bmck

i have always liked buffel as a player - i always tend towards players with craft & imagination. that said, johnny is right. buffel has had plenty of chances with us, and the one constant in that time has been his lack of constancy. i would honestly rather see gow in that kind of role.

100% agreed.

alan gow was fantastic from the highlights. before we signed him he had the most assists in the league - and you can see why. even if for parts of the game he looked jaded, his craft had concrete results, twice setting up goals. he's exactly the sort of player we need in the final third. and he's only young - he's hardly going to be the finished article yet.

thats the bit that gets me. that is too much to take.

... Mail thinks we are PAYING Hutton to leave. No quotes, but I sincerely hope this isnt true.

the rst dinner i went to was great. count me in.

father ted's the only decent one in that lot. however, black books beats anything the yanks have done

im talking about turnover. we turnover at least as much as them, so it means at least as much money is flowing through the club: thats fans money, by and large. the english arent paying more for their product, there is just more of them paying it. when you compare what the average loyal rangers fan pays per year, and the same with an english team, there wont be much difference. i dont have to look at anything. if i am treated as a consumer i can just say, "whats better value for money, this product or that? what should i spend my money on, this or that?". it doesnt matter how the product came about - thats their problem, why should i care if they are doing a good job on their resources? i dont buy a car because the makers of it done jolly well to get anythign out at all - i just buy the one that represents the best value for money. thats why people in ireland support english teams instead of us or celtic. in the "supporting a football team" market, rangers are simply one club like any other. personally, i will always watch rangers when i have the money, not because someone has convinced me its good value for money, but because i am a rangers supporter. that being said, i am not convinced its good value for money just now. and perhaps those who have set up a funnel from their labour to the ibrox coffers, those who are the worst to be treated mainly as consumers, have genuine reasons to think that mismanagement has affected their product, has tarnished their subscription.

i think the problem is that over the last wee while we have been told that we are very much customers of the rangers brand. we are constantly told to buy this & buy that. we have a similar turn over to the bigger clubs in the big nations, and our 'product' is vastly inferior. that is, we spend as much money on rangers as, say, tottenham fans spend on tottenham, and we watch a inferior product. despite many rangers fans spending their last penny (i know one legendary bear who wrote to murray, on a recent price increase, to ask him if he would just like his wages & to give him back what he feels is right) they have, of late, watched dross. i can understand it when fans are constantly treated as subpar customers start to think about what it is to be a customer: what it is they are spending their money on. but, for me, despite what everythings been dragged down to in recent times, its not about value for money - if you want to get to a period of beautiful football, you have to support through the dreggs. at the end of the day, so long as rangers win, i couldnt care less. that being said, i couldnt afford a season ticket this year, so am not as out of pocket as some fans.

Would it be possible to have an Ibrox Youth Academy where general education is integral - like a completely self-contained footballing school - as has worked so succesfully for the likes of Ajax etc?

welcome ye sir.

great news! i love trains. they have just built a new train station at my bit too - it woudl be great if it went there direclty.

everythings ok at the server end m8, as far as i can see. i will keep an eye though

i thought it was well written too m8. :cheers:

we must surely have fulltime groundskeepers whose job it is to make sure this doesnt happen.

I agree with Wij - boy's that thing we seem to be lacking, a potential matchwinner. He's also skillful and industrious. A celtic supporter, though.

just to be clear, i was only interested in the idea that you should do something because its an honour, he probably is a twat. i dunno, never met/heard/seen him other than playing for liverpool. never even heard an interview.

i wouldnt sell him, but he does not seem to fit into walters plans.

i think its maybe just that too many people think its a footballers duty to live out their fantasies. they think "no matter what, i would love to play for my country, therefore he should too". but football is just a job like any other - if someone said "i dont want to play for my country, i would rather spend my time with the kids" i would completely respect that. its their life, they are the ones with the talent, they shouldnt make decisions based on what other people woudl do if they were lucky enough to be in their situation.

me. thats besides the point though - the argument is that he should not pick and choose when he wants to play for his country BECAUSE it is an honour. but it may just be that he thinks not getting fucked about is more important than the honour of playing for your country. in other words, you shouldnt necessarily bend over as soon as someone starts playing the national anthem and think of queen and country. as gribz said, most people will think of it as an honour, but that doesnt make it so. if he doesnt want to play its his decision, is what i mean.

its only an honour for people who think its an honour. if he doesnt really think of it as an honour then no amount of saying "but it really is" is going to make any difference, much less tellign him he should behave a certain way because of it. for instance, an obe is an honour, but someone who is a republican absolutely should pick and choose whether they accept it. just because someone calls something an honour doesnt mean a) it is, or b) a certain way of acting necessarily follows it.

i hate all this "playing for/serving your country is such an honour that you should take anything". if scotland, in any form, arsed me about, then scotland can gtf. he's under no obligation to play for his country.

i have been thinking about this. i pay a considerable sum for the use of the server - the service is very good, i have only been down for two weeks (these ones) in about 3-4 years. getting use of another server in a completely different location seems like overkill. the things that have been the most destructive downtimes have been domains not being renewed (and subsequently stolen) rather than anything to do with the server - and the problem that did occur (a corruption in a hard disk array so bad that it forced the physical rebuilding of the entire server and corrupted the backups) is very, very rare. so getting (buying) use of another server may be more than we need for this purpose -especially now that the thing that caused us the main problem in the past (domain renewing) isnt a problem anymore. however, calscot is right - from the end users point of view it simply doesnt matter why something has gone down, they can take their "custom" elsewhere, even if they would prefer be here were it available. i think some kind of information service is key. you cant be loyal to something that doesnt exist (no snipes about god please ). my current preferred option is setting up a free message board alternative and keeping a "to be used in case of emergency" mailing list of board members email address, provided no-one objects. s_a is right: a fair bit of time & indeed money is invested in this site for no (financial) reward, so members here get something as well as give something. i think so long as everyone pulls together when stuff goes wrong, even the mighty FF has had its problems in the past, we will continue to have a worthwhile forum. hopefully offering something a little different than other forums. as a sort of thankyou, sometime in the next month when i hopefully get better and back to work, i am going to set up yourname at gersnetonline.net webmail for regular forum punters, and a few other features i have been meaning to do but for unwellness. anyway, thanks again, and i will have more details on the backup service once i have worked out exactly the best way to do it.

calscot's back. yay. more posts to make chris' brain cry.

aye, but the opening post was just saying give because phil odonnel, whereas pete was saying give because its inherently worth it. the rest is just discussion.