Tannochsidebear

Its fairly obvious what is going to be acceptable to the majority of Bears this season. Improvement in all areas. We can forgive not winning the title as long as we contend for it. Our rivals budget dwarfs ours, and they have a team who have won over course and distance year after year. For our part we are building our team back up again and we have pretty much wasted 2 years in doing so with mistakes in dugout and boardroom. I want to see improvement. I want to see us win our home games. I want to see us win the games we should be winning. I want to see us play decent football. It doesnt have to be like Barcelona of a few years back, or Man City last year, just better for us. Defend better, attack better. For the investment in the football side this last few months this should be the minimum we can ask for. I want to see a big increase in the number of points won. This should in turn ensure there is no talk of a battle for second. Aberdeen and Hibs may well get a similar points total to last year (70-75), we need to be at least 10-15 points higher than that. To win the title we probably need 20-25 points more, which is a big ask (not impossible when you consider the amount of cheap points we surrendered meekly the last two seasons, especially at home), but to say we have failed if we dont do that would be wrong, this time round anyway. The big stepping stone will be to win a cup and to beat the bheasts. This is what we want to see. If these things happen and we dont win the league, then nobody will be calling for Gerrard to leave. It was blatantly obvious that Pedro was miles out his depth and should have been sacked at the very latest on the plane home from Lux. All fans could see he had no management qualities and the players did not believe in him, nor worked their best for him. I dont think we will see a similar thing with SG, but if we do the results will suffer and the calls to go will increase. However lets stay positive and hope for a season of stability, improvement, and silverware.

Is this not starting with the game on Thursday? I thought Europe would be included in the same way as domestic cup games?

tonight - WCSF France v Belgium tomorrow - WCSF Croatia v England Thursday - The People v some pub team. I cant wait for Thursday!! On a similar theme I saw on twitter over the weekend a great stat from Friday nights games; Brazil v Belgium WCQF Att: 35,000 Rangers v Bury, pre-season friendly, Att: 41,000 It truly is all about the Rangers!!

France 3 Belgium 2 Croatia 2 England 2

Our next poker trip is Sep 19, probably about 20 going this time, but there are a few from the dark side as well! Yes just looking at shows now, heard Love was fantastic. Might go & see Jeff Dunham again, very funny.

This is spot on. While those players mentioned underachieved last season, the lack of decent coaching and management was a huge part of that. I think we have a lot of players in our squad that will be so much better with good coaching and management.

Me too mate. Staying in the Venetian this time as I’m going with the wife. When I go with my poker guys we have tried a few, MGM, Flamingo, Caesers & Mirage. Where’s your favourite?

Cheers FS, much appreciated! Now just need the wife to be tired and want to go to sleep (it will be 4am and we will have not long arrived from Honolulu so should be no problem) and its off to (watch) the match I go!

France 3 Uruguay 2 Russia 1 Croatia 1 Sweden 1 England 1 Brazil 3 Belgium 2

We must not allow the bheasts to say this is all a sinister move by the club. The club and the new manufacturers asked the fans what they wanted and this is what the fans asked for, and will buy in huge numbers. Does this make the fans bigots for wanting strips in these colours/styles? Nope, we know it will wind up our opponents fans, and so if they are upset by it, then we have won! Give the fans of our own club what they want, and tell those that dont like it that it is none of their business, we dont make strips for our opponents pleasure.

"Since being in Scotland and I have been able to sense the excitement there is about Steven Gerrard taking over at Rangers - I am sure nobody will be disappointed." On the contrary, I am hoping there are an awful lot of people disappointed, especially those in the mhedia, if we can play good winning football!

Damn, I was hoping the OF game would be Saturday lunchtime so I can watch it with the Las Vegas Loyal. By the time of KO on the Sunday, I will still be 3 hours from Heathrow flying back. Thats going to be an excruciating wait for my phone to switch back on upon landing to see what the score was! Need to see if there is a RSC in San Fran to watch the Motherwell game in as I arrive there earlier that day.

I see Osijek are 2-0 up on St Johnstone in a friendly after an hour. I am assuming this is the same Osijek we are scheduled to play? Can anyone confirm? I am hoping Tommy Wright will be taking some notes to pass on to us, and that we have someone there watching for ourselves.

That sums this nonsense up quite well. A decade ago we had drew with Barca, beaten Red Star Belgrade, Stuttgart, Lyon, Panathanaikos, Sporting Lisbon, Fiorentina and played 19 matches in Europe in a single season. This year we will all be over the moon if can mange to beat two unpronounceable sides from Macedonia and Croatia. We can certainly claim to have our best squad since 2012, but a decade would be ridiculous given the talent in Walter's 2007-2011 squad, even if the bank was forcing us to reduce the quality year on year. We should be trying to manage expectations in the media, getting carried away wont end well. Let the bheasts do the bragging, we should have nothing to say until we have achieved something.

France 2-1 Argentina Uruguay 0-1 Portugal Spain 3-1 Russia Croatia 2-1 Denmark Brazil 3-1 Mexico Belgium 2-0 Japan Sweden 1-1 Switzerland Colombia 2-3 England

TNS are Welsh side The New Saints

Can anyone recall what our attendance was for the Progres home tie last season? I recall being mightily impressed with the attendance for early July against a pub team (little did we know they would be a match for our pub team!). I agree we will be sold out very quickly given the interest in the new manager and players. I hope they give us some early belief. As this game is only 2 weeks tomorrow, do we have any closed doors bounce games planned or is the Bury game the only one? If thats the case then we are pretty much using the Shkupi game as warm-ups?

Very interesting to note that all of training kit has no manufacturer branding on it at all. It looks quite retro! 42 man squad including backroom staff. Thats an awfully high wage bill!

Surely nobody got 2 correct scores in these two games? Germany oot, I cant believe it! Most people were saying this is wide open this year, I didnt think it would be THIS wide open. All of Eng-er-lund will be sniggering gleefully and thinking their chances must be increasing with every time a "big" team plays poorly.

Sorry guys, I totally forgot about round 3 due to being away on a lads weekend to Eng v Aus at the cricket and only came back up the road yesterday afternoon a little bit fragile! If i'm being honest the only point i would have got would have been for Uruguay to beat Russia but not by that scoreline, all others i had bets on that lost! If not too much hassle, can I get the rest of Round 3 predictions entered here? Australia 1 Peru 1 France 1 Denmark 1 Iceland 2 Croatia 2 Nigeria 1 Argentina 2 Mexico 1 Sweden 1 S Korea 0 Germany 3 Serbia 0 Brazil 2 Switzerland 2 Costa Rica 1 Japan 2 Poland 1 Senegal 1 Columbia 3 England 1 Belgium 1 Panama 1 Tunisia 2

The only ones I know a bit about are Goldson and Arfield. I like the look of Goldson, he looks a proper defender in what little I have seen of him. Arfield looks to me much in the Murphy/Dorrans mould. Decent English pedigree without being top quality or having that spark of genius that can win games from nowhere. Those players however cost a lot of cash well in excess of what we can pay, so hopefully he can improve our midfield creativity from last season. Katic we will have to wait and see about. Hopefully our DoF has a good eye and he is a nugget we can use for a year or two and sell on for a big fee. I do worry about 21 year old centre backs, they usually have a few mistakes in them, so hopefully these dont cost us and he can grow with a good partner in Goldson beside him. For the fee we paid it looks like Katic and Goldson will be first choice centre backs, so hopefully this is the new Weir/Cuellar pairing! The SG picks of the 2 boys from Liverpool will be nothing to do with the DoF, so this will let us see how good the new manager is at picking players to fit the way he wants to play. I cant really see Ejaria getting much if any starts, but hopefully can offer something from the bench once he settles in. And then we have McGregor. The one real star of our summer business IMO, I am absolutely delighted to have re-signed our keeper. Not only will he earn us points with his performances and saves, his winning attitude and knowledge of what it takes to win at Rangers will be passed on to all in the dressing room, of that I have no doubt. Only an obsessive tim would deny we have certainly improved our starting 11 "on paper" with our signings to date, and with some areas still needing improving, it may be that we have more to come, or have to wait until January/next summer to get the team finished the way Allen/Gerrard want it. Now we just have to go on the park with a better attitude, better tactics, able to change the game with subs if required, and find a consistency that can see us challenge.

You dont get sent home from pre-season training, missing valuable fitness work, if you are not injured. If it was a scan to see if an old injury has healed properly, it surely would have been done last week before they left for Spain. I think we can safely take it that Dorrans will not feature in our early season games.

If I remember rightly Premier Sports done a few of these games last year, although I cant be sure as I was in Luxembourg having a quite wonderful day of sunshine and culture until the football started and ruined it all. Dont think RTV had the licence for that game last year. I'm hoping Rangers travel club will manage to do a day trip for this tie, although the price they will be quoting for it (if true to form moaning about availability of planes etc) would get you a fortnight in Magaluf!

Ok, so leaving behind the baggage this lad brings now that he has signed, do we think this is really for cover, or will we be looking to move Tav on for a good fee? The reason I ask is that, from the court reports when JF was getting done for assault, he was earning £28K PER WEEK as a Liverpool reserve player. If he has freedom of contract and comes to us directly from this contract, what sort of wage cut are we talking about. A backup player in our squad should be on no more than £2-3Kpw. We dont have a massive wage budget so I cant see us giving this guy a huge (by our standards, not his previous earnings standards) contract just to be back up. Does the lure of SG mean this lad is willing to give up a huge amount of cash to be a backup? Will be interesting to see how this pans out.

If that is not bringing the club into disrepute and gross misconduct then I dont know what is!