calscot

And yet we got to the Europa final... We should really have done better under Whyte, shouldn't we..? To think that Morinho spent about £200m and still couldn't get past Dortmund... What a failure that guy is. Shitty anti-Rangers point.

Looking through the UEFA rankings it's depressing to see the top mostly full of the top five coutries with mega bucks tv deals, state sponsorship and sugar daddies. There are also the likes of Russian and Ukrainian teams who also seem to have mega bucks and we can't even compete money-wise with Galataseray. The ones that stand our are the top four Portugese teams and the top three Dutch (not Feyenoord at 123rd) - and yet I don't think we can even compete with them - Portugal due to the Brazilians and Netherlands due to their money, populationa and amazing countrywide, grass-roots system. You have to drop to 34th to see a team that maybe we could compete with for finances and population size. That is the Swiss team, Basel. Maybe we should have a look at them... 38 Olympiakos? Surely we can compete with a bankrupt country? Where you'd think it's too hot to play... 45 FC Copenhagen. They aren't doing brilliantly but they seem to be steady enough. Going down we encounter a couple of Belgian teams - not outwith our potential surely? At 61 comes BATE Borisov. Surely we could use the IPO money just to buy their whole team? Then at 62 comes Celtic so I'll stop there. Ironically we were way above the level those teams five years ago at 24th. Maybe that IS the model to follow... PS The guy who said the UEFA rankings were as poor as the FIFA ones needs to learn a lot more about it. Try here for a start: http://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/data/index.html

They won the Bundusliga the season before, and last season in the CL they were pretty much - rubbish... The point is that to really believe in their system you'd have had to predict them doing very well. It's pretty glib to do it after the fact. Last year, Bayern were the club to model... And they are also the best club this year.

Does anyone actually know what the facts are behind Dortmunds current success? I noticed that their turnover in 2011 was £125m and this will rise quite a bit in the following years. Their winning team may not have cost the earth but it must be within the budget they can afford and the whole squad will probably have cost more on top. I can't imagine their wage bill is not commensurable with their earnings. I see that in 2011 it was £48.4m - more than we've ever had, although a fraction of Bayern at £131.7m. When you see that and I think the cost of Madrids wages were £197m, then you really have to wonder what it is they are doing right. Could it just be they have merely found the next Alex Ferguson and that once he is gone so is their amazing "system"? Could it just be the luck of finding 11 players that play fantastically together? Is getting Morinho and giving him £200m to spend just so inferior? One problem for us is that their system gave them 5 years of doing nothing much at all - 5th or 6th at best and nothing in Europe. If their grand plan requires this, where would that leave Rangers if we copied them? Struggling for promotion and then mid table in the SPL? Would our fans really stand for that? Can we afford to do what they have done - after all with their income they can have as many scouts as the want in as many countries. They also benefit from the whole German football infrastructure and coaching, as well as eastern block immigrants looking to make it big. What does our income and home in Scotland offer in comparison? In fact, even if we had £30m to spend and could entice what are considered the best Scottish players to the club ie the Scotland team, we'd still have an incredibly shit side. What does that say about our youngsters who seem to be getting worse every generation? Yes, we can utilise a lot of our own talent and win the 3rd division with a huge gap, but as people have seen, they don't actually have the stomach for what is on display from them, or the inconsistency of results. In fact many on here actually like to peddle to us that these youngsters don't even exist - they are a "myth". No matter how much we see them on the pitch or on the team sheet, they are not acknowledged by some... In any case, I don't really see how anyone can have a process where they produce a conveyor belt of local talent - even less when you consider the pool of potential available in the Glasgow area. It's always the case of the bigger area you cast your net, the more likely you are to find quality catches - but you can't expect kids to move or travel, so large clubs wait until they have developed and then pay good money for them. Ironically Dortmund don't seem to be too interested in "building a team for the future". No, they follow the latter and go out and pay top dollar the best young players they can find. Is that a model we can really follow with our current income? Haven't we done that for decades with great criticism and mixed results? Anyway for me, Dortmund's current success if far too fantastic to really pin down what they are doing right - it's just too freaky and I doubt they really know themselves. Real Madrid and José will be left scratching their heads too. You've got to give it that the Chosen One is far more of an expert on the game than any of us here, yet he is clueless about this, and we have people who claim to know the secret. I'd love us to be as successful as Dortmund have been in the last few years (although I'd be pissed off about being 20 points behind in the league - and ironically a "crap" manager like McCoist needed a 10 point deduction for that to happen); however, I don't think it's as easy as just trying to copy everything they do - especially as we hardly have the means or the environment and there is no empirical evidence whatsoever that they are doing anything special that is transferable to another club like us. We can try but that does not guarantee that we will succeed. But the first thing we need to find out is: apart from their money, their country's infrastructure, their manager and their players, what it is they are doing DIFFERENTLY that makes the difference?

Actually, I think the best and easiest model to emulate for CL success would be Chelsea. Get a billionaire to buy us and then spend a billion on us... They have a much better record than Dortmund. Or should we copy Liverpool and Milan who met each other in the final twice in 2005 and 2007. Their model of doing things then must be paying off now...

I think I've got the point but I'm not sure if you get the one that you are using hindsight as wisdom and the fact they are out performing everyone, not just us means that not only are they an incredibly difficult success to emulate, there is probably a good dose of luck involved. There is no model that guarantees success and we should be looking for one that has a very good and sustained track record of well above average results. Dortmund ARE looking good but we dont' know if it's something that is sustainable and can be copied with success. No-one can even say that it is something that scales down to our level as they have the buying power to snap up their first choices of the most promising young players. And it looks like that's how they've built their team - in complete contradiction of the developing youth model mostly advocated on here. And can you really compare a 17m euro 23 year old with Andy Little? Or even Templeton? In fact looking at that it more agrees with my own philosophy although I'd probably have aimed for one or two more experienced players. It also took them 6 years to finish in the top three of the top league. So perhaps we need to give our club a chance. Their final positions in the intervening years would NOT be acceptable here.# I agree we need to look at other clubs and their success and what we can learn from them. However, I don't agree we should run our own club down using unfair comparisons to the flavour of the month (or year) or call to just glibly copy the them. As I said, if we're going to copy others, I rather they had a model that delivers consistently over time and that CAN be copied. But the trouble is if it can be copied and delivers success, what if everyone does it? Seems to me that the next best team will be one that does something DIFFERENT - maybe like present day Dortmund... The way to keep winning is to be one step ahead, not behind.

Seems to me that people want a team full of kids. They get one and low and behold they don't find them good enough...

] Again Dortmund and QOTS are terrible arguments. It's completely random. You didn't know they were going to be good at the start of the season so where is the determinism? Both teams were relatively crap the season before, so where is the provenance and sustainability? This is about as clever as telling someone on Deal or No Deal - at the end of the program, they should have chosen to keep box 12 as it had the largest amount of money. Or telling the next contestant to pick box 12 as it was the best last time. You're saying we have to copy the best team (compared to resources) of the season, every season, without knowing who the best will be? Even if we could predict it we'd be changing direction as often as a pin ball. If we're gong to copy anyone it should be a club that produces consistently very good results over a long period of time, constrained by a low budget. Both Dortmund and QOTS are not that club and you'll probably be picking different clubs next year, the same as you would have someone else last year.

PPS The argument would hold more water if instead of comparing us unfavourably to the best in world this year, that maybe you should be comparing us to the average over several years. If our coaching staff should be sacked due to the former then so should almost every coach in the world!

PS Dortmund have been poor in Europe (or not even qualified) for the last 10 years. They started this season 65th, 15 places below us, in the UEFA rankings. We have yet to see if their success is sustainable or a one season wonder.

The mean is always skewed by outliers, when you have a trio that are 33, 34 and 35 year old in the team, it moves the mean up somewhat but is hardly making it an old team. Funny how I don't see a single teenager in that squad and only two under 23. We've played at least 6 teenagers and 14 under 23's. In fact we had 10 under 23's in the squad and 8 played. We had 4 teenagers and 3 played. The average of the squad was 22.8 and those who played was 23.4. The starting line up was 24.7. Take away Jig and Alexander and the average of those that played was 21.5. Take away the two youngest to balance and you get 22. The meadian of those that played was 22. The starting line up 23 and the squad 21.5. Dortmund median 24. You just have to exchange Alexander for Cammy Bell and you get a mean of 23.9 for the starting team, and 22.7 for those that played. Dortmund have done incredibly we but it's very easy to sit back and choose the best team of a season. I didn't see anyone picking them for the CL final at the beginning. And the main point is that every other team in Europe can be shamed by how well they've done with a young and cheapish squad. Not just us. But to compare to us is ludicrous. They didn't start the summer with about 7 players and then have about £2m in total to spend while having the negative of finding players to play in the bottom tier. I'm sure their wage bill must be at least in the thirty millions. They are possibly a club to emulate but then last season they were poor in the CL so maybe this is a flash in the pan or purple patch. You could equally say Rangers' Europa final team is one to emulate.

The last screenshot in the article is incorrect as it's a repeat of Walter screaming for Bain rather than anything about running the club into the ground.

I thought the pun was ImranAhMad....

They really don't need us, do they? That will be at least £3m downturn in revenue but I think they would have lost more if they hadn't as what do they have to look forward to apart from the long shot of another CL run?

I'd put my money on Dave King. He's free to invest now and he's previously lost £20m but still interested. He's 57 with a shit load of money that he won't spend in his lifetime. What else do you do with your twilight years when you've got money to burn? BTW I always thought we had the third largest wage bill in Scotland at £7m with Hearts having £8m... Or have they recently reduced theirs below ours?

Sounds like Goian is just back for his pension... £800k minus tax for a year of not doing very much except a bit of keep fit and the odd 20 minutes of playing football at a pedestrian level. Should set him up for the rest of his life in Romania...

Is he out of contract in the next window or are we talking about buying him in January? Or can we have some kind of paid loan deal until then?

Seems like it was very dirty with the biggest part in having to mug Whyte. If a lot of what is said is true then it's no wonder that quite a few big hitters stepped back from the plate. It's all a bit too murky and they probably didn't fancy getting their hands dirty.

I agree, and for me it's one of those that doesn't actually need to be pointed out, but I'd be dubious about someone choosing that ability who didn't have those three qualifications I mentioned. There are plenty of qualifications required to choose a CEO but those that do not have those qualifications have their choice under a shadow. I'm sure MM, WS and AM have enough between them to be able to make some kind of intelligent choice. While those with self interest at heart don't have my confidence. The latter is something that seems to shaft us again and again. Ability is totally worthless if someone nefarious is pulling the strings for their own gain. Which pretty much says that finding the best ability is probably not the most important criterion. There are plenty of considerations that are at least equally important.

1. Possessing common sense. 2. Having the best interests of the club as their agenda. 3. Not having previous.

Suspend the rules, allow the SFA to decide, under pressure from Lawwell they force through the stupid proposal which just failed. How to circumvent democracy...

Pretty ageist viewpoint. Are there any successful sides with no players over 30? I doubt it. It all sounds a bit Logan's run to me... I don't see why we always need a sell on value, what we really need to look at is overall value for money. Not every player will bring in more than we spend on fees and wages. We could sign a 30 year old on a free and pay him 5k a week and he could easily give us 4 great seasons, while we could buy a few promising youngsters who don't work out and we end up paying them off. I think we always need to look at the balance instead of arbitrary and counter-productive age rules.

The refinancing to lower leagues was mostly speculative. The SPL would have to earn a certain amount before the trickle down took effect and at the moment I doubt they'd reach those thresholds. Scottish/British player quota would be against EU laws. I think the UEFA model has been approved using age and length of time playing in a league. Therefore a Czech youth would qualify and if he stayed five years he'd also qualify as an adult. I totally agree that we should introduce a debt limit but with the intricacies of business could be hard to enforce. Turnover is a poor metric to base it against and will make it less expedient to subcontract anything. Perhaps it should be based on tickets sales plus TV money.

The reason they don't want a single league body first is that the SPL want to retain a disproportionate control of the funding and control to protect themselves. They want to force through all the financial stuff and league structure to their agenda with any changes to the governing body.