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calscot

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Everything posted by calscot

  1. calscot
    Going from last year, that still looks like they will have to plug a £10m+ hole to finish the financial year. Perhaps this has been reduced by other income and some cuts as well as less opportunities to syphon money off, but then they still have last year's loan to pay also. I still presume they are trying to tread water and just about hold out till next season where we might start to break even - but that would be without a war-chest for recruiting players of the ability that we need. That's where lack discontent with the board and the performances of the team could collide and combine into a critical mass. After that, the exit strategy could be pretty scary with sale and leaseback as possible last throws of the dice before handing the stripped carcass over to Dave King - for a sum. Either that or they start running the club "properly" and secure tens of millions of pounds of "soft" investment. I'm finding this scenario a hard one to put my money on.
  2. calscot
    Studies have shown that people with higher intelligence are more likely to optimistic. Others show that optimistic people tend to be more realistic. I think one of the reasons for the former is that they tend to think they have the power to improve things or that opportunities to do so will come along, and the latter is that optimists tend to see both sides but are still optimistic while pessimists tend to see everything as bad refuse to acknowledge anything good.
  3. calscot
    There seems to be an attitude that if a player leaves us and then plays well, it's because our coaching was crap and now it's good. If a player leaves us and then plays badly it's because our coaching was crap. If a player joins us and plays badly it's because our coaching is crap. If a player joins us and plays well it's because he's previous coaching was much better than ours. And if he has a bad game, it's because our coaching is crap... Our coaching may be crap, but with that kind of thinking, how will we ever really know?
  4. calscot
    Just because they have used it for years doesn't mean it's not flawed. I think that's a very flawed way of doing it especially as it doesn't take into account a load of anomalies with Rangers being a highly exceptional one. I think you've shown exactly why it is flawed as in Rangers case, it doesn't give a fair representation of the likelihood of a team getting to a specific stage in the competition. The whole point of seeding is to keep the better teams separated until the later stages and avoid things like the two best teams playing in an early round and therefore one of them being eliminated so early. This tries to lead to the scenario where the possibility of advancement to later rounds is more correlated to your sporting ability. They also attempt to prevent one competitor from having an easy route to the final while another has a very difficult one, knocking out all the top rankings on the way. In something like a tennis competition this could be highly crucial as one player could have a series of very long and hard 5 set games against great players, while the other has short, easy straight set wins against lesser players, and therefore he could win the final due to having a lot more energy left than his opposition, while being say the 8th best player for the competition. Therefore the primary goal of seeding should be to accurately rate the competitors in order of potential. However, as seeding by default influences the progression of teams (and so for sporting and financial aims) it also has the add complication in that it needs to be objective and transparent. This creates a very complex problem and so in most sports is usually simplified to base it on recent, past performance or current rankings. Neither is ideal. The League Cup has obviously chosen a different past performance criteria and as you say, uses last year's league position. As shown above, when it comes to Rangers, this is a highly flawed strategy as our league position in no way reflects our cup progression potential as we are not there on sporting merit. Some competitions take other factors account and adjust the rankings accordingly by committee, which is why Andy Murray was rightly seeded above his world ranking for Wimbledon as he had performed better in that competition which has a different environment than similar competitions. UEFA realise that in Europe you may be from a high quality league and so not have a recent record as you haven't qualified and so adjust the rankings based on your league's performance in their competitions. Basing rankings for knockout competitions based on the last few years performances can also be flawed as you could be knocked out early by the best team in the competition - but then in circular fashion, that is exactly why the seedings are there to start with, and also why the more accurately they represent the potential, the better they work. So in the end, all the SPFL have done is inadvertently made their competition a lot fairer and more balanced which is why no-one can honestly pull out the "sporting integrity" card.
  5. calscot
    Are Rangers seeded 23rd based on actual results or is it because they wiped our previous record? I struggle to believe we're the 23rd team based on (say) the last 5 season's results. The point is that giving us 23rd would be skewing the seeding anyway, and the top 8 is a correction which actually *increases* the "sporting integrity" of the competition. I think too many people are totally forgetting what the seeding system is really all about and instead getting bogged down in the flawed methods...
  6. calscot
    One ironic thing in that article is that Fartlek and interval training are pretty current in today's sports science.
  7. calscot
    I agree here and think it's unrealistic to expect the current level of squad we have to consistently win cup competitions. For me, it would like expecting Hearts to win a trophy every year (or even every other year) as well as finish at least third in the league with a first or second every few years. The thing about cup games is all it takes is one bad performance against a highly motivated side to put you out. Most squads of our past, have had a massive gap on quality outwith Celtic and so have been able to often win against lesser teams while not playing so well and just have the one real rival to overcome. But even the most spectacular of our sides have lost many a cup game to a lesser side or even just lost two finals to Celtic. You could say that we have big gap over our rivals in the challenge cup but not winning it twice equates to no worse than all the failures of our best sides, especially when Celtic were struggling or went out before meeting us. Top Rangers sides have lost to the likes of Raith Rovers never mind one the most under funded and handicapped in modern history. I agree it's not a quality statistic due to what you say and also as it doesn't count us going out to top tier sides but you have to win a lot of rounds to get your percentage up that high. Out in two rounds every time and you might not lose again but you have a 50% stat. But the point was that we have been well capable of beating those sides but cup games being cup games it's easy to have the odd bad one against a fantastically motivated side. That's why the league is more of a barometer of where you are as when you lose, you get to opportunity to win next week. McCoist record of results is better than any previous Rangers manager when you put ALL the games together and while you can argue about the level of opposition, outside Celtic, we've often had just as big a differential. However, there is the special case of how well a manager can motivate his own side in cup competitions with some being better than others. John Greig was able to do it somewhat but at the expense of dreadful results in the league. I would agree that McCoist has not yet shown an aptitude for bringing the best performances out of his players for individual big games, which to me, is his greatest flaw as a Rangers manager, that would be more ignored elsewhere, given good league results. I agree again, but feel I have to re-itterate: *no-one* is saying Ally is great manager. There is only one extreme argued for. I doubt the latter shows a low success rate for a non-OF manager (outside Sir Alex and Jim McLean) and it has to be argued that Ally is not really the equivalent of an OF manager in this context. His position is nearer to a reasonably well funded Hearts or Aberdeen - who've been relegated. Some of the extremely negative judgements need to take this into account.
  8. calscot
    I think it would be folly to avoid ignoring environmental factors... You don't just sack someone for not increasing profits when you're in the middle of a recession. There are overarching baselines that you need to measure yourself against.
  9. calscot
    World Of Warcraft?
  10. calscot
    But probably not as bad as you might think. 2011: W1 L1 2012: W6 L1, on penalties plus beat Forres and Motherwell, lost to DU. 2013: W8 L2, one in extra time. Plus drew with 1 and lost to DU. Couldn't play a large bunch new players for one loss so got to be some mitigation there - especially considering the team's results record after that. 2014: W3 L0 So 18:4, 82% win rate. Nothing special but neither a complete disaster considering the circumstances during his tenure. 20% win rate against S.Prem sides is not very good even with the circumstances.
  11. calscot
    As I've said before, I think a lot of it is how the lower tier teams set up against us, and we while we have the quality to win the vast majority of the time, we don't have enough not to have to graft for it. I thought moving to the current league would make a difference and teams would fancy their chances more rather than stifling the game to avoid a humiliation but even the likes of Hearts killed the game after they scored and they were a higher level where our players didn't have many clues how to crack the wall. Yet, they still managed to graft for it for the equaliser and then immediately switched off, which might be a lack of experience at that level. I think Clyde were different as Bazza probably primed them to play some football and we see how poor that made them, with our players enjoying the freedom to play it offered. Similar thing with Dumbarton. However, all that's done is show the smaller clubs which tactics work best, even if you're unlikely to get a result. What other explanation is there for the same players having a couple of good games and then one that's less so? What did Ally do wrong this time when he was obviously after a repeat? You can't blame the line-up as it didn't change much and I doubt he kept the same side and then radically changed the tactics - or the training... For me, as I've said before, while Ally can get his sides to win, he doesn't seem have the invention of new ideas that are needed to not only beat these sides but to do it more fluidly and more convincingly on a weekly basis. Although, to be fair to him, I doubt there are more than a few managers that do, and certainly almost unicorn-like for our chances of employing one. I do expect some better games in the first half of the season due to some of the Championship sides trying to play us but I expect it will deteriorate in the second half if that mostly doesn't work for them. I still think people are doing "pointless comarisons" with Rangers sides that had top class players, which make the huge difference. Second-class players have always brought us second class football in my lifetime, be-it Greig, Wallace (II), Eck (laterly), Le Guen or Smith (II). Even our world 11's that we've seen struggled to produce free flowing football a lot of the time under Souness, Smith (I) and Advocaat with two of them having seasons where even the results were well below our expectations from our financial advantage. I now expect (and hope) us to rise up a gear in the cups against S.Prem sides like ICT due to our experienced signings and our players getting used to playing at a slightly higher level, but still suspect such games will be frantic. Ally desperately needs a top tier scalp right now, as his record against them in the cups is not good.
  12. calscot
    Under the circumstances this seems like a sensible move to keep the draw moving and is only happening because we are already against a seeded team (and as someone says, if we're victors we are worthy of the seeding). I think it's probably popular for most clubs anyway as the smaller teams will relish the game against Rangers and the money it brings, while the seeded teams should want to avoid us until the later stages as we are still easily a top 8 side of those left in the tournament. In the end it will also be better for the tournament. Only one team can lose out slightly and I doubt they can grumble about real sporting integrity when seeded below the likes of Rangers which will be their natural seeding. So who are the old 8th seeds anyway?
  13. calscot
    I can't see banks touching us until we stop making losses and become a more stable club without ST boycotts and onerous contracts. One scenario is that to safeguard their investment, the current board start balancing the books - although I think they will likely wait for promotion before attempting that. They would also have to raise an initial investment to accelerate us into becoming some sort of championship contenders. Their ability to do this is now becoming questionable and their track record suggests that any cash raised could come at a with a disproportionate price tag. Another scenario is the Dave King one - should he be prepared to deliver what he has intimated. The problem is finding a scenario where he can take over without overly paying off the current shareholders which is something he seems very averse to. And he is also an unknown in how soundly he'd run the club and how well his co-investors may desire to be compensated, and indeed whether there is more than the revival of his club, that's in it for him. Successful businessmen don't like to lose their money when they can help it. You'd have to hope that if the latter one panned out, it's because he's as wealthy as some think (in the £100ms) and at his age, creating a successful Rangers may be an interesting retirement project that is close to his heart. And would you prefer to go out as a successful businessman in SA with a bit of a question mark over your tax dealings, or the same as that - but also the guy who made a football club a force again, and a therefore a bit of a hero for many? For a guy possibly worth upwards of 200m then a soft £30m investment wouldn't be too much of a dent in his kids' inheritance, and done right, might even still be worth close to that when he's ready to take a back seat. For many bears the latter might just be a dream but they also see it as perhaps the only option that can stop many years of coming second... I think the current board can't succeed without the backing of the fans and that their main hope is to find one of their own to "lend" the club money to finish the season while gaining promotion and hoping that in itself will bring the fans back in numbers.
  14. calscot
    While I think our absence is costing them, I think that they have had some compensations to offset this with more European money than they'd normally expect and the strange valuations of their players sales. At the same time their board seem to have cut their cloth to suit the lower income and they don't seem to be increasing their debt. However, this may be backfiring with lower attendances and season tickets this year - although I've no idea of the actual figures. But what history has shown is that finances as football teams tend to spend what they earn and don't "save" money, they are only ever as wealthy as their last few seasons' income and so it can take just a few years for peer clubs of similar size to catch back up financially. We've seen it with us with Holmes, Celtic with the Bunnet, and we see it all the time in the EPL. The exceptions are investment in infrastructure and the other side of the coin, the accumulated debt and its servicing costs. That is why not increasing their debt is important for the future when we are back at the top. We should have been (and may still be) of a position where we return without debt and with our stadium and training facilities intact. We may need a lot of spending on the stadium but it's not of the same order of cost as replacing a stand etc. However, the bill is increasing and it looks like we're increasing our debt just to pay our running costs. On the flip side we have the offer of a £50m investment when back in the top tier - something they could probably match a fraction of to keep pace. It seems to me that if we were well managed it wouldn't take us long to be back on a level footing and that's where the current board may be harming our medium term future. We can't afford to get into debt or allow maintenance and renovation of Ibrox to become damaging to the operational budget. Other than that we will quickly need the resources and a manager who can overcome them in the league and qualify for the CL group stages - every second year anyway, despite the initial gap. That's where a a pretty large, soft investment will be needed.
  15. calscot
    I can't see the relevance, but basically it's because top CL teams are irrelevant to us. They have the top players (and managers) in the world. I don't know what you're trying to equate. Being better players and training better than other teams doesn't mean you play "beautiful football", it means you generally beat them - which we do. Firstly you're kind of arguing against yourself here as you're counting wages of the likes of Jig whom you don't rate. Secondly, if you're going to throw numbers around at least make them relevant. Paying more for a load of non-playing staff to run a large stadium is not going to make you play "nicer" football. I think it's your excuse that invalid. Sorry, but you have demonstrated many times that you don't watch ANY Rangers games. I really don't think you do - it's easy to make it up on the Internet and most of your arguments are made up. I explained how much I watch games, your own explanation for your watching was noticeably missing... I wonder why? I think you keep saying that about me to deflect from yourself. Even if you are actually in front of a game, you obviously don't watch it. All it takes is to count a string of at least four passes on the deck to realise you don't watch the game. I don't disagree with that but it only argues against your own points. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, it's not that relevant to now. You seem to be saying that we used to play better football and still failed... Kind of against your original argument. I don't expect Scottish teams to compete against the likes of Barcelona these days, the world has changed and population of your country is incredibly important for TV money, leaving our clubs and those of similar countries as provincial teams. Our only hope was to have switched to England in the early 90's. The point is though, that Scottish teams can achieve results against the likes of Barcelona, not by playing lovely football, where they'd be taken apart, but by playing a more ugly style. It's always been the way for less skilful teams to have a better chance of a result, which is why it's used on us all the time. I have never said that. I have said that with the kind of players we have, in the football climate we're in, it's just not easy to turn on the style, especially when not winning league is more catastrophic than any other time in our history. I would say that's easier said than done, especially in our position where we can't really attract the best talent - as they will want to play in a better league. Which is why we're going for short term contracts to almost guarantee us to get to where we need to be, before we can actually achieve any of that. I would say it's the absolute level of skill that makes you play "nicely" not the relative. Otherwise you'd see great football at all standards when their is a gap. But you change your argument to suit you, one time you're saying our player are crap, and not worth the money, and the next you're saying we've spent more money and so have great players. I don't think we ever get value for money and less so in the lower leagues where we're effectively paying sweeteners for players to drop a level or two. We have better players but they are not great players and just because you spend more money doesn't mean you always play well. It does usually mean you'll usually win though.
  16. calscot
    That just seems naive in the extreme. You're not going to win any football debates with that argument. If you're going to compare other clubs, they should have a similar budget. But even then they will not have the same experience as us. Four games a season, other team upping their game, damage limitation instead of going for a win etc. I would say form experience, you can have any attitude you like, it doesn't mean you'll be able to play how you want to. That's all a bit simplistic. If it's so easy and works, here's the big question - why isn't EVERY club in Scotland doing it? And why aren't you some managerial guru that is rising up through the ranks by doing this seeing as no-one else is? If it's not about money then surely you can start off with a pub team, making them look like Real Madrid and winning at the same time... But it's all very well doing it in training but it's totally different in a competitive game where you have another team to contend with. The fact is that teams now set themselves up to stop other sides from playing like this - even the most skilful of sides. I don't remember Barcelona allowing Rangers time on the ball and space to play, which was weird seeing as they called our game "anti-football" which was exactly what their game was by not letting us play, they just did it further up the pitch as they had more skilful players. Another telling thing happened on here recently. People have been saying that we don't practice short, fast passing in training, then some photo's are shown with the players doing exactly that, and it was quickly joked about negatively and glossed over. But then people keep saying we can't string three passes together, and I now can't help myself counting to seven and eight etc throughout the game.
  17. calscot
    I don't think there is any team who hoofs the ball constantly, so you're probably correct.
  18. calscot
    Could be anything to do with the £70m minimum that clubs get from TV? How much to Rangers get again? Even Celtic only get a few million.
  19. calscot
    Care to point me out the champions league winners who have our budget? I'm sure we'd perform to higher level if we spent about half a billion Euros on transfer fees with matching wages. That's true, hoofing it has been part of our game forever, even the best Aberdeen sides in the 80's were known for it with Miller, Eck and Rougvie. It's part and parcel of our game and our problem is we're part of that game. There are plenty of good sides who struggle to play the ball around against Scottish teams. But it's even worse when you're playing them four times a season and they all raise their tempo against you. BTW We also mostly play the ball on the deck, although I would agree that the long ball is used more often than I'd like. We've done our fair share of embarrassing other sides. It's not long ago that we were in the Europa cup final - I really shouldn't keep having to point this kind of stuff out to a Rangers fan... Like Barcelona who looked crap against us and needed a cheat's goal to break our defence? Even Celtic beat them recently and before you bring out the thrashing Celtic took later, the case you're making is "always" and obviously that's just plain wrong. Again, I seem to have to remind you that Rangers are in a different place right now - you do know about the club don't you? It will take a while and a lot of investment to get Rangers back to the top of the Scottish game and even then it will not be possible, in the current state of the game, to be able to afford a team like the one in 02 - which even then we couldn't actually afford. It put us 80m in debt and Murray had to pump 50m back into the club a couple of years later. In fact that team was the beginning of a long decline due to overspending, and helping take us to where we are now. You really don't seem to know the club's history. The same manager of that team then had to sell all the best players and bring in much cheaper replacements (although incredibly expensive compared to now). He struggled and the football became very poor and in the end of his tenure we finished an ignominious third place to a side that had a hell of a lot less resources. Something that our current manager, whom you think is the worst ever, has never fallen to. I don't disagree but don't see the relevance. It just adds to the fact that Scottish football is not of the best quality, and so I can't see why we expect great quality at a certain Scottish club while its having the hardest off-field struggles of its history.
  20. calscot
    I think these days we need all the money we can bring in. Our commercial income is crumbs compared to the likes of Dortmund.
  21. calscot
    I think that if you're after good football and not interested results then why support Rangers - a club more renowned for winning stuff than its good football? Maybe part of it is that you might be Scottish but the fact is that there are few sides in Scottish football that have been known for highly entertaining football, it's always been a place where it's "played at 100 mph" and in a robust manner. The Scottish leagues have 42 clubs that garner support from the indigenous population, to go out and watch this "torture". However, only the fans of a couple of clubs have the luxury and compensation of winning most weeks. Some people are always strangely pointing out how much better other clubs are and given critical reasons for this - so I keep asking them to try to pretend to support any of these clubs for a month or two, and I guarantee that you'll find that the same type things happen, the football is the same or worse, and the exact same criticism applies. Even if you choose Celtic (who seem more admired on here by some than Rangers), they have just been totally pumped in Europe by a Polish team. I also asked people to predict an exemplar team to watch this season for the type of football they want along with good results, and got no takers. It all much easier to do it in hindsight. But then people were predicting Rangers would struggle in the league last season as it would be a step up from the one before. They were 100% wrong and so now the volume on the complaints about the football has to be turned up to justify their negativity.
  22. calscot
    The question would be "why?" This is just making it up. I could just as easily say that if Murray hadn't sold the club, Ally would have won the SPL. In fact that's considerably more likely than him getting sacked. He certainly looked reasonably capable under the dreadful Whyte period until the shenanigans started to kick in. Even if he'd finished a close second, which he looked well capable of, that would have been reasonable considering he's a new manager against a bigger budget - which is the usually stick to beat him with when he plays teams with smaller budgets. Like I keep saying, if Ally is that bad then why do people have to make stuff up to demonise him with?
  23. calscot
    No, they have far bigger budgets than the rest of the challenge cup participants. So what are you saying? I realise this is where the Ally bashers start to get lost in their own inconsistencies. I doubt their wage differential compared to Rangers is of a huge factor a magnitude less than Rangers (certainly a lot less than many other Rangers sides) - and we are of course, supposedly handicapped by the worst manager in the leagues, who is making our players worse. Therefore not even making the quarter finals seems a much poorer record than the "worst manager in the leagues" making the quarter finals and the final. Either Ally is the worst or he's not... make up your mind. You can maybe apply the better player argument to most of the teams but not to Heart or Hibs, whom the anti-Ally guys say signed better players than us, so with the Edinburgh teams, budget becomes irrelevant as Ally has supposedly wasted money. Trouble is if Ally is the worst, then results dictate others must be even worse - which doesn't make logical sense. Ergo, Ally being the worst is an oxymoron.
  24. calscot
    BTW The score was actually 4-1. Can I also point out that neither Hearts nor Hibs will win the trophy this year, or even the semis... Should the managers be sacked? Are they now worse than McCoist? Falkirk, Alloa and Livingston are the only other Championship teams left and all have been kept separate and all with away games.
  25. calscot
    East Fife away.
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