DMAA

Not surprising to me to hear Bates was offered deals by several clubs in England and Hamburg wasn't even his highest offer. Annoying to hear Rangers say they "couldn't" match the offer when they really "wouldn't" because they took him for granted.

Also they make these... I used to wear them all the time

I like Hummel's distinctive design, can't go wrong with it. £5m in a year sounds fanciful to me if Celtic are only getting £6m a year. We need to do a lot better in Europe to get decent money for these deals.

I think Alves suffers from the same thing Barton did to an extent. High expectations mean they can't do anything right for some people, when they both suffered from playing in a poor team for managers who weren't up to it.

Disappointing from Miller and Wallace, especially Wallace because he still had a contribution to make. On the other hand this guarantees Miller won't get a new contract which is good and Wallace's wages can be used to sign a younger, hungrier player who will make the club money and stay injury free. It's safe to assume from the story that they crossed the lines so no matter how poor the performance was the board had no choice.

Does it really make that much of a difference to all that to swap an attacking midfielder for a striker? (e.g. Windass for Cummings I can definitely see that Murphy isn't your ideal left midfielder in a 4-4-2 and Dorrans not your ideal centre mid because both are probably more suited to more attacking roles.

Exactly. I think Murty has made a huge mistake by sticking with 1 up front. Both players could thrive alongside each other. I hate it when there's a consensus that we "lost the midfield battle" so we just need to "flood the midfield" to counter Celtic/Hibs/Kilmarnock. It's nonsense, we're not Ross County for crying out loud we shouldn't be afraid to have two strikers right on top of the opposition centre backs like others have done to us.

He's a bigger name but Preud-homme's record is far more impressive. He has repeated success at every club he's been to. He certainly seems less of a gamble than de Boer right now and I think we've done enough gambling lately.

The only manager we've been linked to who has had me excited is Michel Preud'homme. That's purely from his record according to Wikipedia, but I wonder where we'd be today if we'd given him the job when he apparently applied for it before we gave it to Murty. Time to drop the nativism and judge merit only.

I'm sounding like a broken record, but if he was paired with Cummings he'd look a lot better. 4-4-2 would bring out the best of him because there would be less pressure on him to score. He'd get a lot of assists and probably score more too.

What a negative approach to the game to go with a flat 5 in midfield. Especially after Motherwell destroying Aberdeen showing the difference it makes to have two strikers. Celtic’s weakest position is defence yet we focus the game in their strongest position in midfield. I think Motherwell will give their centre backs a lot to think about and it will be a rebuke to Murty.

He was 19 then, that's not the same. I'm saying to replace him directly now in terms of quality and age would be difficult and probably cost about that. I used Cardoso as an example of what the market price can be for average centre backs.

Nobody is doing that, we're just expressing disappointment at what is a disappointing developement. We already needed a £2m+ centre back brought in in my opinion to compete with Bates and McCrorie with Cardoso and Alves leaving ideally to free up wages. With Bates leaving it looks to me like our money is going to be spread more thinly signing a couple of centre backs which is a bad thing, we need quality for next season and not quantity.

I don't understand this talk of risk. We're talking about a player who even at 21 was outperforming and starting ahead of his higher paid colleagues, and in terms of finances we're talking about peanuts. The risk is in spending a substantial transfer fee and at least £7,500 for an adequate replacement. Given this is the club who spent £1.3m and £20k in wages on Fabio Cardoso last summer I would consider that very risky.

What people aren't taking into account is that we have limited transfer funds available this summer, and even just to find a replacement for Bates of the same quality and age would probably cost about £1m in today's market (Cardoso was £1.3m remember and he is a few years older). Which makes laying down a red line over a few grand extra a week sound short sighted.

I’m amazed at how difficult our fans are to please sometimes. It seems every player is held to an unattainably high standard. Unless Bates demanded a guarantee of being in starting 11 (v unlikely) we’ve let ourselves down here. A young Scottish player who is very good at what matters as a centre back. Very disappointed to hear we’ve lost him for nothing.

Money almost always buys success in football. Without an outstanding manager our chances of stopping Celtic in the next few years are very slim. Even assuming we made a great start to the season and were top at January, Celtic would sanction a spending spree and pretty much guarantee it didn't happen. We've been pretty lucky they've been generally pretty frugal this season, and made a bad decision to spend big on overrated loan player who can't even make the team. All that's done is made the gap between our squads artificially small, it doesn't represent the gap between our bank balances.

I don't think Rangers is a safe enough job for Frank de Boer right now. It's the opposite of safe in every way. A board with a poor reputation, 5 managers in the space of a few years, an impatient support and a small chance of winning the league any time soon. The mismatch in ours and Celtic's finances has made the job a very hard sell in my opinion.

Yeh I don't understand why clubs are complaining about the unavoidable. How was anyone to know Kilmarnock would finish top 6 this season? And Hearts weren't exactly looking top 6 material at the beginning of the season either. Why are they complaining as if this is brand new and no other club has had to do this before, am I missing something?

The only game Celtic need to win is at home to us. Are they really going to overexert themselves against Hibs and Aberdeen knowing the advantage they would give them against us if they slipped up? Especially at a time of the season when youth players are often given a run out. Murty really needs to make the quality in the squad count now.

This run in will tell us a lot about what this team (and manager) are made of. With the danger of finishing a humiliating 4th I'm not sure I can watch from here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/43728201 Title decider at Parkhead is a real possibility now. A motiviated Hibs stand a good chance at home against an unmotivated Celtic. A very tough run of fixtures for us now. The remaing few games will show what this team (and Murty) are really made of. Lets hope we'll all be surprised. I'm not relishing away games to Celtic, Hibs and Aberdeen at the moment.

It would make him a hero if they won the title against us. It makes it an event that goes down in history and that's why he wants it. It will instead be a very underwhelming title win, won by the incompetence of the competition as much as anything else. Quite incredibly after last season, Celtic were actually there for the taking this season and it's a crime that we couldn't run them closer or even take advantage.

Good on him for wanting to keep playing and I think the vast majority of Rangers fans would give him a big thanks for his time with the club and wish him well, but let's hope it's with Kilmarnock or Hearts. We need a leaner, higher quality and higher potential squad. Miller is fine but he's not a player who's going to help us catch Celtic next season and he's one of many who should make way at the close of the season so we can sign a few quality players, and leave space on the bench for at least a couple of youth players (for example Middleton). Miller and Herrera on the bench means no chance for those young guys to come through and Celtic have been far more successful than us at doing that and are reaping the benefits.

Why would Dundee make up a lie about a bid and then name the club. There's no reason to doubt they're telling the truth, just as there was no reason for everyone to think Rangers were lying about the Morelos bids. I haven't seen him play, but it sounds like he's finding his feet and bigger clubs than Dundee are looking at him. As someone has said, I guess we'll see on Saturday. On a related point, I'd seen a suggestion Cedric Kipre would be a good signing with him getting in to the Ivory Coast side. On paper that sounds all right, he's a 6 foot 4 bruiser who's now an Ivory Coast international aged 21. But having seen the Motherwell Aberdeen highlights from the other night I've no idea how he made any international squad!