Walterbear

You may be correct Darther I don’t know Stephen Dornan but there is a chap on followfollow (cuttyyoung) who claims he does support Celtic. There may be 2 Dornans in the area who dislike us. Their meetings minutes refer to the Ibrox Football Club in places (odd they don’t know the name of the club whose stadium towers over the place and is bang in the middle of it, and Cllr Dornan seems to be interested in the Orange Order (or rather blaming it for lack of use of a local park). I’m not an OO fan or detractor btw - I genuinely know little about it. I just think its it’s odd that the trial day was not approved on the basis of the facility being used for youth football, when its only been booked 3 times in a year for a total of 6 hours to coincide with Saturday home games (which is the time being requested by Rangers). Rangers also provide coaching to the community as far as I understand. I think its odd that amongst reasons given were to not encourage burgers and chips. Well in that case just shut Glasgow down. Funnily enough I get the concerns local residents have with match day parking far more than I get concerns about this fan zone. At least I can see the obvious impact cars have on a local community. I would bet a pound to a penny Cllr Dornan was part of the lengthy discussion at the meeting of the CC when actually it is supposed to be a community councils meeting which is apolitical. If he is offering technical advice on procedure fair enough but I think the whole thing stinks.

It would be the same 50,000 folk who were attending anyway on a Saturday and this fan zone was initially for a trial period. If you read the previous minutes from May and before there was no inkling there would be a problem so something has happened in a relatively short period to influence the community council. I fully understand why residents may not want this and that is fine but in the much publicised Susan Aitken letters said she had acted on information from the community council AND Stephen Dornan. She may of course consult with Dorman but the role of Stephen Dornan in what is supposed to be a residents decision is worthy of challenge given he is a relatively high profile Celtic supporter. It all seems a shambolic way to do it imo. If a few Rangers bars had emptied that night and popped along to the meeting the vote would have gone through.

Here are the 20th June minutes. Note Stephen Dornan is in attendance and vote was a show of residents hands. Much discussion and objection so not beyond the realms of possibility that the local council have been heavily influenced by arguments from Rangers hating Dornan and the ‘residents show of hands’ included folk who might not normally attend, knowing what was to be discussed and how the vote would be constituted. Speculation I know but a good chance this was a decision influenced by a few Rangers haters as the other argument in respect of facility usage does not stand up to scrutiny. Local Rangers fans should get along to these meetings as they can change things directly. The community council is supposed to be apolitical btw. http://ibroxcessnockcc.weebly.com/minutes

Yup. At some point we really do need to lose the fear we have in these games.

Agree with that Tannoch and winning these games is vital to build momentum and self belief. I don’t think we can understate the effort expended in EL qualification and that pre-season got us through it and the mgt and team deserve massive credit. It’s right to make a further assessment after the run of games you refer to. At the moment it really has to be a thumbs up to the achievements so far and for the fans to play a continuing part in that. Celtic’s defence would not have withstood the pressure that we have been under so Im confident our back 5 is better than theirs. The real difference is the middle of the park and we have some decent players who I think just need that one star player to make everyone play better. I don’t see that player anywhere in the current squad tbh. I’m fairly confident we can match their attack out wide and in front of goal although yesterday we saw again (twice) the rash shooting from narrow angles when other players were in better positions. That has been going on for a couple of seasons now and needs trained out of Morelos in particular.

Agree with most of that. You beat Celtic by pressing them and it’s been proved by a few home and foreign teams who are not world beaters. Had we done that yesterday we could have been in the end of a thrashing as Thu would have taken its toll and I’m sure damage limitation was on the minds of our tacticians. Given all the circumstances of injury, Europe, the fixture schedule and still lacking a bit of quality which will be remedied over time I am very confident that yesterday is the widest the gap we will see and it will narrow quite quickly. It was was a blessing that game was at Porkheid because had we lost at Ibrox with the handicaps of the fixture list etc it would have been far more difficult to retrieve the 3 points - which I suspect we can do in December at our place.

But they have been gunning us at Hampden, porkheid, and Ibrox when we have had big supports. I think today it was confirmed that despite obvious progress we have a good bit to go. Decent European teams go there with small supports and do better than we did today.

Agree 100%. Coulibally would have made a difference giving others space and our Albanian will help but quality midfielder needs to be in the pipeline. We just qualified for EL and disappointing as this performance was there are reasons to be optimistic we can add to the EL story, win a trophy and build a platform for next year and a real go at the title. We are only 4 points off them which you might expect visiting their place first. The break has come at a good time for us it’s been a strenuous effort so far and the 9 guys who survived the UFA game must have been tired. I’m confident Gerrard and his team know what is required. Win our next 2 league games and the feel good factor should return.

But the question is “what problem are we trying to fix” and then think out the box about solutions. Withholding licence fees is a blunt tool unlikely to be successful and should they give in you just end up with an organisation (BBC) that is in any event becoming less relevant in terms of Scottish fitba. The problem is they are biased but the answer lies in whether we need them at all and how do we replace their negativity with positivity. How do we exploit RTV more for example We need bright people who are digitally very aware, a loyal and expandable customer base across the world and a bit of cash. We don’t actually need BBC Scotland who invest pennies in our game and quite frankly hate our club.

She’s a steady career petson been there a while but nothing special and reasonably well liked and capable. She isn’t the problem as far as I understand and which started well before her and above her and has got out of control (I know for a fact). A lot of the issues now are at the editing and production level but they started with a tacit approval of bias and support of bias at a much higher level and became ingrained in the organisation especially after the events of 2012. It’s not just Tims who hate us. She will be a lot more worried about the inevitable crash of the under budgeted new TV channel than about Rangers. The culture is very anti-Rangers amongst contract staff and independent producers as well as BBC employees. Replacing the people who resent the existence of Rangers will take a long time. By then BBC Sportsound in terms of football will be irrelevant but we are talking years imo. Rangers have the solution in their own hands with the advent of digital mobile technology. BBC are good at that as well but it is a game changer and we need folk in our club who can exploit it. In some respects exploiting this will be as important as improvements on the park and should complement and enhance the Gerrard revolution.

You write and sound like John James mate. No other genuine Rangers fan would expend your word count on negativity tonight.

Yes for me. I’m glad this game is at their place rather than ours as losing 3 points at home would be more difficult.

I would show him the videos, explain what he did, ask him what was going through his head, involve his mum and dad to explain to him that his behaviour was jeapordising his career and I’d give him another chance. I’d also expect him to apologise to the rest of the team on his own volition. But I wouldn’t do anything until next week. I’d put him on the bench for the scum and give him 15 minutes.

Aye but that’s for tomorrow. Best lesson for Morelos is to celebrate what the 9 and 10 achieved. He needs t he left in no uncertain terms. Today isn’t about him and he needs to reflect on that. In in the meantime raise a glass to Goldson and the rest who defended like like Stalingrad. !

Lot of this down to the training in Spain. SG and co saw the problems immediately and have made up in just over a month for the disaster of Pedro et al.

Don’t think I’ve ever been prouder of our team given the stakes and where we’ve come from. 4 qualifying rounds in Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia and Russia with 9 men. I genuinely feel that so long as the money men can keep us good that we are finally, finally back. We’ve had better teams but what a platform SG and his team have created in virtually no time and well done Dave King for what is looking like a master stroke. I’m really confident with the likes of Barisic and others we will get out of a EL group. Brilliant feeling tonight. Christ I’ve got to say sober but how can I do that now!

We need more or less a 4-5 formation or a 5-4. Even with Morelas we weren’t holding the ball up front on this pitch and against what looks like a decent defence on their own pitch. This is going to be hellish for next 45+

If Morelos costs us this match he will find it difficult going forward with Rangers. Unbelievably stupid and irresponsible and putting pressure on his team mates manager. Raging.

That team is good enough to score imo. Hope we don’t sit deep.

9 hours there and back JFK.

On approach to landing so that’s a 5 hour trip. Not too bad - not even to Alicante and back. Not sure jet lag will be much of an issue over 4 hours either. That’s one concern removed.

https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/9037730 BRO37A passed st Petersburg an hour ago. FlightRadar24. Hope the Zenit boss was flushed on ? It should be there on schedule. My lovely other half half is getting concerned about me since SG arrived. (Over Vologda now on the trail of a Frankfurt to Beijing flight. )

The real reason is it’s full of Rangers hating folk at the highest level and has been for a long time and there is influence with certain ministers. There is only one answer and that is put the ball in the net.

He didn’t punch him, knee him or use excessive force or brutality off the ball. Case closed.

Thing that worries me about UFA is their size. Couple of big lads up front and we did poorly on set pieces at Motherwell. I might be wrong but they didn’t look like the type of team to cause problems outside the sort of tactics the Russian national team played. Convinced if we score we are through. Plastic pitch a bit of a worry but we did OK at Killie (albeit) UFA are better than them. We need to be a lot braver than we were against Motherwell in terms of controlling the ball and playing further up the pitch. If we sit in we will lose. If we are brave we will score.