calscot

I think the thing that REALLY doesn't suit Boyd is all the hoofing the ball up the park from defence. THAT definitely doesn't suit his game at all. So, I really really hope that we can play the long ball less next year and concentrate on playing out of defence. However, the amount of times we've given the ball away in terrible positions, while trying to do that is cringe-worthy.

Yeah, that's kind of my point. The same people were baying for Adam to get a game a couple of years ago and now they turn on him. What makes them think Gow will be any better except for pure speculation? Some people seem to like players better when they don't play as they can't form a negative opinion - the players' skills seem to get exaggerated in their minds. But it's funny how quick they are to slag players off when do get a chance but they are not fantastic. I can understand disagreeing with a manager who sees them on the training ground every day when the team's doing badly. But when he's doing a decent enough job, surely it's best to defer to his greater knowledge? If we'd paid say 6M for Gow to the likes of Barcelona, then I'd understand the consternation a bit more. But is a freebie from the SPL really going to be our hidden hero? It's also ironic that some who want him to play, also continually slag off our signings from the SPL...

Funny how some people think Gow should get a chance while slagging off what they reckon is a similar player in Adam, who did get a chance. It seems a fine line whether you are seen by the manager as good enough to get a chance. Adam just made it and gets slagged of by the fans. Gow looks no better and yet everyone feels sorry for him. I think some of you are answering your own queries. You've got to be pretty fickle to bum up Buffel and Gow on the one hand and slag off Boyd and Adam on the other.

Totally agree with TannochsideBear. From what I've seen he doesn't look any better a level than Broadfoot - who nobody feels sorry for and many give him the pelters. However Gow has got far more competition for his place than Broadfoot has had since Hutton left. It's funny though, I'll bet the very people who slag of Broadfoot, would be the one's "feeling sorry for him" if Hutton had stayed and he never got a chance... I can never feel sorry for a guy who has an easy life and earning 300k a year for playing football. If he really wanted to play and show what he can do to the world, he'd have gone to Burnley to kick start his career. However, that move included a pay cut which is probably a big influence on him staying. If he goes on loan instead for a year, he won't get paid any less. When you've got a manager who fell two wins short of what could have been your best season in your history, you have to give him a minimum of respect about who he plays. There seems plenty of fans who suggest that in Walter's shoes they would happily for them and bafflingly for me, play a team full of fringe players instead of Smith's first choices - and all because they feel sorry for them. I'm really glad Walter doesn't think before a match, "I better give that player that doesn't look up to it a game, as he works hard and I feel sorry for him." There's no room for that sort of crazy sentiment at a successful club like Rangers. Now if Walter spent 6M on a player and didn't play him then questions would be asked about why he bought him, but a freebie fringe player on a low wage? What's the problem? I wish Gow all the best, but not at the expense of the success of my football team.

Barry had about 10 excellent games where he surpassed the level of anyone else we have in midfield. However, he had more than that many games where he was mediocre at best. Thomson, while not hitting the heights of Bazza, also had a higher base level than his captain, and on average he may have shaded the older player. However, Fergie looks like he's declining while Thommo is showing signs of potentially improving greatly. So the former Hibs man gets it from me. BUT, I'd have probably have given it to Novo had he been listed, for his right midfield performances. The guy was a talisman last season, and an example for the rest of the players to follow.

I think with Boyd it's obvious that he is neither great nor is he gash. The truth is somewhere in between which causes split opinions. He's obvously good enough to play for Rangers otherwise he wouldn't get a game and wouldn't be the top scorer. It seems though, that he's only just good enough - which is why he only plays half the games. Scoring goals is what the game is about but that counts for the opposition too. The trouble with Boyd is that unless he scores two or three - which is rare, then his presence in the team means that the opposition have more chance to score - not only that but others in the Rangers team are less likely to score. If Boyd would put in a shift like Nacho Novo and hold the ball up and turn and run with it like Darcheville, then there would be no arguments about his talent and he could go on to become a legend. In fact what we're really looking for is a player with the shooting skills of Boyd, the tenacity and defending of Novo and the ability to hold up the ball and do something with it of Darcheville. The thing is that Novo and Darche have more shooting skills than Boyd has of their skills, and that's why he's down the pecking order. It's like football manager games when the players have a mark out of 10 for about 10 skills. Boyd get's 10 for shooting but pretty much one's and two's elsewhere. Darcheville and Novo get about 6 or 5 for shooting but have very good levels in the rest of the repertoire.

Er, the evidence for not being able to get shot of him is that he's still here... Maybe you don't believe that, but there is no evidence to the contrary. Clubs may be interested but they are obviously not interested in paying him a similar wage to what he is on. If they are so my clubs interested, then why has a player who can't get more than a couple of games in three years, not left? I turn up at a few different places to play football and it's not even my job and I actually pay to do it. Therefore I must be one of the most ambitious players around... I think if he didn't turn up to play the odd reserve game (from what I've seen on Setanta, he RARELY plays), he might not get paid. Besides if he's a footballer there's a good chance he likes a good kick-around. Could it be he's not complaining because he doesn't mind doing bugger all for 1M a year? Sorry, but you've a bit of a cheek to go on about "bollocks and nonesense" after those points. If it's nonsense to think that a guy has no ambition for turning down a move to the likes of Hamburg two years ago from a team, where he was not in the manager's plans for the sake of a bit of a wage cut, then please explain the word for me, as it doesn't seem to mean what I think. Playing about three competitive games in two years must be the height of ambition... The 400k to Feyenoord is a factor I forgot about but it still doesn't really come to bear. For a start, it's a rumour that has never been confirmed. Secondly, if a supposedly great player seemingly can't show he's worth 400k then what it wrong with him? Besides, I read he had about 14 league games to play before triggering the payment. If it's true, it's obvious to me that Rangers don't want to pay an extra 400k for a player they think is just not good enough for the team. Why pay 1M for Velica if you can have a supposedly better player for 400K? Buffel may turn out to be a great player elsewhere, but he's been one of Rangers biggest failures of all time. Latent talent and potential count for nothing. It's all about getting in the team and doing it on the park. Buffel has pretty much done neither - and remember he's had three different managers so it can hardly be a clash of personalities. You only have to look to the appearances and number of goals for Boyd and Buffel over the last two years to see who what is bollocks and nonsense. Against those figures, hailing Buffel as a hero and slating Boyd as useless becomes totally mystifying - and just doesn't correlate with my idea of reality.

It's now a FACT that Boyd is a more valuable player. We've had an offer for 2.5M while we can't even give Buffel away. That pretty much shows the former is pretty valuable while the latter is truly worthless. The reason we can't get shot of Buffel is that we were silly enough to pay him far more than he's worth and even without appearances money and bonuses, he's obviously earning far more at Rangers than any other club in the world is willing to pay him. The Belgian obviously has no ambition, character or fight in him at all. He prefers to sit around and take the money instead of either getting his arse in gear and impressing the management to fight his way back into the team, or take a pay cut and show what he can do elsewhere and maybe make the big time again when he get's noticed. There is something very weak about a person like that and I don't know how anyone can respect. He may have talent, who knows? It's difficult to say when a guy won't get off his arse and show you what he can do. I would almost put Buffel in the same catogory as Prodan as a waste of money. He's been injured either physically or what looks like mentally for most of his time at Rangers - and he's been at Ibrox far, far too long. I think Rangers should use one more week of his wages to throw a big party when goes to celebrate. As for Boyd, he has his weak points but has shown he is still a valuable player to have around, and he scores just about enough goals to justify his presence at a ground like Ibrox. So I agree that there is no comparison between the two, Boyd is by no means perfect and I'm not really one of his fans but he's world class compared to Buffel. A Ferrari that never starts is useless compared to a working, if not completely reliable Alpha Romeo. However, I doubt that Buffel can be compared to the Italian super car.

Not many businessmen run a football club for the money. Most make a big loss. However, when you're wealth is in the hundreds of millions and upwards, you can afford it. What they get is two fold: prestige - if not fame, and their egos massaged. When you are as well known as SDM for being the owner of a club like Rangers, it surely makes business easier for him, and his companies. Taking clients on private jets with celebrities and then introducing them to famous footballers in the inner sanctum of a famous football club and then allowing them to watch the game as VIP's, all must surely oil the wheels of business - and make SDM seem to be "the man". I think SDM has also benefited from being the one to decide who to contract. His contruction company refurbished Ibrox with the club deck etc, he started and quickly grew a catering company on the back of a contract at Ibrox. The same goes for his ticketing company and I think he might also own the stewarding company. He also sold the Albion training ground to his son for a pound to build and run a profitable car park and has probably used various buildings as free office space. He's made money alright, although it's money someone would make - unless he allowed those companies to be owned by Rangers FC, with the profits going towards the team. Like Bluedell has said, the question is more about whether Rangers got value for money, rather than the club being conned. If businessmen don't run football clubs for the hell of it, can anyone explain how Brooks Mileson made money out of Gretna - or a multitude of owners of SPL clubs? SDM may not always have acted in the best interests of Rangers, and has done plenty to benefit himself; but to say he's bled the club dry, does not ring true. I believe he wants Rangers to be very successful as it reflects much better on himself and I think he'd rather hand over the club to someone else in great shape rather than a mess that makes him look like he's running away with his tail between his legs. The better the finances, as well as success on the pitch then the better he looks and the more money he'll get for the club. It's all win, win, win for him - except that he has the incredibly difficult job of delicately balancing the finances with the success on the field.

Craig, I think they should give us assistance; however, picking and choosing games seems a dangerous road to go down. We will hopefully be playing important European games all season, like we were last season and so when we play Celtic is going to be a moot point. They can certainly try to avoid the situation of last season when we played Celtic twice in a week when we also had a Euro semifinal. But I don't think we can tailor our fixtures to give us an easier ride when we have European games. Three away games out of 4 sounds bad but it's only one off the normal two which is why I said it's hardly an anomaly. Four away games out of five starts to get a bit much. You could, however, argue that we may have three easy home games in a month when we have other important Euro clash. In the end I think, that apart from a few exceptions, and some sensible constraints, the fixture list should be fairly random. I don't advocate running the fixtures through the computer multiple times until we see a version we like. I do think we should have new rules to accommodate teams in Europe, like allowing them to forgo replays in the SCup. Teams still in Europe should also possibly get an extra "by" to one more round. The season should start earlier to allow teams to get up to full fitness before qualifiers and this should also all them to play in better weather and help prevent fixture pile ups. More games before the winter means less games after. Rangers' fixture schedule from Feb onwards was outrageous. To that end I would also have the League cup done and dusted by November which will also brighten up the mid season as well as rewarding early season form. However, it's main impact would again to be to stop fixture pile ups when there are postponements later due to the winter weather. This way teams could probably afford to postpone a game or two when they think they need it for Europe. So I'm all for helping teams in Europe, I just think messing with the fixtures is a step too far.

I don't think helping us qualify was ever put on the agenda by anyone. I've always thought we could be assisted by starting the season early so we are match fit for the qualifiers but no many agree with me there. That would also give us some room for a winter break - or postponements. I really think that we need to totally rethink about our whole schedule in Scotland and looking towards a more Scandinavian model as that is a better match for our climate. However, I don't really think it's feasible or morally correct to arrange who we play, when and where to help us. That could easily backfire on us anyway with teams up for it as they are considered lambs for the slaughter.

The thing is the income from Europe is just income, not profit. There are increased expenses for the club, not least bonus payments to the players, and then there are costs of hosting a game at Ibrox with security etc as well as travel costs for the away games. It would be interesting to know what the net profit is and maybe the club should publish such information so as the fans are not too disappointed when we don't spend 30M. You also have to remember that when you sell a player there are sometimes sweeteners for the player and a fee to pay to the agent. When you sign a player there is his signing on fee and the agent fee as well as wages and bonuses to take into account. So if you sell a player for 8M and buy three for 6M you are probably lucky to break even. The point with the accounts is that all the money is accounted for, we spent more than we earned last year and so have to pay some of that back this year if we don't want to have dangerously high debt with the interest that attracts. I just can't see how there is any dosh left over for SDM to siphon off. I believe SDM has made money out of Rangers over the years, but I can't see where he has taken a penny from the club directly - he doesn't even take a salary, and most chairmen take at least 6 figures. He has made money out of Rangers by contracting and subcontracting work and services to his own companies as well as selling off a few assets. However, his 50M investment probably negates a lot of that and if he sells the club he'll probably get less than what he paid for the equity. In the end he should be quids in - although not massively, but he will have given work and services for it. He could have made quite a bit out of Rangers had he not spent so much under Advocaat but to be fair to him, he admitted his mistake and paid up for it. I'm not a big SDM fan - in fact I've slagged him off more than most, but I don't agree with demonising him about stuff he doesn't appear to be doing. Rangers, like any club, have books to balance and despite what fans think, do not have huge amounts they can sustainably spend on players. That's also why you don't see Celtic massively outspending us. We spend 12.5M last season out of a turnover of 44M - that's pretty amazing. And we brought our debt up to about 25M which is pretty worrying. However when you look at that you can see why we chose to sell players to balance things. Basically in an average season and without selling players we pretty much break even - and so realistically have NO money to spend on players. In an exceptional season in Europe like the last one, we make more money, but the net profit is far less than you think and the same goes for selling a few players. The Euro run and Hutton money have made a huge difference this year and will allow us to spend while possibly reducing the debt - which obviously has to be done. When you have debt you have to try and repay some of it every season. When you buy players today on tomorrows money then it obviously means you will have to buy less tomorrow. The amount of spending we've been doing under Walter CANNOT be maintained. We are treating his first two seasons as exceptional where it is imperative he builds a successful team. Once he has one, it will be back to tweaks, player turnover and the odd big signing - probably when we sell someone for a big profit or have a good year in Europe. That's why Murray park will be so important: not only will it hopefully be supplying us with good squad players, it will hopefully provide the odd Hutton that we can sell to use the money to bring in high quality players from outside. So while SDM is probably trying to make Rangers into a more attractive buying proposition, rather than skimming money off the accounts, he seems to be trying to get a successful team on the pitch again. And that has been proven this year, to bring in lots more money.

Cotter, can you explain how SDM is gradually recouping his �£50M? I can't seem to find it in the published accounts...

Smith was twice the player Hutton was. I'm hoping he'll be back as we've really missed him. I remember we were told he'd be out for about three months...

I agree. Over the season we pretty much play the same teams home and away. Let's just get the points in the bag. Celtic supposedly had a harder start last season, and who won the league?

Cuellar has already played in La Liga so I doubt he has aspirations there. I think we put ourselves down a bit sometimes. I can see why Rangers would be attractive to play for as money isn't everything, especially when you get paid about a million pounds a year already. At the risk of stating the obvious (although seemingly it is necessary): With Rangers you get to be in contention if not winning trophies every season and with that comes playing in the Champions League pretty much every year. We've also shown that we can more than rub shoulders with the teams in the latter stages of the UEFA cup. Scottish football is not as bad as people would like to think, which is why we sometimes struggle against many of the teams. Like most countries we have a decent rival who have managed to get to the last 16 of the CL twice in a row despite having far less TV money than other countries. Now if you get to be a first pick for Man U or Barcelona etc then fair enough, but if not, would you prefer to be a squad player for the likes of Newcastle or Tottenham and maybe even say Wigan, or would you prefer to be the first pick and hero of a club where the average home attendance is 49,000 in a five star stadium? A club with one of the best training grounds in the country. I think all that Cuellar is doing is being highly intelligent and seeing past the hype of the Premiership. He knows that a good life is more than hawking your skills to the highest bidder. Laudrup and Larsson knew this too, with the former learning from experience. He seems to be happy where he is and wary of throwing that happiness away for a bit more money. People are hyping the Prem all the time and dumbing down the SPL, but we of all people should know better.

Our defence was domestically worse than Celtic's last year so really needs improved. I also think our attacking options and creativity could improve if we changed both full backs (Broadfoota and Papac) to players who like to get forward. I hear Spurs have just the player for right back, how much do you think he'd cost us?

I really don't want us to go down the road of Celtic fans. Playing 5 games in 10 days is one thing but 3 away games out of 4 is hardly a statistical anomaly.

I think it's a damn shame that what looked like a very promising representative body for the fans has turned into a complete farce. I can see a new, rival Trust springing up but if that happens, neither will be taken seriously as it'll be like the "I'm Brian" bit from Monty Python...

I think it's the latter rather than the former that counts. We had games against Barcelona, Stuttgart, Bremen, Lyon and Fiorentina - and had a chance of a result in most of the games. Money talks and the Premiership is a pure gravy train these days. It's interesting that Sky are squeezing the British public for more and more money, which they then give to the Premiership, who in turn give it all away to their players even if they are nothing special. It's like a pyramidal money making scheme with the public at the bottom and the players at the top. Wonder what the credit crunch will do to that league...

Platini does seem a bit clueless...

Yeah, I think we're reasonably sorted on the left unless we sell someone - there have been rumours about McCulloch going back down south. With Burke out we're light on the right with only Novo and Davis - who doesn't inspire there.

Could it be that Klasnic doesn't want to come? A lot of foreigners can't see past the Premiership, even if it's with a nobody team like Wigan. And the likes of Wigan won't mind using their 25M odd or more from Sky to bring in a few box office attractions on riduculous salaries. Even the likes of Portsmouth have someone on 80 grand a week.

I'd say that was a compliment. The board is obviously strong enough in everyone's principles that we reached a level of self selection. We may not all agree with each other on many things but there does seem to be a common level of decency and integrity that naturally stands out. Well done guys.

I think there is no chance that we have finished bringing players in. The 6M budget has always looked like a hoax to me, to wind up Rangers fans. SDM said WS would get a similar budget to last year - that was about a gross 12.5M on players purchases. We should also not forget that you can get some great players on a Bosman or freebie - a la Prso and some very good ones like Weir and Alexander, and also some squad fillers like Dailly and Broadfoot. I can't see someone as sensible as Walter spending all his budget on one part of the team when there are other obvious weaknesses. At minimum we need a full back (possibly who can play both sides), a right winger and a creative central midfielder. We could also do with another centre half but with Wier and Webster staying, we're probably covered. However, I think we'll get another in if Dailly goes. The most disappointing thing is that it looks like we're no going to bring in a striker who will excite us. The position is pretty much filled. I think there are some other players we already have who will play a big part next season and almost be like new signings: Webster, Smith, Beasley and Fleck.