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I think that wee guy with the megaphone in the front of the Broomloan stand could do with being replaced tbh. We need to hear songs about Rangers. Songs about football. Not songs about Bobby Sands. Yes it was funny 35 years ago but no joke stays funny that long..

I'm 40. When I was at school (a proddy one before anyone asks..) you only saw folk like teachers wearing a poppy, and then only in November. My 2 grandfathers both served in world war 2. I can't remember either one ever wearing a poppy, and my mums dad in particular was right into his army reunions & stuff. Now we have Rangers scarfs on sale all year round with the poppy, and every club in the country (bar one) has them on their strips come November. That's fine, but does it mean folk today are more patriotic or care more about our war dead than my grandad's generation did? Don't make me laugh!!

Great article. How old is Naismith? Prior to the Progres debacle I would have said No, mainly because I doubted he was still any good (eg. he's not had any Scotland caps for a few seasons). However I was kidding myself on. He simply can't be any worse than Waghorn, Morelos and Herrera, and Kenny Miller is obviously finished. We desperately need a cutting edge up front or we'll struggle to finish in the top 4 imo, so we simply must get him & Walker from Hearts in. Whatever the cost! Also the line about 'there has been no clarity over what Charles Green did with the money' deserves some kind of award as understatement of the year!

Maybe another orchestrated boycott is required. A bit difficult with the BBC though, as they do not have to worry about subscriber numbers dropping..

Significant, though. There is no way these guys had a change of heart. They have been forced into this embarrassing climbdown, either because their bosses had a moral objection to this kind of harassment, or more likely because the boycott is hurting them financially. These sites depend on clicks more than paper sales nowadays, and they simply cannot afford to ignore such a large and now well organised section of society. Well done to all involved!

I can't get my head round this mentality that somehow ex-Rangers men like McInnes, McLeish & Walter Smith somehow aren't as good as a coach nobody has ever heard of. Remember when Smith took over from Le Guen? In his first game back we beat Dundee Utd 5-0. He turned us around in one game. That is what good managers do! I can only think it is some kind of snobbery that is preventing us going for Derek McInnes or Tommy Wright. These guys would understand that Rangers need to win every game - not use huge games (Celtic & Progres) as training exercises. It's not acceptable. Fair enough if we could attract top players like Advocaat did but those days are gone. We need a boss who knows the Scottish league, because that is what we're trying to win. McInnes has his Aberdeen team outperforming us at home and in Europe on maybe a quarter of the budget? If his team continue to outperform us this season, then he has more than proved he'd do a better job than the Portuguese fraud!!

Le Guen had a good pedigree - 3 Ligue 1 titles in a row - however Miller had a cheek considering PC gave him a new contract. It depresses me how players get to pick the manager these days but it happens everywhere. It was a huge mistake to only give them 2 weeks off though. Backfired in every way possible.

This is Ned behaviour and I'll explain how it works. The first wee guy does it and it is funny. However nearby neds then have to kick the arse out of it by all copying the first guy, so it then becomes boring. The next step (which didn't happen at Ibrox) often involves the bed desire to go one better than their mates, so chuck a coin, a lighter, a Buckfast bottle.. next thing they're on the park, etc! It was a bit like the Hibs fans at the Cup final. Fair enough they hadn't won it for 100 years, so thousands run on to celebrate. Once on the pitch they don't know what to do next, so one says something cheeky to a Rangers player. Then another Ned has to take the next step to look big in front of an audience so Lee Wallace is getting punched. Most Hibs fans just wanted to celebrate, but their being on the pitch in the first place enables total knob ends to attack players, because they sure as hell wouldn't have the balls to assault our players if they weren't in a mob already. You have to nip any neddy behaviour in the bud right away because it will get out of hand, even if it doesn't start out that way.

If you add in player salaries, then we must have easily spent over £10million this summer. And so we should be. I scoffed at the idea Aberdeen would finish above us last year but they did by some margin. So I won't be writing them off this year. Hibs, Hearts & St Johnstone won't be far away from us either. Hopefully all will be closer to Celtic than last season.

Don't want to panic too much - st Johnstone actually are a decent team by Spfl standards. Any Rangers team could get beat 1-0 by st. Johnstone. However, the worry is we aren't scoring goals or creating chances again and it shows it was a mistake to sell Barrie McKay as we don't have a decent winger to replace him. I still think Caixinha is signing better players than Warburton did, but we are still a few short. To sum up, if PC survived the 2 worst results in our history then I doubt he is getting sacked for a narrow defeat in a training ground exercise..

We all know the anti-royalist celtic fc have celebrity fans who were only too happy to bend the knee to Her Majesty and accept a knighthood - Sir Billy, Sir Rod and Sir Jimmy to name but 3. My old man is asking about Rangers fans who received the honour, but I'm struggling to come up with names. Can anybody think of any? And David Murray doesn't count..

If "title stripping" had been imposed on us in 2012, in return for us keeping our SPL status, then celtic wouldn't be on course for 10 in a row now, and we wouldn't even be playing teams from Luxembourg in competitive games in June, let alone getting beat by them! Rangers have been punished enough for not paying this tax debt. Demoted 3 divisions, fined £250,000 and losing out about £100million over 5 years in terms of lost players, lost gate money, TV & Prize money - not to mention the "lost" merchandise money & share issue cash which were last seen heading in the direction of Messrs Ashley & Green.. In professional sport, paying high wages is not generally considered cheating, although it does give teams an advantage. Is it unfair that Barcelona can pay higher wages than Ross County? Probably, but most reasonable people understand that this is how professional sport works. Running up huge debts may seem unfair, but the fact is that there is always a longer term price to pay. We have paid a heavier price than most. However in Scottish football we are not dealing with reasonable people. We are dealing with rabid animals wound up into a blood-thirsty frenzy by the Scottish nationalist media. But looking back, if we had just chosen to bite the bullet and accept title stripping in 2012, would we be in a better place now than we are today??

Excellent statement, the best I have read in recent history. Almost Churchillian. Better than Dave King's statement imo, which was a bit rambling. This is cutting and contains no empty threats. Just promises!

For the last 5 years, the first I have heard about anything Rangers news related has been when a guy in my work - we'll call him "Tim" - has texted me. Every detail in every court case, every financial transaction and every tax demand has been instantly relayed to me, while I had been minding my own business doing my job. However this week has been very strange. A series of very significant Gers news events have happened - Ashley selling his shares, the new kit deal, new DoF, new signings.. Yet I have not had a single text off of Tim commenting. This is very out of character behaviour considering Tim's 24 hour Rangers obsession. I suspect now I might never hear from Tim again.. Has anybody seen or heard from Tim this week? Indeed if any other posters have been affected by missing Tim syndrome, then is there a helpline or something you can call if your Tim has gone missing..?

He has finally achieved great things this week, but he wants to give it a rest now. He will be back in SA so maybe won't see it, but this sort of talk makes Caixinha's job harder.

I'm just finding it odd that this new deal was concluded too late for a new strip launch this season. Is this Mike Ashley's parting shot? I don't know what SD will have done with last years stock but apparently it is already sold out. If SD don't supply us with any new strips, then how can we make any serious money until next year? Still, better than having to wait 4 years after that I suppose. We would never have been competitive again with no retail income & Ashley blocking a new share issue!

On another note, expect Norwich to be asking about £3million for Dorrans now they know we've got a bit of cash..

Whyte got off because Donald Findlay convinced the jury that David Murray knew full well from Day 1 who Craig Whyte was and what he was planning on doing. Far from "not providing any evidence," Findlay produced various documents which suggested Murray would have flogged us to anyone because he had carved up a deal with Lloyds Bank to keep his metals business if he did. Findlay showed that either Murray did know, or that they should have known - eg. a witness stated that no proper 'due diligence' was ever done on Whyte. That clearly casts reasonable doubt on the verdict on the charge that Whyte fraudulently misled David Murray - you can't defraud someone if they actually know what you're up to & benefitted from it themselves. Murray is now back in the Sunday Times rich list on the back of this "fraud." Posters should maybe have followed the trial. The acquittal of the fraud charge was no surprise at all, although how he got off the Companies Act charge I have no idea. But I wasn't in court. The jury were.

I think there has to be doubts. DF's summary seemed to be that AJ, Paul Murray and Dave King were supposed to be bringing in fresh investment/new owners to the club, and in that they failed. However you could wonder who exactly would ever have been willing to buy us with the big tax case hovering over the club at the time? More serious doubts in my mind though which came out at the trial, involve the contracts given to Martin Bain and Ally McCoist. The former was given a contract which required a 3-year pay-off, while Coisty was awarded a deal which included a £1million compensation clause if he was not appointed successor to Walter Smith as manager. AJ was chairman of the board at the time. More details on the Bain deal are available via this link, which I found somewhere else.. http://www.somersetcountygazette.co.uk/news/15269946.Rangers_trial___Club_acted_illegally_over%20_chief_executive_s_contract_/

I think our finances have improved a bit, to be fair. I think the prize money for finishing 3rd in SPL was about £1million more than winning Championship, plus we now have the realistic prospect of a couple of full houses at Ibrox in Europe, in a few weeks time. But yeah, there is no value for money in England. Basically we ended up playing the same team who had dome well to win the Championship. Only Clint Hill really came in and became a regular starter, yet it's not too optimistic to say that Alves is probably on the same wage as him, but 4 years younger and a higher level of player. Accrington Stanley players simply can never go straight into the Rangers first team, they would really need to prove themselves at a level in between (eg. English Championship/other SPL) before we should ever have been thinking about signing them.

Completely not having a go at the player, who I think would be outstanding if surrounded by more creative players, however.. have you ever read an article by a player where he says something like "naw he's my mate and all but he's never Rangers class in a million years..?" Although Foster does make some good points here about our midfield last season possibly making the defence look worse than it was. And the Keeper.. I mean how many goals did we lose from shots from the edge of the box?? Hopefully Jack will make an impact in that area.

Don't want to get done for contempt of court, but did nobody see Donald Findlay's summing up of his defence case in the Whyte trial? Let's just say it didn't paint AJ in a good light at all. Claim was that he was incompetent, no suggestion of any criminaltiy but still.. Incidentally I hope the club have 2 statements prepared for tomorrow, one for 'guilty' and another for innocent. Because if it's the latter, the proverbial is going to hit the fan again, but if it's the former, then we need to be ramming home a few points in the media!!

Good luck with refurbishing the toilets. Might annoy the 2 guys who sit behind me though, as they spend half the game in there (presumably) as every game they disappear after about 30 mins then return 10 mins into the 2nd half smelling of booze and obviously considerably more steaming than they were in the 1st half. Maybe it's them who are complaining about the bogs right enough as they spend more time in there than most..

Craig Houston was a good spokesman for the support, in my opinion. Can't remember him ever saying anything I didn't agree with, and too many others are content to say nothing at all. As for the point about the stick he and others get, how much of that is from genuine Rangers supporters? Because these fans message boards are literally teeming with obsessed fans of other clubs pretending to be Gers fans. Apart from this forum, of course..

When I say £10million that's including wages. International class players don't come cheap, even if they're Bosmans. Europe would only be a carrot if we get into group stages, which would be a bit of a miracle. Less likely than us winning the SPL I'd say.