JohnMc

Paterson started the match really well and for first 15 minutes was the best player on the park. I think Brighton put a man wide to stop his runs then and he was a bit quieter after that. I watch Paterson and think he should first choice right back, then Tav comes on and you see his crossing and passing and realise that Paterson still has a bit to go to match that. The 11 that ended the match was a lot closer to our probable first choice starting 11 than the 11 who started the match and it showed. As others have said Kelly, Paterson, Itten and Bassey did themselves no harm today, I didn't think Jones took his chance to impress either his current manager or any potential future ones. Brighton are a better side than any we'll face domestically this season. I know better than to read much into friendlies but I know I prefer a goalless draw to a 6-2 hammering a week before the season starts.

I thought it was just me who didn't mind this strip while the internet in general seems to be up in arms about it. For me the issue this strip faces is the issue all our strips face and that's the sponsor. Their logo feels bigger and more imposing than previous sponsors, I'm sure that's just an illusion. If the 32Red was a little smaller and little less intrusive it would make a big difference I think.

Hahaha! I don't want to know what kind of records you keep! I still think there's little difference between most, if not all, Championship clubs and the bottom half of the SPFL. The difference is the the teams in the SPFL will play against at least 3 or 4 better sides 3 or 4 times during the season, whereas the Championship sides will play against similar quality sides all season long. It's not that I think Dunfermline are significantly poorer than Ross County, I don't. I just think that after spending most of last season at Raith Rovers, a club who play possession based passing football, it was time for him to step up a level or leave. The coaches know more about him than me, I'm just surprised that at 19 they don't think he should be playing at a higher level than the Championship. I expected him to follow the Stephen Kelly model of a season in the Championship then a season the SPFL, like we've done with Ben Williamson. If nothing else a season at SPFL level gives him a bigger shop window and increases any potential fee we could get if we choose to sell him next summer. I guess we have to trust Mulholland and his coaches on this.

If we think he's a top talent why is he spending the season at Dunfermline? I'd expected him to join Livingston or Ross County or St Mirren this season, and see if he could force his way into an SPFL side and if he could then see what his performances are like at that level. I just don't think it's possible to go from the Championship to the Rangers first team. We either think Kennedy is still at least 2 years away from our first team or else he's never going to make it with us, in which case sell him now and let him get on with his career. It's a very strange move.

I'm surprised at the Kennedy move, I thought he'd go to a SPFL club, he's 19 now, he should be playing at a higher level than that. He showed last season at Raith Rovers he can play in that division, I don't understand why another season there is in his or our interest. Frankly, if West Ham did offer £600k, we should have bitten their hand off.

Milngavie looks good in the summer. Nice and inconspicuous for his trips to Waitrose at least.

There was an interesting exchange between Neil Lennon and the SFA's Ian Maxwell on this morning's BBC Scotland Euro Breakfast radio show. Lennon continues to peddle his 'we were treated differently over Covid' line and Maxwell's response left him floundering. It's telling though that it took another guest to correct Lennon rather than one of the money journalists BBC Scotland Sport employ.

As ever the headline is a little misleading, wishing the best side in Scotland had a couple more Scots in it is hardly news. When looking to buy a player Rangers always look at Scotland first. That doesn't always mean the player will be Scottish (Novo, Kamara for example), but there's a higher likelihood they will be. If for example the club is looking for a central midfielder we'll look at who is available in Scotland first. This is perfectly logical as someone already based in Scotland knows the league and is probably on a poorer salary than we'll pay them making a move to Rangers both attractive financially as well as from a football perspective. This also removes all potential issues around settling in, if a player is based in Dundee or Aberdeen they'll probably need to move house but it's hardly a huge upheaval for the player's family. The other attraction of a Scottish player is European squads. There's still a requirement to have a certain amount of 'home grown' players in the registered European squads each season. This is probably why a player like Jamie Barjonas was retained despite never looking like he'd get a game. He was cover just in case we'd a terrible run of injuries. Rangers have signed Murphy, Middleton, Hastie, McLoughlin and Wright in recent seasons and we were seriously linked with Shinnie and McLean. Some have fared better than others, but looking for 'local' players is clearly still a big part of our plan. Now, why Scotland isn't producing better quality players is a whole other thread...

I did wonder when someone was going to take issue with much of the hysterical coverage last weekend has created. Thanks for sharing.

It's more the hypocrisy of it I was trying to highlight. The irony of criticising me for failing to mention something they were indulging in themselves.

I think my point, poorly made as it is, was that politicians have far more power to implement societal change than football clubs do. Politicians can improve schools, indeed that's literally Humza Yousaf's job now. I agree that individuals have the ultimate power to change.

It’s Not What You Say, But What They Hear I made a mistake last Sunday. In a pique of frustration over the inevitability of much of Saturday night’s events and annoyance over some of the coverage it garnered, I sent a Tweet. As Tweets go it was quite long, and was an attempt to remind people that Rangers supporter’s who fight police officers, or themselves, on a Saturday night in town are no more representative of me, or the vast majority of our support, than the Rangers supporter’s who went bird watching, long distancing running or line dancing are. I wish I hadn’t. I’m not a prolific Tweeter and I rarely Tweet about football. If you want occasional photos of my local park, perhaps some obscure research on birds or the occasional insight into international events, maybe I’m your guy, otherwise best ignore me, I’m there to learn, not teach. Prior to Sunday I doubt I’ve ever sent a Tweet that was ‘liked’ more the a dozen times; I’m not interesting or high profile, and I’m okay with that. An hour or so after pressing ‘Tweet’ I was very surprised to learn over 100 people had liked, retweeted or positively commented on it. Almost all seemed to be fellow Rangers fans who had clearly been feeling something similar. This continued for a few hours, numbers increased and my phone battery complained. A couple of friends texted me to say they’d read it and enjoyed it, even my sister, who I didn’t know even had Twitter, called to mock me. All good so far. Then, sometime around mid-afternoon on Sunday, supporter's of the second best side in Glasgow came across my Tweet. The comments changed. I’ve not read them all, there are simply too many and life is too short, but I got the general gist and some clear themes emerged. My claim that it was a “minority” of Rangers supporters who were involved in any disorder on Saturday was widely ridiculed. Also, I’d failed to mention sectarianism, or “anti-Irish racism” as many seemed to call it. Lastly, that drunken, loutish behaviour is recurring and unique to Rangers supporters. The ‘minority’ issue is easily dealt with. I think it’s fair to say Rangers have somewhere around 500,000 supporters. It might be more than that, it might be less, but I think it’s a conservative estimate to suggest that 10% of the population of Scotland would describe themselves as supporter’s of Rangers. Some of them might be nominal, a club they followed as a child but take less interest now, others will attend every match, home and away. The only definition of a Rangers supporter I accept is that they want Rangers to win. Estimates of the total crowd numbers at Ibrox and later in the city centre vary, somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000. 20,000 people is barely 4% of our support, and it’s worth remembering that Chief Supt Mark Sutherland of Police Scotland described that crowd as “largely peaceful in nature”. Even if someone wants to complain that everyone present was breaking Covid guidelines and so at least technically in breach of restrictions, it doesn’t change the fact that the other 96% of the Rangers support weren’t. As for those who actually engaged in vandalism and violence that was a very small percentage of those present and a tiny fraction of the Rangers support. For me those are simply irrefutable facts. I don’t know what ‘anti-Irish racism’ is. As far as I know the Irish and the Scots are the same race. Having lived in both I can also say that in my experience we’re largely identical in almost every measurable way. I’m unaware of any systemic discrimination towards Irish people in Scotland, certainly not in this century at least. I didn’t mention sectarianism as I was unaware of any taking place. I wasn’t there, and I’ve not watched many of the videos that have been circulating. If there was sectarian singing or chanting then I condemn it. The anti-Catholic chants and songs still exist among a section of our support, and, away from the stadium and often after a few drinks they sometimes make an appearance. I wish they didn’t. I expect our board wish they didn’t and I can only imagine what some of our players must think. It’s embarrassing. It would be disingenuous to say nothing has changed in this regard over the years, but it would be equally wrong to say this has disappeared, it hasn’t. I can understand why someone who feels these chants are directed at them reacts with fury when they hear them. That said it surprises me to see how many people liberally sprinkle the word ‘hun’ around their timelines when questioning my views. The refrain, when challenged, seems to be that the word isn’t sectarian and isn’t an idiom for ‘Protestant’. A ‘hun’ apparently is a Rangers supporter. Unless it’s a Hearts supporter. Or maybe an Airdrie supporter, and sometimes even a Morton or Kilmarnock supporter. This is the thing about the English language, the meaning of words changes over time and between people. My children regularly describe something positive as ‘sick’, this puzzles me and makes me feel old at the same time. The meaning of the word ‘sick’ has changed. I took a trip to Belfast before Covid hit. It’s a city I know quite well having lived there for a while a few decades ago, but it’s also a city that’s going through such huge change that parts of it were unrecognisable to me. I decided to do the first time visitor thing and take a bus tour to reacquaint myself. The Belfast bus tour takes you to places that are famous and infamous. It doesn’t hide its past, you see the city warts and all. We visited various ‘interfaces’. An interface is a euphemism for a border, in Belfast that’s where a republican area meets a loyalist area. These are bleak, people-less areas, dominated by high fences and walls, where territory is clearly marked by graffiti. Much of this graffiti is sadly familiar to a Glaswegian and I’d little trouble understanding just whose territory we were leaving or entering. Something unfamiliar did catch my eye though, 3 letters that made a regular appearance as you entered loyalist areas; KAT, and 3 similar ones when you entered republican areas; KAH. The tour guide explained that KAT stands for ‘Kill All Taigs’ and KAH stands for ‘Kill All Huns’. On the streets of working class Belfast it seems that Taigs are Catholics and Huns are Protestants. Not unsurprisingly I’ve recently started to notice these initials in Glasgow too. Now I’m willing to accept that not everyone who uses the word ‘hun’ does mean all Protestants, but that doesn’t mean it’s not what I hear when it’s said. And while some might not use it that way, others clearly do. Meanings change, it’s all of our jobs to keep up with that change, not just Rangers supporters. Lastly, why is it always Rangers? This takes us directly into ‘whataboutery’ country again and I’ve little desire to spend more time there. Suffice to say that over the years I’ve seen violence, first hand, sometimes at very close quarters, perpetrated by supporters of Aberdeen, Dundee, Motherwell, Airdrie, Kilmarnock, Morton, Clydebank, Partick Thistle, Hibs, Hearts, Falkirk, Clyde, St Mirren, Sunderland, Glentoran, Linfield, Cliftonville and, believe it or not, Celtic. Rangers don’t have a monopoly on bams, but I’m not going to pretend we don’t have any either. That there was disorder on Saturday night didn’t come as a surprise to me. I’ve lived in Glasgow long enough to know that there are people in our society for who a Saturday spent drinking will greatly increase the likelihood of them being involved in violence. That hard drinking ‘get mad wae it’ culture is alive and flourishing among a section of our society. I don’t think the blame for that can be laid at the door of Rangers directors, players or indeed me. The Scottish Crime Survey of 2018 recorded that 46% of all violent crime in Scotland is alcohol related. 41% of all prisoners in Scotland report being drunk at the time of their offence, that figure rises to 60% for young offenders. The STAG Trauma Report in 2015 records that alcohol was associated with 33% of all major trauma patients, that number doubles when just recording male patients. Alcohol related death is 7 times higher in Scotland’s most deprived areas and alcohol related hospital stays are 8 times higher in Scotland’s poorest communities. Again, the figures are higher for men than woman. Despite this I’ve yet to read anyone ask what Smirnoff, Buckfast or the makers of MD 20-20 had to say about last Saturday night, far less suggest that everyone who drinks alcohol should be ashamed of themselves and demand action be taken. Rangers draw their support from across Scotland and beyond, but the post industrial heartlands of the central belt are where we draw the bulk of our support. These areas have more than their fare share of economic black spots and deprived communities. None of that is an excuse for violence or religious intolerance. Indeed the majority of people brought up in these areas aren’t violent or bigoted. But the power to change the people who are, to improve their schools, to broaden their horizons, to perhaps give them ambitions beyond the weekend, to deal with whatever demons they currently try and drown and to instil a pride or self worth clearly lacking in some of them doesn’t lie with Steven Gerrard or the Rangers board. It lies, quite squarely, at the feet of those elected to represent these communities; politicians. That’s ironic, because some of them have been very quick to point fingers of responsibility elsewhere this week. It does feel that some people see Rangers as responsible for the actions of everyone who supports them at all times. There were 54 arrests and 429 crimes at T In The Park a few years ago yet no one suggests The Stone Roses are held responsible for that. There is a limit on what the club can do and should be held responsible for. I’m surprised that even needs stated. But then maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, it’s strange that now we have so many ways of communicating with each other more than ever people still only hear what they want to hear.

I don't think he should be in the squad, I don't think Gilmour should be either. Both clearly have huge potential but neither have played anything like enough first team football to warrant a full international call up. Anyway, they're in it now so I hope both of them do very well.

It's come to something when Brian Wilson sounds reasonable and moderate to Rangers fans. It's a fair article and raises some good points.

Yes, there is - https://www.ipso.co.uk/

Congratulations Gunslinger, hope this Saturday goes as well as last Saturday.

It's ironic, but Glasgow police were criticised in some quarters for not following the letter of the law when we won the league. Some wanted kettling, mass arrests, roads closed and forced dispersal. Glasgow police, sensibly I thought, pointed out that would have been disproportionate and that officers on the ground made decisions based on crowd and public safety and their feel for the mood and moment. I'm surprised to see you're a critic of that approach. ?

Ah now, Del, read it again please. You've taken half a sentence, read the whole paragraph please. I said there is a chance Glasgow won't come out of level 3 because of rising infection rates and so people should stay away from Ibrox and George Sq. I didn't say it was because of that gathering, or any other. Since I wrote that it has in fact been announced that Glasgow and Moray will now not leave Level 3 lockdown like the rest of the country. As someone affected directly by that I find it both very frustrating and more than a little concerning.

I'd say for a lot of people it was. Some may have been tipped off and were waiting for it, but a lot knew nothing about it until it happened. I'm not condoning it, I'm just pointing out it shouldn't be compared to what's being discussed for tomorrow.

That's naive Billy, and you know it. Many were fairly happy to excuse the celebrations when we won the league, I certainly was. There was a spontaneity to it and a release of pent up tension and anticipation. This time it's different.

Frankie, it's not news that football supporters are treated differently by police and usually politicians. I mean I've been going to football regularly since the early 80s and it's been happening as long as I've been attending. My issue isn't whether politicians are opportunists, they are and always have been, and it isn't whether the police view 2 large groups of people differently if one of them is wearing football scarves, they clearly do and always have. My only issue is people equating two quite different gatherings of people. The gatherings when we won the league were a spontaneous outpouring of joy. They shouldn't have happened but it's entirely understandable why they did. I didn't criticise them at the time and I won't criticise them now. But what's being spoken about for tomorrow is quite different. Even from a pragmatic point of view we should be discouraging it. The Glasgow police were heavily criticised for not taking strong enough action last time, they might feel they need to correct that this time. A dozen young lads getting criminal records for this would be a real shame.

It was spontaneous for a lot of people, the vast majority of who had no idea they were going to take part in it when they woke up yesterday. I'll leave what condemnation they should get to people who want to get involved in the politics of it. I don't. But as a gathering it's entirely different to what's being spoken about happening tomorrow.

Gie's peace, we won the title months ago. I can't remember any other time our support have gathered in George Sq to celebrate a trophy handover. It didn't happen after Wallace stopped Stein's 10 in a row and it didn't happen after Souness won his first title. There is literally no excuse for it happening tomorrow.

Are we drawing an equivalence between a spontaneous protest by the neighbours of two men being removed and deported and football supporter's celebrating receiving a trophy for a league they won 2 months ago? I'm sorry but the two are simply not the same. Whatever your personal politics, like or dislike for the current government or specific politicians or your views on immigration and refugees in this country, if you're trying to draw parallels between these events it's no wonder we get trounced in the media so regularly. By all means ask why Thistle supporter's weren't derided for their spontaneous gathering outside Firhill when they won the league, or the various Green Brigade gatherings to worship and the tomb of Scott Brown that have taken place in recent weeks. As a Glaswegian who actually lives in Glasgow I'd really prefer if all Rangers supporters stayed well away from Ibrox and George Square tomorrow. Infection rates are on the rise here, there's a chance the lockdown restrictions might be stopped because of this. So please, stay at home, watch the match on TV and celebrate it with your friends and family. This is not the time for pointless political point scoring or whatever the fuck it is motivating people to consider this.

Note to self, 18.00 is not the same as 8pm. Note to self, 18.00 is not the same as 8pm. Note to self, 18.00 is not the same as 8pm. Note to self, 18.00 is not the same as 8pm. Note to self, 18.00 is not the same as 8pm.