Mountain Bear

If your glass is half full, a 16 team league will reduce the threat of relegation for mid table clubs and reduce the amount of negative / over cautious football. If your glass is half empty, it just creates more meaningless games. Personally, I think summer football with a 16 team top league would improve the quality on offer eventually.

So if we have a competent management team now, we should let them get on with the job of deciding what they need and how best to bring it in within the budget available and the three year plan they themselves have laid out. If we were talking about a team full of loanees I'd agree with you, but I'm entirely relaxed about one or two.

We had several times the resources of everyone else last year too. The new management team need to get more out of the experienced players we've retained, give the best of our youth setup genuine opportunities and bring in a small number of quality additions to raise the overall standard. If we can do that through permanent signings, then great. If not, as long as it's done in moderation, then a couple of eye catching loan deals won't harm our youth development and might just help put a few more bums on seats. Even the Hearts team that won the Championship at a canter last year had a lot of 1 goal winning margins in the 2nd half of the season. Warburton will want to have the deck stacked as far in our favour as possible given the resources available and I think the above blend of approaches is a good compromise between minimising risk and still building for the long term.

Rangers need the right long-term strategy plus some smart short-term tactics. Nothing wrong bringing in a quality loan signing, if we'd have to pay over the odds to buy equivalent quality (assuming of course that the equivalent standard of player could even be persuaded to come to the Scottish Championship - which is unlikely).

I'm willing to defer final judgment on all our remaining players, until we see what a decent fitness regime, some youthful competition and a tactically aware coach does for them. I suspect that many do indeed fall short of the required quality, but we'll see.

I don't know my left from my right Zappa! You are quite correct.

Each to his own I guess, but after everything we had to endure to get our Club back, you'd hope that most people would be prepared to give the new regime the benefit of the doubt.

That's a bit disappointing tbh. What's their rationale (the 50% that aren't signing up)?

He's the least of our problems. I'd take a new goalie, right back, centre mid, left winger and two strikers before turning my attention to left back.

Another good RST statement. They've been on a roll so far in 2015. "...blogger and fiction writer...", lol.

Funny that, Celtic touted as being after another one of our targets. Anyone would think someone was trying to ramp the price up...

The bastard offspring of an ill advised liaison between a goalkeeper's top and a bad Pringle sweater. A few years ago I bought a book about awful football tops as a Christmas stocking filler. The highlight was Celtic being one of only a few teams to have two entries, with a couple of their more garish away tops. I do hope they don't bring out a revised edition, because this will certainly be in with a good chance of making it, if it's real.

Yes RF are pushing the idea. The RST were asking what people thought of it too. I'm off to hunt in the back of my wardrobe...

Mostly agree, but the bit about only having 5 or 6 players left with any experience is nonsense. It's at least 3 times that number. Whether they are good enough is another matter though.

Good choice. Gersnet is an oasis of sanity. Welcome.

Good to see so many Bears feeling optimistic.

A straw poll of opinion based on responses to a Rangers First tweet (retweet for yes, Fav for no) suggested 92% of respondents wouldn't buy it because of the SD contract. Obviously that's not the most robust research methodology in the world, but there were several hundred responses overall and it sends a fairly clear message to Mike Ashley about the mood of the support. Time to really push the Lionbrand shirt as an alternative that actually benefits the Club methinks.

But will he entering the Gersnet Prediction League? That's the real question.

Very conscious of the effort required to run the GPL over an entire season, so a big [emoji122] to Zappa. Cheers fella. Despite the valiant efforts of Zappa and others who ran him close, the Little General didn't meet his Waterloo and was a deserving winner. Well done!

I'm sure it'll be character building...

As one of the journos on Sportsound pointed out last night, those who make the most noise about a role in public, seldom land it in the end.

Thanks Zappa. I hadn't read the reports from that game. Hopefully that was a one-off!

I suppose that's true, but it must be particularly galling to be 4th in line behind 3 journeymen if you're even half decent.

I keep hearing how good a keeper Liam Kelly is. Well with 2 reserves out of the picture and Bell hardly covering himself in glory, it'll be interesting to see whether he gets (and takes) his chance in pre season.

Yes, I read that today and thought it was a very odd thing to say. If it's accurate...