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.

Last year we had an absolutely incompetent management team. So it's an entirely different situation. They have been able to bring in some of their own players, spending a lot of cash compared to the other teams in the division. Those couple of eye catching loan players will need replaced in one year, providing us with no long term benefit. There's nothing to guarantee they will be any better than our own player.

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.

Can you explain to me why it is required for the second division of Scottish football when we have several times the resources of everyone else?

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.

Yet more short-term thinking.

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.

Interesting that you say you'd take a new left winger before a new left back, but don't mention the right wing MB because I'd say our left wing position is stronger than our right wing position. On the left wing we currently have a choice of Walsh, Templeton & McKay compared to the right where we're limited to Aird and Gallagher (who's really a striker tbh), so unless we start putting players who prefer to play on the left over to the right, then it seems to me that our left wing position is stronger than our right wing.

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.

Only amongst my mates

That's a bit disappointing tbh.

What's their rationale (the 50% that aren't signing up)?

Wallace has been extremely poor for years in lower division football earning a fortune. He doesn't deserve anything.

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.

See there is a campaign started for fans to where old strips at first home game of the season. All over Twitter land, possibly started by RF ?

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...

Good words from Walter.

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.

Afternoon bears,

 

Decided to join Gersnet after having followed Frankie on twitter for quite some time and found his analysis/articles to be fair minded and insightful. Was previously a member of RM forum but the atmosphere there seems to have deteriorated in the past few months and so have decided to give this a try instead.

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.

Report: Rangers 'hold talks' over appointing highly-rated Ian Cathro as manager

 

Rangers have reportedly held talks with Valencia coach Ian Cathro over becoming their new manager.

According to The Sun, Rangers have held talks with Valencia coach Ian Cathro this week over becoming the new manager at Ibrox.

 

Rangers lost 6-1 on aggregate to Motherwell in the Scottish Premiership play-off final last month, meaning they must now spend at least one more season in the Scottish Championship.

 

Manager Stuart McCall could now lose his job - despite only arriving in March. The 50-year-old was only handed a contract until the end of the season, with Rangers hoping he would win them promotion through the play-offs.

 

Having failed, McCall now faces the possibility of being replaced, with a host of managers now linked with the job - and The Sun believe talks have already been held with Valencia coach Cathro over becoming the new manager at Ibrox this summer.

 

Cathro, 28, has a remarkable back story which has seen him rise as a coach at such a young age, and is now assisting Portuguese manager Nuno at Valencia having worked together previously at Rio Ave.

 

Cathro is only young but will no doubt fancy managing on his own at some stage - and Rangers want that to be immediately having allegedly opened negotiations with Cathro this week.

 

Given Cathro's youth in terms of coaching, some may see this move as a shock but the former Dundee United coach has such a growing reputation that Rangers may think they can land their manager for now and the future by hiring Cathro.

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 was trying to be a nice guy, but I suppose I deserve that.

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.

He was absolutely shocking in the Youth Cup Final we played against Celtic a couple of weeks ago when they put 5 past him. Some poor defending didn't help, but Kelly was really terrible between the sticks.

Thanks Zappa. I hadn't read the reports from that game.

Hopefully that was a one-off!

True for most this particular pre-season.

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.

Pretty sure that Mohsni has been attributed with quotes that he told Erwin "I'm not shaking your hand, but all the best".

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