calscot

While it's fine that you disagree with it, and who won't on hindsight, I think there is a clear logic to it, which makes it somewhat understandable. Garner is supposed to be very good as a centre forward and Waghorn has been pretty useful up front, on the right in the past, and so the combination with McKay on the left looked quite potent - on paper. Waghorn did score a hat-trick the previous game but it was a step down in quality from second in the top tier. So now the decision is whether to give it time to click, or change tack to drop Garner and put Waghorn in the middle. But Garner was brought here for a reason, and mainly because Waghorn has not been as prolific in the middle as we needed, so I can see MW sticking with it.

There is more choice than strict liability and no liability... There could just be a Goldilocks solution somewhere in between...

I think we will roll over quite a few of the smaller clubs as although they will try the same tactics, the quality they have will struggle to hold back the tide; however, the top half of the table might have enough quality to use the highly defensive tactics to thwart us much more than we can afford. It's a bit like our UEFA cup run where we had just enough quality to get away with it quite often against the more middling clubs, especially in the UEFA/Europa Cup. I think if Warburton had been able to spend like pre-McCoist days (and post Wallace), then the difference in quality would allow his tactics would work like in the second tier. But unfortunately that suggests his tactics only work when there is a marked difference in budget. He obviously needs to build on the possession play, and introduce version 2 that can systematically defeat the likes of Aberdeen and Hearts most of the time, but with "only" 2 or 3 times the budget, as even when we up our spending in the future, we will then be coming up against financial peers in Europe (as well as still having to beat Celtic). For our system to be any good it must be able to beat teams of *similar* quality more often than not, and obviously *usually* beat teams of lesser quality.

I can almost see a point where they can't punish the club directly, but they CAN punish the fans and ban them from several Scottish Cup games. We're talking the amount that invaded the pitch was about 50% of their normal home attendance or more. That the club suffers financially from that is an unavoidable side effect, but judging by their complicity, well deserved. I also think that there is a case here to vastly reduce the number of tickets of clubs in cup finals to me more in proportion to their normal attendances when against the OF - I can't help but think that the attendance of so many infrequent attendees potentially makes the behaviour far worse than it would be - and that is bourne out by the Motherwell fans in the play offs also (even though that was a home game, the home crowd was far larger than normal).

Only in your mind, not in reality...

I think the ref must have thought he got the leg first and then the ball.

I agree, although thought McKay did some good stuff on Sunday.

There's often a lot of debatable or subjective yellows. They need to think twice before a red as it really affects the game.

They have a good free kick taker...

There's plenty in Sutton's team of the week... but then that's all about the trolling of Rangers fans.

Yes, and I've repeated it so, so often...

Yeah, sorry.

Again I pretty much agree, but I was maybe over-optimistic in hoping we would be about 10 points behind at the end of the season rather than less than a quarter of the way through. With the second biggest budget, a supposed dream management team, and 48k for a 12th man at Ibrox, I'm still finding 7th place and 3pts behind second a bit deflating. The problem with having so many teams above us is that it's not just overcoming 3pts from one team, they won't all drop points at once. Also I'm worried about being able to beat Hearts now, and with every game even more of a must win, the pressure is very much on - and I don't think our team has been the best at dealing with that under the current management. The cup game against Celtic was unique in that expectations were low, and the pressure was all on Delia and his players. Maybe we're just having a hiccup but it's a pretty long one.

The Aberdeen map makes a mockery of those saying they dominated the game or having lots of their players in the "team of the week".

I'm not really sure how to interpret the Garner anomaly in that map - is it a fault of the player or the team? It kind of looks like it might be the missing link - we need him up front, and getting a lot more service.

I think refs make mistakes just as managers and players do. They have to call it as they see it and so the better refs won't lose sleep on a bad decision as it will affect them too much in the future. I think managers have to live with the odd mistake and put any frustration into marking the performance of the ref rather than shouting at him.

I agree with most of that, although I do see we're all now focusing on second place; I can't help but be a wee bit despondent about that, at this early stage...

Ah, need to look at it again - if that's the case, again not detracting from the seriousness, then I think it gives a nefariously false impression to the public.

Before I get the usual nonsense stuff about me "defending" McCoist or thinking he was a good manager - I'll help people by recaping that I said he wasn't good enough for Rangers in the second half of his first season, but I did argue against the extreme criticism that he certainly didn't deserve. However, at the moment, I am consistent in that I don't think Warburton has significantly improved the results from someone I didn't think was good enough (if at all) and therefore not shown he is good enough either - yet. Other people argued McCoist was a terrible manager, so maybe that puts the lack of progress in results into perspective. Or are people happy to have mediocre results relative to our budget, as long as we play the ball almost exclusively on the ground and dominate the possession in most games?

He has a worse record for combining the first 18 games of tier 2 with the first 7 games of tier 1, than a man who is considered the worst manager in history on here - despite having a far less restraints... No manager had to deal with what McCoist did but it didn't cut him any slack... I think the meme was "excuses"... There has to be some consistency, if previous managers' results are unacceptable during the worse off-field time in our history, then how can worse results have any mitigation?

Pretty horrendous stuff by a couple of Rangers fans really bringing the club down, and being pretty sociopathic, violent yobs. We don't need much of an excuse for people to hate us, so this is also like being an enemy to the club and its fans. Not wanting to detract from that, but I did notice a suspicious cut in the footage...

As I've said before, whether MW is sacked should not only be based on where we finish but the circumstances behind it and how he has performed as a manager and in progressing the team towards a future challenge for the title. At the moment he's floundering and his results are worse than "the worst manager in Scottish history"... I warned before he came that merely playing the ball on the deck does not guarantee results and that it can end up very frustrating to watch, rather than entertaining. While Warburton may have brought more "professionalism", organisation and technology to the club, (which isn't such a great achievement considering the board and situation we've had, along with the great strides in technology which wasn't there before), as well as a so called "footballing philosophy") there is more to football than that, and it requires a certain inspiration and canniness that he's not displaying. His progress is way behind the likes of Robbie Neilson, who has had far less resources at his disposal and whose club was in a similar situation. I don't think people want him sacked at the moment at all, that's just making it up for argument sake, the straw man and all that, it's that he's doing incredibly badly, and looks like he's going into a dead end route with no clue about how to find a new direction. I think what some fans want is acknowledgement that plan A is not quite working and that we're switching to plan B or at least plan A.2. I really don't see how losing a 9 point lead over a more expensive team is "unacceptable", where being a potential 10 points behind after 7 games along with a humiliation by Celtic, and in 7 place behind 5 less expensive teams is fine, and just needs more time. Fans are concerned and rightly so, this season is already looking like a disaster for a club like Rangers - and history has shown there is no sympathy at all for the position the club is in, or any perceived lack of time to get it right.

They won with a one in a hundred free kick, which may not even have been a foul in the first place. Their other goal was a schoolboy error by the defence after a hoof up the park, rather than reward for dominating play. There is no description of football in where they can say Aberdeen were dominant, it's literally nonsense - or just being so biased and bitter that they can't stop putting out mistruths. Aberdeen were never in control of the game at any point. I can't even remember a dominant 5 minute spell. We, on the other hand, dominated possession, just watching it that gave the impression and the stats (however accurate they are) bear out this impression. We also had more territory, more attacks and more corners. Our build up play was a lot more controlled and we dominated for spells. However, our effectiveness in attack was poor and some of our defending dreadful. At the same time, their effectiveness in attack wasn't exactly good either, although maybe they created some better chances. Their defending in the end was slightly better by putting high numbers in the box, but that's not dominating. But the only place where they were measurably better was two goals to one. None of the three goals were much to write home about in a tactical sense, although I'd say the penalty came from a lot of dominating the possession and territory.

I agree we'll give hammerings to lesser sides, and more wins against better sides if we can take our chances; however, I think the level of talent, while good, is not of the level a club like Rangers need. I think most of them could make up about 6 out of the 11, but can't help we need up to 5 (to pluck a number) players of a noticeably higher standard to really compete. I thought that was what we were recruiting with the likes of Barton, Kranjcar, Garner and Senderos (and those we missed out on instead) etc... But it doesn't seem to have happened. I'm also a bit worried that perhaps our management team are a bit too inexperienced for a club like ours, and in our situation. I'm sure Warburton (and Weir) will learn tons and end up in the top half of the EP but it now looks to me like he's still on a bit of a steep learning curve at the moment - which might not be so great for us this season. I thought they showed great promise but, so far the results have been well below my expectations - bar beating Celtic on penalties in a first season and from the second tier.

I think we've established that due to the location of the fans, and the colour of the seat, that it was a lot more likely to have originated from the Rangers fans' side of the fence.