bmck

Everyone waits on players these days.

I'm surprised rbr. You're normally the most level head! It seems like it's a case of "heads you win, tails you lose" for the new manager and owners. Things will always go public now, as it cranks up the pressure on the buying club. If we try and keep something hush, then they will be accused of keeping the fans in the dark while being asked to shell out money on season tickets. If a journalist gets a whiff (as they will inevitably do because of agents) then Ally would be forced to lie at a press conference, which he just can't do. It's like the fans are falling directly into the trap set for them in favour of the selling clubs and agents. And Of those players, we offered several as high as our wage structure will allow, and they turned us down - nothing you can do about that. Miller was at an inflated price, and would have had no sell on value. Ortiz , Goian , Wallace we got, and the other two may still work out. Honestly, getting a player is the definition of a zero sum game - if you don't win, you lose, and whoever wins or loses does so directly proportionate to the loss/gain on the other side. The same is true for what price you sell or buy at - the more pressure the fans put on out of embarrasment, the weaker hand you have in transfer dealings. I'm honestly baffled. Would you have paid a few million for Miller, or broke our wage structure for someone like Conway or Hemed or Danns? We have succesfully struck a deal for Cuellar, we're just waiting on him. We can't force him. We're trying to get value for money, and that means bidding what you can afford and being prepared to walk away. If that means fans with a weaker constitution get all embarrased on the club's behalf, so be it, for me.

And got him for half the asking price. Maybe he thinks it is, and many fans share this opinion (or did until they got embarrased we hadn't signed him), maybe he was trying to force their hand. Who knows. I'll go for 'negotiations'. Everyone's entitled to their opinions. I think he's being responsible. I'd rather this than pay anyone anything they asked and end up back in the financial rut.

Every Rangers manager needs to compete straight away. There's no doubt about that. I'll be happy as long as we're competing this year, but he would have to win next year. Sad as it is, that's the nature of the beast. You don't get far chopping and changing managers.

It's hardly amateurish to try and get a good deal. It can't always work. And all this "we could have got him for cheaper earlier" is conjecture. What we hear in the media is all part of the circus of negotiations, not the truth. We can't have known what we would have got him for, have no knowledge of whether they would have procrastinated to allow other clubs to bid, whether another club would have immediately outbid us etc. The only time we'll be able to see how well we've done in the transfer market will be when it has closed, and we look at who we have and how much we paid for them. We already have our best players signed up on long contracts, have brought in Lee Wallace for 1.5 million below the just-give-them-how-much-they-want fee, and Ortiz and Goian have came in for under a million between them - on first impressions, they seem fair value for that money. Patience!

We aren't asking for donations! But maybe you should be... CONGRATS!

I'll do it if it hasn't been done by the time I get back

Don't think it really matters if sites ask for donations or not - don't really understand the consternation. We're in a happy position not to need or want, but there have been other sites I've enjoyed using the service they provided, and they didn't make any money, and I was happy to donate. Each to their own - it's not a cheap business.

I think this would be good in a number of ways. Ortiz seems conscientious in tracking back which may palliate Whittaker's defensive frailties. It would give us two genuine winger types, which I think is a necessity when you don't have a lives-to-make-killer-passes midfielder. It would also some inject som craft into the middle of the park where it's needed.

Totally agree with that Danny.

Like it or not, this the typical kneejerk reaction that Ally's got to endure this season. No matter how far from sensible it is, Ally's going to have to prevail over the attitudes of fans - the irrational huge demand at Rangers is something he is going to have to thrive under. He's going to have to develop a Walter Smith like disregard for opinion - and Ally is so used to being loved. I'd like it if we somehow collectively managed to give him a chance without shotgun criticism aimed at everything and anything without a moment's pause. No surrender - aye right. We're often quicker to surrender than the players we are criticising.

I was actually pretty impressed with Wallace. He looked pacey and direct and comfortable on the ball. At the moment I'd rather have him in the team than the really slow Papac.

Agreed. Ortiz was happy to feed Wallace with every intelligent forward run he made. If he done this more often - or there was more general movement in the team - I reckon he could be pretty effective there. He can cut inside - with all those options - and Wallace can give him a by-line option and a natural left foot.

He seems like the perfect other midfielder in an attacking side - the less glamorous one whose passes work and makes quietly effective use of the ball for someone making intelligent forward runs. We don't have that other player though.

I've got split feelings on this. I think it would be interesting to compare the average length of our passes with theirs - I imagine ours would be much bigger. I remember when I watched the world cup when I was wee I heard a brazillian coach say "we always move sufficiently to give the man on the ball two simple options". To my ten year old brain this was like an epiphany that has never really left (though it took my at least half an hour to work out that this was never going to work with the two versus two games we had going in the back lane). However, as much as I believe in this - and as much as I believe ninety nine percent of our problems stem from a lack of movement, and have done for some time, a lot of it also comes down to just natural rhythm. When the confidence is up, the players have shown they can do this (like at the end of last season) and that it's effective in the SPL. It also comes down to fitness - we were at our most fit at the end of last season, and it's no surprise it started then. That said, we don't systematically build it into our play like they do on the continent - if it happens, it happens. Despite our lack of doing this we've punched above our weight in Europe, and that's because our own system, if not as pretty, can be effective. Last night it just all went wrong.

Not wanting to rain on the misery parade (though maybe that'd be appropriate) but look back to Lennon's first few games in which entirely the same thing happened, and we were rejoicing (sort of). McCoist doesn't have great options, and has been caught out first by a decent Hearts side and then by a decent team midway through their season. While there are - as everyone has pointed out - clear and dodgy signs, it's not completely panic stations yet. McCoist didn't seem very animated and somewhat resigned - that worries me most. Knowing what to say to the press and what to say to the players is a different skill. Here's hoping he has it.

It's been two minutes since we won the league man!

Seems like those nights where we could keep playing for another few hours and never score.

Picked a bad day to give up sniffing glue.

Aye, or that.

What can we really do to change things other than just play better?

Craig, there have been some server issues over the last few days. It's being looked into.

Hippogriffs don't exist.

We need a midfielder whose only purpose for breathing in this cruel world is the joy of opening up a defence.

One's essentially a private argument, and the other a public statement. That said, I was going off Leggo because I find it sometimes a bit too obsessive. But as someone pointed out, even if everything he says isn't to our particular tastes, he's someone making using of power and scope has available to him - which is more than most of us do. Very easy to wait for someone else to do something then offer a critique than actually do something yourself.