DMAA

A bit of a strange one. He’s had a decent but not great scoring record in the 2nd and 3rd tier in Spain up until last season when he scored 32 aged 28/29. It’s worth noting that 8 of those were penalties, so 24 goals in 36 league games is a fairer reflection of his goal scoring ability in my opinion. Luca Toni was 26/27 in his breakout season in Serie B with Palermo when he scored 30 goals. Up until then his goal scoring record was very average. Of course the rest is history. However at 6 foot 4, 2 years younger and probably less penalties in his tally if any at all he arguably had much more potential than Mata today.

You’re overlooking his achievements because of his brand of football. The test for mediocrity is not how many trophies you’ve won, that is a very narrow minded way of looking at it. The test is what a manager has achieved, how successful he has been. Allardyce has delivered success in pretty much every post, often success which was well beyond the expectations of the board.

Great player but please let’s try and make our money work for us by signing younger players on a permanent basis.

It’s one thing for it to be an honour to player for Gerrard, it’s another thing to essentially pay about £2.5m out of your own pocket to do it. He is apparently on 70k a week and we would probably only offer about 20-25k.

I think it would certainly be inconceivable back then that Rangers could afford to hoover up the best of the rest of the league without even having to play them (Christie, Cifci, GMS, Allan, Hayes).

What difference did this make?

I’ve had a quick look at the transfers of the main Scottish clubs over the last number of years compared to the 90s and it does appear clubs had far more to spend back then. In the last few years clubs have spent next to nothing and when they sell players only a % of it goes into their budget. In the cases of Hibs and Dundee United they’ve run huge surpluses over the years. In the late 80s and 90s it seems the enormous budget inequality we know today wasn’t there, everyone was spending quite a lot of money (even before inflation) and not many were making money out of the transfer market. On that basis it seems it was definitely a tougher league back then.

I’ll be glad if Skrtel isn’t a target. Very contradictory reports though, there must have been a change in mind somewhere.

I think there are very few managers who have his ability to dramatically improve the fortunes of struggling sides, therefore he just can’t be called mediocre. However I agree his abilities don’t seem suited to being a top 6 team.

The other big reason why we should be limiting exposure to players this age

Geezo calm down, I just said I was bit gutted when I saw the picture. I was a big fan of his, he played a big role in the road to Manchester and played 150 times for us including 3 titles in a row. For me it added insult to injury.

They’re not exactly in the lookout for a manager who specialises in defence. He’s quality at what he does, he’s just not mediocre.

Holt is the only one who I like as a backup but centre mid is too crowded. He’s probably 5th choice which means he doesn’t even make the bench unless there are 1/2 injuries. That’s the job of a youth player IMO.

Assuming those two sign, and assuming we stick with the dreaded 4-3-2-1, our starting line-up currently looks like this IMO. Improved from back to front. Macgregor Tavernier Skrtel Alves John McCrorie Rossiter/Jack Wilson Arfield/Dorrans Murphy Morelos Next priorities are; Sell Halliday, Hodson, MOH, Herrera, Pena, Cardoso, Dodoo, Wallace, Holt, Wes and/or Jak, Forrester. BOGOF everything must go Sign a second quality striker (McBurnie?) Sign a young quality centre back (Goldson?) Sign a young winger who has pace and dribbling skills

He grew up a Jambo so he has no excuse.. After everything he achieved with Rangers he's really twisting the knife publicly parading his son at Parkhead in a Celtic kit.

Can’t wait to see how this team shapes up. What a difference to have a transfer window where the signings actually go straight into the starting line-up. This time last last year our loan signings were Dalcio and Nemane

I’m surprised at people’s negativity towards Murphy. Without him we’d have been blown away by Hibs, he got 3 assists and was instrumental in most of what went right. He’s also one of the only players we have who can dribble past his man, and he’s been better at this when he’s playing through the middle.

Pictured at parkhead at Brown’s testimonial with his son in full Celtic gear

Have to say I was a bit gutted about the Whittaker thing last night so It was good to see a lot of positive headlines this morning from the DR and ET.

No. He has bodyguard commitments with Erdogan that he can’t get out of. Erdogan knows he’s the only man for the job.

With McGregor in I’d like Alnwick and Wes off the wage bill tbh. Kelly is 22 and McCrorie is 20, what’s the point in having these guys at the club if we don’t even trust them to stand in on an odd occasion and play a few cup games at that age!?

Capturing Wilson & Skrtel would prove that he can attract a higher quality player to the club than would ever be possible under an ordinary manager, even an accomplished one like Walter Smith. Very excited to see who else he can attract if these are confirmed. Hoping the rumour regarding Goldson is true.

Claim from his agent in the paper is that he contacted the SFA for a ticket as a neutral and didn’t realise till he was there that it wasn’t a neutral area. He almost joined Motherwell in January apparently. He is dressed neutrally to be fair and if he had been celebrating you can guarantee there would be a video of it. Interesting that Rangers haven’t even bothered to contact him about the whole thing.

Watched that video a few days ago and this guy looks brilliant. As I’ve said I think we should use the loan market sparingly but he’s a perfect example of the kind of player we should be trying to loan. Someone who walks into the starting line-up.

It’s still very harsh to include Allardyce in this. He’s been a success at pretty much every club he’s been at bar Newcastle. And he’s proven time and time again that he is almost peerless when it comes to improving the defensive performance of his sides. He took over Blackburn, Sunderland, Crystal Palace, Sunderland and Everton half way through a season where all had struggled to keep a clean sheet and were in the relegation places. In each season he saved them and kept loads of clean sheets in the process. He also steered Blackburn, Everton and West Ham to top half finishes from those weak positions.