calscot

I always thought there were two types of chair - the ones who actually does all the chairman stuff, and the ones who are more figure heads and more of an honorary position, although they are big hitters that can step up to the plate when the big situation arises. For the latter I'd expect someone else on the board as a de facto chair for the day to day stuff. So I don't see a problem with DK being the latter, which makes his main location and amount of daily input unimportant. However, stepping back and allowing a more active chair to take the designation, doesn't seem like a problem either, as he'd still be the top cat involved in the big stuff. I like him as chairman as he seems to carry a bit of gravitas, and speaks better than our other directors. He's also shown a lot of nerveless steadfastness in the face of adversity. The guy comes across as a real leader.

You have no way of knowing whether McCoist would have gained promotion or not had he not resigned. Despite two successive managers who delivered far poorer results we still got to play-offs. McCoist's records against SP sides in the lower divisions made him favourite to beat Motherwell with 2 chances out of 3. He had already beat them. His record against Queen of the south was also 2 in 3 and 1 in 2 against Hibs. Using the results, the odds were definitely pretty reasonable. His results also showed he was capable of second place and one less play-off which may have helped. As I've said before, this doesn't mean I'm defending him as a good manager, I'm just defending reality. The relentless obsession with twisting everything to grind McCoist into the rubble reminds me of another lot. I'm consistent enough to find it incredibly tedious no matter who is doing it. The meme is well and truly ingrained.

Celtic have lost to Aberdeen (twice), Motherwell and Ross County this season (forgetting Europe). They were favourites in those games and I think we have as good a chance as Aberdeen and a better one than the other two. Hearts have also drawn twice and I think they are a bit of a benchmark for us. I also predict it will be one of those tense affairs where the form book goes out the window, and it's all about the battles on the pitch on the day, which team puts in a better shift, how the ref is, and what role luck has to play. And I don't think they'll be used to our style of play which is possibly a bit more European - where they haven't coped so well. I think it's doable but not something to bet the house on.

I think European qualification would be a massive boost to us and bring in quite a few million which would be highly significant considering our current income. It would also help to attract players. Beating them and winning the cup would also be fantastic for our confidence and profile. Attending the final itself must bring a few hundred grand share from the gate and tv money. Although with the SFA, wouldn't bank on it being that much.

A bunch of guys sneaking to the toilets for an illegal, bigoted sing-song sounds doesn't sound like anything I'd want to do or ever admire. I hope that's not what we mean by, "We are the people". I really don't understand wtf that's all about for grown men - or was it boys? Some of us just go to the toilet, do our business, wash our hands and LEAVE - it's not somewhere I'd ever want to hang out with other men for pretty much ANY reason never mind that...

Not a fan of Murray but he was owner during 2 of the top 6 European campaigns of our history with one of them being arguably the best in the top competition. We were also the most successful Scottish team in Europe during that time. I don't see it it as one of his many notable failures.

Not overstretching our finances or putting the club at risk seems like a no brainer. It's still win at all costs - within our affordability.

It has to be remembered that the motivation for bringing in young players on loan and developing them is to be able to add players to the squad of an ability we couldn't otherwise afford. We can only tell on hindsight if they haven't contributed enough. But if we play them and they benefit from that, it puts us in a position where we are a very attractive club to send out the most talented of youngsters. We are reasonably unique in that we will have home games of 45 to 50 thousand fans who are highly demanding and also have a deep winning mentality and have fantastic training facilities. We also play in a very physical league which can toughen players up who have not had much exposure to the English Premier league. A young player from an EP club coming here, getting games in front of huge crowds, learning to cope with a physcial game while playing a high standard of good, modern, attacking, possession football, winning loads of games and coming back with a medal or two or three, is bound to have matured as a player. Maybe that means that we are eventually borrowing the next Messi or just the next Rooney... However, I think the mentality of MW comes from managing an E1 and EC team who are just trying their best to do well on a budget where they can never truly compete. Even with the possibilities I described above, the ambitions of Rangers are different, and it will do us well to develop our own young players. But then, I think the discovery of the best talent is a bit of a numbers game and lottery, which is why Alex Ferguson continually bought a lot of players, even though he won that lottery more than once. You can have all the best coaches and facilities, but it doesn't trump the top raw talent with mediocre coaches and facilities. After all the main bit of equipment you need is just a football, and Maradonna made do with an orange...

I agree we COULD challenge, just look at Leicester, but while it's not proportional, paying significantly more money generally wins out in the long run, as long as it's spent half decently and with a half decent manager. To up our chances, I don't think we have to match them but I think the gap is a bit too significant, and so we have to close it somewhat. Celtic don't look great but are still on course to win the SP and way ahead of the likes of Hearts, whom we've not outshone this year compared to their last - and they have improved their squad from last season and doing relatively well. We don't know how much Celtic are under-performing just because they can get away with it or due to a lack of motivation due to a lack of real competition, so the relatively small gap compared to expenditure is not evidence we can rely on. There is also the RD factor, and whether they dump him for next season. I agree with you and MW that we need about 4-6 new players in of a certain level - and above what we have now - and for me the central defence is a priority and a prolific striker would be good. I'm happy enough with the goalie and think the midfield is reasonable, although wouldn't say no to someone classy (but affordable) there. I'm also convinced that our wage bill will automatically rise for the current squad, it's part of what they are playing for - so I would expect it to go immediately from 6m to about 9m without a change in personnel, especially if we do very well, due to the bonuses. I'm therefore expecting us to increase to at least £12m with the replacements to those that leave, and additions. I think we need to increase the squad by a few as we're lacking in some back up in some areas - especially defence. That would be about half of theirs which I think brings our chances right up. A quarter just shows a probable gap in quality, as even if they don't have the best value for money, it won't be that bad. There's a reason players have different levels of wages and VFM only skews it so far.

Agree that that is the real plus, but disagree that that's what his full meaning is... Really he's just bullshitting about what a good job he's done.

I think the most disappointing thing about GZ is that he hasn't come on leaps and bounds under MW. I was expecting more positive results with our loanees, with only Ball doing showing reasonable improvement. Not only that, it's been at the expense of our own youngsters, who haven't had much of a look in when you look at the U21s. MW's record for improving players is so far dominated by the 23-26 range, plus Barrie McKay at 21.

I somewhat agree but then a striker still needs to tackle now and again and I'd say KM's tackling is better than Zelalem's shooting. Defenders are there to primarily tackle but all of them are better at shooting than Zelalem. Nothing personal against the lad, but it's something he really needs to work on... I think I've done some bad back passes that were better and harder shots than he seems to muster.

Scottish football have "thrived"? Really? Well obviously he would say that...

It interesting to see how differently they talk about Rangers and Celtic. Of course you have to base your analysis of Rangers chances next year on ONE game - the latest against Dumbarton and Rangers didn't look great, despite dominating and winning - and so no chance of being able to compete with Celtic for the title - you know, the team who just played crap and drew with Dundee! Based on the last game for each, I'd say we're favourites! But then it's all credit to Dundee and Celtic are just sleepwalking...

WRT winning championships, a miss is as good as a mile. It's all about having the quality to stay ahead of the rest until the last game. Sometimes that costs twice as much or more as a close second place. Aberdeen ran us close before when we were spending far more than anyone and were one of the top spenders in the UK. Motherwell have been second to us while on a shoestring. The law of diminishing returns applies in spades in sport, when you're near the top, to be that little bit better and be the top, can cost a disproportionate fortune.

Wasn't it something like £28m for Rangers and £36m for Celtic?

I think if I was in Scotland but games were inconvenient to get to, I personally probably wouldn't buy a season in any case, and instead go game by game and join an RSC.

Most of Scottish football gets peanuts, but I think Celtic get about £3.5m...

There is a chance we could meet them in Europe - and we'd be the underdogs. I find that depressing. Also we compete with them and other clubs for players - the better the likes of them can afford, the lower down the skill levels we have to look. I find that a bit depressing also. We might be busting a gut and our wage structure to lure a Championship player, and they could swoop in and take him, just as we sometimes used to do. Not a happy thought either. That's three differences I can see...

If I lived in Glasgow, the moving around of games would be one of the biggest things preventing me from purchasing a season ticket. I'd probably pick and choose my games, deciding each weekend.

BTW The 2011 census put it at 32.4% with Catholic at 15.9%, which kind of explains the equalish number of Rangers and Celtic fans seeing as most Catholics around the whole country seem to support Celtic (maybe with the exception of Edinburgh and Dundee) while just because you see yourself as protestant does not mean you support Rangers - although you are more likely. It means Protestants are far more spread more around the 42 teams than Catholics. I would guess the non-religious would be fairly evenly split between the OF, if they don't support another team, like what you would expect in say Liverpool or Manchester, had the two clubs in question been more evenly successful.

It all depends on the question and the loose semantics of being religious. The funny thing being, I'd guess over half the answers are the actual religions that the people DON'T follow. The question is probably interpreted as, "Are you a protestant atheist or a catholic atheist?" Well, actually more like, "Which religion were you brought up in?"

Agree, could pay the wages of 5 players for that but it's not exactly closing the gap by enough. Actually, it would be more like two or three if you consider wages as 50% of turnover. I can see league sponsorship, prize money and TV increasing by about £4m also, so perhaps we could go from £6m in wages to £9m... But much of that will be taken up by automatic pay and bonus rises to our current squad, so we need to find more money from somewhere. It all looks depressing when you consider the £90m from TV that the likes of Watford rake in.

Trouble with season tickets is they don't really add up to much - another 5000 is merely two million quid, although the more fans the better obviously. It's the commercial side we need to be exploiting - German clubs are bringing in £100-200m in that department, and I can't see why we'd have less than a tenth of that market penetration than one club out of twenty in Germany. I think our biggest problem there is the same thing everyone says makes us special - the polarisation of the population between two clubs, and mostly for unsavoury reasons. Companies don't want to alienate half the population. Another part of the trouble I think might be the collective marketing of the SPFL, along with our losses on the kit front. When you consider our paltry TV money and nothing from Europe, you can see why our turnover is currently mostly based on ticket sales which will max out at something like the £25m mark. We need to get back to the top and have reasonable runs in Europe to get us back to the £50m turnovers of old. Then we can spend up to £24m on wages, which was about where we were in 2011, IIRC.

Wouldn't enjoy being in that queue, but then I really hate queuing.