Tannochsidebear

Congrats to the twins, some much-needed good news for the fans.

Lazy bassa, would never get a game for us!

They are also now selling a digital version of the match programme if it is just a read you want. If you are a collector this wont be any use though!

It looks like a case of the youth coach not fancying him at all. If he can keep fit, the new manager (surely not long now!) may have a different view. Pete's comment in #160 sums it up perfectly I feel.

He was outstanding last night, easily MOTM, and his best performance in a Rangers shirt by a country mile. IF he could reproduce that on a regular basis, I would have no worries about him, but he doesn't, and will be back to costing goals/chances soon. The evidence is, sadly, overwhelming since his return to the club that this will be the case.

The more I see of Murty's idea of football, the more I am desparate for a new, proper, experienced, manager to take over NOW, not in the summer. This side have, aside from a spell at Murrayfield, Dolly at home, and for 45 mins v Hamilton at home (which we subsequently lost) played pretty dire football. The results have been mixed, but the football has been consistently awful. I was speaking to a few of my mates who have been going all over the world for 30-40 years watching Rangers at half time last night, and they are now at the point of shrugging their shoulders and saying they have given up ever hoping it gets better. These are guys who spend thousands a year, going to our friendlies all over the world, never miss a game domestically, and are usually so defensive of criticism of our club, and it really worries me that if guys like this are getting fed up, what chance do we have of maintaining the level of support we have miraculously been able to achieve in recent dismal seasons. Another full house treated to another poor home performance last night. How long can we continue to expect 50,000 to want to buy tickets and turn up to watch utter dross led by an inexperienced youth coach who looks more lost with each passing game? The board must now do an about-turn and get a manager in ASAP or this season will end very badly, and renewals for next season will be badly affected.

There was the rumour he got himself booked so he would miss Motherwell and be available for the OF game. I think that gives him far too much credit for his level of intelligence personally! As for the team line-up, please Murty just play an attacking line up that doesnt have 7 defenders in it, has some creativity in a central area, and some support for our striker. Hows about; Wes Tav Alves McCrorie John Candieas Pena Holt (a winger, either the boy from Man City or whoever is next in line in the youth side unless I have forgotten someone!) Morelos Hardie Motherwell, with 1 point out of the last 12, are a pretty average bottom 6 side who are in poor form. Lets go at them with all guns blazing and get some revenge for the thuggery at Hampden with some good attacking, fast-paced, quick-passing, high-pressing, football. Caveat - With Beaton in charge I am guessing we will have to be 3 goals better than them to get a draw! If we go out knowing we are getting nothing, then we shouldnt be surprised when he starts his cheating, and our team talk should most certainly involve not breathing anywhere near a Well player in or around the box, hence giving Beaton the chance to give himself a late Xmas pressie by getting his cards oot. Anyone red-carded tonight misses Saturday, so Morelos better not put a tackle in at all tonight or he is getting it!

The only time we have looked coherent up front is when Pena is playing in the 10 slot. He has been the only one who has consistently linked up and looked to support the sole striker as a priority. Given Pena seems to have been binned by our youth coach, we should be playing 2 strikers.

Always a solemn occasion, to think so many of us went to see the Rangers and didnt go home is truly heart-breaking at any time of year, but somehow seems even more brutal at this time of year.

How many times must we let this happen. You get the impression our board (whoever is in charge) couldnt see a value in a player if their life depended on it. Hardie is a regular scorer at all levels up to international U21 and given our lack of goalscoring options (Morelos aside) he should have been given plenty of opportunities to make a name for himself. That we have given Miller about 70 games in the last 18 months and Hardie about 6 makes me sick. If we lose him on a pre-contract we will regret it. As for the others, Bates should command a fee, as should Wilson (no laughing at the back!), not sure about Thompson's development since that one first team chance he got a long time ago, and Nico and Miller should probably be released into the wild.

We have had sports science people at our club for a while but I heard from a couple of players that they were not as fit under the Pedro fitness training than at other times. Clearly the coaches implementing the training and fitness have a much bigger role than the scientists, and the end result of how fit the players are comes more from the trainers / coaches than the analysts. Therefore good training implementations, routines, fitness and gym work are all far more important. There is a role for the analysis that comes from sports science, but it's a much less important role than a lot like to make out.

We noticed it as well from the Moffat stand that our subs were missing at half time for about 5 mins, then when they did come out there was a total lack of effort from ALL of them. It was as if they knew Murty wasn't going to change it up till late in the game so it was pointless. I am much more upset at the 11 who played so poorly for the first 75 minutes than the subs who were not used until the game was lost.

I would argue this was reinforced this afternoon!

I dont want him back but I do feel a bit sorry for MOH. His style of play is never going to be used with us as we dont counter-attack, and we dont ever get space in behind defences. I wasnt at all surprised that he started well back at Saints, and he could work well in most SPFL sides, but certainly not us. We should be getting a fee for him, but no other club in Scotland bar one have any money to pay fees.

I had forgotten about Beerman there. I liked the look of that young lad and he didnt look far away from being able to play regularly in our first team. It makes the decision to give John a 3.5yr deal all the more astonishing when we have our captain to come in and Beerman should be pushing Wallace for a place, not pushing John for a place on the bench! Of course it could be that Wallace is completely goosed, and it will be between John and Beerman (and Hodson?) for the place. Then again, every decisionfrom our board at present on footballing matters is more baffling than the last.

Eh, we dont have any management!

Shocking decision on both parts. Murty only saved from criticism because he is the youth coach stepping up while we appoint a manager. His team's performances in at least 5 of the last 8 games have been utterly atrocious. If he was permanent manager we would be calling for his head by now after the three defeats by Dundee, Hamilton and St Johnstone. My wrath is not directed at Murty, who is never going to say no when asked to remain in charge of the first team for longer, but at this utterly incompetent board of directors. On the back of the awful appointment of Pedro, this complete balls-up does not look good for our board at all. Declan John, after a fantastic start to his career with us at Hamilton, has been pretty rubbish in recent games IMO, (not alone there of course) and I was just talking about him to my mates recently in saying I was glad he was only on loan and that Wallace would hopefully be back soon so we can send him home. I can only hope he is a very cheap backup.

"we'll also be forced into changes with injury to Kenny Miller meaning he may be unavailable until after the winter break." Has this been confirmed anywhere? (not getting my hopes up just yet!)

Windass is most definitely not that clever!

I thought he was our star man by a mile at Hibs the other night. He popped up everywhere in midfield, helping out the defence, helping out the forwards, and closing down, tackling, passing in the centre of the pitch as well. I was knackered just watching him. If he had slipped in Windass instead of shooting that may have got him perfect marks. Outstanding, and long may it continue.

Just to be clear, I dont blame him for the goal either, it is just that yet again our opponent has scored from 100% of the on-target attempts. It seems to happen an awful lot.

I had McCrorie as MOTM after 20 minutes, it was clear we were well off the pace and were back to our inconsistent worst. Wes had two things to do all game, keep out their goal, and catch (or punch to the halfway line) that cross in injury time. He failed with both, would get no more than a 4 from me. His distribution is still slow and inaccurate. It says a lot that Pena (hooked at half time after a poor display) still managed to get the same mark as Captain Calamity who played the full 90 mins. I think that is about right, with Holt, Candieas and Windass all lucky to have escaped the half time axe. (It was never going to be Miller chopped lets face it) I thought John had a stinker as well, and Candieas crossing was really poor, rarely hitting the intended target. He doesnt look up before crossing! He gets into good positions for crosses, works hard enough, but really needs to work on his accuracy. On the face of it, only sheer grit and desire got us the win. I am actually delighted about that because those basic mindset skills have been sadly lacking for far too long, so well done to Murty for ensuring the players came out second half and upped their game a bit. I was happily chanting 3IAR at full time, and left happy at the win. yes we played a lot better against Hamilton and got nothing, but the result always has the final say in how your mood is at the end, so I was a happy frozen bear heading home.

I would urge the club not to give Murty another 6 games in charge and to move swiftly now to put a full time permanent manager in place without further delay. (Not Eck please!). While we got ourselves up for the Dolly double dunter, I really worry that tomorrow will see a performance more like the Hamilton or Dundee games, as this group of overpaid underachievers now know a new manager is not imminent, and they owe the interim nothing as he will be back with the youths in a few weeks. Add to that the fact that having won 2 games in a row, we now look to get this seemingly impossible (for us) third win in a row which has eluded us for a year now. With very difficult games with Hibs, St Johnstone, Motherwell and a trip to the piggery coming up in the next 3 weeks, it is complete mismanagement for us to still be under interim control after this length of time. I have never feared a home match against Ross County (or similar) in my life, but I have a bad feeling about tomorrow given our history over the last 12 months in these type of fixtures, our abysmal home record this season, and all the off-field attention this week distracting us all from a hugely important match. The one thing I am thankful for is that we have not apppointed DM. I watched him and his side closely over the last week, and he is not Rangers class as a manager, certainly not one I want to spend £1M on plus wages, backroom staff, budget etc. He looks bang average to me. I was pretty much undecided until the double header but those two dolly performances told me everything I needed to know. That Murty tactically outplayed him at Ibrox, and he couldnt get anything against 10 men for 35 minutes at home, tells me he is no messiah. I am utterly astonished that our board said in their statement that not one of the applicants was considered good enough, but they thought DM was good enough to spend a huge amount of compensation on. Who applied for the job then, just the cast of jakeytims.com? I have major doubts over our board's (including our DOF) ability to know what we need in terms of a manager. While Warburton was exactly the type of manager we should be looking for, (just unfortunate he couldnt get a side to defend or have a plan B), the cronyism in appointing a mate's mate in Pedro with no CV worthy of discussion, followed by this crisis shows them in a very bad light. The one thing I hope for from this is that it may force them into going after a bigger name than they wanted to just to try to get back some credibility.

The petulant statement suggest to me (guessing between the lines) that through back-channels we had agreed with DM that he would come after the Dolly-double-dunter and our board feel really let down as he has played us along for a few weeks now while we thought we had our man only for him to bottle it. Milne has somehow persuaded him (as is his job) to stay in his secure job at Aberdeen with a Chairman he seems to enjoy working with and is close with, rather than go to a club with a split board, a vacant chairman, a DOF he doesnt know, and a huge expectation. I can see the attraction (if I had no ambition). If this is miles away from the truth, and lets face it we will probably never know, then our statement is a total embarrassment and someone should pay for this with their job.

For me, the result last night should rule McInnes out of having any chance of getting our job. To be so tactically outdone by a youth coach, unable to control his players, and give up a hugely stinking performance in their fans biggest game of the season does not give him any credit if we were considering him for our club. I have been completely undecided if McInnes would be a good choice or not, but I watched him and his team closely last night playing against a Rangers side in complete disarray losing our last two games so lamely, it should have been an easy victory for a settled side who have been solidly in second place for a few years now. Now they may come back on Sunday and show they have learned from last night and do us over big time, (not one of us would be entirely surprised if this would happen) and that may get him a bit more credibility, but that was a really poor show from him and his side last night when he was supposedly putting himself in the shop window in front of his potential new bosses.