pete

It depends whether you found Barry Ferguson very good. Not since he returned from Blackburn imo. The fact that we never won the league under his leadership speaks volumes for me.(since his return)

Or they never learn from their mistakes.

He didn't bother me to be honest and he really did say quite a few positive things as in we got the tactics spot on, we were the better team etc.

The beer served in the stadiums here only has 2.5% alcohol which hardly gets you drunk but gives you the idea you are getting a drink. Of course if you drink it above a lot of beer taken before the game then it still will have an effect.

Personally I don't think it is anything to do with the bank, I think Muir and Murray have put the plug in to get the best price possible for the sale of the club. I may be wrong but the fact that Whyte seems to have hit a hurdle makes me think that way.

Drip, drip, drip, drip.

Welcome back Koeman!

Hopefully for the good and you will stick around.

I've signed!

The fact that you create football clubs takes the need away for coaches in schools. Football clubs here are mostly self sufficient with the money covered by membership, profits from the canteen, sponsors and lottery money. The pitches and up-keep are normally provided by the local council and volunteers from the club. The top senior and youth teams mostly have paid coaches with the club also using members of the top senior teams to coach at youth level. From u13 upwards all coaches of the first team at that age group(A1,B1,C1,D1) all have KNVB Youth coaching certificates. Even the coaching level is a part of the pyramid.

The Johan Cruijff Foundation have been building safe street playing areas to try and bring back street football to the kids. A fence concrete and two goals is all that is needed. I remember we used to have a playing street when I was young. We used jackets for goals which meant i was always losing jackets.

I sent an e-mail to McLeish at least the address given to contact him explaining the Dutch system, but I never heard anything in reply. Not even a standard automatic reply.

Therein lies the problem in that boys clubs are apart from senior football and amateur football is apart from junior football. there are no links to all the different levels of football. Why do Holland always manage to kick above their weight at international level and keep producing world top players is that the whole system is based on a pyramid. All levels from youth up to the professional game are all linked together. An amateur club is also a part of the community. Sometimes you have a family with three generations playing at the same time.(Grandfather,father and son). It is crazy in my view that the likes of Renfrew juniors is one team. A whole community should be playing for Renfrew juniors from 5year olds up to the granddad teams. It is crazy to me that once you become too old for a boys club that you are released to find an amateur team yourself. The top players will be scouted by senior teams but what a waste that some players will probably stop playing because they can't find an amateur team to play for. An amateur club in Holland can have something like : 20 senior teams 7 A-teams,(u19) 8 B-teams,(u17) 10 C-teams,(u15) 11 D-teams,(u13) 15 E-teams,(u11) 11 F-teams,(u9) From 5 until 7 most clubs have puppy leagues within their own club. These clubs all have their own playing fields,training facilities and canteen where beer wine and soft drinks can be served which pays a huge chunk of the coaching costs. If you have 10 teams playing at home(20 teams) on a match day and everybody buys one drink then you have sold at least 220 drinks many pubs would die for that. Of course speaking from experience I know that home teams buy crates of beer and not glasses. Every senior player pays roughly 18 euro's per month membership, with the youth paying half of that. This is indeed an example of a large club, a normal club will have between 4(village or small community) and 20(large community) senior teams. The broader the base of the pyramid is the higher you can build up.

A bit of a strange reaction to this to be honest. People on here are shouting for expensive scouts to tour the worlds parks looking for one diamond in 500 million pebbles and yet taking a look at a professional who possibly has been mentioned by his Rangers coloured manager is sneered at. Strange!

The one thing that I will say is that there was no debate or at least i filled it in without debating it. Since I have read other peoples ideas on it I may have voted different. I think i have now changed my mind and support going back to a 10 or sticking with the 12. Financially I now believe it is the only way to go. The only thing that i will never change my mind on is getting rid of that stupid irritating split. Serves absolutely no purpose and gives advantages to some teams.

That is shocking. We are behind Cyprus? That just goes to show how Scottish football has plummeted.

Just for another wee bit of transparency;) it is actually common procedure that a thread that has gone astray is temporarily closed so as admin\mods can discuss what has happened and how we are going to handle it. Any posts that we feel are not fitting are removed and the thread is reopened. Obviously some that have gone totally astray will remain locked.

MF any decision to ban anyone on this site is not taken lightly. We want to keep good members not lose them. This is a decision taken over a number of months and with the full backing of all of Admin. Do we need to be childish and put yellow cards above people who have had a warning or can we not just hope that people accept that after many private messages asking them to just discuss things in an adult way that they might just ask themselves am i crossing the line, as you say that you did. People do have different opinions but that does not make them a prick a cunt or an idiot and they certainly will not be banned for having a different opinion on this site. If you do have a different opinion though, then it should be open to discussion why you have that opinion and is it correct. A forum is to discuss and not just throw names and swear words at each other. If we accept that then the only way is down. I believe the thread has been reopened as there were some very good discussions in it.

I am afraid that the final does or did also leave me with a feeling of not trying to fight to the death, a chance in a million missed. I played football long enough to know that sometimes you are forced back when you don't want to be. Unfortunately we cannot turn back time and we really have to thank Wattie for all the effort he has put in to Rangers. No matter how we look at it i honestly belief he was doing what he thought was best to win the cup and indeed ten in a row. Hindsight makes things an awful lot easier.

I still think Fleck is too young to be a regular. We really need to give him time to develop. I must admit i don't see why we need 7 strikers when we only play 1. At 21 though Goodwillie could be a good gamble for the future as Naismith is now turning out to be.

Miller out and Goodwillie in is very believable to be honest.

He didn't at Ibrox.:tongue:

Listen guy's you can have the most creative player in the world playing but if you only have Kenny Miller to aim at 30 yards away then even Messi will look average.

Depends on if the troops go AWOl as most of the players seemed to do on Sunday.

Johnny I am not totally arguing against what you say but the fact you say nobody can do what Wattie has done is going too far in my opinion. I am sure there are managers out there that perform better on less of a budget that Smith has had. The fact is we will never know one way or the other. As MF said we just have to worry about Smith for a few months now and then i fear we will have bigger things to worry about.