Zappa

He makes one poor pass in the video you posted, but almost all of his other passes were good, with quite a few being outstanding.

I can't see Stewart Robertson getting 7 votes out of 10, but it's definitely a step in the right direction to be signalling our intent.

Come to think of it, if you were stoating about wearing that purple monstrosity you'd probably attract bees from the lavender!

What a pile of pretentious shite! The marketing coobag from PUMA actually has the brass neck to insinuate that the strip design's unique.

No idea about this game, but in a lot of cases it's possible to get in (depending on the venue). The Club don't advertise that though because at many of the venues they don't have facilities to cope with fans and obviously have very little or no security.

Rangers Youth ‏@RFC_Youth 47m47 minutes ago Manager Mark Warburton is here too, casting his eye over the youngsters.

Done mate, no worries.

The players sales you've totted up are over a 10 year period (which is fine btw & thanks for doing it!), but the club's total revenue is about £75m per season.

Somebody at Murray Park should have strapped Nicky Law to the roof of McCall's motor before he left.

The Club's pretty slow with it's official news at the moment eh?

I think you're way off the mark on that one SBS. There's about 17m people in Holland and Ajax is the biggest, most successful club, so the scales are tipped in it's favour before you even consider other factors of their revenue streams. With that size of population it means that when Ajax play in Champions League group stages and get a share of the TV pot money, they're getting more than 3 times the amount of cash that any Scottish Club gets for being in the CL group stages. Then there's the fact that Eredivisie Clubs get several times what Scottish premier league Clubs get from domestic TV broadcasting rights. Murdoch's Fox Sports is pumping in vast sums of money and every club is getting a big slice of it. They've also got a big deal with Adidas plus the shirt sponsor deal which is worth 8 million per season (just for the sponsor deal!). Our shitty 32red deal is only worth about £600k per season. That's just for starters. Tot up all of their revenue streams and they completely dwarf us before anyone even starts talking about the impact of their youth development and player sales.

Ajax might not have produced as many home grown stars in recent years, but nonetheless, across ALL of their academy age groups over the past 5 years they've apparently won 22 titles & cups, which is a very good record. What about the previous 5 years (2005-2010)?? Same again! 22 titles & cups across their youth system age groups. That really doesn't sound too shabby to me. Maybe Feynoord currently have the better academy although I genuinely don't know what parameters 'the best academy' is based on. What I do think though, is that the quality of a top football academy should be judged over a longer period than just a few seasons because the quantity of high quality players the top academies produce will fluctuate, not just from year to year, but from decade to decade and all of the smaller periods in between.

Monday, 13 July 2015 17:30 Mulholland Happy With 20s Start Written by Nick Thomson HEAD of Rangers’ Academy Craig Mulholland was thrilled with how the under-20s side performed in their first pre-season match against Dumbarton on Saturday. With a number of players making their first appearances since making the transition from under-17s to under-20s and also a new formation being deployed for the first time, the young Light Blues ran-out 4-0 winners. But while the scoreline was impressive and could perhaps have been even more, Mulholland is insisting that performances will be put ahead of the margin of victory at all times. Speaking to RangersTV.tv, he explained: “I’ve always said throughout the academy that the results are not important to us, it’s about the way we play, the way the players conduct themselves and how they learn on a daily basis. “We were delighted with the performance. They really worked hard at the style of play and playing with an intensity and a tempo, which is going to be important. “We sat with them today to do the video analysis of the game and then we were out on the pitch to review it. “But on a daily basis it is all about getting the structure around these boys right and creating a performance environment that is going to make them better. “That will include the video analysis, the work on the pitch and the one-on-one discussions we’re starting to do with them. “All of these things are really important.” The under-20s have enjoyed a thorough pre-season programme so far, and they will play their second match tomorrow evening against Tynecastle at Murray Park. And Mulholland has been left more than satisfied with how their preparations are coming along. He continued: “It’s been good, and it’s always good when you start playing games. “I think every club across the country thinks their pre-season has gone well, but once they start playing games it all changes! “But for us, it realy has gone well, and I think the principles of pre-season that we have tried to bed down are that there is a real physical component, and we’ve really looked at the tactical component as well. “You hope that by the time you come out of that first two or three weeks of training that the boys have a good understanding of what they need to do technically, tactically and physically, and if we can train all those bits together then we will have achieved our objective. “The first game at the weekend went well, so we’ll continue to build it up.” 17 year-old Ross McCrorie has been selected to captain the under-20s side this season, but while he is the lucky one to have been handed the armband, Mulholland is looking for every young player to show some authority and influence. “We’re looking for all the players in the academy to have some form of leadership about them, and we absolutely won’t put up with energy sappers in the group,” Mulholland insisted. “Ross probably epitomises the opposite. He’s a real energiser – he’s first in the gym every day and around the group he is really positive. “We’re trying to create a culture where players are not afraid to come and take the ball, so if someone makes a mistake, they don’t have someone screaming and bawling at them whether that be a coach or a captain, and Ross is excellent amongst the group. “We have high hopes for Ross, and he demonstrates the qualities we want from a young Rangers player.” http://www.rangers.co.uk/news/academy-news/item/9604-mulholland-happy-with-20s-start

Oh yeah, and Mark Warburton has played against the lad travernier when Brentford lost 3-0 away to Rotherham in March 2014 with Travernier winning Rotherham a penalty and Haris Vuckic scoring the 3rd goal.

That website's not particularly reliable dB. Wigan signed him just over 12 months ago on a 3 year deal, so he's contracted until summer 2017. Anyway, another interesting thing about Tavernier is that the season before last he went to Rotherham on loan at the same time as Vuckic went there and they both played quite a lot of games for Rotherham, as well as helping them get promoted.

Wigan signed James Tavernier last summer on a 3 year deal and put him out on loan to Bristol in January where he helped them to the League 1 title, Bristol's first league title in 60 years. The lad's got a lot of experience under his belt having played over 100 games in League 1, the Championship and even in the EPL when he was with Newcastle. Obviously this would be a loan deal because I reckon he's probably worth a good few quid.

I've moved this to it's own thread since you had put it in the thread for EPL transfers.

I'm not doubting you pete since you lived in Holland for a long time, but I am slightly struggling to understand why the Ajax academy 'is nowhere near the best in Holland' when it's widely regarded (even to this day) as one of the top 5 academies in the world.

Benfica are still a top class Club ranked #6 in the current UEFA rankings while Ajax & Anderlecht have youth academies ranked in the world's top 10.

You've really contradicted yourself there on the subject of qualification for Europe Rab. More importantly (for now) though, signing 11 players on loan would be pretty daft. One, two, three players on loan is absolutely fine, but signing XI players on loan in this transfer window wouldn't be a balanced or prudent approach to building the squad or achieving the Club's goals.

You missed out Wayne Bridge (maybe you didn't rate him?), although he didn't come all the way up through the Southampton academy, I think he was signed at about the age of 16. There's also the young lad Ward-Prowse who's another real Southampton academy product having came all the up the youth levels at Southampton along with Luke Shaw. Ward-Prowse could maybe be one of Southampton's next big money sales.

Very best of luck to the lad. If he gets enough game time this could be a massive opportunity for him.

Attack is where the manager might well have his toughest decisions to make because by all accounts Miller & Clark just weren't good enough last season and their goal tally combined is what I'd have expected from each of them. On the other hand, does the manager take a big gamble and put his faith in relatively untested younger strikers like Gallagher & Hardie? Quite a few fans (online at least) are crying out for those lads to get their chance, but I bet they'd soon change their tune if it went pear-shaped because the lads didn't score enough goals and we were dropping points. Tough calls ahead for Warburton and in the meantime I'll be astonished if he doesn't bring in at least one striker before the transfer window closes.

Four of the 10 players out of contract next June will be over 30, so it wouldn't surprise me if those players aren't given new deals/extensions, but I think it might be quite foolish if the manager didn't consider giving a few of the younger lads out of contract next June a contract extension or new deal before January. Walsh, Gasparotto and Gallagher all fall into that category.

I think it's just that W&W decided to start building from the back. Two central defenders and a keeper was as good a place to start as any.