A poor Rangers team?

[Super_Ally 0]

Since the end of the season 2002/03 we seem to have been in a continuous cycle of financial meltdown and rebuilding team the entire squad. I'd have happily taken a couple of bad seasons if I could see us finally bringing the club up to the 21st century and building a good squad. By now we should be very secure financially with a lower debt and already much further developed on other fronts. The only progress we've really made in these seasons is having a fairly decent SPL level side.

 

Agree totally with the sentiment that we should aspire to greater things. But I recently wrote an article on this. Please explain how a couple of bad seasons which will cripple our finances and potentially ruin us is somehow going to lead us to salvation? This was the bizarre argument of the PLG supporters that just doesn't stand up to even the mildest scrutiny.

[Totti 0]

By saying I'd take a couple of bad seasons, I mean I'd have taken a couple of seasons where we maybe focused on youth and new ideas and saved some cash. Focused more on matters off the park than those on them.

 

We basically should have completely gutted the club several seasons ago and started afresh. Instead, this is still to happen. Instead of dealing with what needed to be dealt with we have just dragged ourselves from season to season.

 

The entire club needs to basically redesign itself. Hopefully this will happen by default when new owners come in. I just hope they are a hell of a lot better at running a football club than SDM.

 

Walter was only meant to be here as a stop gap but he's still here?

 

We got rid of him in the 90's because it was agreed he didn't have the ability to take us any further. Talk about devolution.

Edited April 8, 2010 by Totti

[calscot 0]

What level should we be at?

 

What makes us think we deserve better than we have? I really can't see the logic.

 

Scotland is 16th in Europe and for good reason. If you look at the countries above us they have far bigger populations who are less fat and less lazy than ours, and with money coming from TV, are mainly relatively richer compared to their GNP.

 

Our peers whom we're fighting for 13th place with are all similar sized countries and generally no poorer than us, with arguably a healthier population. Why should the Scottish champs be any better than the champs of Switzerland, Belgium or Denmark?

 

We were shown up as "limited" in Europe by a top team from Germany, a top team from Spain and the champions of a highly ranked country who are above Portugal, Netherlands, Turkey and Greece. (And the Netherlands are usually used as a good example.)

 

What intrinsic quality do we have that should guarantee us to be better than that lot? What obvious advantage makes it a failure for us not to be easily beating those teams?

 

I really must be missing something.

 

Scotland used to be football crazy and most boys played for hours every day on the streets. We used to produce streams of great players that made us punch well above our weight in European football. Where are they now?

 

We also used to take a lead in coaching and tactics, meaning Scottish managers were well sought after. How about now?

 

We used to be one of the richest clubs in Europe due to one of the biggest average gates around and had an incredibly passionate support which was like having an extra man. With television money as it is, we are now the poor relations and our crowd has lost a lot of its passion.

 

Even with all the advantages we used to have, the Rangers norm in Europe has been "limited". We've get a reasonable run every few years and a good one once a decade - ironically the last one was a couple of seasons ago.

 

Add in the club's current financial plight, the lack of signings in the last 18 months, the small squad, the lack of Scottish talent, a poor league in the financial and sporting sense and people are wondering why we're not one of the top 8 teams in Europe?

 

People think a few notional changes can raise us so far that we can compete with and beat �£200M teams from richer leagues while there is no money in Scotland?

 

I really do want to know why people think that by doing stuff any other club can do, why it would make US a world beating team?

 

Fair enough, there is probably stuff the club could improve (although insulting to those who are there to suggest they are doing nothing or are all incompetent), but to expect a bit of scouting and a bit of very basic coaching to turn us into a club who can easily get to the latter stages of the Champions League is just ludicrous in my opinion.

 

There are just far too many odds stacked against us on a very uneven playing field, and some people need to wake up to that fact.

 

We're champions of Scotland against "poor opposition" for a reason. When you're all scraping from the same crap barrel, the cream still rises to the top. However, it's extremely difficult to change that barrel.

[Super_Ally 0]

By saying I'd take a couple of bad seasons, I mean I'd have taken a couple of seasons where we maybe focused on youth and new ideas and saved some cash. Focused more on matters off the park than those on them.

 

We basically should have completely gutted the club several seasons ago and started afresh. Instead, this is still to happen. Instead of dealing with what needed to be dealt with we have just dragged ourselves from season to season.

 

The entire club needs to basically redesign itself. Hopefully this will happen by default when new owners come in. I just hope they are a hell of a lot better at running a football club than SDM.

 

Walter was only meant to be here as a stop gap but he's still here?

 

We got rid of him in the 90's because it was agreed he didn't have the ability to take us any further. Talk about devolution.

 

How do we fund this evolution of the entire club without winning the league and getting the Champions League money?

[ascender 352]

The SPL is our bread and butter, so we must concentrate on that 100% at the moment, particularly with our finance problems. Going forward, I think the only way we can look to compete (whatever that means) in Europe and grow the playing side is by continuing to bring players through Auchenhowie while supplementing them with some older, more experienced guys like Davie Weir who are maybe coming to the end of their career. Add in the odd purchase in the 3M region of someone like Davis as well as the best of the other SPL players and you have the basis of a squad who are capable of winning the SPL each year.

 

Obviously this should be supplemented with an extensive scouting network for youth players covering the Eastern Hemisphere with a view to actually bringing them through to the first team instead of rotting in the reserves before being flogged on a few years later.

 

Having these younger players coming through, with a view to being sold on at some point after they've established themselves in the first team would also go some way to bringing revenue in.

 

Walter is already part of the way down the road to this model in terms of younger players, albeit probably wasn't his choice to do it in this fashion.

 

Personally, I think this is the only way we can ever hope to grow the club. We need to accept we're a selling club and I'd hope that any owner looks at youth as the way forward for us both on and off the park.

 

But then you get to the question of the manager and coaching staff. Are they the best people to take us forward if we're looking to bring more young players through? Walter has done an amazing job, but is he willing to commit 5 more years or so to try and take us through a potential new era if we get a new owner and face up to the new financial realities?

 

We're all aware of some of the criticisms of Smith during his time here before and this time round, but are those valid or is it just a problem of supporters needing to adjust their expectations, in European competition in particular?

 

One good thing that has happened during the down-sizing is that we now have a strict wage structure in place and you'd hope that this (along with the general focus on finances) would stand us in good stead if we can just find a new owner.

 

 

 

Mike.

[calscot 0]

Totally agree with SA. How can deliberately being crap for a couple of seasons which brings in the damaging effect of vastly reduced revenue streams and of course supporters turning away, do anything for the good of the club? Complete nonsensical philosophy.

 

Concentrating solely on youth rarely pays dividends for any club.

 

People go pie eyed about the Man U team that won the league with "kids" but the fact is that is not that club's policy in the slightest. What happened was a generation of very high quality youngsters coincidentally came through at the same time, allowing a young team to play for the champs. If it's such a good idea why hasn't it happened again? In fact, why isn't the Premiership chock full of kids?

 

In Scotland, it didn't work for Hibs, so why would we be any better than them with the same market to draw from?

 

Maybe we should copy Ajax who are two places BELOW us in the UEFA rankings? And that is despite our last two disastrous seasons coupled with other Scottish clubs doing next to nothing which lowers our score.

 

People come up with these glib "solutions", but there is more to football than putting on some youngsters and telling them to play lots of short passes.

 

I think Mowbray put the final nail in the coffin for the philosophy that "trying to play good football" will automatically bring success.

[metlika 0]

 

Our peers whom we're fighting for 13th place with are all similar sized countries and generally no poorer than us, with arguably a healthier population. Why should the Scottish champs be any better than the champs of Switzerland, Belgium or Denmark?

 

 

I do think Belgium should be above us in the coefficients 2 times our population, but Denmark they have only one decent club and Switzerland maybe have one or 2.

 

Our computer game culture and junk food is not helping there should be something done.

[metlika 0]

Obviously this should be supplemented with an extensive scouting network for youth players covering the Eastern Hemisphere with a view to actually bringing them through to the first team instead of rotting in the reserves before being flogged on a few years later.

 

Scouting Scandinavia and Eastern Europe would be my ideal situation. South America is out of reach as there is restrictions on players joining before they are 18 and never guarantee that they will settle here.

[calscot 0]

I do think Belgium should be above us in the coefficients 2 times our population, but Denmark they have only one decent club and Switzerland maybe have one or 2.

 

Our computer game culture and junk food is not helping there should be something done.

 

Denmark and Switzerland are both above us in the rankings which suggests that over the last 5 years they have better clubs than us.

 

Denmark have a history of very good players in the last 20 years, the problem of their league is that as a small country, they can't afford to keep them. However, if their best players are better than our best, that may suggest their next tier of players is also better.

 

What they don't have is as much money as Rangers - which is probably due to not having such a big rivalry which stimulated the interest in Scottish football and allows two clubs to claim about 75% of all the money available.

 

Same thing goes for Switzerland as well as a bigger preoccupation with winter sports with football well down the pecking order.

 

Both countries are richer than Scotland, have higher standards of living and vastly better health statistics with better diet and more exercise all round - so I agree with your chips and X-box synopsis.

 

It's the OF factor which allows us to even compete with these countries. How people expect us to compete with Germany and Spain totally escapes me.

[Totti 0]

We have one of the biggest supports in Europe and ARE one of the biggest clubs. For that reason alone we should be far better than we are. We don't have a god given right to be the best but if we had done the correct markerting and developed the appropriate infrastructure in previous seasons then we would be in a far better state.

 

So players in Scotland are shite, yes we know that. Do what other clubs in our position do and get cheap players from other countries. We've tried that many times often to little success. Why? Because we have no scouting network to speak of which is a fucking joke.

 

Once we start getting good enough players we'll be able to generate proper money.

Edited April 9, 2010 by Totti