JohnMc

Before joining us? Did he, I don't recall that but you might be right. I know he certainly was reported to have done that when he was with us and we should have kicked him out there and then.

No problem. I just don't feel someone with his past and his record should be considered for Rangers. The on-field stuff I'm actually relaxed about but his off-field past is too much for me. He is/was a ned, pure and simple and I don't know if I buy the Twitter philosopher reimagining he's got going on now. He'll be a lightening rod here and attract undue attention. He might well have turned over a new leaf, I just would prefer he wasn't a Rangers player.

Were you a professional footballer Pete? I didn't know that. A poor disciplinary record is usually a sign of a poor professional but to be honest that side of him doesn't worry me, he's a decent footballer I don't think there's any doubt about that. There's surely a scale on these things, no? I doubt Gavrilo Princip thought millions of people would die following his assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand, some consequences are unseen. However stubbing a cigar in someone's eye has fairly clear consequences, beating up a fellow player has fairly clear consequences and attacking someone in the street also has fairly clear immediate consequences. I'm not suggesting he shouldn't be allowed to play football ever again, just not with us.

When we signed Gazza he was playing Serie A, the best league in the world at the time, was the fulcrum of the England side, and had never been to jail or seriously assaulted a team mate or a youth player. He was known to be impetuous on the pitch and had the highest media profile of any British footballer ever but he didn't have anything like the reputation of Barton. I wish we hadn't signed Barton and I'm disappointed someone like him is going to pull on our shirt. But, whilst he does I'll support him and the side and hope his time with us passes off without incident.

I'm sorry but I don't think someone who has spent 6 months in prison for multiple assault convictions should be anywhere near Rangers. I don't care if he's a reformed man he shouldn't ever pull a light blue jersey on. I kept hoping this was just a paper story but as it's clear it's genuine I'm appalled. I don't care how good a player he is, he should never be a Rangers player.

I notice he was warming the bench last night along with that other wunderkind Charlie Telfer. Stranraer stuck five goals past Livingston last night and they couldn't get in the starting 11? Livingston are in genuine danger of going out of business, again, so you wouldn't think they'd be too hard to do a deal with.

I wasn't trying to make any political points in the original post, I was simply getting angrier and angrier as Tuesday went on and the day and its aftermath were discussed and analysed again and was moved to write about it instead of ranting about it to my bewildered wife and children. I'm actually ambivalent as to the causes of the disaster, it was a different era and things have now, thankfully, improved. People made mistakes, didn't do their jobs properly or didn't understand the consequences of their decisions. That's the case with almost all disasters and as we can't turn back time we can only learn from them and ensure they don't happen again. My anger is aimed at those who chose to cover up the causes and who perpetuated the lie over who was responsible. That's unforgivable. As others have said much of the culture that allowed that to happen was created by the government of the time. Freedom of Information requests have proved that Thatcher was misled as to the disaster's causes, she was lied too by senior policemen and accepted their version without question. She seemed to find it inconceivable that the authorities might be wrong or that she might be lied too, despite testimony to the contrary from junior officers and appeals from the Secretary of the Merseyside Police Federation. Thatcher had no feel for sport and disliked football, her governments response to Hillsborough was to try and introduce compulsory ID cards, an Orwellian reaction that fundamentally misunderstood the problem. I'm probably more angry at her predecessor John Major. Major was a football fan, and a genuine one too by all accounts. He should have understood better, he should have empathised if, as we're led to believe, he'd attended Stamford Bridge regularly. Successive governments have, thankfully, dealt with Hillsborough differently, through to the current one and that should be welcomed. However, for me, the mind-set that allowed Hillsborough to happen still exists, football supporters are not treated in the same way as other members of society. What i'm not sure is if the culture that allowed lies and cover-ups to flourish is still as prevalent. Here's hoping we never find out.

With respect you've got your timelines all wrong. Thatcher was replaced by John Major, not Tony Blair. When Labour, led by Blair, came into power in 1997 one of the first things the new Home Secretary Jack Straw did was order a new enquiry into Hillsborough. This second report, the Stuart-Smith report, found along very similar lines as the original enquiry did in terms of blame. The Labour government was split on the findings, with Jack Straw accepting them and indeed defending them and Lord Falconer, the Justice Minister, criticising them publicly. In 2009, Labour Home Secretary Alan Johnston, ordered the formation of the Hillsborough Independent Panel to oversee all aspects of the documentation relating to Hillsborough. It was this panel that first uncovered the truth of the cover up. Whatever faults Blair and Brown had, and they had plenty, the governments they were in did bring us to where we arrived yesterday.

On the 15th of April 1989 I was at a football match in Glasgow. It was one of hundreds of matches I’d attended by then, I was 18 and going to ‘the football’ was something I’d done since I was at primary school. Unusually for me I was in the ‘The Jungle’ at Parkhead that day, it was the first time I’d ever been in that famous stand. It was a Scottish Cup Semi Final against St Johnstone, in those days they didn’t play 2 matches on consecutive days at Hampden so Parkhead was chosen as the neutral venue. I don’t remember much about the match itself, a nothing each draw that went to a replay, but I’ll never forget the day. The ‘Jungle’ was like a lot of terraces I visited in those days. Big, open, barely stewarded and poorly policed built in the Victorian era and upgraded in the 60s it was still controlled by men who Dickens would have thought twice of creating for believing their avarice might have been a fiction too far. There was of course no mobile phones, no Facebook or Twitter, but there were ‘tranny men’ guys who had small transistors with them and would be constantly pestered for scores from other matches during the game. From them word started spreading that there had been some sort of incident at a match in Sheffield. Over-crowding, people being crushed, even talk of deaths, although no one was sure, was being passed around like macabre Chinese whispers. What did seem clear was the match in England being played at the same time as the one I was at had been held up. The official attendance at Parkhead that day was given as 47,374 although as anyone who attended matches in those days knows it was always a good few thousand more. A blind eye was turned by everyone to this type of fraud, indeed it was the subject of comedy, everyone knew and no one really cared how many people were actually squashed in, as long as they’d paid. After all, we were only football fans. Leaving Parkhead after the match is all I really remember of the match. I’m not even sure who I was with although I could guess, it was a social event and I went with the same four or five people every week. As always happened at the end of a match thousands of people turned as one and headed for the poorly marked and criminally small exits. A crush ensued, being literally carried off your feet was commonplace and it happened that day. Most if not all the Rangers supporters around me had never been in the Jungle before, we didn’t know the layout, where the exits were or how steep it would be. No one in authority cared; there were no police or stewards around anyway. The exit involved funnelling thousands of people through a small passage, with a wall on one side and a fence on the other. It was bedlam, it was frightening but it wasn’t unusual, it was the same when you went to Tynecastle or Easter Road or Tannadice. I remember hearing a girl break her leg in a crush at East End Park in Dunfermline during a match once. The sound will live with me forever, she had to be passed down over people’s heads because medics couldn’t get through the mass of bodies in front of her. That’s just how it was, more fool us for accepting it I suppose. Ibrox of course wasn’t like that, but it took the deaths of 66 people in the early 1970s for that to happen. As everyone now knows that day in Sheffield 96 men and woman were killed at a football match, crushed to death in an open terrace. Ninety six people, think about that number for a minute. That’s more people than were killed in the Charlie Hebdo or recent Brussels terrorist attacks. These were people who went to see a football match and never came home. On Tuesday, something that most of us have long suspected and a few have always known, the law finally accepted that they were unlawfully killed. It took this time because those responsible covered it up, there is no other way to describe what happened. People made mistakes or were criminally negligent and rather than accept that they covered their tracks and blamed the dead. They were abetted in this by large numbers of the media and politicians. The victims were only football fans after all. The victims were demonised and the survivors were blamed for their deaths. Football wasn’t the omnipresent, class-bridging, super Sunday, bet in-play commercial love-in it is now, in those days football fans were regularly described as animals, and worse. So the next time you hear someone describe the supporter of another football team as ‘scum’ or ‘sub-human’ or ‘Neanderthal’ pull them up, that language eventually leads to people being treated that way. And the next time you hear a politician or a policeman asking for your trust, particularly when it involves your life, check who is going to hold them responsible, and how, first. People in power will lie rather than face an unpalatable truth, people in power will blame those without power and it usually takes a generation before that can eventually be proved. Stadiums have improved, stewarding is much better and policing too, but the attitudes of the authorities towards football supporters still leaves a lot to be desired. Football supporters are still treated differently from the rest of society, never forget where that road has led in the past.

I'm not sure what I was looking forward to more, the match on Sunday or Germinal's preview. I hope the match is as enjoyable as this was.

Craig Thomson was once a season ticket holder at Love Street according to my St Mirren supporting mate. Surprisingly few people mentioned that when he sent two Rangers players off against St Mirren in the 2010 League Cup Final.

Forrester is a loan player and he's been excellent, improvement from him in every match. You need competition for places and both Oduwa and Zelalem provided that. Oduwa put pressure on McKay and Zelalem put pressure on Halliday, it might not be coincidence that both have been very consistent this season. How they'd have been had there been no one to step into their role is unknown. It was no coincidence that Mark Hately had one of his best seasons at Rangers when we signed Duncan Ferguson for example. I doubt either Oduwa or Zelalem will be in the Spurs or Arsenal first team next season but they've experienced first team football now and all that goes along with it, so they are better players now than when they first arrived. Young players need first team football, Warburton understands that. I'd expect to see Liam Burt out on loan next season for example but Hardie and Thomson back in our squad.

Excellent stuff Frankie, well done.

BBC Radio 5 commentator Alan Green was banned by Alex Ferguson for years. Ferguson refused to be interviewed by him and wouldn't answer any questions he asked at news conferences. From 2004 to 2011 Alex Ferguson refused to speak to anyone at the BBC at all, he wouldn't do pre or post match interviews despite being contractually obliged too. Eventually the Director General of the BBC intervened and an agreement was reached with him. But for 7 years he would have nothing to do with them. They still covered pretty much every Man Utd match at home, away and abroad during that period. The arrogance of BBC Scotland knows no bounds at times.

I know what you mean about the Club Deck Craig, lad next to me was really nice but the fella sat next to him... I really enjoyed last night's match, three good goals, the first was a superb header from a move straight off the training ground. I agree about O'Halleron, our whole right hand side was weak until Mckay switched there late in the second half. McKay is a hugely important player to us now, he's involved in so many of our attacks. We were talking last night how he was released as a 16 year old by Kilmarnock and looked like he was going to be released by us this time last year. You wonder how many other players are lost to the sport. But as Craig says you still hear supporters who aren't convinced by him, it's bizarre. Appreciating what McKay does is my new litmus test for seeing whether someone actually understands football or not. And Dundee Utd lost last night too.

I can understand where DJ is coming from to an extent. Not so much with Wallace, Andrew Robertson is a good left back, playing at a higher level than we are and currently first choice. However how John McGinn can get a call up before O'Halleron, Holt and McKay is an utter mystery. To be honest I don't think any player from the Scottish second flight should be getting into our full international side, ours players included. Shinnie at Aberdeen is a surprise omission as are Arfield and Rhodes. The lad Tierney might become a great player but he should be in the under 21s just now. How Whittaker, Mulgrew and Hutton are in that squad is a mystery.

Come, come rbr, there was at least one poster on here who had written them off as not being good enough and bemoaning our manager for not signing players from Germany and Spain. One thing that Warburton has reminded us is that under the right manager, and in the right side, any player can excel. I'll be entirely honest and admit the career of Ali Crawford has completely passed me by, however I'd never heard of Tavernier, Kiernan or Waghorn this time last year either. You know I can remember when we were once linked with a youngish Falkirk centre half, a lot of fans weren't keen on the idea of signing players from Falkirk, we signed players from much bigger clubs. His name was Davie Weir, he did alright in then end.

Erm, who is he?

I can remember Celtic getting the Broomloan, the West enclosure and some of the Main Stand. For all Calscot makes some valid points I'm not for banning away fans. Going to Parkhead is a right of passage for Rangers supporters. Yeah a trip to Tynecastle or Pittodrie or Easter Road will see you in the minority and faced with hostility but it's nothing like what you face at Parkhead. For many of our away trips there can be as many of us there as the home support. That's never the case at Parkhead. Being in the away end at Parkhead is what tests your mettle as a bluenose. For a start there's the journey to Parkhead, wherever you're travelling from you pass pubs and bus stops and cars and vans filled with 'them'. There seems to be an awful lot of them around. The thing I always remember about Parkhead though was when they scored. That might seem an odd memory but it's always remained with me. See, when you were in the Rangers end you couldn't really hear their support. Sure you could see them, tens of thousands of them, but as we were all singing that's what you could hear. And we sang all game, from when we first arrived until we were half way down London Road on the way home. The only time we stopped was when they scored. In the old Parkhead, when we got the covered end behind the goal, it was the strangest sensation. You'd be watching them attack at the other end of the ground, I couldn't always make out what was happening all that clearly but suddenly three sides of the ground would be jumping up and down and their players would be wheeling off in celebration; but there was no noise. Our singing would stop to be replaced with audible groans and curses and then a couple of seconds later this wall of noise would hit you, it was primeval. It would last about 20 seconds or so before someone would start one of our songs, a defiant one usually, and we'd go back to not hearing them. But see when that wall of noise hit you realised you were far, far from home. Winning is always great but winning there is especially good, there's no point in pretending otherwise. Likewise losing hurts a little more too. That's part of being a Rangers supporter, I wouldn't want to see that taken away from us. That feral, aggressive, threatening experience is part of football in Glasgow, it's part of who we are.

I couldn't agree more, it's petty, unprofessional and unfair. On their website they have the highlights of the match along with commentary so it's not like they aren't sending anyone to the game. I can just about understand the department wanting to support and protect McLaughlin, even if I believe he is in the wrong and someone at the BBC should be big enough to see that. But What they are actually doing is disgraceful, for a publicly funded organisation.

Double post.

I'm not really sure what we're talking about anymore Calscot. Most, again please I say most, not all, people choose the football team they support as children, way before they've any real grasp on religion or national identity or politics. And most (that word again) people as children are heavily influenced by family members and their peer group. So if your father or uncle or older brother support Rangers you are more likely to support them yourself. Likewise if all your friends at school support a particular team you might be influenced in that direction too. Now you could replace football with Star Wars or Minecraft or Scottish country dancing its still the same people influencing you as an 7 year old. Children are influenced by family and friends, it's not a new concept. Some aren't. .

I suspected that myself BH.

I've changed your quote slightly Rab, it pretty much still works though. The big question is why?