calscot

Does anyone really want to wear a bright orange shirt for aesthetics? You want to look like you've been tangoed? I don't really recall many people praising Motherwell and Dundee Utd for having the most aesthetic shirts - for me the current blue Rangers top is the most aesthetic I've seen anywhere for a while. Are people talking about wearing the shirt to games, for football or just casually? At the game you could ruin the aesthetics of the rest of the sea of blue with bits of red, white and black. As for football, I have the old orange shirt but rarely wear it as I only really wear Rangers shirts for that reason. The thing about football is that you generally organise people into teams depending upon what colour they are wearing and what works best are actually traditional Rangers colours - blue, black, red and white, as that's what most people wear no matter what team they support. Bright orange, day glow yellow and things like green and white hoops just make you stand out like a sore thumb, not fitting into any team, and so you even get Celtic fans for instance, wearing a black away strip for that reason. I think due to this it's silly to have some fancy away kit as when are you going to wear it - it's usually home strips for going to the game. I think you're better off with a fancy home strip and a couple of plain away ones for playing sport. If you're wearing it casually, then if you're a grown-up you should be maybe be thinking about your dress sense... For me a black one and a red one would be preferable with white the next choice.

How about an orange home kit - ditch the blue? Or a pink one if you want to use new colours? We don't need orange and have tradional colours that are very nice. Why look like Motherwell or Dundee Utd. I would rather stick to our colours of blue, white, black and red. They are good colours and I like them.

The point is who cares if they disagree with something that is obviously appropriate? You're not going to get that one passed reasonable thinking people or a law passed against it. A campaign against the union flag would end in disaster for those running it. It better that than just giving stick after stick to be beaten with. The problem I have with the Sash is that it's about something else that's detrimental to Rangers. I'm not into Penny Arcade either but assume it's not about an unrelated religious or political point that is contentious and potential divisive? Not heard it, but believe you. Probably only on the telly as I haven't been able to make it to a game for a while. It's hard to make out but when it gets loud it does sound like the usual favourites. It's not sectarian and neither is pretending to play the flute... If it's done to wind people up then it falls under plenty of other rules. In the context given, I inferred that you thought that for us it was about religion and politics. For which most people tend to think is about religion and politics...

The point is who cares if they disagree with something that is obviously appropriate? You're not going to get that one passed reasonable thinking people or a law passed against it. A campaign against the union flag would end in disaster for those running it. It better that than just giving stick after stick to be beaten with. The problem I have with the Sash is that it's about something else that's detrimental to Rangers. I'm not into Penny Arcade either but assume it's not about an unrelated religious or political point that is contentious and potential divisive? Not heard it, but believe you. Probably only on the telly as I haven't been able to make it to a game for a while. It's hard to make out but when it gets loud it does sound like the usual favourites. It's not sectarian and neither is pretending to play the flute... If it's done to wind people up then it falls under plenty of other rules. In the context given, I inferred that you thought that for us it was about religion and politics. I'm not talking of promoting Protestantism. I'm talking about promoting our history.

Shouldn't I have nothing to fear from religious people who devote themselves to the teachings of Christ who preached against violence? Or are you saying those that sing the sash are sensitive wee souls? Kind of shows how messed up it is. But if you want to sing about your father's beautiful sash then I've no problem with that, but it's still a bit of a weird old song for a football match. Maybe, but do you actually know many football songs that aren't a bit shite? You're completely missing the point anyway, there has been few new songs by ANYONE for years and we've lost a lot of the old ones. There are plenty of modern anthems to adapt.

As I've said many times, there is stuff that is inappropriate and stuff that is appropriate, using the Union Flag as an example is poor as it's obvious that it's appropriate. I think we can work out a lot of this stuff for ourselves. If people complain at appropriate stuff that's their problem and you can point that out. We work it out for ourselves. Some of our songs have nothing to do with Rangers and are verging on weird and cringeworthy. The Sash is a terrible song which to those not in the know, probably comes across as a bit gay. I've nothing against gay people, but I'm not gay and don't want my club to be thought of as being a gay one - and the same applies to the OO. We've probably got the worst list of songs of any team in the UK and to be honest is was a far bigger repertoire (especially about individual players) when I was young. We could do with bringing some new songs in to contemporary tunes - it's not hard. To make the point, I made about five up when PLG came to the club - they didn't take off, or any others either. Our repertoire is anachronistic and stagnant and the only changes are simple chants to obvious and overused tunes. I don't know about refusing them but to me it's always something that I've seen as highly inappropriate - are they asking god to make them play better football for their huge wage, while there's a famine on somewhere that he's ignoring? It's a bit weird. I've never seen someone bless themselves when just about to their job at any place I've worked. To me religion should be a private thing and maybe we should have a quiet room where any employee, opposition players and officials can go and perform any kind of prayers or religious/superstitious ritual before they go out there. Can you imagine signing a muslim and he gets his prayer mat out on the pitch before every game? It's just ridiculous. I've completely lost you and assuming you are talking about some designated religions and religious orders related to the discourse on the OO. So should Ibrox also be a church? Can't we be more than a team without attaching an off the peg religion to it that already has a network of churches for people to worship in? There is more to spirituality than religion, and it can embrace all religions. There are plenty of good human traits we can champion without using any religion. You don't need any specified religion to be more than a club. I don't really remember Barcelona being referred as a distinctly Catholic club, yet they pretty much invented that tag line. Or maybe we could just move with the times and if you want to promote Protestantism, perhaps it is best to do so in the context of the kirks, most of which are not highly patronised. Perhaps it can be promotion towards being a good person who treats others with respect and kindness while helping the needy, rather than putting it all into getting it right up another section of society.

Maybe you need to word things in a way where infer what you really mean. But I still don't agree with your attitude - we've been shafted by one and all with the "fuck em" attitude. Sometimes when you find out everyone thinks you're a cunt it's time to look in the mirror and perhaps make the odd change.

Yes, you certainly do have to look hard - so how does one sentence mean it's "prevalent" in a thread of 180 posts? You certainly are misreading or making it up and now providing the evidence. Show me over 90 references to OO being sectarian or one each of half the posters if you want to try to argue your way out of it. "prevailing attitude expressed throughout" indeed.

The bit in bold is the most classist thing said on this forum. You are classist and it's there to see. Why shouldn't we try to appeal to ALL classes? You say we shouldn't divide them and do just that.

Either you are totally misreading the posts or you are just making it up to get offended. I haven't seen anything about the OO being sectarian. What people have a problem with is hijacking a religious order you don't really give a shit about, just to noise up another religious order. How is that behaviour that should be celebrated? I've read before that the OO are actually against that kind of crap an d that it tends to be the hangers on that cause most of the trouble on their marches. The whole thing is hypocrisy as it's all supposed to be about following the teachings of Christ, worshipping your god and living a good and just life. I really don't see any of that coming through in any of the false idol worshipping of who would be considered heathens by the protestants of the 17th century. If you're into the OO, why not join it and follow its teachings instead of forcing a load of false crap onto the supporters of a football club so you can have a go at others? Just which of Christ's teachings are you following? "Love thy enemy"?

I'm sorry but that just makes no sense in context of the previous reply whatsoever. There's plenty of incredibly important stuff in British History and it's not exactly normal to associate it with a game that was invented a couple of hundred years later. In fact the fans of one team do go on about a great historical moment and I personally find it incredibly distasteful - England fans against Germany. Many of your ilk slag the Tartan Army fans off for celebrating William Wallace and also the Battle of Bannockburn (Bruce et al), and I find those more important to me than the Battle of the Boyne. Why would we attach ancient history to a football team? It seems to mostly be done insidiously.

According to BBC final score fixture list, the Scottish Cup doesn't exist... SFL2 does and Blue Square leagues. I wonder why?

I'm not sure that's the case due to the new Champions route to the group stage. We just have to be able to beat other marginalised countries' champions, and if we become seeded it's not too bad - Celtic had to beat Helsinki, and the year before, we had Malmo which while we lost, you'd have to expect us to beat them more often than not. Our problem will be that we will return with a low coefficient and no seeding status and so will be more likely to get the better sides.

The caveat I have for this is that you can't really tell how good kids will become, they can look like they have "potential" but they rarely become more skillful, what they get with maturity is more consistent thinking and decision making and the ability to focus and keep the head. We've been in a position in many seasons where we've talked about the great future of the club and often players just don't make it or are sold. Some are even sold for peanuts and THEN make good. I remember, not so long ago we had the likes of McGregor, Hutton, Smith, Burke and Adam in the team - and we're now in the "future" for that time. There's been plenty of others like Malcolm, Hughs, McCormack, Murray etc...

I'll have to give it a think, and find some time to rewrite it a bit to make it a bit clearer instead of straight off the cuff. But I'll give it a go.

Now THAT is a worthy debating point! I also don't like the fact he smacks the ball up the field - although it's not always as unsuccessful as some would suggest. I think that while passing short generally puts our defenders under pressure, they need to learn to cope, and it also draws players for the opposing team into our half so that even if the ball is passed back to Alexander and he hoofs it up the field, they will have a few players in front of the ball and so less there to win it. Players pushing up from the front also cause the defence to push up so that there is not too much room given in midfield and this gives us a chance to get behind them. I think the problem with Alexander booting it up the field and as you say telling our players and theirs what he is about to do, plays into the hands of a team that want to defend deep and try their chances on the break - exactly how the SFL3 teams are playing. And as you say, once our players get used to being comfortable and confident in possession deep in their own half, they can pick out a pass or beat the player bearing down on them and we quickly have some momentum, at worst still having possession. The flip side is that if they are beaten it is in a very dangerous position.

People seem to watching a different game from me. The ball was by far the great majority played on the deck and it was those passes that usually went astray and caused us problems from Motherwell. We lost the ball in more dangerous positions than any loss of possession from a long ball. In any case there were very few long balls except from Alexander and so if you really want to criticise, at least be more specific and knowledgeable. I hardly think anyone can fairly criticise the team for playing loads of long balls but there is a genuine discussion on whether Alexander should usually punt the ball up the field. I watched this and noted that when he played it short, the ball more often than not came back to him fairly quickly - meaning he was under pressure and had to punt (which will be chalked up as just another long ball in some people's memory). Our defenders don't seem confident enough (well until we are a couple of goals up) to play the ball out of our own half when under pressure - and the problem is that most teams are pressing forward when our defence have the ball. That is actually a good time to punt the ball up the field... As for always losing the ball from a punt, that is also inaccurate and while sometimes we lost the first header we often gained possession on the second or third ball as it bounced around. The opposition rarely had a good attack directly resulting from Alexander's punts but they had some very dangerous ones when they gained the ball in our half from a slack ball on the deck. If I was the manager I'd be more worried about these slack passes than the amount of long balls from the keeper- although the second is easier to deal with in the first instance, there is still the problem of defenders doing something good with the ball once they receive it. When our out field players resort to the long ball I noted that either they were clearing up the line under pressure or trying a killer pass - the latter of which paid off with a good attack quite a few times. I think there are far too many people with a very simplistic outlook on what is good or effective football - ball on ground: good, ball in air: bad. However, it's far more complex than that and there is a rich diversity of tactics and plays from which it takes a sizable gamut of them to work. Maybe some people here need to get their boots back on and play in the Sunday leagues in defence. Then they may realise how often they boot the ball high up the line or pass back to the keeper forcing him to punt. In fact a lot of the time you find yourself just booting the ball away as hard as possible, be it up the park or into the next field.

I'm not blaming the youngsters but in the games we have not played well, they have also not played that well. Would more experienced players have played as badly? Maybe but I believe many of the teams of the past where we bought players instead of bringing in youth would have done better. Who is to say that the experienced players wouldn't have played better if given service from top class, experienced players - Laudrup, Gazza, McCall, Durrant, De Boer etc and backed up in defence by the likes of Gough, Butcher, Berg, Amoruso, Moore, Numan etc? But you can't talk about the increase of kids in the team, have the manager's head called for, and say it's an unequivocal success. We cannot know how other players would have played but the fact is we have people saying this is the worst Rangers team they have ever seen (and what do they expect when you go bust and start in the lowest division?) and coincidentally or possibly not, we have the most kids playing since I remember. Promising kids are always exciting and I'm enjoying it, but you won't see many top clubs full of them. If it was a model to follow, Man U would be doing it every few seasons, they've done it once and actually only had ONE teenager - who didn't always play. The point is that when we're trying to be champions of Scotland and do well in Europe, just how good are your home grown kids going to be for a long, long season? To be a teenager who gets into say a Hibs team, you have to be say in the top 20% in Scotland, to be good enough for Rangers and be better than Celtic you have to be say top 2.5%. Just what are the chances that some of that 2.5% are already in our ranks out of 42 senior sides? Remember we're talking top 2.5% of ALL players not just the youngsters. You have to already be better than most other players in Scotland outside the Old Firm. So even if you have the talent the pressure on you is enormous with fans baying for your gaffers head after a couple of draws or a single loss. Hibs, who have less pressure and less money, have probably introduced and produced the most consistent crop of top youngsters in the past decade - look at their success. We've mostly brought players in from outside, as have Celtic - look at the success of the OF. While we are in Div three the kids don't have to be of the same standard to be able to go out into Europe and say defend against Messi. We also have less money and a transfer embargo so the kids WILL get a chance. That may be interesting and exciting but it's not going to work when we're back up at the top and in Europe and I really don't think you can implicitly criticise managers of the past for not doing so just because we have had one good win. I'm enjoying the energy and enthusiasm from the kids and freshness they bring, but I'm not going to be myopic about it or ageist or into the mindset that they are the only one's who can bring success - when all the evidence points to the opposite.

I can't remember a season in my lifetime when we haven't done that...

I would say that's debatable. Three away draws and a penalty shootout loss have had fans calling for the manager's head! I think it's fair to say that the results would have been better had we signed some of the usual top class, experienced pros. Hardly rewarding. To be honest I think people overplay how good youngsters are for two main reasons - firstly they give them a break for their mistakes and bad games, and secondly they don't talk about how good the player is now, they talk about how good they could, "potentially" be. Funny how that doesn't apply to a youngish, new manager...

BBC have it as 14,737...

I take issue with this. Maybe he has experienced racism, but it's glib to imply that white Scots receive very little. I could say I'm a victim of racism by people of pakistani origin which is more than casual. I had a girlfriend for three and half years of pakistani origin and we even thought about marriage - however, that would have been difficult as despite us living together for three years, her family could not know about me as she told me she would be disowned and shunned by them due to me being a white, non-muslim. That's is pretty extreme racism. In contrast, all my family and friends welcomed her and also, when I first started going out with her, I was always on the lookout for racist comments against us as a mixed couple and was surprised that we received not one in English. She did have hassle in Urdu in Pakistani shops now an again, so we stopped going into them. I also have received "casual" racism in England for being Scottish. It all seems like banter and so I just let it go or give as good as I get. I remember reading an article about Scots being racist to the English and found it so ignorant in that I had received pretty much all the type of the abuse they reported that the English get. There is casual racism everywhere by all colours and creeds, but sometimes it's all about how sensitive your are - and that also affects how it's reported.

Craig Moore?

De Marcus Beasley?