calscot

Souness didn't know him but he knew another interested party which is where he threw his hat...

With Walter there is there a need or a space for Souness? Is there an offer? As for investing, Souness may be a multi-millionaire but that doesn't give him spare millions to put into the club that he'll unlikely see again. You really need to be worth something like £50m or more to be comfortable throwing a couple of million at a club.

Not sure if I agree with this - what would their motivation be? Probably squeezing as much money as they can out of the club before they move on. I would like people with the health and prosperity of the club at heart. I think the biggest trouble there was a shareholder with 83% of the shares. With a maximum of 10% there will be plenty of board members speaking up if they have to. Another part of the trouble was that those that didn't speak up helped create the shit that hit the fan and so were part of the cover up. That can happen whether you love the club or not - but I would say is less likely if you love the club. Walter is a case in point.

I read it again and see where the mistake was made - I could have been clearer. But the misinterpretation was jumped on pretty quickly and heaviily... But I think it shows that if you think a point is preposterous, perhaps it's best to read it again and see if you've got it right. You can always ask for clarification.

But you are compensated there by a win every time, and sometimes a good performance...

I don't see why they shouldn't meet in a cup - one of the two teams would progress if they weren't related so which one is pretty arbitrary - and at no expense to another team. In the league it's a different story where the first team could gain easy points while a rival has a hard game - not only that they could lie down to another team to affect the league standings.

A £30m price tag and no interest of backing from a billionaire?

How are the fans efforts in getting to a game an excuse for Ally? That's the most ridiculous Ally bashing ever, you just can't help going on about excuses even when none are being made! The point was that it's trying for the fans to watch the poor away performances, even more so after travelling a long way.

Sport has never been about entertainment. It's about competing. Some people find watching the competition interesting, exciting and sometimes entertaining. If you think that you should switch to the Harlem globe trotters or figure skating. Who are YOU entertaining when you play sport?

How is saying that fans must be more disappointed if they see a bad game when they have to travel far a horrendous excuse? Are you saying they should stop moaning? I don't see how it affects the results.

They can't do it next season as we'd be in the third level division and so would our colts... They need to wait till we are promoted to Division 1 before implementation - or introduce a 16/14/14 distribution to boost us up a league and accelerate our way to the top.

So only two colt teams? I was thinking that most of the SPL would want to get involved.

Just thinking that teams that get relegated from the league above while we go up will miss out on the two home games against us as well as potential TV money. On the other hand the team that goes up with us will get us again. This should make the promotion to Div two and the relegation fight in that league a bit more competitive. East Fife and Stranraar are currently in the relegation places - although East Fife did benefit from a windfall by playing us at Ibrox in the league cup which is probably more money than they would earn in two home games so perhaps it would be apt if they go down. At the same time, another team that has already benefited is Queen of the South and they will probably miss us this time due to promotion. Perhaps if we are promoted sequentially and they yo-yo back down and so miss out that will also be good for the sharing of the wealth among the SFL clubs. One thing that can be seen is that clubs that have invested in larger stadiums will benefit more with Queens Park probably gaining immensely for sharing their home with the Scotland team. I'd love to see a packed Hampden for that game. I was hoping we'd be going there quite often this season but the cups have disappointed. We've got another chance to play there once or twice in the Scottish Cup but that will be a difficult task. Can you imagine Queens Park finishing second behind us and having two more huge gates?

Where would they fit in? We already have too many teams.

PS What do you really know about our current training and nutrition that is sub-optimal?

How come he had shit results compared to even McCoist? He had personal preferences but there is no evidence they were any better than before. However, he forced them on players in an uncompromising way which really pissed them off. He then couldn't cope and gave up. That's pretty bad change management. If you are going to make such big changes you need to get the players, who are major stakeholders, on your side. You need to introduce it in a way that is palatable to them and you need to COMMIT to completing the job. He brought in a whole team of his own players, so perhaps he should have interviewed them about how open they were to his methods. Le Guen has shown very little evidence that he can turn a foreign team around with his diet and training and his management skills were obviously lacking in many areas.

Where is the sugar coating? The point is that overall results are about adequate but not spectacular, but there seems to be some recent improvement all round. Some see the mitigation of the crisis we've been in, the lack of a preseason, the lack of time to research and sign the most appropriate players, the lack of attraction of third division football, the lack of money given, the number of inexperienced youths we need to play, the actual standard of our signings, our injury crisis, and the actual adaptation to lower division football. When you put that together, you guess that the manager will need some time to get the team firing on all cylinders especially with the huge pressure for a good win in every game always being a monkey on the back. There's a long way to go but my "sugar coating" wasn't that as such, it was the fact that I took time to watch the whole game with a half decent stream and enjoyed what I saw. I didn't see the dross performances that the likes of you are moaning about - and I'm told this was a pretty average game and nothing special. A few other games I've seen have also been entertaining enough although I've seen a few shockers - like ICT. I think we've been generally good in the league at Ibrox and that is reflected by the high crowds at every game - I think the more open minded and less critical fans are enjoying themselves at least at home games. Away games have probably been a lot more trying - especially when you add in the effort to actually get to some of these remote places. You might be a season ticket holder who is very unimpressed but I'm pretty envious and think I'd really enjoy going to all the games if they are of the level of the last game or better. But then I don't go to a reasonably good restaurant and leave disappointed they didn't serve me the standard of a Michelin star meal. I may aspire to eat top class food but I know I can't really afford it and so adjust my expectations accordingly.

I think when you mention tennis players you are talking about the top 10 in the world at most and probably the top 4. They are undoubtedly the best few at their sport and so not surprising that they are very fit. However, how do you compare fitness between sports. All sportsmen tend to get fit for the sport they are in so a marathon runner will look pretty unfit in a weight-lifting competition and vice versa as an extreme. But the marathon runner will find it hard at many sports including more fitness and less skill oriented (outside a repetitive technique) sports like road cycling and swimming. But if you take the top four footballers in the world you'll find some incredibly fit guys - just like you will for skiing, F1, athletics etc, etc. Most top athletes will be training pretty optimally and the main difference for fitness will tend towards genetics which is why you get super humans like Lance Armstrong. We don't have any player in the top 10 in the world. Not even the top 100 or the top 300. But I'm pretty sure they are very fit guys. I remember getting a free ticket to an Aberdeen v St Johnstone game and while these players weren't a patch on Rangers or any EPL side, the thing that struck me is that looking at a different perspective rather than wanting a team to win while there in the flesh, I noticed that even at Aberdeen they had players who looked immensely athletic and mega-fit. They certainly didn't look like your average bloke in Sunday League. The thing about football is that there is a lot of money to go round compared to the likes of tennis, and so you get thousands of professionals. It's also a team sport where fitness isn't always as crucial as in other intense singles sports. You can make up for it with good teamwork, good individual skill and plenty of experience. David Weir wouldn't break any records in a sprint or a marathon, but he could play his position better than a lot of younger, "fitter" players. But in the end, training like a tennis player will not make you fitter for football. We can embrace other training techniques to improve our cardiovascular fitness or core strength etc but I don't think football will get that much new training techniques from tennis. I think they COULD benefit from some of the sports psychology - but I think they need to borrow some of that from golf and rugby for set pieces. Rugby have definitely learned from psychology and they do a pre-shot routine which includes relaxation techniques and then visualisation of a successful shot before committing to it. I don't understand why footballers don't do this for some set pieces - especially penalties; although to be fair they also have to think about psyching out the goalie rather than obviously aiming for one place. They also have the dilema of how close to put it to the post to make it harder to save where as golfers and rugby players are just trying to aim for as close to the middle of their target as possible which gives them an equal amount of room for error each side. You may not like the coaches at Ibrox but I'm highly confident that they are pretty knowledgeable on the state of the art of football training. How much they apply that knowledge is another matter but I do think they take it very seriously.

Garbage eh? What are your credentials here? I'm a qualified and experienced weightlifting instructor and always reading up on training methods for fitness. Did you know that in a five set match, the likes of Nadal doesn't run much more than two miles? Say 700m a set or say 70m a game, or say 12m a point on average. However, it is quite intense as a lot of it is a long series of mini sprints. Footballers tend to run for about 6 or 7 miles in a game (some players do more). Maybe not quite as intense as tennis as a lot is jogging around, but takes more endurance. But the point is NO-ONE excercises for 6 hours every day - except perhaps on the Tour de France - but that is mostly low intensity due to drafting. Cavendish trains on his bike for about 3 to 8 hours a day depending but cycling is easier to maintain for long periods - for example marathon runners are finished in 2 hours, you wouldn't expect them to do three in a day. Training can be less intense that actually playing any sport but if done properly really shouldn't be - although if you're training for a few hours a lot of it will be resting. Proper training should really be as intense than the competition itself but usually in shorter amounts - you want to save your best for the competition day. Rest is as important as training as you get the benefits of the training during the recovery where your muscles repair themselves better than they were before. This isn't really what you were orinally getting at as the topic was about fitness. But anyway, ball control takes a lot of energy in my opinion - but how much time should you really spend on it? Professional footballers are usually about as good as they are going to be, hours and hours of non-stop practice could be wasted due to the law of diminishing returns. Usually when you do so much practice when you are tired you actually make yourself worse due to sloppiness creeping in due to the fatigue. Listening doesn't take physical energy but it does take energy. But then how much can a player learn from a coach? Will he learn loads by listening for hours every day? Football is mostly not that analytical, if you're thinking too much then you're going to be ponderous in the game. You can analyse the game and form your tactics and strategies - as well as drumming certain things into your brain so they become second nature but I don't see how forcing players to sit in a classroom for hours on end is really going to help. I suspect most professional athletes outside cyclists and other sports where the intensity is less and the competition takes a long time, train for a few hours a day about five times a week. When your game is for 90 minutes - what is the point in doing iron man type training?

What some people want is something that is very difficult to deliver. They want a manager that can consistently beat all other managers. There are few in the world that come close and none are infallible. Man U have been very lucky in having probably the best manager ever over an incredibly long period of time - although it has helped that he has had top money to spend on players (maybe he hasn't been that good after all). However, he did a fantastic job at St Mirren and Aberdeen on a much lower budget. Mourinho is another very consistently astute manager but he rarely stays long at a club and also needs top dollar to do his magic and we couldn't supply him with what he needs. But who else is there? How do you guarantee perennial success against your financial peers as well as playing a level above your financial inferiors plus punching well above your weight in Europe? I don't really see how it can be achieved unless you are really, really lucky and end up with a Struth or a Stein as well as a couple of generations of highly talented local players. Outside that you would expect in the marathon of the league that a club should expect to beat teams with far less resources over a season - and in the last 30 years we failed to that completely just once. Cup games tend to be a bit of a lottery and to win one you the OF also have to beat their main rival and peer or have them slip up to someone else that then has to be beaten. However, we've done not too badly there either. So you really have to wonder, what it that the most critical of fans actually expect realistically?

From how I interpret things, Walter is likely to have absolutely NO day to day or week to week tasks. Instead he will turn up at Board meetings and give his knowledgeable and experienced view on the proceedings where he can add relevant input. They may ask him to provide the odd ad hoc report on football related stuff but his job description will be pretty much empty.

He probably felt fit but had a recurrence of pain during the game.

You'd expect all the season ticket holders at least. For the others you can understand that the weekday game was probably an expensive night.

I very much doubt it would be Walter's job to sack McCoist if he wasn't performing but instead would be giving advice to Green. And in that sense if Ally was shown to really not be up to it, I'm sure he'd call a spade a spade. However, if it was that bad, I'm sure Ally would himself resign. I'm pretty sure his job is safe at the moment as he's doing a passable job and we need some stability. We're clear at the top of division three despite having very few senior players and most of them being injured. We've been playing about 7 home grown youngsters over a game which is pretty amazing and when you think about that, we're doing pretty ok. There was criticism over the ICT came but they are a comparable side who played better on the day - and they are well ahead of Hearts who have a larger wage bill than us. We got to the last 8 of the cup which is not bad for a club in our position - getting to the last 4 would be nice but surely it's not worthy of huge criticism if we don't - in a knock out competition. Eight SPL clubs didn't get there either. Getting the team going after the turmoil we've been through was always going to be a task and we do seem to be improving despite the injury crisis. You also just have to look at Celtic to see how you can get dragged down to the level of your nearest rivals. They are a third of the way through the season and if they continue with their points per game they will be luck to attain 70 points - that's 3 less than Ally did last year with the affects of administration AND a ten point deduction. And this is supposed to be a great Celtic side who beat Barcelona and Benfica... So I don't see Ally being sacked in the near future and if it does come to pass, rather than being the man to pull the trigger, I think Walter will be more usefully utilised in recommending a replacement - for which I'm sure many on here will have complaints.

Scotprem.com have their attendance as 0... Funnily enough that also changes their average attendance stat to about 38k... BBC of course don't even mention the attendance. Daily Mail say, "vastly reduced".