calscot

Ok he didn't but he might have if he finished the jobs - From Wikipedia: "Leicester were flying high at the top of Division One when McGhee left the club unexpectedly in December 1995 to take charge at Wolverhampton Wanderers. " "They were crowned champions of the new Division Two in 1994 and, when McGhee moved to Leicester City halfway through the following season, Reading still appeared in with a chance of a second straight promotion." A good record of doing pretty well and then leaving half way through the job seems to make him highly qualified for the Scotland vacancy...

Hemdani and Cousin were the worst for me.

I'm more intested in a left back, and a couple of midfielders right now. A top centre back to eventually replace Weir would be good too. I think we're pretty much covered everywhere else.

I think you've been a bit unfair on McGhee who took both Reading and Leicester to promotion to the EPL. He's now third in the league with Motherwell in his first season when our league is considered reasonably strong with the likes of a resurgent Hearts and Hibs, an improved Aberdeen and Dundee Utd, a pretty solid Kilmarnock and a good footballing Falkirk side. Even ICT are perking up again so McGhee is looking like he's doing a great job and his track record is pretty good. Now whether that makes him a good candidate for Scotland is another matter, but ignoring his real record of success is just not going to help. His biggest problem to me is lack of experience at the highest levels including Europe, although you can't fault his playing experience there.

I think one further thing that people forget about PL is that he was offerred an improved contract but chose to leave anyway.

Seconded. There seems to be a lot of sentimentality for players who were pretty much failures at Ibrox. The guys I missed were the ones who did well but left too early like Albertz and Tugay.

Let's see, our junk food junkies and boozing Scots have on a tie basis, beaten the champions of Montenegro, Serbia and Germany and unless they lose by 3 goals or more, have also beaten the champs of France. They lost by one legit goal to the mighty Barcelona and are a home draw away from the CL last 16. They have also beaten the (less Scottish) champs of Scotland and have two relatively easy games away from being top of the league after the first half of the season, as well as being in the League cup semi. Compare and contrast with when just one year ago we had a foreign manager who mostly played a load of foreigners with a supposedly superior diet and who drank a lot less. We were about 10 points behind Celtic and in third place in the league, out of the league cup to a lower league team - but doing ok against lesser known European teams. If it's all down to diet and how much you are drinking, then I've got to say to players, "Keep it up!".

Song for Lyon: Were leaving together, But still its farewell And maybe well come back, To Ibrox, who can tell? I guess there is no one to blame Were leaving the ground Will things ever be the same again? Its the final curtain... Were heading for the UEFA Cup and still we stand tall Cause maybe theyve seen us and welcome us all With so many rounds to go and smaller clubs to be found We'll all miss the Champion's League so.

Maybe worth noting that Celtic got through without "winning a tie". The lost to Milan on away goals rule, lost to Shakhtar on aggregate and drew 1-1 with Benfica. CL really helped them there. However, I'm glad a Scottish team got through. Lets hope we make it two.

That will help our Euro 2114 bid no end.

Papac is a weak link in defence (and attack) so if we could fit in a "Hutton on the right" then that could improve the team immeasurably. Buffel has two chances of playing - "None and F*** all!" Adam will probably get the nod. Shame Novo is injured. An even bigger shame that Burke became a useless waste of money after he signed the contract he held out for.

How about Fleck to Leeds on loan to get him some first team experience?

I think Derby have shown that these type of fringe OF players are pretty good in the Championship, but struggle in the Premiership.

I would prefer many other players in our squad to play before Buffel, Sebo and Lovenkrands. The first two are players with ability who play half heartedly while the latter plays with his heart but with half the ability. I would pick Darch, Boyd and Novo well before those three.

I always thought Celtic fans were the hypocritical ones who continually bring up sins of the past and vitriolically bang on about them ad nauseum. Now it looks as if we are just as bad. Are Bears the new Tims?

Can't see him not signing - where else could he go without taking a huge step down?

The second goal came from a free kick that never was. Aberdeen played reasonably well conisdering Atletico spent 4 times as much as us in the summer. They were unlucky with their attacks on many occassions but very lucky in their own area on many others. They were far too casual in possession in their own half which proved costly and their defending could improve dramatically. Altelico deserved to win, but only just - not bad for a tiddler against a shark.

I believe the pot money (market pool) is actually only about Ã?£5.5M, so instead of pocketing the lot each team gets a share with Celtic receiving a bigger share as champions - 55%. Last year there was a "participation premium" of €2M plus a surplus bonus of €1M. Add on €400k for each group game played plus 600k for a victory and €300k for a draw. That means before the last 16 Celtic earned €7.2M then another €2.2M for reaching the last 16. So that's €9.4 + €7.8 market pool makes €17.2M. This works out just about Ã?£12M Of course they should have made about another Ã?£10 from ticket sales etc, giving them a total of about Ã?£22M. So if we optimistically (and plausibly) get 4 points in the remaining two games and (pessimistically) go out in the last 16, we should receive about Ã?£9.4M plus about 10M in gate receipts etc.

As it's Scotland, I think the most likely scenario is a 0-0 draw where we miss a penalty in the final minute. I much prefer success to a glorious failure, but I also prefer a glorious failure to a pathetic failure. Anyway, glorious failures are what legends are made of. Does anyone remember Van de Veld? Does any remember many other Open runners up as clearly?

If it was a training session then to me it was pretty worthwhile. The team have spent 180 minutes training against the arguably the best attacking team in Europe. To come away after only conceding one legitimate goal in those 180 minutes suggests that this training could be invaluable for the rest of our campaign. I'm sure it has done the confidence of the defence the power of good and they will have learned much from the games. After the way we've played in all the CL games, your mate was pretty naive not to expect a very defensive display in Barca, so I've no sympathy whatsoever. I'd also like to see him put together a team with the ability to attack Barca at will. Seems to me that some of our fans would prefer the CL nights with Laudrup in the team where we got gubbed home and away. Seems like Barca fans would prefer to be gubbed by team that attacks them, denies them the ball and scores a few spectacular goals. Barca seemed to show a masterclass in attacking, while Rangers showed a masterclass in defending. You get to see great implementations of both sides of the beautiful game, so why the complaints? I've watched all the Celtic games and they may have been exciting but also naive. They only scraped through against Spartak while giving their fans heart attacks, we bulldozed our way past Red Star with narey a heart in mouth moment. We've got 7 points to their 6 and we have two apparently easier games to go in what was originally considered a harder group. Celtic don't seemed to have learned much from the Artmedia thrashing where they chased the game. Walter has clearly learned from his thrashings in Europe and his pragmatism will bring us far better results, if not always the prettiest.

I might be out on a limb on my own here but I believe I saw a lot of positives in the game at the Nou Camp. I don't think a Rangers team of the last 3 or 4 seasons could have come away with a low scoreline and many would have been embarrassed. We weren't embarrassed and I was pleased with most of the defending which I thought was very organised and very skillful. I was also very pleased with how we were in possession. There was no likenesses of rabbits in headlights, no hot potato, and all our players looked reasonably comforable on the ball and passed it about quite well - until they ran out of options in the last third due to lack of numbers. In fact some of the play with the ball at their feet was as good as anything Barcelona produced. I still actually feel a bit hard done by in the defeat, that goal should never have stood and brings back thoughts of tv replays like they have now in Rugby. You could say the goal was coming but you could have said that at Ibrox, and it didn't. Going back a step to the header, Papac's lapse was one of the very few in the game and I doubt Messi would have been so accurate had he been challenged by a focused left back. The second goal was also slightly fortunate in that the good save from an excellent one-two rebounded straight to Messi rather than one of several Rangers players in the vicinity. As for Barca's other chances, not many were close, and MacGregor didn't make any better saves than the two of his opposite number. Rijkaard stated that it could have been 6-0, but by my reckoning we could just as easily argue it could have been 2-0 to Rangers. In the end, for a comparatively inexpensive team cobbled together in the summer, we look very hard to beat even by the best teams in Europe. If we can perform that well at Barcelona then we have every chance of good results against the lesser lights of Europe. We have a lot of young players who are standing up to be counted at this airiated level and with a bit more time, I think that Walter can achieve great things in his second stint at the club.

You've got to have hope, or what's the point in watching football? If the best team on paper always won it would be a boring, uninteresting game that would not have the world following that it does. I think our hopes have been dashed so often that some people have become cynical, stoic and jaded. However, at worst we can enjoy a game that is as big as any that Scotland could have been involved at the finals itself. Scotland's qualifying group has been as glamorous as the finals and we are privileged to be able to watch our team play against the world champions, with a genuine chance of winning and a great chance of putting them out of the competition. Don't let a myopic view of the destination blind us to the passion and enjoyment of the journey. We may likely get beat, but that's because Italy are one of the best international teams around, and ironically that's who we really like to play. As a smaller nation we should have the character to be able to take defeats against nations like Italy on the chin. Some people sound like they would prefer to play the Faroes and Andorra all the time as they can’t take losing. These people may prefer us to lose next week ,as that means we won't be playing other great teams in the finals, who funnily enough could also beat us. Give me a game against Italy before the likes of Lithuania any day; if we get beat, so be it. There is only one team in the competition that won’t face disappointment at some stage so we all have to be able to take it. Put into the mix a game at Hampden where Scotland have won all their games so far, including France, and the reward of the finals as a result of a win, then the game has to be unmissable. This is what football is all about, so please don't ruin it with all the, "I'm so realistic," rubbish. I'd like any one of those negative people, who seem so scared of being wrong that they can't be optimistic, to come out and prove to us how they predicted that we'd be one victory away from the finals in our last game from the group of death. Your so called, “realism,” is so utterly wrong that your opinion can no longer have credibility. Stop trying to be so wizen and aloof, and get behind the team and savour our biggest chance at glory for long while. Don’t being a Negative Nancy and just enjoy the game!

It will be very interesting to see what happens if PSG give him the time to turn it around, and if like some would have you believe, he'll be the next Alex Ferguson. Will we kick ourselves if he takes them to the top of European football, or will we be indifferent if drags them up to a reasonable level or will we breath a sigh of relief that he's gone - if he takes them to mediocrity or worse? I hope PSG do give him time to let us see what happens.

Gribz, it may be difficult to find someone better but we are probably working on the context of the rumours that he wants to leave. The fact is we won't be able to get much money for him in a year or two which a mistake we've made previously. We got Thomson for 2M as a young promising player and if he improves he'll either be a mainstay of the team or we could sell him for a large profit and reinvest. It's a bit like shares, it always makes sense to buy low and sell high. Given his age, �£3M is undoubtedly Hemdani's peak value so it's a good time to sell and reinvest in someone cheaper and/or younger who will hopefully fill his place and then also appreciate in value. The trick is to spot that kind of player, just as a fund manager needs to spot a stock which is about to rise. Also, while Hemdani is a very good player, he's not exactly indispensible.

i can't disagree with that...