calscot

Perhaps we need a proper feeder club where we lend them players and they follow our training and playing philosophies. Probably not something we previously craved, but we do seem to be creating something for the club that has the potential to last. It would be good to set this kind of tradition for the club where we play a certain style of football (with emphasis on high levels of excellence and winning deterministically by skill ie out thinking, out passing, out running, out dribbling the opposition with confidence and skill on the ball and great levels of control - rather than just pandering to any arbitrary notion of "entertainment"), and having the most up to date training methods, concentrating on marginal gains in all aspects - like the Sky cycling team.

I don't disagree, but we need a balance. We can't ignore the development of our own players - loan players eventually go back to their own club. Game time for our own U20s seems to be at an all time low.

Burt has to get a chance in the league games - Warburton has given less game time to our own youngsters than just about any manager we've had, unless you count McKay - who won't get many more games than when he was 18. It's not that he doesn't give youngsters game time at all, it's just he gave it all to three loan signings. However, as McKay has shown, being out on loan can raise you a level and mature you where you are out of the pressure of winning every game in front of a huge and demanding crowd. But I would like to see more of our own youngsters being blooded now and again, and the best being given some decent amount of game time. I've never been a fan of overdoing it or playing youth for youth's sake, but there is a goldilocks level. I also realise that maybe the current crop of 17 to 20 year olds maybe don't quite make the grade (yet) - as only one was MW's choice, and that could change with some of the reports of the U17s and the fact we've got rid of Sinclair. However, we've still produced two top class players in four years, which I think is not too bad, but would be great if we could double that rate.

Hopefully Waghorn can get some game time in the last two league games. Not sure how he'll get match fit in the three week break though, we need a couple of friendlies - but not too much travelling.

Speaking of Foderingham, a lot of people have been saying we need a better keeper and I've not been seeing it, after this game I'm certain I don't agree. I think he suits our style of play and has been pretty solid and reliable. His weakness is long clearances - but he hasn't had much practice...

Were the songs predominantly sectarian? Follow follow seemed to be our most prevalent song followed by No Surrender. There was a rendition of the Billy Boys but I couldn't make out if the offensive line was sung. Then there was a lot of the Magic Hat song, as well as Can you hear Celtic sing and You're getting sacked in the morning. As for Celtic fans, hardly heard them. Sounds like the reporter has assumed or been told it was sectarian and I don't know what problem he has with a former English and Scottish king who saved our nations from French expansionism. Paedophile has nothing to do with bigotry either. Now "Hun scum", that is sectarian and no milder than FB - which is actually arguably anti-terrorist. It's obvious he's not interested in sectarianism enough to put effort into being accurate, but he's interested enough to libel a load of people. Maybe that's what the fighting fund could have been used for. Sue every defamation of character in the press that has a good legal case. Again and again. They would soon get the message that we're no longer a soft target to paint as perpetual villains.

It was Barca's post...

"We're still better." They just never show any class no matter where the players come from. It seems they are infected as soon as they step through the door.

I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with here. Are you saying quality and value DON'T enhance hard work, or are you saying we have no quality or value in squad? Don't understand this bit either - are you saying they had no quality but a load of hard work? Are you saying if a Junior team was the hardest working team in Scotland, they would win the cup? And he was a real failure as a Rangers manager? Arguably our most successful manager of modern times and you don't like his philosophy? So you're saying Barcelona and Bayern have no quality, it's just coaching and drilling? I'm also pretty sure Walter was on the training ground most days. I really don't think you can easily compare someone who has had no success whatsoever in a provincial league or even provincial club in a big league, with a successful manager of Rangers. Your whole post is a bit bemusing.

Unfortunately playing for Hull means that he probably wouldn't take the pay cut...

So Warburton is the Messiah - and we should know, we've followed a few! Speaking of false Messiahs, PLG was reportedly in the press box. I wonder what he must be thinking at Warburton's success... His subsequent career may give him the hindsight to see that he should have treated the Rangers job a bit more seriously and with proper conviction. He eventually came accross like he was never interested and just using us as an easy one season stepping stone to the Premership - unfortunately for us and him, it wasn't as much of a piece of piss as he thought it would be, and then bailed.

IF we win the cup, Dave King will be due a lot of credit. That's some turn around of our fortunes on and off the pitch in just over a year. The boardroom coup was masterful when our existence looked like going the route of Newcastle, and as such worthy of some kind of revolution hero status. I know others are involved but sometimes it takes a leader, front man and focal point to get things done, and he seems to have done the job so far. With his earlier promises, I can't see him letting us down in the recruitment drive for next season, with money coming from his own pocket and others - either as equity or lones converted to equity in future. However, I do expect him to be careful with the money and it's not the usual war chest to splurge - and in that respect he has chosen the perfect manager. The European football possibility will be a factor although again we can't speculate too much as we don't know how well we'll do. We'll need to hold back a bit on that and can revisit the transfer market in January, if everything pans out and we reach the group stages. I can't help thinking what would have happened if he had taken over from Murray a while back - before the EBTs. His character seems a lot less egotistical and volatile. So if we win the Cup, there can be no more criticism about how much he's spent so far - it will be just right, the Goldilocks amount.

I thought there was two parts to our play yesterday that were really lacking and could have bitten us - long balls and heading. I've said since we started playing the ball on the ground we need to be able to use judicious and accurate long balls as well as good clearances when required. We have ignored that part of our game as we haven't needed it so much against a much lesser opposition. Against Celtic we were under a lot more pressure in possession and resorted to the long ball on a pretty regular basis - however, the delivery was almost always abysmal - either straight to them or out of play. I found that really frustrating, and I think the more tired we got, the more we used a tactic we're poor at a lot more unnecessarily. I think we need to practice it and use it - which doesn't mean we change our main style, as we only need to do it now an again. But it should be a skill in our repertoire. The other problem is our heading, which although not as bad as our long ball, meant that they had numerous headers on goal - almost every corner, which meant that four corners in a row gave plenty of chances to put a good one in and score. I recall the fourth corner itself was a bit of a soft give-away too when we needed to release the pressure, and even a throw would have been a better concession. There were boasts about how little we header the ball and I remember saying then that it was a concern in the long run. I do think we need to replace one of the CBs with a player who can win most of the high balls in the box - like Butcher and Gough - and Weir. We'll need that a lot more in the division above. However, I'm not detracting from the rest of our play, which was fantastic yesterday, and great to watch. It was probably the most aesthetic OF game for a long time while still having that amazing tension and end to end stuff. It reminded the rest of the world of the OF brand.

I think the good thing about Ball playing and doing so well is that it somewhat nullifies the Oduwa disappointment and means that clubs like Spurs and other will see the value in sending their players to us - although we should only take the best who add something to the squad, which Ball has done. Zelalem has done a bit but he needs to develop some parts of his game and I think needs a better workrate. However, I do think Oduwa was a factor in McKay having confidence to run at players - which he seemed to start doing after the Spurs youngster was getting praise for it. He's become my favourite player to watch and reminds me of past times when we had players who would take opponents on from the wing and get into the box. We haven't had many of those recently. The good thing is that Holt likes to do this through the middle now and again too and I love some of the interplay between them with McKay using his pace to ghost past defenders and collect the ball. We seem to be using a certain style of diagonal pass between the defenders for that, which had Celtic beaten every time - until later when they finally sussed how to defend it and our legs were weary.

I can't help feeling we've got to be careful about insulting our current squad who just beat Celtic and won the Championship at a distance, and the wee cup too. However, we'll probably lose our three loans, as well as Shiels, Law, Clark and Templeton. So we need to recruit 7 players to get back to the same strength of squad. We maybe need a few others for strength in depth as the semi-final showed we need. So maybe even 10 - unless we can keep Ball and King. I think these are the aspects we should be emphasising while praising our current squad.

If you train hard for a while, you won't lose any fitness with a week's rest and have a good chance of actually being fitter afterwards as muscles repair and body has time to make physiological changes. You do start to lose something after two weeks but you can prevent that with a bit of basic exercise - just a bit of running, cycling, swimming and a few medium intensity sessions in the gym. A reasonable diet with the odd treat will also stop the pounds coming on - it's not time to stuff your face with doughnuts every day...

This is what I was sent from RangersTV support when I complained about not being able to view a match the day after: Unfortunately restrictions on the Scottish Cup rights mean we are unable to show full matches in the UK until midday on the Monday after a weekend fixture. You will be able to view in full from 12 noon today. This is a restriction placed on all clubs in the competition and is a result of the broadcasting agreements between the SFA and their broadcast partners. I explained to them, that I was fine with externally applied restrictions, my problem with their service is that they don't publish accurate information for when that particular game will be available on the relevant page. They said they were going to address that...

I thought he looked comfortable on the ball and his pass completion was good - although he mostly made the very simple pass to retain possession. I also thought, "Oh shit!" when he walked up to take the penalty but fair play to him for stroking it home with confidence - I was wrong there. However, his defending was non-existent. He just wouldn't track back with his man and was a distant spectator for their second goal and posted missing for a couple of their near misses. He kept giving them a spare man. I wasn't impressed with that at all - especially in a game like this.

It's sun worship...

Why do they always lie about the Catholic signing thing and ignore the fact that having consistenty about 8 or nine Catholics in a team from a country of 18% of that denomination shows an extremely sectarian recruitment policy. Then there was the antisemitism and the anti-black racism.

How about an Atenist?

Our larger squads of the past tended to be poor value in the past as the players brought in during an injury crisis had played so few competitive games they were not match fit, nor were they very motivated... 24 sounds about right, then if that becomes really depleted, you dip into the academy.

Thing is, it's not a hot climate that keeps these plants alive, just the reasonably mild winter... Still only average 19C maximum in July...

Moscow, Ayrshire

Millport, Greater Cumbrae, off Largs