maineflyer

You're right of course, there are always two sides to a newspaper story. However, if the club or these players were in anyway concerned about how these sort of articles came across then there would be no articles. It's no doubt also the case however that the papers actively target players who could be said to have the greatest need to communicate with the fans - but also the least justification for doing so.

Ain't much doubt remaining about that, no matter how difficult many will find it to accept.

I think you do your fellow fans a complete injustice. The vast majority of Rangers fans have always responded in the proper manner to players, irrespective of age or background. Players who perform well are universally lauded and respected. players who do not perform well are treated accordingly. In other words, players play and fans respond to the manner in which they play. It is not the duty of supporters to regard players in a manner contrary to how they perform with the ball. Despite what the media would have everyone believe about Rangers fans, we have taken catholic players to heart as heros because they could do the business on the park. We have also forgiven previously poor player who have found their feet and eventually delivered good performances. In other words, Rangers fans are almost always an entirely honest barometer of how players perform. Charlie Adam was well treated by most fans when he first broke through into the first team and was generally performing well. The change that has taken place is of Adam's making, not the fans. You continually seek to excuse poor play and lay the blame at the feet of the fans, which is simply not justifiable in reality. If those same 11 players had done the business on Saturday and beaten celtic we wouldn't be criticising them now. But they didn't and we are entirely justified in our reaction. Football at this level is not some sort of kindergarten activity where players need to be cosseted and presented with false praise. If they are man enough to accept ibrox wages then they should be prepared to accept the judgement of the supporters. And then to excuse our manager on the basis of how fans behave is simply ludicrous guff. It didn't stop him wasting money of Miller when so many openly asked him not to.

I'm grateful - in retrospect I realise I should really have sought permission first.

Perhaps something we could do is attend to the following petitions........... http://www.gopetition.com/online/24211.html http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/parity-for-rangers-fans.html I hope there isn't a problem posting these here.

I have so much time for Nacho Novo - love the guy to pieces for what he's done for Rangers. But if we've reached the stage of bemoaning the departure of a player who can't get more than an occasional appearance and his replacement with another load of bollocks from Hibs, then it testifies to the depths of mediocrity we now occupy.

You could easily get very pissed off with patronising claptrap like this from your manager. ".....we must adjust our current squad before we look at bringing bodies in." Exactly who is going to do that then Walter because you've just spent the last year showing that you're not up to it.

I'm sure I'm not alone in finding this sort of thing deeply patronising. It's like being forced to read the Rangers News. Do they think we are all complete idiots?

Ferguson manages one of the best-run and successful clubs in the world. He has consistently delivered success at the highest level over a twenty year period and continues to do so. I'm struggling here to see the basis for comparison with Walter Smith. Maybe it was irony and I missed it?

Take a look at the body language of Walter Smith and you'll know a great deal about why we're failing as a team. Does anyone remember the antics in the technical area at the start of the Smith/McCoist era? Compare and contrast with what we've seen these last 12 months or so and tell me the old man isn't just past it? No appetite, no desire, no energy, no new ideas. Long ago spent when he ran up against the limits of his own abilities. It happens to better men than Walter Smith and in more important activities than football. You do your bit and then you step aside. You do not come back to remind everyone why you left in the first place. Does anyone actually believe Walter Smith retains genuine enthusiasm for the task? If he does then it doesn't show in how he acts or speaks. The real danger for the club right now lies in the chairman's proven inability to select and stand by a manager who can develop the playing side and make a real difference, leave a legacy for success. Or is it unwillingness - could Murray live with someone whose views would have to contradict his own?

Yes but Sir Murray has arranged for us to play against David Beckham. Have you got your tickets yet? You can always tell how badly wrong things are going when the North European league for second best also-rans is raised by the clowns in charge of our demise.

It was a cast iron certainty. Anyone who knows Smith also knows he has no use for youth or creativity. One day we'll see Aaron in some CL game and wonder if he's the same guy the great Walter Smith couldn't find a place for.

It was you who posted that "Boyd was pish today and apart from winning a couple of headers, contributed nothing. His first "big" game and he he failed" All I said was that Miller should not be removed from culpability along with most of the rest of the team, which seems reasonable enough.

There's nothing like an inability to accept others may have different opinions to keep a thread rollicking along. However, it is avoiding the real issues if we simply focus on one or two players. To lay the blame for yesterday at the feet of Kris Boyd is just nonsense, irrespective of what someone might think of Boyd's abilities. In the first place, you cannot judge a player's worth by his performance in one game, you can only judge his performance in that particular game. Secondly, we didn't lose to celtic because of Kris Boyd, we lost because we were ill-equipped to win as a team. If you are the kind of person who seriously believes a 6' 4" striker should be played as a wide midfielder and that Steven Whittaker is a fullback or that McCulloch is a central defender, then you might understand some of our manager's decisions. If like me you think these and other team selections are outrageous, you might be on the track of the real problem. You cannot fill the squad with mediocrity, use them poorly, and then expect those players to shoulder the blame for a manager who is at teh heart of most of our ills.

I always felt PLG was compromised before he took up the reins. He's beginning to show his abilities now at PSG and that was another club in dire need of help. The difference perhaps was that he got the backing he needed in Paris through the painful period when they were closer to relegation than success. Meanwhile, we are in no better shape than when PLG arrived at Ibrox. Two and a half years and a bunch more money wasted. If anything, the UEFA Cup run last year has once again papered over the desperate need for root and branch change at Ibrox. God, how many times have I found myself using those words over the last eight years and we're still going backwards. It's interesting to see jonc127 mention the name of Souness - the last really effective, change-inducing manager we've had at Rangers. We all took umbrage when he left us but how many of us thought we would still be looking 17 years later for someone like him to come along again. Can you imagine for a moment Murray ever appointing someone like Souness - neither can I.

I'm not questioning your views but what is this "steadying the ship" that I keep hearing Walter being credited for? It's become a mantra, like Murray's "sectarian bile", trooped out in cliched post after cliched post. In my opinion, he steadied fukk all - what he did do was return us to a path that had already been going nowhere for several years. I would rather have gone through the pain two years ago than still have it in front of us. It seems to me the appointment of Walter Smith simply guaranteed perpetuating the second-best misery that has been allowed to beset this club for almost a decade. Some steadying. I'm not going to defend the specific choice of PLG but his was the sort of appointment this club desperately needs.

As it turns out, Murray Park has been most appropriately named. Everything about it suggests quality and purpose but the reality has been otherwise. What could have delivered so much has become just one more sign of failure to hang around our necks. In fact, you'd have to be blind not to see the absurd irony of having a facility like Murray Park on the one hand and a dinosaur manager like Walter Smith on the other.

As far as the fortune of rangers is concerned, this may be another season lost but the next five years fill me with utter dread. I fear this will be the period during which we will finally reap the consequences of Murray's incompetent and largely self-obsessed leadership. I believe we will reach a very low ebb indeed.

You need to calm do a little. I groaned at your allusion that Mendes had been a class act today - he wasn't. And your statement Davis had been poor. Also that Boyd was terrible - he was ineffective but he certainly wasn't terrible. As better analysis has pointed out elsewhere, Davis and Papac were probably the only two who deserved pass marks today. So I groaned at you post because I disagreed with it. Perhaps you shouldn't take it to heart so much.

Or was he genuinely injured today? Does anyone have useful information - that is, news that didn't come from public statements by Rangers.

There were a small clique of players who virtually ran the on-field side of things during "Walter's" NIAR years. We saw this when they reached the end of their playing careers. Walter was one very lucky manager whose reputation soars way above his actual ability.

If you buy poor players and manage them badly, the result is what you saw today. Please, have the decency to lay blame where it belongs. Walter Smith and the man who brought him back.

Those clowns should never have been given work at a club like Rangers in the first place and should be hounded out forthwith. But they won't. And we all know why. So the nightmare will go on and on. When you think about it, today was fairly typical of what Rangers fans have been asked to accept during the last eight years.

Nothing to argue with there - except you were in such a hurry that you unintentionally forgot to add Miller, McCulloch, Beasley, Burke, Dailly and Hemdani. Could you see your way to including the other deadwood at the club as well - Murray, Bain, Smith, McCoist, McDowall and Durrant?

Why not just accept the blatantly obvious - Walter Smith is a joke of a manager. If you can't see this then you're simply looking in the wrong place. What we all saw today WAS Walter Smith. Those were HIS signings, His team choices, HIS tactics, HIS failure. I take no enjoyment from pointing out that I've been saying this consistently since he came back to the club. But surely more can now see through the masquerade of the "legend manager" to the empty vessel within. The game today showed everyone who cares to see that there is no point talking about the rest of the season in a spirit of optimism or hope. It's gone and we will end this season as ill-equipped as the day PLG left the club - only a great deal lighter in the wallet.