Zappa

Building the squad is going to be an ongoing process anyway, especially when you consider that as things currently stand we've got at least 10 players who'll be out of contract next June. It remains to be seen how many of those players Mark Warburton decides are worth keeping.

It depends whether we sign Halliday & the young lad Thompson. I think those two signings will probably be made official this week, but as you said in a previous post, Thompson might initially be earmarked to play in the U20 squad and if that was the case, then even after signing Halliday the manager would only have 22 1st team players, 3 of whom are very inexperienced.

I'm not worried yet. The immediate schedule is tight, but there's still plenty time left in the transfer window. I think it's pretty much a certainty that we'll see a couple of new signings this week, but I expect more to come in the last week or two of August.

Me too. At the current rate we could possibly have over 35k STs sold before the first league game at Ibrox because there's probably going to be another rush of sales at the end of this month.

It's not even a fortnight now. Not much time left to get the squad whipped into shape!

No idea, but van Gaal has probably targeted Schweinsteiger because he knows the player very well and knows what he would add to his team. He only had another season on his Bayern contract as well, so Man Utd might have got a pretty good deal on this one.

Come on rbr, you know we don't do personal insults here.

Not well spotted at all actually. Someone must have spiked my drink yesterday because I was talking shite. Season ticket sales are going great in all stands apart from the Broomloan where sales are really poor, presumably because folk are taking the opportunity to move out of the Broomloan so that they don't get moved when it eventually comes to Celtic games. A half decent indicator of how well sales are going is that there's only just over 800 seats left in the whole Copland stand.

More like smoke and mirrors!

I'm pretty sure now that it was the U21s, but the Belgian lad Ismail Azzaoui who scored 2 of the Spurs goals is only 17. Apparently he's a top class prospect though and that's why he's moved up from the Spurs U18 squad to Ugo Ehiogu's U21 squad this season. Good article on the lad here. Azzaoui hat trick from December in the FA youth cup........ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDRqNwwpbp8

I must have missed the news on that one.

Going by the Spurs article I've just posted it looks like it was their U21 squad mate.

Players step it up in training game - Ugo Posted on 10 July 2015 - 15:57 Ugo Ehiogu was pleased with the efforts of our Development Squad players in today’s training ground friendly against Rangers. We hosted the Scottish Championship giants at Hotspur Way as part of a series of behind-closed-doors sessions, as our youngsters look to step up their pre-season programmes by getting match minutes under their belts. Under-21s Coach Ugo explained that today’s collaboration with Mark Warburton’s side worked well for all parties – and picked out several players for praise. “It’s always important to put these game situations on because we’ve had a physical and technical build-up in recent days and now the players are being reintroduced to different types of movement and running by playing in training ground games,” said Ugo after the match, in which Ismail Azzaoui (2) and Shayon Harrison were on target. “This morning’s game was a wonderful test and the format of it worked well, especially in the hot conditions. Six or seven players got 60 minutes under their belts, which was really pleasing. “Ismail Azzaoui was very eye-catching with his movement – he threatened in behind and scored two goals. I’d say Cy Goddard can be very pleased with his performance, as can a lot of the Development Squad boys. “There were some very solid performances, Christian Maghoma and Grant Hall were impressive at centre-half, and later in the game there was a great opportunity for some of our new First Year Scholars to get some exposure to senior football, so there was a lot of good stuff to improve on next time. “Now we recover and go again. We’ll look to ramp up the tactical awareness and intensity each time we have a session like this and the aim is for players to be fit for the first league games in August.” http://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/news/ugo-on-training-games-100715/

Anyone got news on what team we're playing in a closed doors game next week?

He'll have taken a massive drop in salary, that's for sure. He'll probably only be earning about 10% of what he was earning with us.

I see Man Utd have agreed a deal to sign Bastian Schweinsteiger from Bayern Munich subject to his medical.

It was a sore one for St Johnstone because as well as getting put out they apparently had to charter a flight to Armenia which cost them £110,000. Ouch!

Very interesting comment from Ian Durrant here: http://www.rangers.co.uk/news/academy-news/item/9599-delighted-durrant-praises-performance So basically Mark Warburton has already instructed Ian Durrant on how he wants the U20/development squad to play.

Strangely and worryingly, the stadium seating plan for buying season tickets online doesn't reflect the numbers we've been hearing at all. There's absolutely no way it's showing 25k+ seats taken.

Cheers for the updates CB. Good result, but it probably doesn't mean too much considering that half of the Dumbarton team were triallists.

Cheers, I couldn't imagine the manager seeing any value in putting our players up against an U17 side. I should have known the clown who writes that Ibrox Noise blog was talking pish again.

I see some mentions online today that it was actually an U17 Spurs team we played yesterday. Surely not, eh?

We'll no doubt find out if it's official on Monday or Tuesday.

Kilmarnock: Lee McCulloch agrees player-assistant manager role By Kenny Crawford, BBC Sport Scotland Lee McCulloch will sign for Kilmarnock in a player-assistant manager role, his representative has confirmed. The former Rangers captain will join Killie on a three-year deal to team up with boss Gary Locke at Rugby Park. McCulloch, 37, was deemed surplus to requirements at Ibrox after Rangers' new management team of Mark Warburton and David Weir arrived in June. The former Wigan Athletic midfielder won three top-flight league titles and two Scottish Cups with Rangers. McCulloch, who played many of his 46 games for Rangers last season in central defence, joins striker Kris Boyd and full-back Stevie Smith in making the move to Kilmarnock from Ibrox this summer. Scotland international McCulloch was involved with Locke in Kilmarnock's preparations for Saturday's friendly against Berwick Rangers. He joined Wigan from Motherwell in March 2001 and, after more than six years there, moved to Rangers for £2.25m. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/33492092

From the Club website: http://www.rangers.co.uk/teams/academy-information/key-staff/item/2529-craig-mulholland