with @Rousseau on this one, crushed to a pulp in the first leg!

As usual a honest reaction interview from SG, and he nailed the first half for me, we were too safe, too square, too boring. Much improved in second half with more off the ball running into spaces, more forward passes into dangerous areas, more overlapping, a really good watch in second half for what was effectively a bounce game against an amateur side. Same again the next two Thursdays please!

I hope nobody has paid for flights to Lux. Cork now 2-0 up in 2nd leg.

Team news is out and 9 changes wes polster edmundson goldson Halliday aribo kamara Docherty hastie stewart Morelos

Yes I will accept all that, we were running on empty leading up to the break. But we were most certainly still in the title chase at that stage, and lost the title in the second half of the campaign with no Euro games to contend with.

Glad you typed that, I would have went for "some Turkish mob"! Hope this is true, and we get a decent fee for him. Cant see him getting much gametime ahead of Jones, Ojo, Hastie, Murphy etc and if he does it will mean those new players have failed.

Not sure I agree our league form suffered badly during the Europa campaign. While we definitely suffered at the piggery after our jaunt to furthest Russia, it is worth remembering that we went joint top after beating the bheasts at New Year. It was our form just after the winter break that cost us the title, with no European action to blame for it. With the size of squad we have there should be no excuse if we rotate it properly.

The way the Rhebel are controlling the narrative for this overpriced wee ned who cant defend and is injury prone is truly remarkable. Imagine just for a minute this scumbag was our player. The Rhebel would be laughing at suggestions that Arsenal were preparing a bid of around £2M and adding that as he is injury prone, has defensive flaws in his game, cant even get a game for his lowly ranked country, etc etc. The power of the press is a valuable tool to be using as somehow it still has some respect down south where they will read these stories and give them some credibility where none exists. The Rhebel (and the others) continually downscale our players values and deliberately overhype the scum players values.

Not necessarily @Gonzo79, Dudelange have dropped down into Europa and will play in R2 next week, and as the higher ranked side they get to choose which night they want to play. As they have been playing Tuesdays they may want to continue with Tuesday for their next home game, or they can pull rank and play Thursday, which would mean Progrès would have to move to Tuesday (can’t be Wednesday as visiting team need pitch available at kick off time the day before to train on). Its a wait and see job for everyone involved, and I’m guessing the earliest an announcement will be made will be Friday once Progrès have officially qualified for R2, and confirmed the date change with UEFA.

Oh it did Bill, I seen the tweet with this story in it, and the replies were virtually all from bheasts foaming at the mouth!

Just been looking at Bert Kassies site to see how the seedlings are working out for us and it makes depressing reading. The list of seeds for R3 is daunting and we have to be as lucky as last year to get a hopeful draw. We were the last of the seeds for R2, and we are 2nd bottom of the unseeded teams for R3. The list of seeds for R4 is even more impossible, and, like last year, we only have a chance of drawing a 50/50 winnable tie if we actually draw one of the top 13 seeds in R3, which means we would be seeded for the R4 draw as this takes place before R3 is completed. This is what happened last year when we got Maribor in R3 who were one of the top seeds, and therefore we were actually the seeded team when we drew Ufa in R4. The 13 sides we have to hope for are 2 from the CL dropouts plus Sparta Prague, Braga, Legia Warsaw, Eintracht, Steaua, Feyenoord, Espanyol, Malmo, Partizan Belgrade, Standard Liège & Wolves. How many of them would you think we could reasonably hope to beat? It looks very difficult indeed, not impossible but very difficult. Should we not not draw one of those sides, we will be unseeded for R4, which means we get drawn against one of the above, but when they are more up to speed and into their season which seems more dangerous again. Of course we have to get our co-efficient up in order to get better seedings in the process, but you need to beat a lot of good teams to get the points to get you up there. It’s a real double edged sword. Our achievement to reach the group stages last season was the real highlight of the season and a magnificent accomplishment given just how difficult it is, but we must acknowledge we got really lucky with the draw in that we were actually seeded for R4 due only to the timings of the draw, and we got Osijek who were 5th bottom of the seeds when we could have got Sevilla or Besiktas amongst many others, Maribor who were probably not as good as they had been in building their coefficient instead of Olympiakos, Bordeaux, Feyenoord or Copenhagen who were the other 4 seeds in our mini group, and Ufa who were about the poorest R4team we could have got when Leipzig & Atalanta were in our mini group. It was nothing short of a miracle to get so lucky, can we get just as lucky again?

The Ryan Jack pass through to DC was a thing of beauty, and very unlike him. I am hoping he has been working on this part of his game, and being coached on this part of his game, as if he can add a good forward pass or spot an runner like in that move, he improves his game hugely. Last season he was too safe, with the easy option of square and backward passes taken all too frequently, and was by far the weakest part of his game.

I'm assuming that is Jamie Murphy in the line-up. I hope he gets another good workout under his belt today, injury free.

Anybody any idea how many tickets have been sold for Thursday? Need to to decide whether to take the car or the supporters bus.

Any links to last night's podcast please? Cant find on main page, its still the mojo one.

I noticed that too, was a great moment between manager and captain as if to say “well this is all going to plan isn’t it!”

Listening to the SG post-match interview he mentions that FH being left sided will allow him to play 3 at the back when he feels the opponent allows it. Very interesting indeed to see how that side may shape up.

Agreed. However the wage bill must be eye-watering and unsustainable, so sadly quite a lot of our options need to be removed. The other worry is that how do our young academy players feel when there are several experienced players in front of them. SG has always talked about a pathway to the first team, which I think is exactly right. With the current squad numbers how does a McPake Mayo Mebude etc even get on the bench?

Just watched the game back on RTV after spending the afternoon at Perth races and then watching the amazing drama of the cricket World Cup Final. I really don’t care about scorelines in friendlies, for me it is all about getting match fitness levels up and while it seemed we played at an intensity which was impressive at this early stage, the same couldn’t really be said for our opponents, the French cheating scumbags of Marseille, who look miles away in terms of their preparation and coming off the back of a defeat at Accrington in midweek. Im delighted we got through the game with no injuries, lots of players getting game time into the legs, scored some beautiful goals and looked defensively sound again, but it’s got to be taken in context as our opponents looked not much better than Oxford. i did wonder when the friendly fixtures were announced why OM were second and we play Blackburn & Derby in the next two weeks when we are supposed to be playing better quality sides each week but after watching today you can see we have got the order bang on. I’m guessing the French league doesn’t start for weeks yet. Really looking forward to Thursday and my first chance to see the team in person rather than on tv, and what should be another comfortable victory.

Aren’t all our players @Scott7? Hope he can get up to speed quickly with important Europa qualifiers coming every midweek even before we get started in league business.

Delighted we got this quality signing over the line. Look forward to seeing him in action, I’m guessing alongside Goldson, with Katic & Edmundson as backup/rotation options.

Thanks @Gaffer I especially like that you think he looked quick, as I dont think Goldson is the quickest and we can struggle against the counter sometimes because of this, so it looks like we have identified the exact type of player we need and went out and (hopefully) got him. I dont mind spending this kind of fee for a player with international caps who has played fairly successfully in a top tier league (even more so when it is a defender in Serie A).