Super_Ally

Not necessarily as Boyd's replacement. Just talking to him.

Jack Ross' blog from the BBC talking about the impact of Sports Science and new techniques on player preparation. Though the spints he completed at Falkirk were 20m and body fat percentage was one part of their testing programme but not monitored during the other tests. I think maybe the website editor has fucked up the quoted paragraph. The yo-yo stamina exercise is a modification of the bleep test which is more relevant to football, whereby there is a slight "rest period" between each shuttle where the player walks around a cone 5m away. A bleep test is constant whereby the stop start nature of the Yo-Yo intermittent endurance test more accurately reflects movement patterns in football.

Agreed, but we might have some interesting ammunition to back up our points if the tims/media continue with this worst team to win the league patter.

Rumours we're in talks to sign him. Poster on FF says he's his pal and that is the source. Another says his son is pumping Goodwillie's cousin and is trying to get confirmation. Do what you like with the info. May well be pish.

I quite agree. It was a favourite topic of conversation when PLG arrived and in fact often since, that I have never understood. I've never qutie figured out how this getting worse in the sort term can posisbly make us better long term. Lots of little steps forward rather than bigger steps backwards for me. E.g. When Smith returned, immediately saw the CB's were shite and brought in Weir/Ugo to shore us up. Easy when you know how.

Continuing my broken record theme. Found these stats interesting though: I actually don't think we will, statistically speaking, be the best team of the last 5 years as I think with the job all but done and likely our last 4 games or so meaning nothing, that we will drop points in some of these "dead rubbers" (to borrow Tennis parlance).

As Walter Smith has seen off yet another manager across the city, Tony Mowbrayâ��s ultimately disastrous reign draws certain parallelâ��s with that of Smithâ��s predecessor at Ibrox. Paul Le Guen arrived in Govan to much fanfare and acclaim. The relatively youthful manager came to Scotland with a mightily impressive C.V. from his time at Lyon where he continued their domination of French football whilst punching above their weight in the Champions League. The job that awaited him at Rangers was markedly different to that of the French cracks. Rangers were not, at that time, top dogs in Scotland. Indeed we had fallen quite low under Alex McLeish after a couple of years of fantastic success. Le Guen was charged with returning us to the top of the pile in the SPL whilst utilising the nous of a more tactically and technically gifted foreign coach to elevate our performance and results on the European stage. The oft debated question on internet forums such as Gersnet was whether or not our fans had the patience to accept a couple of years of obscurity and a lack of trophies whilst the Frenchman modernised the club; changing attitude and habits and attempting to develop a conveyor belt of youth talent to supplement the squad. Clearly with the global economic crisis affecting the banks generosity putting greater strain on our finances allied to the fact that our income is dwarfed by that of Europeâ��s other top leagues (even the Championship has a far more lucrative t.v. deal than that of the SPL) a change of tact and direction was required. David Murray and many fans believed this bright young manager was the man to facilitate this change. Where this plan falls down, and this is something that confuses me, is how short term failure leads to long term success. We have seen over the last two years how badly we depend upon the Champions League bounty to break even or turn a small profit. Without the short term success, we do not have the financial clout to put in place the long-term vision for the club. An effective and efficient scouting system and a productive youth and modern youth academy requires considerable start up and running costs. Part of PLGâ��s master plan, and that too of Mowbray it seems, was to dismantle the current squad. Weed out the bad influences and those who would hinder the endeavour to completely rebuild and reinvent their respective clubs. Recent media reports suggest Celtic wasted somewhere in the region of �£20 million on Mowbrayâ��s vision including payments to West Brom for his and his assistantsâ�� services, financing his transfer dealings and his subsequent pay-off. PLGâ��s net spend was minimal and he graciously turned down his right to a substantial pay-off. However, he also did not spend all available cash when the problems with the team were easily identified and rectified immediately by Smith. So to successfully revolutionise a team and a club as a whole requires an enormous amount of finance currently not available to the Rangers management team. If our ultimate aim is to build a club and a team capable of sustaining itself and punching above its weight in Europe as the likes of Ajax and Porto have done previously, how then do we achieve that. It seems blindingly obvious that if this reconstruction requires serious financial muscle and Rangers rely heavily on the Champions League fortunes to prop up our balance sheet that our long term target must be made up of series of short term successes. Winning the SPL title year-on-year (as much as that is possible) and securing passage to the CL group stages must be the cornerstones, the pillars of this strategy. Walter Smith may operate with a tried and trusted strategy, a pragmatic approach that many view as safety first. A potential 6 trophies in 3 full seasonâ��s in charge including likely back to back titles will allow us to firstly stabilise, and if success is built upon, strengthen our financial position and build towards a more exciting and profitable future. This idea that we must take several steps backwards to take a large step forward has never added up when analysed rationally. It makes far more sense to build from a position of sense. It is doubtful it is even possible to prepare for long term and greater success without these short term victories. Walter Smith may not be the man to lead the club towards this future vision, but when he hangs up his managerâ��s clipboard he will leave the club in a far stronger position for a forward thinking bright young manager, like a PLG, to realise the clubâ��s lofty ambitions.

That was a classic "shit Boyd" display today from Keane. Did fuck all but score a soft pen. And yet they were going overboard about him.

They only show the highlights!

Agreed, said a few times to my bro he's been poor. The young right back who is only in through injury, McCormack,looks to have been a bit over-awed on occasions too. Stokes also has disappointed at times. Lack of pace or quick thinking and suprised how profligate he was when played in behind considering how many goals he has scored for a provincial club.

Hibs - Celtic 0-0 at HT. Hibs passing has been slack at times but I think they've been the better team and had the better chances.

My thoughts too. CSKA are unlikely to progress against Inter imo (though still possible) whilst Lyon went top of their league yesterday I believe and are also unlikely to win the CL in any case.

I'm absolutely positive there was a lot of teeth gnashing at a supposed 4-2-4 with two wingers and two attackers.

Aberdeen and?

I remember being on these boards and others during Eck's reign and fans would routinely go nuts about Eck playing "4-2-4", having two central midfielders with 2 wide men either side and 2 strikers. Fans would go nuts and wonder why we got over run in midfield with only 2 "proper" midfielders. Now people are complaining because we often play with 3 proper midfielders; 2 central, Davis wide right and cutting in and a wide/attacking man on the left. And people are going nuts again. Many fans on here and FF in particular that I view are crying out for this so-called "4-2-4" formation that everyone hated under Eck. Now granted it may not be the same people, but law of averages with the number of people now requesting that formation seems we have a lot of hypocrites in our midst.

Are we at Ibrox or up at there shit tip? Always a struggle up there. Though as rbr (iirc) pointed out on the match thread, even draws are good for us. 7 games. 2 wins 3 draws and 2 defeats is even enough. And that's assuming the mhankies win 7 out of 7.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em4PTFVWbBs]YouTube- Alan_Hansen.MPG[/ame]

3 wins or 9 points. Anyone still think it's not over? Sounds like a plump lady clearing her throat. :spl:

Might have been a good post but for the PLG nonsense.

Sacked Calderwood apparently because of cup results against wee teams. McGhee has got a worse league record and an equally poor cup record.

I doubt that! Only kidding, hence the smiley. There will of course be post split games.

Fair do's. I think because I can't do anything much technically I don't understand who can do what.

Cheers mate. Didn't know you could do that.

Write article, PM to Frankie or other admin (Frankie probably best). Or when Frankie sees this he'll no doubt give you access to the writer's forum (I can't do this, dunno if other mod/admin can) where you can post it in there before it gets posted live. Third option, write it and post it as a new thread in this forum and it can then be uploaded to the main site.

Jumping the gun on 3 points maybe (though I think I said hopefully) but not jumping the gun on the title and no one will persuade me otherwise. :spl: Remember it's only 4 wins if they win every single fixture til the end of the year. A team who haven't won more than 3 in a row all season have to win 8 on the spin!