Uilleam

Are we sure that it is Hertzken, with 10 men?

I think that he might still be a boy!

Yes, but investments can go down as well as up. If Gilmour netted a hat trick against the fhilth, he would be able to dine out on that for the rest of his natural life, and would never have to buy a drink in this city again.

Give Pedro Caixinha that Chelsea squad and you would see wonders.

Graham Hunter interviews Walter Smith From today's Times https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/scotland/i-heard-a-quad-bike-and-suddenly-there-was-paul-tfz8g7t90 (Paywall) ● The full interview can be heard on Monday’s episode of The Big Interview with Graham Hunter. Search for this and archive interviews on iTunes, all podcast apps and other online platforms WALTER SMITH INTERVIEW ‘I heard a quad bike and suddenly there was Paul’ In an exclusive extract from The Big Interview with Graham Hunter podcast, Walter Smith explains how he persuaded Brian Laudrup and Paul Gascoigne to move to Glasgow May 13 2017, 12:01am, The Times There are two players, in particular, who played fantastic football for you: Paul Gascoigne and Brian Laudrup. How did you sell them the package of playing for Rangers? “We had a team which had played exceptionally well for three years before I took over as manager, but Graeme [souness] and I were in the process of changing the team. When Graeme left I continued that process and I started to say that we had to find an extra spark. So I looked around and, all of a sudden, I read in a newspaper that Gascoigne was leaving Lazio. “I had met him on holiday the year before, in Florida; he was in the same hotel. He didn’t know who I was, but that was Paul. I had my two boys with me and they obviously knew who he was. He had been wandering about the beach and started to play football with the kids, so I got to know him. “I sat down with the chairman [David Murray] and said that I had an opportunity to sign Gascoigne. He was coming back so I said that we should have a look at him. It was just after the mid-90s when English clubs started to get away from us in terms of finance, but clubs like Rangers and Celtic could still compete. The chairman got in touch with the president at Lazio and said that we were interested in signing Gascoigne. He said OK, that was fine. There were a number of English clubs interested and Lazio were going to transfer him at the end of the season, so the chairman asked if we could speak to Paul and they said OK. “It was the end of the season; I got on a flight to Rome and the people at Lazio gave me his address. He stayed in the hills outside Rome, so I got in a taxi and went up. I doorstepped him.” I didn’t realise that. I thought the process of signing a player like Paul Gascoigne would have been a lot more complex than simply turning up at his front door. “It wasn’t even a matter of watching Paul Gascoigne play, because he was injured. He had been out with a broken leg for most of that season. “So, I went up and chapped on his door. I heard the quad bike — I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time, but I heard this machine coming up — and suddenly there was Paul. He looked at me and said: ‘What are you doing here?’ And I said: ‘I’m here to try and get you to sign for Rangers.’ He said: ‘OK.’ I’m not kidding. That’s what he said: ‘OK.’ “I asked if the people at Lazio had told him that I was coming over to speak to him but he hadn’t been told. I was actually very fortunate because I had gone there the day before he was going away on holiday. So we had a very interesting day at his place, then I got in a car, went to the airport and flew back. “His agents at the time wanted him to go to an English club but, true to his word, he said that he was going to sign for Rangers. And he stuck it out. It was great.” When I spoke to Chris Waddle, he spoke about sharing a room with Paul on England trips and talked about Paul’s throwing arm. Apparently, if the hotel was in a public area, Paul would buy boxes of eggs, sit by the window and pick people off like a sniper. When it came to managing a character like him, you must have needed a lot of patience. “When you take Paul Gascoigne, you take him knowing what he is like. There is no use complaining about it. You sit the other boys down and say: ‘Look, he will probably get away with more than the rest of you will, but he will win us football matches.’ “He was never bad; it was stupid things. They would just happen to him. They would just come into his head and the repercussions were always left to me or whoever, and I must say that [Rangers assistant manager] Archie Knox handled him fantastically well and kept him well out of my road on the majority of those occasions. “I would put an arm around him. But I also had to be the other way with him. That would work for a while and then he would lapse back into the way he was, but nobody can take away the fact that he was one of the most instinctively talented players of that generation. “I met Billy Connolly once and he asked how I was getting on with Gascoigne — and, as usual, at the mention of the name you start to laugh. Billy said to me: ‘Walter, always remember that you have to live with the genius. The genius will never live with you.’ I have always remembered that statement. That was Gazza. “Everybody has had to live with him, on his time. But what he brought to us, in terms of his football, was fantastic.” And what about Brian Laudrup? You actually played against his father, Finn, in 1977, in a match between FC Copenhagen and Dundee United. You came across the son 17 years later. How did that come about? “When we signed Brian … you couldn’t have two more different types of people than Brian Laudrup and Paul Gascoigne. Brian was unhappy in Italy because of the way of life, the intensity of it all. The fans were on top of the players all the time, everywhere they went. That was something which Brian didn’t like. “One of our scouts had told us about Brian Laudrup and said that he was going to be available. Brian had been at AC Milan, on loan from Fiorentina — he was going back to Fiorentina, but he didn’t want to. We thought: ‘Well, why not?’ So, again, we got in touch with the club and Fiorentina gave us permission to talk to him. I went and met Brian, sat down and spoke to him. He said that he wanted to come to Scotland to see what it’s like and where he would live. “He came to Helensburgh. Brian was a home-loving, quiet guy and he enjoyed it in Helensburgh because he could go home and nobody bothered him. He was just allowed to go and play his football, and he had a fantastic input for us. He was great. “Brian enjoyed the freedom to play which we gave him and he paid us back with a number of goals and fantastic performances. He could do anything. He could have been a defender if he wanted to. He could tackle. You never saw the tackling aspect in the games because that wasn’t his forte, but you could see it in training. He also had fantastic skills, he could pass, he could dribble: he was brilliant.” There have to have been days when you are sitting on the bench, no matter what way the game is going, and you think: ‘I signed that guy and that’s the right guy for this team. That’s beautiful football.’ That must have been how you felt about each of those players. “There are few players who, as a manager, you always hoped would get on the ball. I would hope that those two, Paul Gascoigne and Brian Laudrup, would get on the ball, because they would do something which you didn’t know was going to happen. “They brought a spark to a team which badly needed it and they saw us through some difficult years in the end to try and win nine in a row. That was a big thing: to equal Celtic’s achievement.” ● The full interview can be heard on Monday’s episode of The Big Interview with Graham Hunter. Search for this and archive interviews on iTunes, all podcast apps and other online platforms

The most obvious connection I can make with General Lee is that we have been watching the Dukes of Hazard, in defence, too often this season (Daisy Duke, mind, Daisy Duke....That's all....)

Well said, PC. Now what about those pesky boardroom 'revelations'?

I am inclined to ignore -completely- reports of transfer targets who appear to be players in whom we may have been interested, if our Manager was not a Portuguese intellectual with only a handful of games in Scotland under his mortar board. I stand to be corrected, of course, but it seems to me that the football media speculate, ironically firing blanks to avoid, well, blanks, the latter anathema in their world. It is the journalistic equivalent of talking for talking's sake.

Whatever; William Tell, he ain't.

The Cresta Run. (Heavy Brit involvement, right enough, but nonetheless....)

I think that 'Waldo' has to up his game next season.

Senderos was neither feared, nor respected; mercenary, perhaps.

I hope for a game worthy of a European Cup Final.

Interesting little piece on Ajax, and well worth a read. Some weel kent names appear, none of whom know anything about Scottish fitba' right enough. From today's Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2017/may/10/ajax-johan-cruyff-peter-bosz-europa-league-lyon Ajax return to the Cruyff ideals as Peter Bosz leads new generation After brushing aside Lyon in the Europa League semi-final first leg, the Dutch club can scent a chance of a first European trophy in 22 years Jacob Steinberg @JacobSteinberg Wednesday 10 May 2017 10.00 BST Last modified on Wednesday 10 May 2017 10.30 BST It is a cold Thursday morning at Ajax’s De Toekomst complex, where the canteen doubles as a trophy room, the sheer weight of football knowledge can be overwhelming, and the atmosphere is unsurprisingly buoyant after the events of the previous evening at the Amsterdam Arena. Nothing is being taken for granted but Ajax can be excused for feeling pleased with themselves after their stunning performance in the first leg of their Europa League semi-final. These occasions are supposed to be cagey, cautious affairs and they have just torn up the script by beating a dangerous Lyon side 4-1. Out on one of the pitches, the team are doing a light recovery session. The rondos are over and the time has come for some shooting practice. Edwin van der Sar is watching from the touchline and the coach leading the forwards is Dennis Bergkamp. One of the players to catch the eye is Justin Kluivert, a young winger who keeps finding the top corner with eerie calm. It is a scene that sums up Ajax’s philosophy, with each character representative of a part of the club’s soul, and the past and present combining to create a brighter future. Bergkamp is the cerebral genius who looks as if he could still do a job on the pitch, Van der Sar the former goalkeeper who has become an unlikely marketing expert and Kluivert the teenage son of the man who scored the winning goal when Ajax won the last of their four European Cups by beating Milan 22 years ago. The manager is elsewhere. Peter Bosz, who was so fascinated by Ajax in the 90s that he would drive from Rotterdam to Amsterdam to watch Louis van Gaal’s training sessions and whose ideals developed from his heaving scrapbook of Johan Cruyff articles, spends the morning inside his office, pinpointing areas for improvement before Thursday night’s second leg at Stade de Gerland. He is worried. Alexandre Lacazette, Lyon’s star striker, is fit again after a thigh injury. “I already saw five or six moments where if my defenders stand like they were standing yesterday, against Lacazette he will score,” Bosz says. “I have to show them.” Not many clubs can match this level of heritage, which explains the romance attached to the thrilling revival that has taken Ajax close to their first European final in 21 years, an achievement made even more impressive by how they are staying true to their identity: seven of the starting lineup against Lyon were 21 or under. For the time being, of course, they cannot hope to take part in the latter stages of the Champions League. Van der Sar calls it “a playground for the rich and famous” and Ajax know to their cost how much money talks in the modern era, how market forces have conspired against them and benefited the biggest clubs in the richest leagues. “For a club of the stature of Ajax, it’s been too long that we were away from the international podium,” he says. One of the finest goalkeepers in Europe during his playing days, now Van der Sar is one of the Ajax greats striving to turn Cruyff’s vision of how the game should be played into a reality. Bergkamp, Richard Witschge and Aron Winter are on the coaching staff, and Marc Overmars is the technical director. Jaap Stam worked with the defenders before moving to Reading. “He taught me how to use my arms,” Joël Veltman, a veteran in this team at the age of 25, says. “I was too shy in duels. He said don’t smash in but use your arms.” They are a fascinating group who regularly collaborate and debate football. There is no shortage of opinions. “That’s the funny thing,” Van der Sar says. “It is not always easy but we speak as one voice. We have a technical heart.” Intriguingly, however, Van der Sar’s role is not on the pitch. Marketing, rather than coaching, appealed to him after he retired. Now the former Manchester United No1 is responsible for increasing Ajax’s financial competitiveness. They do things differently here. “When I got a call from Johan Cruyff and Dennis Bergkamp two months after I retired, this was the idea that they had for the club, to bring an ex-player into the directors’ office and eventually as the main man,” he says. “Those six years at United showed me what a club needs. You need commercial revenue and exposure. I have brought that a little bit, getting three Chinese sponsors. It’s trying to connect two worlds. That’s why we want a footballer as a CEO.” While Van der Sar watches training from a distance for 10 minutes, Bosz eventually emerges from the main building shortly after midday. He is looking like an inspired appointment. His predecessor, Frank de Boer, won the title in each of his first four seasons but Ajax faded in his final two campaigns and made little impact in Europe. Bosz has energised the team since his arrival in the summer and is popular, despite spending five years at Feyenoord as a player. Ajax’s hated Rotterdam rivals are likely to win the Eredivisie, despite their 3-0 defeat at Excelsior last weekend. They are a point above Ajax with one match left but optimism fills the Amsterdam Arena these days. Bosz’s young team started nervily against Lyon but the noise never died down during an awkward opening 20 minutes. The fans love what they are watching. Bosz cannot stand negative football. He was a defensive midfielder – “a destroyer” – but that is not his managerial style. “When I see my team only defending and destroying like I did I will not enjoy it,” he says. “I thought when I’m on the bench at least I will give myself a happy afternoon. If I give myself a happy afternoon, I can give it to the fans.” In an echo of Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona, Bosz favours a feverish pressing game. “Barcelona have a three-second rule,” he says. “We’re not Barcelona, so I put two seconds on.” Bosz laughs. “The five-second rule is something that if you lose the ball, this is the best moment to get the ball back again. The opponent needs more or less five seconds to get in the right positions. We have to get it back right away.” The 53-year-old is an admirer of Guardiola. His favourite book is Pep Confidential, Marti Perarnau’s account of Guardiola’s first season at Bayern Munich. He learned from Guardiola’s attention to detail, how he would work out in advance which opposition player was always free on the counterattack. “I always thought Bayern Munich is such a strong team that you don’t have to watch for the opponents for two or three days,” Bosz says. Sometimes I’m on the pitch just enjoying it like a fan on the side. Then I get goosebumps There are similarities between Bosz and Guardiola. Bosz’s critics believe his high-risk strategy asks for trouble but his principles have not changed since his first job at lowly AGOVV, from where he went on to enjoy success at Heracles and Vitesse Arnhem. “What they call naive is that my defence was on the halfway line with a lot of space at the back,” Bosz says. “But you have to organise really well. If you do that, you have the five-second rule. You lose the ball and press them immediately, then it’s possible. If you look at our performances in Europe, yesterday was [only] the second time we have conceded in our stadium.” That level of intensity requires mental sharpness as well as physical fitness. Any player who allows his head to drop after possession is lost finds himself on Bosz’s wrong side. “Don’t be disappointed in yourself,” he says. “Don’t be disappointed in your team-mate. You have to press. This is the moment. Not one player. The whole team. If you do that right, you will not concede. We have young players, so when we lose the ball, in their mind, they go back immediately because they have to defend. My way of thinking is we go forward immediately because we want the ball back.” Bosz should not be mistaken for a misguided idealist. He is focused on maintaining organisation and spends hours poring over matches to find seemingly innocuous mistakes. He does not smile much and his mother tells him to laugh more on television but he insists he is a positive guy. “But I am also critical,” he says. “There is no such thing as a perfect game. It doesn’t exist. It will never exist.” What about when Barcelona … “Beat Real Madrid 5-0? There were a lot of things in the game that they didn’t do well. I look on the computer and I write down the right-back, ah, he is too high.” The five-second rule works only if Ajax are alert to danger when they have the ball. Bosz calls this rest defence. “There may be 50 things we have to do well,” Bosz says. “First I explain to my players how we will play. Then I will show them an animation of rest defence. Then clips of training and the game. Then we show them the mistakes we make and what we have to do better. You also show them when the pressing game was amazing. We show them clips from big teams in Europe. Then the idea is in the heads of the players.” His approach stems from his appreciation of Cruyff. “I had only one idol,” Bosz says. “I knew from the age of 16 that one day I will become a coach. So I was preparing by writing down what my coaches were doing right but also reading a lot from Johan. With some friends, we more or less wrote our own book. Every article, all his interviews were in there. We collected them and tried to organise them – this is for attacking, this is how you defend, this is tactical.” At the start of last year Bosz joined Maccabi Tel Aviv, whose technical director is Cruyff’s son, Jordi. “Just before Johan died, he came to Israel,” Bosz says. “We spent a week together. It was just amazing. Instead of the book that you made, he is talking to you. I was just listening. In one week I learned enough for 10 years. He saw two Maccabi games and he was there at every training session.” Bosz’s head was brimming with ideas but he is aware that not every player is a football obsessive. “This is dangerous for a coach,” he says. “If I want to give all my knowledge to my players, they will get bored. My speech before the game is not more than five minutes. It’s important from those 50 things that I pick the right ones.” His players took some convincing at first, especially the defenders, and Ajax dropped costly points early on. Veltman says: “It was tough. If the left winger goes to the area, you go with him. I was like: ‘Ninety minutes man, it’s impossible.’ But it is fun. Sometimes I’m on the pitch just enjoying it like a fan on the side. Then I get goosebumps.” Veltman is a product of Ajax’s academy, along with the captain, Davy Klaassen, and a younger generation is emerging. Kluivert turned 18 last Friday. Matthijs de Ligt, a 17-year-old defender, recently made his Holland debut. Van der Sar says: “It has intensified in the last five or six years. We have changed the academy and put an even bigger emphasis on training and development hours and facilities and coaches. We train more in the first year. Then the teachers come here and then they train again – instead of first going to school and then training. So we have two or three more training moments than before. Hopefully that will pay off.” Van der Sar knows that avoiding a talent drain will not be easy. Klaassen is being linked with a summer move. Ajax cannot compete financially with the leading clubs in England, Germany, Italy and Spain. Can they hold on to Kasper Dolberg, their lethal Danish striker, or Hakim Ziyech, their brilliant Moroccan attacking midfielder? Can Overmars keep finding cheap gems such as the outstanding Colombian centre-back Davinson Sánchez? Van der Sar says: “We don’t have the spending power of other clubs. We want to bring our own players through – of course there is money to spend but ideally we want to develop players. If they’re good enough for the top European level, you see the average ages of the players who join the big clubs. “You touch everything in this club. As a player I always had a look at the people doing the laundry or the guy cleaning the boots or the security guards. It’s important to feel that everyone is pulling in the same way. That’s reflective in how the club works. You need a good right-back, a good centre-half, a No10 – I need a good operational director, a financial guy. It’s making sure everyone goes forward. There’s the goal – we need to score. Everything behind me was bad because that’s a goal. We need to push.” Ajax’s scouting must be clever. Selling Arkadiusz Milik to Napoli for £27m last year enabled Overmars to break the £10m barrier for the first time when David Neres, a 19-year-old Brazilian forward, joined from São Paulo in January. Bosz’s tough three-year spell as Feyernoord’s technical director not only allowed him to broaden his mind by travelling the world but also offered him an insight into Overmars’s job. All Bosz asks from Overmars is that he brings him clever players. “I don’t care what they did at school,” he says. “I met some guys who went to university and were not intelligent players. Intelligent players anticipate. Unintelligent players react. Always. If you think faster, you are faster on the field. If you react, you are always too late. Know what’s going to happen, not what’s already happened.” This is the Ajax way. It goes back to Cruyff. “We have to be different,” Bosz says. “It’s the only way we have a chance.”

The Swiss Army Knife. The Swiss Roll.

Toblerone. Gruyere. Emmental. Tax evasion as an art form.

I am convinced, and will remain so until my dying day, that Senderos deliberately handled the ball in the sellik match, in order to secure a red card. I know, vaguely, you understand, some supporters of rahoops, and they are of similar opinion. 57 caps for Switzerland, you say? In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? Not one fucking centre back, that's for sure. If you mention Ramon Vega, you will not get away with it.

Is it likely that PC will want this guy? Will he fit the template for players, and for systems?

Christophe Berra? It's a "No" from me. If that is what we are expected to settle for next season, then I can only echo a sporting legend: "The future ain’t what it used to be." (Lawrence Peter 'Yogi Berra, since you ask)

Old age and treachery will always beat youth and skill.

A gentleman. I wonder what he would have made of contemporary figures; of, oh, say, "lenny". Hard to tell, but I think we may rest assured that JSS would not have proposed him for the Golf Club

Of course, Feyenoord only go and get horsed 3 - 0 at Excelsior. Ajax won 4 - 0 at Go Ahead Eagles, and are only 1 point behind. Both teams have one game to play. I hope that I haven't jinxed the lad.

There is a lack of fundamental skills, and a like deficiency of tactical nous. Both traits contrive to make performances dross. If PC could enhance their basic abilities (through practice, practice, practice, say) they would still struggle with changing formation, shape, etc, ie with understanding and applying tactics. If he was able to inculcate the basics of tactical awareness (far less tactical sophistication) the lack of elementary skills would militate against practical application.

Absolutely. The first half, after 10 minutes, was a dog's breakfast. The inability to defend crosses into the box at all is astounding in professionally trained/coached footballers. The lack of basic skills is likewise astonishing: some players have the first touch of a jackhammer, some the passing ability of blind man fleeing in fear his life, some both.