Danny

Basically sees us as a stepping stone to England. Well, I suppose he's being honest about it. Still, imo, �£4.4M for a 28 year old is a bit steep. But if he's good, he's good.

To be a tad pedantic, he's still a Rangers player anyway. I assume the move to Qatar will go through early next week. Sure as hell don't want to be stuck with him another year.

Well we just paid the money when we haggled for Cuellar, eventually getting him for about �£2.8M and he turned out a bargain. We just paid the money for Jelavic, giving forth what Wien wanted at about �£4M and he turned out well worth it. The point is, if a player is valued at �£4M by their club, it's because that player is pretty good. And all teams want good players. There is nothing wrong with us spending that much on one player, just as long as it's a wise investment on a great player. The problems come when we spend money we don't have on SEVERAL players of this value. To answer your question, when is it right? When it suits the budget we have. If we won't pay �£4M simply because we don't want to, even when the player is worth that, then we won't sign the better players. Signing Jelavic last summer did not kill Rangers.

Utterly random and pointless this, but curious nonetheless. I just found out Madjid Bougherra is about as Algerian as I am. He is French, and opted to play for Algeria via a Grandfather's birth place. He walks around whoring off Algeria, when he's bloody French! This is kinda like any of the English guys who play/played for Scotland wearing Scottish wristbands and acting like they were born here. Just felt like posting this

He's their hatchet man. Many clubs have one, some might say all clubs need one. Lee McCulloch is the closest we have.

I cant see Papac being dropped. I think the St Johnstone game was a sign Ally will try to accommodate both.

If I believed everything I read on this forum, Ally would have nothing to do with transfers and it was all left to Smith and Whyte.

I knew of Dado though. He'd scored 4 goals in one CL game V Deportivo, and spent most of his career in France with Monaco. This guy has spent his entire career in Australia, not exactly a hotbed of top quality football.

The mentality which put us close to bankruptcy was trying to compete with the top clubs by signing top players for a fucking fortune. We casually threw 4, 5, 6 even 12M at clubs with nary a thought as to the future. The argument that we're just being prudent now isn't very accurate imo - I just think we're being tight and absolutely rubbish at bringing in players these days.

If this guy was truly any good, he'd have had a much better career at the age of 28. Can't say I'm thrilled by this one.

We don't have a best 11. We have a great spine of Shagger, Bartley, Goian, Ness, Davis, Jelavic and Naismith but the wide positions, bar Wallace, are all rather weak.

Either that or the guy on the commentary for the Chelsea game yesterday was incorrect and this article is in fact correct? Bottom line is I'm not hugely inspired by us bringing in a shitload of loan deals.

Wallace is slowly winning me over. I wasn't at all happy at signing him, but he looks like a decent and dynamic LB.

When it opened we had the major 3 defenders we were after - Wilson, Cuellar and Bartley. We've managed to get one of them. Maybe that's a sign of averages. That out of 3 players we want, we'll get one? I do wonder who else we'll manage to get. It's been a strange window. A very poor one really till we got a small trickle of players, then a big boost in getting Bartley.

I remain absolutely bewildered at him selecting him in that slot V St Johnstone. Fair enough, we won, and he was responsible for one very good cross. But it was a bizarre personnel choice otherwise. Is Papac one of our 'untouchables' as Jose put it? A first choice who will always be in the team regardless of position? Did we buy Wallace as WELL as Papac rather than as a replacement?

This disturbs me as much as some guy being done recently for sectarianism against Neil Lennon. Apparently if you post that you hate Neil Lennon, you're being a bigot and PC Plod is after you. This new legislation really is PC gone insane.

Probably as well as Papac on the other side given he's a CB by trade too. I'm not a fan of trying players out of position, especially not a CB - an area that we're anything but well endowed in at the moment. We have the forum's very own marmite in David Weir, the reasonably unknown Goian, the impressive Bartley, and unless I'm very much mistaken, that's all we have in there. Oh yeah, Papac, if Wallace is now to be our first choice LB. But then Ally will probably deploy Papac at LM this season. Because he seems a certain starter always. I'm rambling again. In summary - Bartley or Cuellar at RB = not a fan.

How much have we actually spent this window? Wallace - 1.5M Goian - �£800k Ortiz - �£500k We've spent barely �£2.5M so far up front. Rumour is that we have a �£3M bid out for Zuhasz, �£1.7M for Verhoek, and �£2M for Cuellar. There are another 3 mystery players we have bids out on seeing as Whyte's said we've bids for 6 or so players. I'm guessing the hope is that all the above bids reap rewards and that will be our business for the window. Looking back, I'm not totally sure what I'm trying to say here, but I guess I just reaffirm that while I agree Zappa that Ally is unlikely to buy a new right back (especially given how hard he worked keeping Whittaker) it clearly has become a position where we could well have problems this season.

Heard a story that Verhoek is likely to move to....Nottingham Forest.

I wondered why on earth you were defending it so vigorously, then I realised you wrote it

With the signing of Wallace, we appear to have a good state for left back. He's slowly winning me over, and Papac will provide him with good competition (unless he starts appearing on the left wing regularly...) for that slot. Right back is a bit of a shambles, on the other hand. We appear to have 4 contenders for the role, and none of them are currently adequate. 1: Steven Whittaker. Forgetting the contract nonsense, he's endured a nightmare start to the season on every level, and didn't even feature in the squad for the Chelsea friendly. His form is abysmal, his head appears to be in a bit of a mess, and he's making howlers all over the place. 2: Kirk Broadfoot. Barely adequate as a right back, his demands preseason that he had to play week in week out was a real faux pas and incredibly arrogant for such an ordinary player. Quite dire in the middle, his 'best' form is at right back and even there, his form is rarely ever impressive. 3: Mo Edu. Known to deputise here. He struggles badly enough in midfield these days without trying to make him a flanking defender too. He's not the answer. 4: Jordan McMillan. Did surprisingly well today at RB but throwing him in at the deep end is unwise. Do we need to buy a new RB or do we keep faith with the players we have?

A summer weeknight is probably less attractive than a weekend. My Twitter is full of folk who went today. I don't think half of these people went to Malmo. My sister's other half went to this one today, and didn't make the CL game. I guess Malmo was about the true supporters, and today was a glamour friendly against a shiny Chelsea team which attracted far more fans.

I think any article criticising Scottish football because of our exit is a bit knee jerk. We were the better team in the second leg, and the only thing I bemoan is our awful discipline which cost us dearly. I have no complaints about the management, and the players generally played their finest match this season so far, but for some stupid moments we would have made the final play off round. So I feel anything which looks at deeper problems on the back of our exit is a bit misguided on this occasion. imo of course.

You avoided what I said You say we don't know for sure what Whittaker's on, so surely by that reasoning we don't know what Shagger's on. Or any of the rest of them. So we really have no idea what the scale of best paid to worst paid actually is. But the truth is, of course we do. Shagger is probably the best paid, and there's a group of about 3 or 4 players including Whittaker who seem to be in the 15k-23k range.

Didn't Verhoek come runner up for Dutch POTY?