calscot

There are so many erroneous arguments on here. I'll say again, Scottish football may well be sick and our training methods crap, but you can't use our game last night as much evidence of that or can be to point to the solutions mentioned. It just doesn't make any sense. 1. We played 8 non-Scots and 4 Scots stated and another came on. If the non-Scots need three touches or can't pass a ball, what has that to do with Scottish football? The worst player on the night for us was a Spaniard, the most criticised player of the season so far is American - what can cures for Scottish football do for them? As for the Scots we played, MacGregor might not have been fantastic at the goal but what has that got to do with the Scottish malaise seeing as he's a great keeper overall. Perry and Wylde were getting plaudits recently and by all accounts didn't do too badly last night. That just leaves Wallace, who is considered a reasonable signing even compared to our foreign Papac, and limped off anyway; and Broadfoot - well he is who he is and had a decent game. 2. Are our training methods so bad that professional players from other clubs in Scotland an all over the world suffer from them and quickly turn into worse players merely by training with us? Four players who started have only been at the club for five minutes - the training must be horrendous. The young players are vaunted one minute and so it can't be the youth coaching but two of them are ruined already by the first team coaches? 3. How can anyone really say Maribor displayed more skill, better fitness, better passing and technique when from where I sat, we totally dominated the game and created an incredible amount of chances compared to them? Our problem was bad finishing, desperate defending by them and general bad luck. We created enough to win a few games but didn't get the ball in the net. We had a far better scoring opportunity, for and against ratio, than Man U had against us in two games. How come when we gain a draw that way, we're technically poor, but if it's done to us, they are technically better? Make your minds up. 4. Booze. Which players booze so much it affects their game? And does it matter? Look at George Best, Gazza and others. Nottingham Forest won a shit load of stuff including two European Cups and they were ordered to have a drink just before each game. Then there's the team that drinks together, wins together. There is no evidence that being completely tee-total vastly improves your performance. Also are people saying that the six Scots who played in our team lost us the tie because they all drank too much? All those problems may be there at Rangers and in Scotland, but it has bugger all relevance to OUR game last night and the one in Maribor. In my own opinion, I thought we showed we are a better team than either of the two that put us out but we didn't do enough at the time. If these two teams played in our league, I'd be confident of finishing above them. I would NOT want to discard our manager and team and replace them with the personnel from those two clubs. I would say our biggest problems were not being ready for the ties, not taking our chances, losing soft goals, losing a goal to an excellent strike, inconsistent refereeing, a couple of players' mentalities and a good dose of bad luck - during the games and including the number of injuries. Another thing we've lost is a strong mentality that we had under Smith - but Ally could get that back in time, he still has to settle into the job. Most of those problems are either down to the individual players, or out of our control. The management need to take the blame of readiness and a bit of the mentality and motivation. However, I don't think we can pin this one on Scottish football, Scottish coaching or Scottish culture. There may be problems there but that's another story.

How can we blame Scottish football and our coaching staff when we only had four Scots on the pitch at the beginning of the match? MacGregor was the first on the sheet and he's considered one of the best keepers in Europe. Then there's Wylde, who is very young but has a lot of people excited about him. Wallace has hardly been coached at our club and at the same time was considered a pretty good signing. That just leaves Broadfoot, a guy many think is reliable. Another youngster, Perry came on for Wallace and was considered a success with his recent call up to the team. I can't see how Scotland or our coaching staff can be to blame for the other 8 players. We also played Naismith and McCulloch in the last game - Naismith is considered one of our best players despite being Scottish - and has shown to be decent in Europe. McCulloch - well he mostly played in England including the EPL so I hardly think Scotland or our coaches are to blame for him. The ironic thing is that one minute people are saying we should stuff our team with our young players, the next thing is that young Scottish players are crap and so are our staff who coach them... Scottish football may not be on a high at the moment but some of the knee jerk, finger pointing just doesn't make any sense. I'd like people to answer why they think Scottish players should be any better than the top Swedish or Slovenian players? I can't see why and from what I've seen from Rangers games, although they are not much better, they are no worse - just less lucky or ruthless in front of goal.

If we're slowly falling then we're right at the start of the fall. It's only a four seasons since we were in the UEFA Cup final and only getting beat in one leg by Barcelona due to them blatantly cheating. We were beating the French champions 3-0 and putting a lot of decent clubs with more money to the sword. That was one of the best European campaigns in our history and the best in the last quarter of a century. We had two crap seasons after that but did ok last year. Before that the PLG season wasn't bad and the year before that we were almost in the CL quarter final. Seems to me that far from being a steady decline, we are fluctuating up and down through the years which suggests that we could easily have a good run again next year. If you look at Rangers' European history, it's been the same throughout the decades with far more disappointment than seasons to cheer about. I think Scotland were 26th about 1997 and after a while we were back up to a peak of 9th and hovered around the 11 mark for quite a while. It's been a horrendous few years for Scotland since our UEFA final with only our run last year contributing. Our non-OF teams have been incredibly poor but what hasn't helped is that Celtic have been worse than us lately. However, most years the majority of our coefficient points are gained by the OF and we just need both of them to bounce back and have some good runs for a few years. Their points are watered down by the number of teams we have in Europe so we were hit badly when we had six teams competing. At least we'll now have less teams to divide the total by. Gone are the days since we played someone like Valetta as they are usually now eliminated before we can meet them - because our ranking is too high! I think that's counter to your own argument... They have a rookie manager who seems a bit clueless in Europe. If we win the league again, they'll surely have a new manager next year. If not, then he might actually learn from his mistakes. You must have watched four different games than me. Overall I think we were a much better footballing team than both the Swedish and Slovenian champions. Unfortunately, we didn't turn better football into results. I think all you can say they were better than us at, was sticking the ball in the net. However, we out passed them, out manoeuvred them, out touched them and were the dominant team. I really don't know how you can say differently. What we lacked was not technique, it was a winning mentality. People didn't appreciate it under Walter but now it's gone, we're playing "nicer" football but as has been pointed out many times, that doesn't always get results. The fact is, when we lose, people only remember it as crap football. We may now seem an easier draw but whether we struggle in future is anyone guess based on our historical record. We WILL struggle against the richer clubs but what people have to realise is that the Swedish and Slovenian champs are our natural peers - wealthy, modern countries of around 5M people. It's an arrogance to think they are the minnows. Should we call you "Mystic Gav"? People have been trying to sound sage and negatively predict the future like this for the last four years and have looked like idiots time and again. According to some we have not won the last three leagues in a row - or the cups, we didn't get to the UEFA final, the club still belongs to SDM, we got trounced by Man U, Bouguerra left years ago, and we never signed Jelavic etc, etc, etc. Anyway, we are a club who have more experience in Europe than most but rarely do much in Europe despite this. Rangers have rarely been a top European side and to expect us not to be so in the current financial climate, is hardly a revelation. Depends how long you live but if I recall correctly, you didn't enjoy the last one anyway - and plenty of people said they'd rather we went out than play the way we did - well they got their wish. We've only reached one in the last 39 years, so if it's another long wait, our current situation is hardly a significant factor.

To be honest it reminds me of the type of stuff that Hitler spouted - just substitute Rangers with Germany, VB with the Nazi Party, Bheasts with a derogatory name for Jews and a few other things like songs and see how it looks...

If he could be got for 3M then I think he'd probably be worth it on a long term deal - 5 years. However, his wages could be a huge stumbling block as the likes of Man City will probably be giving fringe players more than we can afford and I don't think he's even worth the top of our scale (but then neither is Whittaker). To me he's about a 15 grand a week player maximum. However, he has huge potential for being great for us and possibly a good resale value if he decides he wants to leave. So perhaps 3M and 20 grand a week might be worth it for a player who would clearly love to play for us. We could really do with another fan in the team who lifts the crowd with what he says as well as some of the magic he does on the pitch. I know Man City want more but he could engineer a move to us by refusing to go elsewhere.

I think Ally would have wanted him at the right price - �£4M is not the right price and way out of our budget for a young, inconsistent (albeit very skilful) player.

I think they will too, and it shows their lack of sporting integrity. They seem to be the Celtic of Slovenia - if you can't win on the pitch, put pressure on the governing body. In 91/92, when we were playing Marseilles, someone pointed out to the TV people that the French goalkeeper was wearing short sleeves - which is against the rules due to the chance of the ball hitting an arm in the melee of the box. With the GK's different coloured shirt sleeve the officials could see if it was him. When everyone has bare arms it's less easy. The TV crew loved this and told the Rangers bench - but Rangers had no desire to make a complaint. We were never that petty and hold a much higher integrity level.

Fair enough but didn't Maribor spank Hibs last season?

Not many Davie Weirs in Wallace's day... Jock was great in his time but it's a naive mistake to think that fitness training hasn't moved on since then.

Not impressed in the slightest; I'm already feeling divided from whoever wrote this... Not the kind of hymn sheet I want to sing from. The blogger doesn't know anything about unity. Extremist rubbish exploiting the worrying, current situation - it's reminiscent of fascism.

Maybe we need a load of chants of "Stupid, stupid Maribor"...

Looking at non-OF Scottish clubs' results in Europe over the last 10 years, I'd say any team in Europe from Iceland upwards would be more effective than Motherwell in a European game... Slovenian Champions will surely be a cut above.

It's pretty impossible that they complained in time as the yahoos only thought of it on Sunday, when it was reported that Boca was ineligible to play against Motherwell. I think they put their protest in on Tuesday. However, I want this to go the whole hog and properly dismissed to show that the complaint is mince and that there is a malicious agenda against us by certain people who have previous.

Ah the red tops all look the same to me...

To be honest, I think this kind of stuff is very helpful to us in showing the agenda against us. The more stupid complaints UEFA get from our enemies, the more they will realise that we are the victims of a malicious smear campaign.

I think we should boo them onto the pitch. They have no integrity.

It seems Maribor like to complain about nothing. There is a story that last year they made an official complaint about Hibs for being disrespectfully 30 minutes late for a training session at their stadium. The truth was that the Hibs bus driver got a bit lost...

I've only read one paper who had the journalistic intelligence to explain the situation even slightly - and that was the Mail. Ironically I don't usually find the Mail a very enlightening paper - usually the opposite in pursuit of a more sensational story. The disappointing thing is that Rangers themselves have not spelled out the situation - ie that he doesn't need a British work visa to play in Slovenia.

That's exactly what I thought. If they want to use the sensationalist title without it being editorial opinion they should use quotes. However, Maribor didn't actually say this and so the headline could be inferred to be the opinion of the Sun...

Just my opinion from watching the game. There are plenty of figures like that around from people's opinion's it's nothing new:, - "a player over 30 is too old", "27 is the peak of a player's career", "he's too young at 19". I personally think those numbers I gave are a good rule of thumb.

PS I have lost all respect for Maribor who obviously don't want a sporting match.

Someone tweeted it to him. The point is that he was eligible to play for Rangers but not yet eligible to work in the UK. The Maribor game was not in the UK and so a British work visa did not apply. Simples. Why would anyone need a British work permit to play football in Slovenia? That is just plain stupid. I expect he would need a Slovenian Visa but that is surely a formality for visiting professional football teams playing in UEFA competitions. Work permits and UEFA eligibility are two separate issues.

He never promised to spend �£5 in this window - the promise was per season. There is another transfer window in January to save some money for and that's when some of the more crucial signings are made - historically it has often been the ones that win us the league. We've already signed quite a few players, it's impossible to tell how they will piece together as a team and come January we will be in a better position to know what kind of player we need to complete the jigsaw. I would definitely prefer to save some money for January. However, with the "front loading" quote, it wouldn't be out of the question to spend more in this window, IF we can find the right player to spend it on and for the right price. I don't know about anyone else, but I try to spend my own money wisely and always looking for VFM - however I'm very into quality and so don't buy cheap shit - but then I can't afford the top exotica either - a bit like Rangers. And like Rangers I try to stretch my money as much as I can. I recently bought a new road bike, wanted a carbon frame but don't have loads of money. I found the last 2010 model Boardman Team Carbon in the country at Birmingham Halfords for 2/3 of the price with 100 quid worth of stuff thrown in. I then upgraded the wheels, tyres, cassette, seat and peddles by judiciously buying from the places with the best bang for buck on the internet. I spent �£1.5k on it which is way more than any of my mates would spend and I know a lot of people who think 300 quid is mega expensive for a bike - but it's still a bargain and not hugely expensive. Then I joined a cycling club and found loads of people who had much more expensive bikes than mine - Cervelos, S-Works, Colgnagos, Bianchis and other exotica. However my bike is still pretty competitive and at 7.4 kilos with peddles, it's not significantly heavier, and I'm usually around the front of the group (despite badly breaking my leg a year ago, doing nothing for 7 months and only just getting into road cycling about four months ago). So I can appreciate what Rangers are doing.

But implying his head would be on the block if we lost...

Well he was only 20 at the time. Shows what a bit of maturity and experience does for you. 23-33 is the best age range for a football team unless you have special players outside that range.