bmck

pete's right - these footballers have fragile enough egos; we need more people massaging them. the last thing we need is people expecting them to act like they're old enough to get on with the job they're assigned to. :D

same here, though i only got the "what the" out and it was in the back of the net!

cousin - about 40 yards out and pretty much at the touchline he was running the ball seemingly into the corner, away from caldwell (i think). he was keeping a hold of the ball shoulder to shoulder - round about ten yards from the touchline he took at touch goalwards. caldwel lunged; cousin got away. with the penalty area being flooded, instead of cutting it back he slotted it past boruc at the front post. miller - it looked like adam (i think) got brought down in the box, just at the left-hand corner, with his back to goal. ball fell out to thomson and he just swept it up quite high and across to the other side - it seemed to hang in the air for an eternity and as it dropped, km shaped up, quite like novo's last year, and rattled into the far post. mendes - after a period of pressure we got a corner. penalty box was stowed with humanity. corner played along the deck out to mendes about 30 yards out and in line with the near post. without even taking a touch he stuck his foot right through it - went through someone's legs and straight into the bottom corner. from the corner to the shot, the ball never went over two feet from corner spot to bottom corner of the goal. kenny miller 2 - broadfoot galloped down the right hand flank, as wide as is possible and right on the by-line. he swung the ball in with some venom, and boruc took it low and just dropped it at kenny miller's feet. time stood still. miller took two ridiculous touches and finally just stuck it away. that's from memory, though - i'm too excited to remember properly.

yes you may sir. i'll even join you: yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas. :D

damnit. your right. did misread you. bit excited the noo. :cheers:

how are you coping?

nonsense. a player should be professional whether they're getting a game or not.

if you think im abbrasive, you should check out my geneaology.

inflected languages are the new sex.

ach, i agree with you all really. think it's worth the debate though. will try the ol' advocatus diaboli approach later though.

whinging to papers = pointless. grabbing a hold of new media = fruitful. i'm not just saying i dislike the blunter approach, i'm saying it's a waste of time. i mean, if it's something you enjoy, then fair enough. i wouldn't waste my own time with it. the reason we've had someone from one of the tv channels, and papers, 'borrow' or court our opinions, is because new media is the only long term threat to the authority of newspapers. if people can get well written, insightful, free, articles from someone openly in love with the club, and they are online in work/at home everyday, then the very least newspapers will have to do is mirror the sentiments or they will simply be squeezed out of the market. i've set this up as an either/or because i think it is. i dont want or care if the newspapers print crap, because they don't get any of my money anyway. the sooner people do that the better. if people are stupid enough to buy stuff that insults them, then they deserve it. if they are then willing to waste their time essentially begging (which is all you can do after you've said "i wont buy your paper anymore" and they say "ok, we like your custom, but given that we earn millions, gtf") and not just investing their time in using and promoting the genuine alternatives then they'll get nowhere. frankie used the example of graham spiers about whom there was lots and lots of complaints. he ended up resigning/getting fired, and now writes for another newspaper, talks on the radio and is getting his own tv show. i'm not saying one approach is subtle; the other forceful. i'm not saying we just have two different tastes that each have their own virtues. i'm saying one is a complete waste of time.

UCF2008 posted the above in the other thread. my original rent-a-cause-reactionaries comment was about their general make-everyone-love-us philosophy. their persecution complex and immediate support for anything, no matter how contradictory, to maintain their romantic rebels image. that being said, i do think his point is worth a debate. recent times have seen ranting as never before. its seen protesting. a whole culture of complaining has developed - but i do think that there are also valid societal reasons for this (information culture/credit crunch/anxieties about pluralism) as well as good arguments for the fact that everything is not as well as it could be within ibrox (murray wants out/rangers fans consistently paying their money to be called bigots by all and sundry etc). that said, i think the anti-murray/anti-smith tone has just got rabid in recent times - a kind of rabid that can only happen on the faceless internet and in small groups. when it takes itself to real life (like the reported protest the other week) it falters. but, then, i begin to think it is all justified again - the protests seem to have spurred the new signings, and it took for mass protests etc for celtic to get turned around. so, all in all, have we become bitter tims?

no, as you anticipated you didnt interpret my words correctly. i just think lobbying newspapers is a waste of time. its not passivity, its pragmatics. i have better alternatives, and i use them. if more people do the same the papers will change. if not, they deserve everything they get (read).

442 Whittaker - Bougherra - Weir - Papac ----- davis ------- thomson -------------Mendes ------ Lafferty ------ Boyd ------- Novo/Miller the midfield quartet would be quite fluid, and whittaker could overlap. miller/novo could stretch them, boyd could do heehaw until it falls onto his toe and he stabs it into the net.

it's said in jest, but i do think the management structure at rangers do think we haven't fundamentally changed as a support in recent times. all walter smith's comments about miller/manchester seem to presuppose the support has pretty much the same attitudes as they did under his first spell, and i think murray thinks approximately the same. but there is a New Rangers fan, i think, and at the club they'd do well to recognise and defend it rigidly. in time it'll become a more wholesale model for what is expected. i'm glad we're not petty-rent-a-cause-reactionaries like the tims: i'd rather be considered the big bad establishment club. "no-one likes us; we dont care" is a good enough attitude for our day. i think, as a culture, we're getting sick of weakness and the romantic image of the rebel - we're becoming less pluralistic, and less scared to offend. so long as we get rid of the bigotry, leave in stuff that cant possibly be considered bigotry, i think there's an attitude and a basis for an attitude that the club could get behind and endorse as appropriate for our times. i just think walter smith/murray just aren't uptodate at all on what the supporters are like and are hence more likely to fold to the inaccurate picture in the media. so, aye - the club could do with reading places like this. there's not a bigot here, but there's no faux-cuddly-cuddly-everyone-be-our-pal-please pish either like those jolly liberal and confused celtic supporters that the media is attracted to because they reflect their own bias.

it's good to have an objective record of these things, so the next time the tims moan about being hard done by, you can just point there and say "no!" simultaneously. i do think they are just crap though.

personally i just dont care. i dont think websites should be lobbyists at all. websites should stick to what they are good at - discussing what's going on and changing the news-reading market rather than lobbying the news-making companies. i'm quite sure, going by some of the stuff that's read, and understanding how capitalism works, that the major newspapers read forums like this one to get at their target audience. gersnet and websites like it have more power in setting up an alternative to shoddy journalism than lobbying for it to regulate itself. the interaction and large scale opinion that websites can influence will itself force newspapers to realign themselves with their increasingly discerning market. i dont think we should ask them to change. if we continue to get as good information online, written by rangers fans, as we do from their papers, and that this trend increases as it now is, newspapers will be forced to change. newspapers have to adopt to the tastes and prejudices of its readership - they are a reflection of us. as it stands enough people are willing to buy and read this kind of journalism and until that changes no amount of individual lobbying will work. simply by doing what we naturally do the media landscape changes; not with confusing our take on rangers with that of a supporters organisation or lobby group.

fine piece of writing. do you mind if we stick it on the main site?

i was helping out at a cycle run thing on saturday and was getting text updates on game from a mate. he said it was clearly onside; never thought it'd be *this* clearly onside. feck.sake.

LOL! welcome aboard!

right, another thread of abuse for me. i was trying to fix something and broke everything again. not slept in a while, going to go sleep my lunch hour now. i promise i wont try to fix anything ever again, or at least until i'm awake enough to do it competently. :admin: it was only an hour though, i'm sure all your employers will be pleased. sorry again.

i think it's a bit harsh. he probably just had some painintheass journalist in front of him, and he just said what he thought they wanted to hear. he's only a lad.

agreed - though experience is not the same as pensionable. i think davie weir has been one of our better signings but we need to start building a defense that'll be playing together for a considerable period of time. there's experience in individuals and experience of defences as a whole. i think we need both.

that's just the same as saying "let's not talk about this, but i'm right". gersave seems like an obviously good idea (if done properly) but it'd be good to hear another perspective.

cheers m8. i'll give it a read through this afternoon.