maineflyer

Can't help thinking this will turn into a bigger own goal that anything we saw on the park last night. I'd like to hear the details but if it's true, this will be turned against us big style by the likes of Spiers. It's almost beyond belief that Rangers fans could do such a thing.

I think there is a great deal of sympathy for what you say there OB..... and welcome to the forum.

Anyone picking up on this stuff about Maurice Edu claiming he was racially abused by Rangers fans last night. As if things weren't bad enough?

He looks exactly what he is, disinterested and second rate. Another confirmation that, when he can't choose from the top rank, Walter hasn't a clue how to pick a player.

Said as much last night when he wasn't in the starting lineup. Walter must be crazy to leave Nacho out of a game like last night. Should always start.

It's tomorrow but top marks for being early. The bad news is you missed the psychiatric assessments this morning, the good news is you can now choose whatever position you want.

It certainly looks like the end of something. Unfortunately we don't appear to have the leadership to do anything about it and total collapse seems likely, again. Twenty years of Murray and we're right back where we were before Souness arrived.

Walter Smith is showing us week after week that he cannot do what needs to be done, we can all see that so there is no denying it. Of course the underlying circumstances contribute to our dreadful situation but if Smith has lost the ability (or will) to organise and motivate, then why does he stay in the job? We know the directors haven't a clue and almost certainly will not fire Smith but surely the manager must have some pride left, enough thought for the club to realise it's past time to resign and go. Last night was a watershed and the manager needs to face up to it.

Right lads, tomorrow morning, 7.00am, Gullane sands. Bring yer trainers and a plastic bag.

It's about bloody time. ten years of sitting on our hands has got no one's attention. Oh, and tell me David Murray didn't see this coming. Slippery bastard.

You think?

D'you think Walter heard anything?

I haven't heard it either to be fair, only word of mouth information.

No worries, I think we all do much the same.

I just think you should worry less about what fans are doing in the stands and more about the performances on the park and why they are becoming worse and worse over time. Forget which fan has the moral high ground, it's a pointless diversion from the real issues at hand.

The people who made Rangers great were actually people like Wilton, Struth and Symon .... and some of our more enlightened directors .... and the teams who played for them. Take their achievements away and there wouldn't be anyone sitting in the stands. Rangers are a football club and, while it might be comforting to think so, success isn't measured by how staunch the fans are or how long we sit it out when the chips are down. In my experience, Rangers fans are actually as fickle as any and I've seen plenty of times when Rangers fans voted with their feet. BTW, I'm told there's booing these days at some away games - you can't describe those guys are part time fans.

We need to abandon false hope and forget about the EPL. It isn't happening. No one is going to make money out of Rangers and we will not see players of the calibre we had in the 1990's again for a very, very long time. All we can hope for is to become much better at our current level. Even without EPL money, Rangers should still be the best team in Scotland and should still be capable of producing teams like those I watched in the 60's and 70's. That means having much better management in the board room and in the playing side. In the end, there is no other way forward. People say we cannot get a better manager than Walter Smith, that's got to be bollocks, the notion that Walter is the very best that Rangers could attract. We cannot compete in the transfer market but we can compete for good managers - not managers on the very top shelf maybe but we keep getting outplayed by teams with less experienced managers and with supposedly lesser players and even smaller budgets. Something ain't right. The game has changed but we're still playing by the old rules.

Defiance in the face of an utter drubbing isn't being loyal and it's nothing to be proud of. It's misguided and unhelpful. I see it all the time from the moronic tartan army, who have now turned defeat into a celebration. We were dreadful and not for the first time either. It's become the norm. From every angle, the club is already in disarray and decay, we need to face that and defiance isn't the right way to go about it. It's not intended as trumpet blowing but you know I've been saying for a long time that the decline would be steep and we would continue to slide unless new ownership emerged to turn us around. That's not on the radar at the moment and we are in real danger of suffering such decline that we will never recover. That's far too serious to address by singing defiant songs. I didn't reply because it seem so important to you to shake your fist at adversity.

I'm only posting this to let you know I started to reply and then couldn't bring myself to do it.

Surely you meant to say one bad result after another.

Surely the tedious shite about the UEFA final must take second place to the tedious shite about "steadied the ship". How do these phrases manage to leap off the tabloid pages and enter Rangers mythology with such ease? There is no fukking ship and there is no special commodity called "steadying" so can we drop this cliche before it turns everyones brain to stone. For everything Walter Smith has done right, he has done at least as much damage in the process. If this team is the product of Walter's "steadying" then we are even more fukked that I thought .... and believe me, I certainly do think we're fukked. Whittaker, Lafferty, Thomson, McCulloch, Miller, Mendes, and the latest greatest hero to zero, Jerome Rothen. Just some of the dross that Smith has brought and then sapped every ounce of confidence from. They were dreadful on Saturday against the SPL minnows and just to show it wasn't a fluke, they were consistently shite tonight against Europe's minnows. Walter's boys couldn't control a ball, couldn't spot a pass and certainly couldn't execute it, couldn't tackle, couldn't defend, couldn't take the ball past a defender, had no sense of position .......... is there anything I've missed. When you've been back as long as Walter Smith has, spent as much money as Walter Smith has, and are still turning in displays like Walter Smith's team has, then it really must be time to look in the mirror and admit .... "it's way too late to hide behind talk of steadying any ships"

1 - 1 draw with both goals in the second half. Hope I'm wrong.

Damn you and your vigilance.

I never thought I'd be defending Walter Smith but we need to recognise that he has more to think about than just the team selection tomorrow night. The season goes on until May next year and Walter has to think of all roads between here and then. There's much on Walter's plate that we will never see or be aware of an we need to accept that. I'm the first to say that I think we could do better than Walter but even I realise you have to judge him on his results rather than how he achieves them - and by "results" I mean the win-lose-draw results, the standard of performance by the team and the development of the team over time.

These organised supporters groups in the stadium are about all that stand in the way of total silence on matchdays. God knows how any of them maintain any enthusiasm in the face of the product being served up on the park and I take my hat off to the lot of them. I also see little mileage trying to differentiate between players and management when it comes to responsibility for the awful displays being offered up. Management and players are simply two parts of the same whole, they either succeed together or fail together. IMHO our tactics and preparation are dreadful and the individual and collective performances are equally dire. Blaming one at the expense of the other simply clouds the issue. While we might (will!) argue about how we got here, we are where we are and the only thing that matter is how we get out of this hole. What won't help is trying to focus blame on only players or only management. The whole club is riven with decay and indecision, top to bottom, and unless that is dealt with at the very highest level there will be no improvement. A new owner with a big new broom, and the right broom at that, is all that we can hope for - otherwise we can have no hope for better management or performances on the field of play. Walter Smith obviously does his best. Lee McCulloch would like to be seen as a fantastic player, as would the rest of them. They don't set out to fail or play badly. However, we've watch this long enough now to know that this management and these players cannot and will not serve up what we want to see.