calscot

I would presume any prospective buyer will be taking such things into account in their bid and there is no way Murray Park will not be included in any agreed deal. It would not be in either party's interest to exclude it from the sale. For example, what would Murray do with it if Rangers don't like his terms and decide to train elsewhere? Why would anyone buy Rangers without the training ground? But in any case I'm pretty sure Frankie is right. I have a feeling the car-park would be included too. Any deal to buy Rangers will be long and protracted to sort out all these issues.

While I agree with mostly everything said here and my fantasy is to have a winning Rangers team playing beautiful football, my bottom line does not required the most entertaining football. The bottom line for me is to have a team who look like getting a good result is inevitable most of the time. Celtic at this year have not exactly looked like Brazil but they have looked like they will win most of the time and then have. I'm sure if the tables were turned in the OF, there would be less griping about good football. I think WS has brought that to the Rangers team, except more-so, and he is now five points ahead of Celtic in his new tenure. After two years of failure, I am reasonably happy with the team's results which has to be said is championship winning form from a very mediocre inherited squad. Yes, Smith needs significant funds to improve the team and flesh out our ridiculously small, "Le Guen sized" squad. But we must wait to see how much is spent and on whom before making snap judgements. But for now, I think winning ugly is probably more desirable than concentrating on entertaining the fans with pretty football. I think the ironic thing is that if Eck was getting these type of results he would have many extolling his virtues, if Le Guen was getting them, he would be declared a genius. But Smith seems to get no credit at all. Smith for me is manager of the season, the Best Scotland manager for a long time in the first half, and the best manager in the league in the second half.

The last time Walter tried 3-5-2 we were dire in Europe. Let's not go down that road again. In my memory we've always done better with 4-4-2.

There is a story about an Ibrox increase every few years but they never come to fruition so with nothing on the official site and no other press nicking the story, I'll take this with a huge dose of salt. However, if we could fill it, it could bring us about £3M a year of increased income which Celtic are already raking in... It depends on how much it costs and how much servicing the debt is as well as how much we'd fill it - but it looks to me that the attendances are up this year and with about 96% of seats already filled there would surely be plenty of take up. We definitely need a better product on the park but it's the results and expectation of success that more than anything seems to attract the fans to Ibrox. People talk about dire games but I seen plenty of them during nine in a row and the DA years with our even our most expensive player ever looking like an donkey against St Johnstone. However if we're top of the league doing OK in the CL and winning OF games, plenty of fans will want come and watch.

Yes it's theoretical but without such theories we'd be as well signing players at random. My theory is that if you take away the old firm for the moment and now take the best 11 players from the other ten team. It follows to me that that new team is very probable in being better than all those other teams. I fail to see any flaw in that logic. Yes there is a chance it will not work especially as the assessment is subjective and there are many other factors due to football being a team game. However this is better than making illogical statements to support what then appears to be a subjective disdain for Scottish based players. If logic is not a useful basis to start from in practice, how are managers making their decisions on who to buy? I must admit I thought Eck's and Le Guen's buys seemed pretty illogical but look where that got them (Eck was successful BEFORE he bought many players). Walter's buys seem to have been eminently logical to me and look at our results now...

Well I've re-read my posts and I'm looking forward to find out exactly what you have a problem with... If you think signing the best players from each team makes you average then I'm glad I didn't go to your school of logic... If you think signing a foreigner is automatically better than an SPL player, then your train of logic is broken down at the station. My point is not that we should definitely only sign SPL or Scottish players, or even Naismith in particular, but that foreigners are not automatically better and lately they've been worse and not value for money. Secondly when you sign the best players in the league you don't end up with a run of the mill team - in Europe maybe but not in your own league. If you think these points are from another planet, then I don't see how you can be from Earth...

You're logic is very flawed here and only makes sense if we sign run of the mill SPL players ie average players from any given team (or the special case that all SPL players are the exactly the same standard). If we sign the BEST players from the other SPL teams, it follows that we'll have the BEST SPL team as our players will be the BEST in Scotland, BETTER than the players of the other teams. The only teams that could possibly be better than us are teams who bring in better players from other leagues (eg Celtic) or produce better players than we have and refuse to sell them. Cherry picking other teams in your league has long been a way of winning it as not only should you have the best team, you weaken the other teams too. I would say Naismith is Kilmarnock's best player so I don't know how you can consider him "run of the mill".

I don't know why on the one hand you can praise Sebo, Lovenkrands, Buffel and Sionko and then on the other hand disparage the likes of a 20 year old Naismith who has scored 13 goals in the league in a far less talented team... No-one knows how good he'll be but he definitely looks like he has potential. He is one for the future and we still need to bring in an experienced target man. But I'd definitely try him in my team before Sebo, Sionko, Lovenkrands and Buffel, who have so far been proven to be unreliable. Also if signing Scots is to blame for our malaise, how come our best run for years has coincided with our highest average of Scots players in the team? You seem to think we are better signing the likes of: Letizi, Christiansen, Bardsley, Fanfan, Svensson, Rodriguez, Kyrgiakos, Bonnissel, Papac, Kalenga, Capucho, Sionko, Namouchi, Mladenovic, N'Diaye, Martin, Diordic, Nieto, Stanger, Eggen, Sebo, Maniero, Ostenstad and Jeffers - just because they are not Scottish or from the SPL? I disagree, I think THESE guys are the problem. I think some people are a bit blinkered when it comes to Scottish and SPL players. I think the team of: MacGregor Hutton Weir Webster Smith Brown Ferguson Hemdani Thomson Boyd Koevermanns Would be our strongest team for a long time with 9 Scots and 2 foreigners.

PS Don't get the sour grapes jibe...

When did Raith take Milan? As I recall they lost 2-0 and 2-1.

In this thread I thought you meant Steven Lennon!:uzi:

Anyone like Chris Killen? Seems to be banging them in for Hibs.

The runners up should never be given a Euro place they always embarrass us and lower our coefficient. It's just plain stupid.

We didn't let PL go, he was offered a fair contract and he turned it down.

You've got to pity Kilmarnock though, if we take there best two young strikers in a row...

At the moment I would put Sebo in the same category of player as Novo, someone who runs about, hassles the defence, makes runs into the box etc - except Novo offers more defensively by tracking back and putting in a tackle on many occasions and also has enough luck to get the odd deflection for a modest string of goals. I'd definitely pick Novo before Sebo and obviously Boyd before Novo. If we got offered 1.3M for Sebo and 200K for Novo, I know who I would keep...

You can't aim for first spot when it's out of reach. In that case you aim to finish second by a margin. Rangers can't and won't always be first and we have no divine right to be. Right now we need to get real and firstly get ourselves in a position where we are generally at least on a parity with Celtic. At the moment we don't have anything to give us an edge over them and plenty that keeps us playing catch-up. We used to have far better leadership than them, more money than them, more fans than them, a louder support than them, a better philosophy than them, and of course a better manager and squad than them. But that's now turned on it's head and it's the obstacles we have in ever gaining superiority again.

Getting misty eyed about Lovenkrands to me seems like people are definitely wearing some kind of tinted glasses... There aren't many former players I'd want back but PL is never going to be one of them.

Going back 7 years is choosing your years to fit your theory. Using arbitrary 5 season multiples: 5 seasons - 3/5 10 seasons - 6/10 15 seasons - 6/15 20 seasons - 7/20 25 seasons - 11/25 (Actually includes a third place but who's quibbling) You could look at it as a big trough a high peak and then another big trough with means we could be heading for another peak or just a time where we swap league titles every other season. I don't honestly think DM has settled for second. What has happened is that he has overspent, got his fingers burnt and is scared to spend again. When you look at his managerial appointments, I think he is hard to fault - Eck was the best young manager in Scotland, PLG the best young manager in Europe and Walter about the steadiest hands around. Even the McCoist appointment seems pretty astute. His spending has been poor but he has tried to get our debt down as low as possible in a climate where we struggle to compete with the big five leagues for players. Celtic have hardly been spending a tenner for our every fiver and I don't think we are that far behind them squad-wise as our last 11 games has hinted at. However we've needed rebuilding for years now and have been unsuccessful in the bargain basement under Eck and Le Guen. Walter needs some serious money but there is no way we can go over-board. I'll go with the 8M suggested by the RST spokesman. I may be naive but I can't believe that Walter would take over without being able to compete with Celtic in the transfer market and I think we need a one time debt increase to do it. After that we need to look at increasing our revenue to be able to spend and to do that we first need a team to qualify for the CL hence the need for one time borrowings. Other forms of income come from glamour friendlies and we're definitely starting to do that again with home games against Ajax and Chelsea with a fat fee from LA Galaxy away. Other than selling players for profit or increasing the stadium - which isn't very viable at the moment I can't see what we can do without either a European league or Atlantic League. DM is denying us funds from ticketing and catering but I don't know if that impacts dramatically. The JJB deal is either good or bad depending on how you look at it. It provides a guaranteed income which is good for our credit rating but not so good if we don't use it. It makes the club more sellable and that's the issue that needs to come to a head. DM needs to commit for a specified number of years or get rid. The limbo he's giving us is very detrimental. I honestly think that with a few signings including Brown, McCulloch and hopefully Koevermanns along with the usual Bosmans, under Smith we can challenge for the title next year and qualify for the CL. The title is never guaranteed so it's at least a step in the right direction with obvious evidence that Smith is up to the job. Eck and PLG were high risks that didn't pay off. WS is low risk and I can't see us not being in contention. Anyway my point is, that at least domestic-wise the picture is not that gloomy. Our biggest problem is how to compete with leagues where the relegated teams get more than 10 times the TV money we do and the mid table teams get as much from TV as our total turnover? That's the thing that really scares me.

Agree 100% with Jim...

PS That makes my squad: MacGregor/newbie Hutton/newbie Weir/Ehiogu Webster/Broadfoot Smith/Murray OR Papac Brown/Burke Hemdani Ferguson/Thomson McCulloch/Adam Koevermanns/Gow Boyd/Sebo With possibly Svensson and Novo as spares as well as the youngsters. Still no a big squad though.

Not surprisingly I agree with you Craig. If we had Chelsea's transfer budget I could understand. But the reality is we are mostly stuck with the squad we've got and we can only afford a few decent players and a bunch of cheaper squad players to enhance it. We 100% can't sell or let go any of our present key players and that includes: MacGreggor Hutton Weir Webster Smith Burke Hemdani Ferguson Thomson Boyd They are the basis of our squad and none of them are easily replacable for the amount of money we have to spend. Players to leave should be: Klos Sionko Rae N'Diaye Buffel (we really have to cash in and a swap plus cash for Kvm would be good) Prso Sebo Players I think should be sold if an offer is good enough: Ponroy Svensson Ehiogu Papac Murray Novo Adam Players to bring in: A cheap backup goalkeeper who doesn't mind playing second fiddle. A cheap right back to compete with Hutton Broadfoot Brown (3M + addons?) McCulloch (1.5M?) Gow Koevermanns (3.5M + Buffel?)

I'm sure we will on a different subject... But the players have changed under Walter. If they had played like that under PLG or even Eck, neither would have had to leave. That suggest to me that one out of three managers knows how to get the best out of the players he has. If players could just play their best without a manager then we wouldn't have needed PLG in the first place. I don't think WS takes any nonsense but he does allow the guys to have a laugh and drink in moderation at the right time. He keeps a happy camp and it seems to work for Rangers and Scotland with the same players. Maybe but like I said I've not been impressed with Le Guen's so called "forward thinking". It doesn't agree with the worlds top experts on leadership and motivation as well as managing change. Human nature... it's naive to think you can fight it. We only gained 3pts from Celtic but it's the paltry two points we've dropped from the lower teams that's made a massive difference as well as only dropping two points to the top five. It is championship challenging form against ANY Celtic side. What remains to be seen is who both sides of the OF recruit and how they fit in and improve the team. I think we need to give Walter a decent but not bank breaking amount to spend. Say 8M. However my hopes are slim.

Sorry and the Graeme Sounness era too...

PS the first team I really remember goes something like: McCloy Jardine A.MacDonald MacLean Miller W.Johnston Russell Bett Cooper J.MacDonald D.Johnstone They probably weren't all in the same team but they are my first memories from the late 70's when I was nine or ten and starting to read the match reports and pay attention to the games on TV as well as going to my first games. The trouble is that John Greig had just become manager and although the players I watched won quite a few cups they never won the league and so it's hard to name them all as legends - although I did name Cooper and Jardine. So I think most legends for people my age and younger will mostly come from the Walter Smith and Dick Advocaat era.