calscot

The difference is that Eck had almost 4 years at the start of last season. This meant he had time to sort it and so was more open to criticism, criticism which was ultimately justified by no trophies and 3rd place and puntuated by the 10 games without a win. Under Eck we were playing so badly - even when we won, that we couldn't see light at the end of the tunnel after collecting 3 points. If we win nothing this season, scrape the league due to other results the next season and then win nothing again the season after while playing dire football like we did last season. I'll be calling for Le Guen's head too. The comparison is a very false one indeed. PLG's previous 3 seasons of management have brought him 3 French championships and two CL quarterfinals while his team played excellent football. I think that has earned him more than a couple of months of time in a new job. If Eck was on the back of an accomplished 3 in a row with good European results and good football on the pitch, I think we'd have given him more time last season too.

I don't know how you can judge players who've only played a few games. To say they have failed and the manager should be blamed means you are either clairvoyant, jumping the gun or maybe you're more qualified than the Rangers scouts? Hateley took a year to settle into the Rangers team and became a legend. Sebo and Sionko have shown they can play and score at international level, so I'd say they have a good chance to become good players for Rangers but need games to show us that. Svensson is taking longer as he's played 8 games, but we bought a 22 year old foreigner whom we knew wasn't the finished product. You are being way overly harsh and I don't remember this kind of unreasonable criticism from you when Eck was around. As the personnel have changed significantly as have the training regime and tactics, I would say that these are not the same problems as last season, new similar problems but not the same old ones. How can you say we are not scoring goals, when I think I am correct in saying that we are top scorers in the league? I've seen some pretty good passing as well but do agree our defence looks a bit shaky especially from crosses. Now we have Papac, that may change, so I think the manager needs a bit more time before being blamed. This all depends on how we play over a number of games. Could he not be saving these players from burnout before the crucial OF game? Is he not trying to get Barry up to competitive match fitness as quickly as possible, seeing as he and many Rangers fans see our captain as being crucial to our season? There are long term considerations as well as for the current game. He is accountable, there is no doubt about that and he appears more than ready to accept it. But usually you audit the accounts at the end of the financial year - or in this case the season...

It's not looking great at the moment but I think I can point out a couple of differences to last season. Last season our manager had been in the job for almost 4 years, our present manager has had the benefit of a couple of months and only 8 competative games. Last year we played dire football in almost every game and looking like we were riding our luck, this year there are glimses that we have a system that could come good with time and seem to have suffered an unfair amount of bad luck. Le Guen has to improve but he's still new and has a new team, at least give him a bit of time. For Eck our patience ran out after four years, surely le Guen deserves to have judgement reserved till at least the end of his first season? The main reason that Celtic are ahead of us is that they are scraping lucky 1-0 wins while we have had a couple of unlucky draws. Luck usually evens itself out over a season.

Cost me £180...

And unless you CSKA at a neutral venue, that's it for the group stages. In fact, thinking back, we've been pretty abysmal overall in the CL sometimes not even reaching the group stages against the likes of Levski Sofia, AEK Athens, Gothenburg and Fenerbache. We've been crap about 8 times out of about 12.

We also beat PSV away the year before.

I think it was Monaco in 2000/2001.

Kelvingrove art gallery has just been opened after a 35M refit. This made me wonder how much was actually spent on resurrecting Hampden as I think it was around double the amount. But how many of you will go to Hampden to a cup final or to watch our national team, and how many will go to the art gallery? It just shows the ludicrous spending in Scotland where we spend more than 4 times on art that we spend on sport - and yet we're supposed to have the highest heart disease in the world. You have to ask how proud you are of Scottish art compared to how proud you would be if our Scotland team was four times better due to spending 4 times as much on grassroots football and facilities? Would you rather have a load of public football pitches to play on and a decent local sports centre or a local museum and art gallery? And which would be better for the health of our nation? I think we should have spend far more on a decent national stadium that holds about 70,000 rather than 50,000, on the scale of the Millennium stadium. That we we wouldn't have to scramble so much for tickets against France - or a cup semi final of Rangers v Hearts. But we spent the money on the carbuncle in Edinburgh instead.

Actually, I'd like Buffel on the bench too, possibly at the expense of Rae or Adam. Also I suppose Hemdani could sub into central defence. I think Adam can also play left back, so that means Rae gets the boot.

I agree with your team although would swap Svensson and Rodriguez around. The subs are fine too except it shows we have bugger all cover in defence. When does Papac become eligible and when is Murray due to be fit?

I'm of the opinion that DM will not make a profit from the sale of Rangers but nor will he make a loss. It looks like he'll pretty much get his money back. However his companies will have raked in tens of millions over the years and his son is probably pretty rich on the back of some of the deals. The fans put about around 25M a year into the club in ticket sales alone as well as about another 15M in merchandise, programmes and catering. Indirectly we are responsible for all revenues from television and advertising. I don't think a penny of our 60M turnover comes from DM. So in the last 18 years, the fans have put in well over half a billion pounds into Rangers. Unfortunately, it's a shame we couldn't have made our presence felt more during the share issue. I am as culpable as everyone else although I think the timing of the issue was terrible, just coming up to Christmas.

lol! It's a quiet time at the moment... Rangers are having a rest, Scotland is doing well, things are quite peaceful right now and the world doesn't need much putting to rights...

We should also be moving ourselves up the world rankings and that could give us a much easier draw for the world cup qualifiers.

Was he ever "on the boil"???

Chelsea 2 8 Rangers Rhodes-Brown Lee McCall Walters Nisbett (4) Durie (2)

Rangers veterens have won the Uk Masters 6-a-side tournament after defeating Chelsea 8-2. They beat Spurs in the semi. Can't seem to find much on it, but Rangers are also the holders of the European Masters after beating Ajax, 6-1 in the final last year.

Walter Smith seems to be the first manager in a long time who can get the national team to actually play minnows like they are minnows instead of teams to be feared. The number of excruciating games we've had over the years against the likes of the Faroes and San Marino etc, not to mention losing to countries who should be below us like the Balkans and other former soviet states, makes you cringe. I look forward to the day that we thrash every minnow, give lesser countries a football lesson, mostly beat our peers and give the big guns a good run for their money.

Don't support any English team and never have. I was amazed when I moved to a new school in Saltcoats when I was 10, that my new peers were all into West Ham, Liverpool and Man U. I just couldn't understand it when we had a perfectly good Scottish league at the time and most of my previous friends were either Rangers or Celtic. I also don't like it when Scots buy Sky sports to watch the premiership as every one that does, devalues Scottish football. If every Scot refused to buy Sky sports without Scottish football in it, you can bet your house that Sky would be breaking down the door to give the SPL a decent deal - but at the moment there is no need to. The weirdest bit for me is a Rangers fan I know here that has Sky Sports but not Setanta... Just don't understand it as it's not as if you can even go to the pub to watch it down here even though the English pubs receive it. They rarely show Scottish football and it's sometimes so bad here that I remember having to walk out a pub after a big argument as a Scotland game was starting straight after an England game finished, on another channel but the English refused to let us change the channel - as they wanted to watch the analysis of the English game! It's also hard for me to have any soft spot for an English team when they all seem to have at least one fan I've met who is disparaging to Rangers and Scottish football.

Hear, hear.

Chanting anti-republic songs probably come under political extremism and quite rightly so. Pro-republican and anti-monarchy singing come under the same category. Anyway, it's a football match, not a political rally so I don't see what the problem is with banning political chants and songs. Those that advocate political songs are also the biggest hypocrites as they are the first to complain when someone sings political songs which are the opposed to theirs. You rarely see a Rangers fan standing up for the rights of Celtic fans to sing their political IRA songs...

For central defence we have Papac, Rodriguez, Svensson, Murray, Ponroy, Hemdani and a couple of the U21's. So our 25 man first team squad is: ____________________________Letizi/Klos/MacGregor _____Bardsley/Hutton___Svensson/Ponroy___Papac/Rodriguez___Smith/Murray Burke/Sionko/N'Diaye___Ferguson/Hemdani___Clement/Rae___Martin/Adam/Novo ___________________________Boyd/Sebo___Prso/Buffel With backup from: Robinson Gallacher Lowing Gilmour Campbell Stanger Furman Carcary Ashikodi Boyd Plus Under 21's and U19's

Let's hope so. Can't believe Fanfan, Bernard, Andrews and Malcolm are still around. I'm really disappointed in Boab, he went on about wanting first team football and then turns down a few offers. Andrews wants to stay close to his church but no-one in Scotland will match his wages and it doesn't sound very Christian to stick around and do nothing because you want more money. I think all four have very little chance of featuring in the first team this season unless we have a huge injury crisis. It shows why we should be very careful about what we pay players as no-one else will match it if they fail to impress. I think that's one consistent thing we're doing at the moment. We are being far more prudent about how much we pay for a player and how much their wages are. We're also not bringing in players till others are off the books. The means we'll eventually be maximising our reasonably considerable budget, enabling us to punch above our cruiser-weight level. Celtic have similar money to us, so spending 40 grand a week on one player means they have to spend bugger all on 3 others. We'll probably have three players wages to make up 40 grand. Our finances will be healthier and if ever there's a TV money meltdown, we'll be there to lead the rest out of the shambles.

I still say there is a big difference between now and last year. We're unbeaten and 1 point behind while playing pretty decent football. Yes we're finding it hard to kill off teams but when the opposition save 3 shots off the line, you hit the bar and their goalkeeper is man of the match, you don't usually hit the panic button. You'd have to be very pessimistic to not think that things will get better with time. Last year we were playing dire football, struggling to string three passes together and resorting to the long ball. We actually ground out some results but even when we did, many fans were despondent as we seemed to ride our luck and didn't seem to be producing the type of football that would take us to any great success. We seemed to be getting worse rather than working on improving anything. Even the most optimistic of us struggled to see any light at the end of the tunnel. First five games of a manager's career and we're unbeaten and 1 point behind while having soundly beaten one of our main rivals and playing some great football - how can you judge a lack of championship potential on that? Sounds like a cracking game, I only seen the highlights and enjoyed them bar the result. We do need to eradicate errors but I'm 100% sure that that's what the team are working on, and PLG has a track record of doing this before. He had a worse start at Lyon yet still won the league. I was referring to the Dunfermline game which to me is the only really worrying game as we didn't play good football. Svensson and Rodriguez do seem to be weak links at the moment but time, a new center half and some intensive training should help that area. 1 point behind for one game is hardly playing catch up since we were top of the league the week before. Once we've played everyone once, we'll be better to judge how the league is going. They may cause us problems but although winning isn't coming easily for us, we don't look very easy to beat at the moment - quite the opposite. Eck's teams looked a lot more fragile and Strachan had the mitigation of his first game. Besides Art Media were more comparable to Hearts whereas Molde are more like ICT. On the basis of our form so far, I can't see Molde getting more than one draw against us. I agree anything could happen in Europe, but it would just as easily apply if we'd won 5 games out of 5 while destroying defences, scoring a barrel-load and keeping clean sheets. Fair enough but winning six games out of six is not a bottom line. Every manager also gets a break at the start of his tenure. Not winning every game is not a reason to get on a manager's back as long as the results aren't too bad and the signs are good. Now going on a 10 game win-less streak...

I think the difference is that the team of last season was effectively three years in the making. The present team is only embryonic in comparison. We should also note that we're drawing games where last year we were losing some. And we've only played one team of note. We struggled against Hearts last year and how times have changed. Kilmarnock have been tipped by many to finish fourth. However, struggling isn't the right word except for the Dunfermline game and how many headlines over the years have you seen which resemble, "Rangers make heavy weather of breaking down 10 man defence"? I think this is the real adaptation to Scottish football, trying to score on a very narrow pitch with all 11 of the opposition behind the ball. And I think this is the lesson that our manager needs to learn. 4-2-3-1 isn't going to work in these games. Yes and he asked for two months for his team to gel and for him to make a difference himself. I think that's exaggerating and demanding he wins his first game against Celtic away is a bit much, a draw would be more than acceptable and a narrow loss wouldn't be disastrous. As long as we at least share the points with Celtic over 4 games, PLG has done his job. A win and a draw against Molde will take us comfortably into the group stage and I'd be shocked if we went out against the Norwegian minnows like Eck did against Zhizkov. A draw with Hibs away wouldn't be the end of the world either. We wouldn't be demanding this kind of form from Eck so why do some expect it from Le Guen when he's only just got going?

We've had a lot of big name signings that never lived up to their transfer fees while some lesser known ones have been gems. Remember Flo, Therne, Boli, Kanchelskis, Hendry, Guivarche etc, etc, etc. Even if their new players perform, remember we won a few leagues when they had Larsson, Hartson, Sutton and others. We of all people should know, that a good team on paper, doesn't always mean much. I'm still optimistic we'll win due to the Le Guen factor but it looks like it will be a proper challenge.