Danny

http://ibroxnoise.blogspot.com/2011/12/takeover-by-craig-whyte-right-thing-for.html I guess there's no real answer to this yet, time will tell, but I've tried my best to look at the facts, both the negative and positive, and sum up where I feel we might be as a club now under this regime.

You've ignored my comment about Kaunas.

Well, he didn't exactly leave for our benefit - he left because he was told that in order to play for Spain, he'd have to play in England or Spain. And Villa came calling, he saw the chance, and the rest is history. The fact that we benefited financially was not his motivation.

There were early signs of good things - the initial changes in the boardroom were positive and I liked the fact we were no longer in debt to the bank. But last summer's transfer window was simply appalling - we spent about 3M at the most (remember we sold Bougherra for £1.7M) and the squad we ended up with was nowhere near good enough to compete in Europe. Then add Greig and McLelland resigning and it left a bit of a sour taste as well. Things were going swimmingly in the league...and I feel a blog coming on...

So why wasn't there a fire sale after Kaunas? Only one player left - Cuellar - and that was because of that clause in his contract. Didn't Lloyds own us at that point as well?

I'm sure he's a very nice man, I just don't trust him as Rangers owner. That's complete speculation and you know it. We were 'owned' for how long by Lloyds? 3 or 4 years? They all remained with us during that time - no bids were ever really received for any of them. So what grounds do you base them suddenly departing when they hadn't previously done so?

We signed him for Bougherra.

I do not trust Craig Whyte one bit. I cannot see any evidence that this takeover is benefiting the club. He seems to have a murky past which is slowly coming to the fore and could in the long term be quite damaging to the club. Even the fact we're not owned by Lloyds is beginning to wear thin, because I didn't see a lot of damage being done to us while our debt was with them. Yeah. we had no money and were in debt to a bank, but it wasn't a bank who were intending to see us go under. We're still effectively in the same position of having almost no money and an owner whose past is coming back to haunt him. We've spent less under Whyte than we did in SDM/Lloyds final season!

Meh, it was Rangers on the telly - I'm drawn like a fly to shit. Not that Rangers are shit, well...er...I'll stop talking now.

But did last night teach us anything at all about the squad? Generally friendlies are glorified training sessions, and offer little to no useful insight to the squad or formations - indeed, the only way you can learn about what works and what doesn't is by trying in competitive games. But that said, did we take anything from the match? I'm going to be honest, I found a few small (probably irrelevant) nuggets of information in it that may or may not be useful. Ortiz was a poor poor signing who isn't suited to this squad/team at all. Not all Ally's signings will be successes and the Spaniard sadly isn't one. Aluko looks to have a lot of energy. He's quick, dynamic, and showed how effective he can be when he does get the final ball in. But he's no Naismith. There's a reason Alexander never really made the big time as a goalkeeper. Sure, Shagger's made errors too, but it's not often you see Alexander pull out saves even half the quality of Shagger's. An adequate deputy but never more. It was interesting to see Fleck in a more central position. It's closer to where he's best suited, and he seemed more at ease in that central slot. He is basically a trequartista and is wasted on the flanks. Time will tell if he's good enough in his preferred position to make it at the club. That's about it.

Quite a lot of folk on here have praised his displays, particularly in the October period. Indeed, I and a few others gave him MOTM in one or two games. Now he seems to be the scapegoat again. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the recent criticism of his displays (our entire midfield has been non-existent since Naisy' injury), but do find it curious given what appeared, to me, to precede it.

Odd - Edu's been getting a fair chunk of praise this season. Suddenly he's public enemy number 1 again?

Edulloch, I like that!

I know it's absolutely not your fault, but the simple fact is you cannot have someone in control of such an essential area who hasn't the time to bother with it. I'm not blaming him either, you need to find someone else to take the burden off him. I know he owns it, but it's just frustrating that he's the only one who can deal with it. It's exactly the same scenario on the other board I use I mentioned - only the admin, who is too busy to deal with the forum, can exact any changes. It's like the boss of a company never being available to fix problems when they arise. I don't mean to moan, because this is a decent board and everyone gives what they can, it's just a bit irritating.

Broadfoot is a legendary idiot, and his behaviour has often gone unnoticed. There's no excuse for a bunch of our own fans to attack him, per se, but he certainly is not doing himself any favours provoking it.

Aye, noticed over the last week it's gone back to being slow. I agree with Gav - one of the admin needs to step up and help out with the technical stuff when Barry can't. I'm on a Milan forum and the single admin is literally never on, so no admin tasks ever get done. And it's excruciating.

It's all a bit buggad at the moment. I'm getting similar problems.

For some reason I can't get onto page 3 Few database errors as well.

I don't mind Leggo, but I'm not keen on his blog. But that's not my point - why post a new thread with the same url every single time he posts a new article? It's like me posting "www.stv.co.uk" every time I think a story is of interest to the forum on stv - I wouldn't do that - I'd do what Ian does in his other very useful posts - I'd post a new thread containing either the content of the story or the direct url to the story, or post one dedicated thread to all stories from that site. It's hard to ignore about 5 or 6 threads all on the main page of Rangers chat, Craig.

'At the time'? I'm talking about NOW! The only activity this thread's received is since I moaned!

You know the point I'm making. Stop being facetious.

I never read them. And why do you say 'the' leggoland thread? I suggested a dedicated thread but it didn't happen. Instead you post the link to his blog every time he has something to say. It's pointless. Then make a special thread dedicated to his blog.

Well if his tedious blogs are going to be tediously posted on here tediously obsessing about Celtic, I might as well tediously join in. As long as everything's tedious, we can all go home happy

Couldn't be bothered. EXACTLY. And everything else. Your entire post just summed up the problem. Meh.

'Leggo in writing about Rangers shocker'.