calscot

Eck, Willie Miller and Gough were all well known for the "hoof!" I play centre half and although wouldn't presume I'm any good, McLeod's words are pretty much what I do, except if I can see if I have time, in which case I look for a good pass and if not a short pass to an open full back.

I think that SDM is now backed himself into a corner, there is no way he can keep his credibility without some releasing of the purse strings. To fail with one manager on a budget is unfortunate, to fail with two managers on a tight budget is careless, to try and fail a third time would be plain foolish. I have no doubts that Walter Smith will demand reasonable, significant but obviously not excessive funds. He has talked DM into it before and I'm sure in his present bargaining position he can do it again. He's on a nice number with Scotland right now with his reputation soaring, he's not going to risk that to inherit a pathetic Rangers squad without any resources to strengthen it, nay rebuild it. Ironically I am pretty confident that there will have been funds in place for Le Guen to spend in this transfer window and wouldn't be surprised if this was in excess of £4M. However in my opinion he now needs to borrow and give Walter at least 12M to revamp the whole squad. I'm pretty sure after that we can sustain a spend of about 5M a year as long as we keep wages under control and of course do passably well in Europe. The difficulty we find ourselves in for about the third season in a row is how to get rid of terrible players on new fat contracts that outweigh their ability and make them incredibly unattractive to other teams?

First he has to take a job in France again, say with PSG and do reasonably well. If he does so, the Rangers job will look like a blip where he tried to bring French style of football to Scotland but was undermined by the Scottish players. That's why he is quitting now in my opinion, as a damage limitation exercise. He's using Bazza as a scapegoat and making sure that his failure is over a short time - to look like the forgettable blip.

I think it will be resolved quickly but the details are negotiable. Whether Walter stays on as Scotland manager is key in which case Rangers could pay his wages with him working for the SFA for free until the end of his contract which would pay for the compensation.

I would think that if he resigned he would be in breach of contract which means the SFA could probably demand the cost of the remainder of his contract ie the amount of wages left to be paid to him. This is probably the 250k quoted.

I wouldn't be too discouraged, it looks like it's just all part of the process. Both sides take their positions and then a deal is thrashed out. 250,000 quid has been rumoured to be the price.

Celtic do seem to be trumping us quite a lot lately: Miller, Riordan, Pressley and now these two - and they took a risk on Hartson when we wouldn't. In return we've got Novo...

PS I've no doubt it will be resolved and I assume that the SFA will just be holding out for compensation. Walter asked to be relieved which would presumably mean no compensation necessary.

I would like him to do two jobs just because I can't see who can do the same kind of job for Scotland.

PS I think the fact that their personnel don't seem to be of the highest standard gives us hope that without breaking the bank, we can get to their level by buying good professionals at our price level and turning them into a decent footballing unit.

I still think that it's a false comparison you are using for Celtic. If they are nothing special by leading the league by 17pts and qualifying for the last team of the CL, when were we ever special? When Walter was an embarrassment in the CL but winning the league were we special? I don't see many Clellands or Bollans in the Celtic team and I do see a lot more tactics instead of relying on a few special players in the team. Maybe it's that you don't see any Gorams, Goughs, Laudrups or Gazzas in their team. But perhaps they have a higher average standard of player with fewer weaker players and even then perhaps they are so organised that the weaker players can do a job making the whole greater than the parts. Sometimes special comes without a fanfare and wrapped in brown paper, the likes of John Brown and Paul Lambert fall into that category.

We weren't to know that, he had 6 months to swat up on it. Besides, sometimes you have to think outside the box and bring someone in with a fresh viewpoint. How much did Arsene Wenger know about Arsenal? He totally changed them into a different team and club. They are nothing like the "1-0 to the boring, boring Arsenal" of old.

There is no way anyone could have truly predicted how bad he would be before hand. If you don't pick managers on previous record and reputation then you may as well list everyone attainable then close you eyes and stick in a pin to choose your next man. Who would you have preferred? Graham Rix?

With regards to © the solution may be to buy middling Premiership players. Souness was successful doing this as he realised that if they didn't work out he could move them on easily, much of the time for a similar money or even a small profit. We would only have to offer similar wages to what they are getting but with the bonus of winning trophies and playing in the CL and the big bonus payments that come with that. When you take players from the SPL and give them big wages, if they don't work out there is usually nowhere for them to go as the rest of the SPL can't afford them. The same goes for Czechs and Slovaks as well as players from the wage capped French league. Players from the Dutch league are also a bit safer as has been proven - Italy has been pretty good too and players from Germany haven't been to hard to move on. It's ironic that it seems we should be bargain hunting in Eastern Europe but are getting our fingers burnt with the likes of Salenko, Kuznetsov, Mikailachenko, Mladenovic, Prodan, Sionko, Sebo, Papac.

Craig you have very good points but the in the end I find myself confused. Yes we had debt but now it is at at manageable level and like you say, less than Celtics. We've reduced the wage costs (although still seem to be over paying players which means we can't get rid of them even to their previous clubs). We've increased income - our turnover is the highest it's ever been. So basically the previous overspending should now be largely irrelevant and we should pretty much be back to square one. The main differences between now and say the previous Smith era is that wages for the top players have spiralled, and the big five leagues have huge amounts of TV and sponsorship cash making us relatively poorer. This has nothing to do with what has happened previously and we should be looking to see what we can do to compete well in the present environment. Celtic seem to be able to do so with similar finances and situation, so why can't we? This is where a lot of the responsibility switches to the manager but you can hardly blame the chairman for his choice in that department. Where the chairman seems solely to blame to me is a) No longer borrowing in a fiscally responsible way to allow spending to increase performance and therefore bring in more income. I believe Craig calls this "gearing". b) Not being around to back up the manager when he has insubordination from players. Indeed, seeming to prefer a player to the manager. Ferguson should have been read the riot act by Murray a long time ago if reports are true. He should have been stripped of the captaincy (although not necessarily dropped) and told to shape up or get shipped out, a long time ago. Insubordination cannot be tolerated. c) Allow a situation where we pay much higher wages than anyone else for mediocre players making them impossible to move on and requiring pay offs. I think this is one of the main reasons we appear to have less money than Celtic. If we are increasing some-one's wages, perhaps we need to make sure it is performance related. If players think they can turn up and win medals here then surely they are willing to take a decent basic compared to what they are on, plus fat bonuses for winning. d) Disrupting the youth academy by creating a high turnover of key personnel. e) Allowing very poor communication with the media by himself and his manager which resulted in the fans and media turning against PLG, resulting in extra pressure on the manager making him want to leave. If ever there is an example of why you need to keep fans honestly informed, it is this. Make that two examples - the same mistake was made with Eck.

PS The above would have been much better to relieve PLG of some of his press duties - although not taking his place. Amid talk of professionalism from the players, I thought PLG was very unprofessional in front of the media and language is no excuse. It's his main link to the fans and treating the media badly is treating the fans badly. If he couldn't trust the media he has Rangers.co.uk and Rangers TV to fall back on.

Very good points by Craig and Cammy. We should have gone for McCoist as assistant or joint assistant. Others include Stuart McCall or Richard Gough.

I would say it's not Durrant's fault that he had a pathetic list of centre halves to choose from. It's mostly the defence that is costing us points and cup runs.

Boyd will benefit from the wisdom of McCoist. I'm confident of that due to McCoist being one of the very few pundits who talks about technique in a way that he shows he knows far more insight to the skill of striking than your average punter or pundit.

Playing definitely helps players but we can't afford to play a dud at the moment. Rangers don't have the luxury of "suck it and see". He should play in the reserves for six games to show what he can do... That is why we have a reserve team although I've already pointed out that we're not using it properly and it's a youth team instead.

I think it's being totally over played. If Bazza's drinking is so unprofessional, how come he plays the sober foreigners like Sionko, Clement, Sebo, N'Diaye, and Papac off the park? How come Boyd scores all the time while Sebo, Buffel and Novo don't? Sounds like big Dado is a partier too but he also puts in a great shift. Maybe it needs to be tackled eventually. But I think getting our new players to play to the standard of our drunken Scots would be a bigger priority. You can blame drink when our best players are the drinkers. What you need to do is get the non drinkers playing better than the drinkers and so pick them first. You can then tell players they'll only get back in the team if they quit excessive drinking and get to the standard of the non drinkers. Without non-drinkers playing better than drinker then this excuse is logically absurd.

With a decent midfield and full backs, Andrews wouldn't need ball skills. A short pass to a player who could do something with the ball is all that is required of a centre back after solid defensive duties.

This could be another failure of the manager, when Smith wanted money, he could persuade the chairman, when Advocaat wanted to break the bank, the chairman seen it his way, when Eck wanted the Boumsong money he got it despite it being a time of high debt. I'm sure if PLG thought he really needed to spend, with his reputation he could quite easily have persuaded SDM to release decent sum of cash withing responsible fiscal limits. Or perhaps persuasion is not one of his strengths. But I think he was cocky enough to think he could do the job without spending and he was dead wrong. I'm not defending SDM here but I do know he's been a pushover before and while that will never happen again, I don't doubt he will listen to someone who speaks good business sense.

We had players playing out of their skins along with a load of luck and it was in a group where we had a top team who couldn't really be bothered, a great team who had become crap in Europe overnight and one of the poorest teams in the CL. We qualified with 7 points and one lucky win and basically were good at getting a draw. Celtic haven't been much better but have shown they can beat teams at home while they can't travel. But they have needed a lot less luck and favourable results than us. However, they are improving and you wouldn't be surprised if they did it again next year. Objectively I think you need to qualify multiple times before you can really say a team is any good in the CL. I think any old team can get to the last 16 once on the back of some good form and lucky results, it's not exactly winning anything - not even the group... To get real respect in the CL you have to qualify for the quarters multiple times - which is what Lyon have done.

I would be hard pushed to agree that Celtic are a poor team. They may not be world beaters but they have many qualities that have given them such a lead in the SPL and qualification in the CL. If they are so bad how come they are so far ahead of the strongest Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen for years (apart from the fact they take points off each other)? I think some people are only looking at one or two specific qualities in a team when there are many that produce results. You could have a team full of Ronaldinho's but they could be powder puff, not play together well, be prima donnas and have no fight when they go one or two down. Celtic have some average players but Strachan has them playing as a unit with great belief and high motivation. They are very organised and never believe they will get beat. They come back from behind time and again or against us they open the scoring against the run of play. They have put together this team with not much more spending than we have, it's just they don't spend all their money on players who don't play then pay offs when we can't get rid of them. So they have been spending money far more efficiently than us with not too many donkeys in their squad. In fact they have signed a couple of dodgy players like Caldwell and turned them into half decent players - and in this example they have taken the likes of Telfer, Caldwell, McManus and Naylor and turned them into the best defence in Scotland by miles and even with Balde in for Calwell and gifting chances, they can still get a clean sheet against Man U. That is an achievement. They are a model that we should be trying to emulate until we find a better way than them for doing things. We had technically better players under Advocaat but didn't do any better than this Celtic team with arguably poorer SPL opposition. Celtic may not be individually the most technically gifted bunch of players but they have other attributes which truly raise their level. I think what some people are doing is looking at their team and thinking "I don't fancy any of those". However, they are 17 points ahead of our squad just after Christmas and also in the last 16 of the CL... If you're objective you would be daft not take all of them along with Strachan and their points in an instant (although Lennon and McGeedy might stick in your throat). As they say, the league table doesn't lie - and while that's not completely true, there is a pretty good correlation.