Rangersitis

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

Is this part of a deal for Di Maria to go in the opposite direction? Muller and Robben were being talked about as possible makeweights.

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!

UEFA used to regionalise the early draws to cut down on expenses for the smaller sides. That charter would have been filled up with fans as well as players and staff, so some of that would have been recouped. I looked at flights for Yerevan as West Ham might have been drawn there. Looking at £350 minimum flying from London.

Is that not the same short termism you were complaining about earlier ? Finding good enough youths for the second division isn't what we need. They need to be good enough for the top league if we are to avoid short termism.....

They need to be good enough for the top league in one year, at the earliest, not now. Wakey wakey!

These European qualifiers are always a sharp dose of reality. Scottish sides are poor. It's actually embarrassing how poor we are. And I don't know how long we can continue in this way.

The co-efficient is dropping like a stone and qualification for the tournament proper becomes more difficult every year.

His best performances come in that position. It gives him the space to utilise the ball better. For me his main attribute is making himself available and spreading the play. Hes better with the game in front of him. He has played more attacking through the middle but I think he is more of a threat when he has time to pick the pass. That and we are crying out for someone to take the ball from the defence and make things happen.

 

What position did he say he sees himself playing?

Fuck me, not happy with bringing in players on loan, but you want them played them out of position too. I'm out.

clearly warburton and those who advise him also don't think we have a def mid or a full back in the youth good enough either.

 

so who are these youth that are not getting a chance that are good enough to merit playing in front of 50,000 paying customers?

 

Fredricks full back

winks def mid

Winks doesn't see himself as a defensive midfielder, so why do you?

What joy it is to be a Bear!

 

Oh wait - anyone got the number for "self-loathers anonymous"?

I prefer my Rangers heroes to have had a bit of dignity about them. It's hardly surprising that an alky wife-beater does it for a strange wee stalker like you.

Garbage.

 

Real Madrid had Hernandez on loan last season, cant remember too many people thinking they are a small club.

 

Falcao to Man Utd - another small club and Chelsea this season.

 

If you play the market right it does wonders. Arsene Wenger uses this system to know if a player is going to make it or not. Look at Alex Song at West Ham last season, he came from Barcelona and didn't sniff at where he was playing, he was outstanding and is now linked with both Man City and Chelsea for his performances.

You cite clubs which have deep, talented squads making the odd loan signing of international players. The current situation at Ibrox Bears no resemblance to those situations.

Gascoigne was a great entertainer and domestically did really well, but I thought he was bought for Europe and at that level he failed.

Yes, he did, but he wasn't alone in that regard. The team was geared up for domestic success but that was their ceiling. Some painful lessons were handed out by continental opponents.

Talented player, no doubt, but a fantastic guy?

John Brown needs to have a word with himself.

I did say that loan signings need to be players of a high standard and fully fit, but maybe you missed that part of my post. As others have said, loan deals for us should be players who are better quality than what we can afford to buy or get out of contract.

They will also curtail the development of players who are permanently contracted to the club. The end results are similar to McCoist going out and buying 'experienced' players to win the lower leagues - it all catches up with you in the end. People really need to make up their minds as to what it is they want to see The Rangers become and how they envisage it growing in the long-term.

Am I the only one that sees this oozing in professionalism ? Looking at the Club's away game protocol in terms of eating, timing, possibly even rooming arrangements ?

 

The more I hear from him the more Warburton impresses me, at least in terms of preparation.

Other than the travelling, should the home match protocol not be exactly the same as the away one?

Or ambition

Yet more short-term thinking.

The "we want it now" brigade are simply piping up to try to discredit King.

King is doing well enough discrediting himself by constantly changing the script. I would have absolutely no problem with him if I could trust him to match his words with deeds.

You directly mentioned the previous incumbents in a comparative manner when you said "if the previous incumbents had similarly failed to tackle the numerous problems that exist, with stories changing from one interview to the next, they would have been rightly slaughtered for it", so I didn't put words in your mouth at all. Let's not get bogged down in semantics though because it was perfectly clear what you meant.

 

I'll try to be clearer here to save any possibility of confusion. It's ridiculous that you talk about the previous incumbents in that way when what they actually did was CREATE numerous problems and not tackle the ones which existed, whereas the new board are actively trying to tackle the problems created by those very same previous incumbents.

 

As for people chosing a 'side', it's high bloody time they did. Most of us aren't blind or daft, but plenty of people fell for Charles Green's bullshit and lies while he and his cronies were planning their blue pound pension funds and setting up contracts that are the worst commercial contracts our Club could have gotten, even under the circumstances. So is it a bad thing for folk to side with guys like Dave King & Dougie Park & co when it's almost a certainty that for once we have people in charge who actually care about the Club and will put the Club's interests before their own? I know where my loyalty is and I'm perfectly comfortable chosing a side when I know it's the right side.

 

 

 

Wallace was ridiculed because he took over 4 months to come up with a business review which was practically a waste of time because the majority of it's content could have been written by any of us free of charge and we don't need to be told what we already know as if we're a bunch of simpletons. The hard work behind the scenes shouldn't be based on shitty reviews and piles of moonbeams, so the 'where's yur plan Dave' and 'where's yur money Dave' brigade need to wake up and give us all peace. There's a massive amount of work to be done, we all know that and the guys in the boardroom know it more than anyone. The Club's ownership and management structure has changed for the better and most supporters are willing to trust that the new board will do it's best to do what needs to be done in the best interests of the Club.

You accused me of being facetious earlier on in the thread because I posted "shut up and be grateful". Now you more or less tell me to do just that.

Clement? ...

Didn't think so, but I did miss out Cuellar.

Arteta ???

Apologies, inadvertently put Ferguson in twice. Edited.

Feel free to point out any other omissions.

I think it is essential that we become a selling club - as long as it's done right.

 

For too long we have done things the wrong way - we have brought in players with inflated transfer fees & OTT wages. We then try to keep them as long as possible, then they move on for less than we paid - either as free agents or poor negotiations.

 

We need to bring players in, develop them, play them....then they will start to attract increased bids. All to often we have brought in players, done nothing with them training-wise then not played them. If a player isn't playing, he ain't gonna attract a decent transfer.

A player who is up against the likes of Hibs, Alloa or Peterhead won't attract anyone. Even if they are competing in the top league, the potential suitors will be limited.

I think we were a selling club even if when we were in the CL 10 years ago. Unfortunately it comes down to players wanting to play for bigger bucks when claiming its for winning bigger trophies. Even 75% of the English Premier League are selling clubs.

 

We made good sales profit out of Boumsong and Alan Hutton. I cant remember if we got anything for Charlie Adam.

Adam was sold to Blackpool for £500k.

A selling club? Since Advocaat left the vast majority of our players have been paid off or left on contract expiration. A selling club would be a huge improvement from where we were before. That said, we have publicly said on numerous occasions we are a selling club, for years we were doing everything we could to sell our players. I remember when there was some interest in Daniel Cousin we told the press his minimum fee release clause!

 

I would hope if anything we are going to radically change our approach to transfers, signing decent foreign players that we can develop and sell for a decent profit. We certainly aren't going to get an awful lot of value for money focusing on English football, hopefully that changes next season.

 

Pretty much every team in the world is ultimately a selling club, bar the odd few. There's varying degrees to be had though, with certain clubs being more reluctant than others to part their cash. 'Every player has their price', but with us that price was often the first offer another team made.

Spot on! There have been a grand total of ten transfers of over £1m since Advocaat stepped down in 2001 totalling about £40m.

Flo, Amoruso, McCann, Ferguson, Boumsong, Hutton, Arteta, Thomson, Wilson, Jelavic.

A transfer surplus of £10m per annum from a declining nation is rather optimistic.

Was in the paper today, nothing else.

Thanks.

I am sure this will be the way forward for Rangers, it looks like the Board and Manager are together in this . .

 

Although it's probably just a dream . . .

 

It also begs the question, have we no ambition to be a top European Club?

Qualifying for the Europa League group stage will be regarded as a successful season very soon. Scottish clubs tumble down the rankings year after year resulting in ever harder paths towards qualification.

Clubs don't spend millions of pounds on players based on the back page of The Daily Record. That is comical.

European exposure will have clubs interested and willing to take a gamble on players who have shone. Hutton was a prime example. Had a blinder of a season, got a big move, never fulfilled the promise of that one season since. The trick is to be able to repeat that every season and to have the financial stability to be in a position not to jump at the first offer on the table.

Fredericks apparently. A full back.

Is this based on anything other than having previous with Warburton? He has spent the last two years on loan to Championship clubs, so on the face of it, a drop down in standard wouldn't make much sense for either Spurs or the player's development.

It is a company which is in a liquidation process. It hasnt been liquidated yet and won't be for ten years or more probably.

 

I don't share the view the BTC is meaningless because it's oldco. We were supposed to have cheated by using EBT's to get players we couldnt otherwise have afforded.

Who can forget the vile Michael Kelly on BBC2 Newsnight demanding titles should be stripped because of alleged taxes due ?

Now it's been proved to have been perfectly legal it is a pure joy watching people like Kelly getting proved wrong. Sadly it doesn't look like we'll ever get an apology from them though. Their bitterness and bigotry will see to that unfortunately.

It wasn't perfectly legal. The non-disclosure to the SFA broke the rules, hence the £250k fine. The possible stripping of titles wasn't centred around unpaid taxes, it could have occurred had it been shown that the use of EBTs had resulted in an unfair advantage on the field of play. Lord Nimmo Smith's ruling put paid to that. Two distinct cases.

I fail to see what the inane ramblings of the morally bankrupt Michael Kelly (and it was on STV's Scotland Tonight, by the way) have to do with anything other than your need to introduce a Celtic link into nearly every one of your posts.