UCF2008

As for this article, it's not surprising to see this rhag drudging up some dud foreign manager to take a pot shot at one of our flair players just as he starts to show some form.

Neither is it surprising to see so many on here lapping it up and turning it on our manager.

How often does Ally change things up before the 60th minute (without being forced to due to injury)???

Most managers don't make substitutions until later in the game unless they're forced to, whether it's tactical or due to injury.

At the weekend Ally made two substitutions before the 60th minute in response to us going behind for a second time. It could be argued that MacLeod was injured but regardless Ally made the right changes at the right time and we got the win as a result.

But there is concern too that King’s road might be blocked by those who seek to cling on to positions of power.

 

Will the Easdales, Blue Pitch and Margarita, for example, be prepared to have their own holdings diluted in order to let King get his foot in the Ibrox front door?

Easdales aside with an investment committee chaired by Laxey's man Norman Chrighton, I don't think there will be any rush for a new share issue unless their holding is protected.

However, the Championship would bring us in more money than the SPL and we'd be able to outspend most of the league, bar the parachute payment mob.

Aye, if the spivs didnae pocket it all

Would we be happy watching an Arsenal type team (who have won nothing for about a decade) but have to pay £62 - 123.50 + membership fee? Except without the TV (£70m+?) and sponsorship money, we would still only have a fraction of their income to spend on the squad.

Aye, if the spivs didnae pocket it all

25 or more of those 55 you mention are youngsters too, playing youth footie at u18s or u20s level.

It's 29 pro youths to be precise and that's not counting the 4 under 20's in our 26 man first team squad.

Mitchell was a decent prospect and was a standout in 2 or 3 of his 9 competitive appearances for us. Such a low number of appearances speaks volumes as to where he's fitted into our plans though.

He was also one of five players who's contract expires in the Summer and his services were unlikely to be called upon in the remainder of the season. It makes sense for him to move on now. Best of luck to him

Does Gordon Durie still work for us? I wonder what the fuck he would have to offer?

Last I checked Durie was our U20 / Reserve team coach and doing a decent job of it too.

Our opposition at this level are often credited with raising their game against us as though they were playing a cup final. Just for the sake of it I decided to check our stats on cup games against lower league sides...

Rangers last 50 games in domestic cup competitions against lower league sides. (1997-2013)*

Wins - 43

Won by a single goal - 12

Won by 2 goals - 7

Won by 3 goals - 9

Won by 4 goals - 6

Won by 5 goals or more – 9

Draws - 4

Defeats - 3

Lost by a single goal – 2

Lost by 2 goals – 1

* Not counting Ramsden Cup games. Lower league sides = Not SPL.

Rangers last 50 league games

Wins - 41

Won by a single goal - 7

Won by 2 goals - 15

Won by 3 goals - 9

Won by 4 goals - 6

Won by 5 goals or more - 4

Draws - 6

Defeats - 3

Lost by a single goal – 3

It's interesting to note that while we haven't been racking up cricket scores in just as many of our league games as those historical cup ties, this is balanced out by the number of games where far better Rangers squads only managed to scrape through by the skin of their teeth.

All things considered, I'd say that overall we haven't been doing too badly at all. There is definitely room for improvement, but when is that never the case at Rangers?

Yeah but we let Mitchell and McAusland go out on loan who both could have easily played there but instead we brought in Foster. Faure could've played at Centre Back and we wouldn't have had to sign Mohsni.

I can't see it happening this season unless forced, but I'd like to think we'll see regular 'rests' for Jig with Faure being phased in at CB next season.

I think it depends on the reasoning behind moving players on. In some cases terminating a contract will be cheaper in the long term but very expensive in the short term. Reading between the lines in comments from CEO and not forgetting the '£1m left by April' quote from Stockbridge I don't think we can afford to be paying too many players off.

Among the cheaper candidates on this front, Cribari is certainly surplus to requirements, is probably on a reasonably high wage and his contract is up in the summer. It possibly wouldn't be too expensive to reach an agreement for him to move on in January.

Hutton is another who's contract is up in the summer and we have sufficient cover for central mid, so he could probably be let go.

Perry is contracted till Summer 2015 and considering his extension was signed when we were in the SPL, he's likely earning far too much for an injury prone fringe player.

Other than those three I don't see how we can afford to be forcing any cuts. That might change if we were to attract a fee for a player though.

It can't be denied that there is an anti-McCoist element amongst our support who'll howl for his head whenever a result doesn't go our way. It's nothing new.

However, what I would say is that over the past ten days or so the usual suspects and various other shit stirrers in the press HAVE clearly had 'the knives out' for Ally. Keevins obviously couldn't find a way to have a dig at Rangers while somehow shoe-horning Celtic into that story though, so we get this instead.

Arguably TinMan? We are using a sledgehammer to batter in a flooring pin. There are no clubs in our league or the league above who have even 1/10 of our budget. His budget could be cut by 90% and he should still be expected to win the league comfortably.

None of the clubs we're playing against have 10% of our budget because they don't have 10% of our turnover. I also doubt any of the teams in our league have a player wage bill less than 5% of their turnover which is the level you're suggesting we should cut back to. Just because we've been forced to play against minnows doesn't mean we should reduce ourselves to that standard.

I've read a few interesting quotes from Malcolm Murray over the past couple of days. In comparison to his pre AGM rants they make more sense and he also poses some valid questions. It does seem a bit odd for him to start making a valuable contribution to the debate after the AGM though. Too little too late if you ask me.

No offense to the players themselves, but we should never have signed the likes of Cribari, Foster or Smith in the first place, so letting them go shouldn't be an issue. We're in the 3rd tier and have some excellent young prospects who could be helping us win the league while gaining valuable experience. I don't buy into this "we want to field the best team possible" excuse we keep hearing from Ally and his staff because honestly, nobody gives a toss about watching guys like Cribari, Foster or Smith. The fans in general are far more excited by the younger players and the failure of the management to not only notice this, but act on it, is very worrying.

In fairness we signed Cribari because we had a short space of time to bring in an experienced centre-half on a free last summer. With us looking to move on Boca and Goian we'd have had no experienced players there at all. In hindsight we could probably have gotten a cheaper and better option from a lower league side, but you can't blame the coaching staff for taking a look at the player and his CV and thinking he'd fit the bill.

I agree we could have managed without Foster. Mitchell did a decent job at RB last season. Faure's done a good job there this season and we also still had Darren Cole at the time. There's not much experience between them but it seems to be historically a position which doesn't bother our managers too much on that front. Smith is debatable because we had no established cover for LB.

We made some good signings this summer, but arguably even some of the best ones were unnecessary. Some of our best young players have been pushed out of position or struggled for game time as a result.

As for the fans being more excited by young players, that's fine so long as the players are exciting enough to watch in the first place never mind once the novelty wears off.

Some fans claim to have the patience for the inconsistency of performance that tends to come hand in hand with an inexperienced side. In general though, I think us Rangers fans are far too used to winning and anything less (particularly at this level) wouldn't be accepted.

somers has proven the impotence of protests. they simply kid on they never happened

He can maybe wave them away as a misunderstanding once. He can't continue to play that card though. At some point he's got to realize he's only making a fool of himself with such nonsense.

No doubt they'll make an effort to black them out on Rangers TV and might even get heavy handed with the stewarding. The fans just need to stand up to them en masse instead of walking away.

Durrant went on loan to Everton. Out of our current first team both Little and Hutton have spent time out on loan.

I don't agree a boycott is the way forward. If it gets the numbers required to be noticed it's going to be bad for the club. If it doesn't then it will be bad for the cause. I think protests should continue instead and I'd like to see them being more focused on the more common goals amongst the support of getting rid of Stockbridge and Irvine.

As much as I'd like to see those two joined at the exit by every board member except Wallace, I think we need to send a clear and ever present message to the board (and institutional shareholders) at every home game that we won't let up on this.

Be better of asking why if it is a 51%-49% deal in our favour why do Sports Direct's shares count double in any vote regarding financial matters?

 

There could be £20m laying in Rangers Retail's bank account but if Sports Direct say no dividend will be paid then no dividend will be paid.

It should be painfully obvious by now that when it comes to Rangers, you don't need anything resembling a majority share to be in a position to run the show.

That said, since Green left the Rangers Retail board at the end of October our sole representative has been Brian Stockbridge. The other two directors are Sports Direct. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence does it?

That was the point of highlighting the address was that it was highly improbable that IA would create an email address that would point directly to him. It would surely have been a little bit more subtle than that

Unless of course it was all part of the exit strategy. Funny how it came soon after the release of the Whyte recordings and coincided with his pal Green going out of his way to make his own position untenable.

He'd have been better off abstaining from the vote.

That could be construed by both the fans and the board as Ally turning his back on them though. I think he's done the right thing here tbh.

Midfielders with 10 or more appearances in 2000-2001 season:

[table=width: 600, class: grid, align: left]

[tr]

[td]No[/td] [td]Player Name[/td] [td]App[/td] [td]Gls[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]6[/td]

[td]Barry Ferguson[/td]

[td]47[/td]

[td]6[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]17[/td]

[td]Tugay Kerimoğlu [/td]

[td]38[/td]

[td]3[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]18[/td]

[td]Neil McCann[/td]

[td]35[/td]

[td]3[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]11[/td]

[td]Jörg Albertz[/td]

[td]34[/td]

[td]15[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]12[/td]

[td]Claudio Reyna[/td]

[td]31[/td]

[td]2[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]14[/td]

[td]Ronald de Boer[/td]

[td]26[/td]

[td]7[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]24[/td]

[td]Allan Johnston[/td]

[td]25[/td]

[td]3[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]8[/td]

[td]Giovanni van Bronckhorst[/td]

[td]19[/td]

[td]6[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]7[/td]

[td]Andrei Kanchelskis[/td]

[td]14[/td]

[td]3[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]26[/td]

[td]Peter Løvenkrands[/td]

[td]10[/td]

[td]0[/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

That's a lot of competition he had there and yet still made the second most appearances. I think the reason he was sold the following season mainly came down to overspending (£30,900,000) in this one.

I've not bothered with the bbc interview but from watching the STV interview I don't have too many complaints. Some of his comments did leave me a little bit puzzled about his exact role at the club and the purpose of the football board, but aside from that there was nothing much to see here. Nothing new at all really.

If anything I'd criticize the line of questioning. Personally, I'd have liked to have heard more on his opinions of how we got to a situation like this with such huge divisions amongst influential shareholders and in turn the support. What's been done to try and remedy it and what has been blocking an amicable solution being found? If the AGM doesn't bring an end to the hostilities what is going to be done to try and get everyone pulling in the same direction?

Personally, I'd accept a compromise where Stockbridge goes, Irvine's contract is terminated and Wilson & Murdoch from the requisitioners side are elected to the Board. I'd prefer the Easdales and Somers to go as well, but I could live with them as long as a couple of people I believe I can trust are elected.

The way I see it Easdale and Crighton (who I strongly suspect is Laxey's man) are the two from the current board who's removal would most likely result in an EGM. With this in mind I'd accept them plus Wallace with 2 or 3 of the requisitioners being voted onto the board to even it out.

Some of you may recall I was skeptical of Malcolm Murray's suitability for the chairman role from very early on in his time on the board. I still don't want him back tbh, but considering who appointed him combined with the disgraceful statements he's made in a relatively short space of time I don't want Mr Somers anywhere near our club either.

Personally I'm hoping those two along with Stockbridge fail to get voted on at the AGM. Hopefully then we can move on and our reshaped (and more balanced imo) board can agree on the appointment of a new chairman and financial director.