Rangers 0 - 1 PSV - Player Ratings and MoM Poll

[calscot 0]

Depends who you ask. There's an argument that all arguments are circular (because they're all circular).

 

I thought the point of a forum was to develop the arguments... Let people understand your point of view in that they may glimpse what you see. Similar to looking at a replay of an incident from a different angle.

 

You are perfectly entitled to think what you like. Overly defensive is a judgement - you throw out your statistics, and I'll counter with commentator and home/away fan responses and we'll both end back where we started - proving what we already felt. Although one of us distinctly more 'already' than the other.

 

The trouble with subjective views is that they are clouded by internal feelings and preconceptions. Raw statistics are not particularly compelling or useful on their own, but what they sometimes do is require you to correlate your qualitative assessment with the quantitative assessment. For me the stats correlate with may thinking that we started defensive and then became attacking and we attacked more overall.

 

 

I've no idea what you are talking about. You were replying to Frankie, who I'm fairly certain has no interest in you.

 

I believe you're being very disingenuous, you were on the game thread in question and I assume earlier you were alluding to my posts there. If your really don't know then why the unnecessarily glib remark about Frankie?

 

That's because people are hurting just now. People who are emotionally engaged get that way.

 

Perhaps, but is it right to lash out when you feel that way?

 

That's just wordplay. You can't have it every which way. When we're good it's all todo with the system, when we're bad, well - we're just bad.

 

That's never been my argument but that conjecture it still makes 100% sense! It seems entirely logical to me. You're apparently well schooled in logic, I find it difficult to believe you can't see that.

 

Your desire to feel superior to overly negative people

 

Who says I feel superior? Pretty much every argument on here, including yours sounds like the person feels superior. What is superior anyway? We all think our way is the best or even slightly better in some way or we wouldn't be saying much at all. I'm happy that I'm more positive, I personally think it's a better way to be and there's a lot of material on the subject that backs that up including longevity - including for cats. However, I do think unjustified criticism is wrong and tend to defend who I see as the wronged - are you objectionable to that?

 

(who you'd hardly count Frankie or I among) has resulted in you twisting words in this childish way to justify what is essentially unjustifiable.

 

That's just superior, insulting and out of order - dare I say "snide nonsense"?. You don't have to like me but there are more persuasive ways of arguing.

 

You may be happy with the first half system; I wasn't.

 

I wasn't happy with the first half system, but I understand it and know it can work. However, our players were not coping with it. That system does not stop players passing to each other or marking properly or tracking back, but the players weren't doing that. The system requires immense application and extreme focus when you have average players, that wasn't achieved. You may disagree but it's a perfectly plausible argument.

 

I was glad when we changed it, and was unsurprised that we improved. PSV just didn't justify that level of defensiveness at home. Walter has employed such systems to great effect against the cream of Europe, but it inspires an inferiority complex when its deployed against teams we're good enough to give a game - eg Celtic and PSV. There's nothing that happened in the game that contradicts that viewpoint, and to suggest otherwise is just to argue for the sake of it.

 

That's a fairer point of view but it's not definitive. Last year we were more direct and had bigger losses - including our "biggest ever embarrassment" against what many thought were minnows. You may disagree with Walters thinking this year, but it's understandable and to a certain extent, vindicated.

 

I was also glad it changed - it was a no-brainer once the goal went in. I'm not sure whether the delay was from the management or the players but it should have been instant. I'm not sure the substitution should have been earlier as there are other factors such as Naismith's fitness and the cup final on Sunday. The point is, it did change and a lot of the criticism conveniently seems to forget that - you can't have it both ways.

 

Managers are usually complimented for changing games, some are damned if they do, damned if they don't.

 

It took a change of system and approach that ought to have been there from the beginning.

 

Perhaps, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Like I said earlier, their breaks resulted in three pretty good scoring chances, that they didn't take them does not say the more attacking system would have worked throughout the game. There is a far different mentality when you HAVE to attack or lose and it looks FAR easier when the opposition want to defend a good lead - something you seem to forget. PSV would have been a different team if it was 0-0.

 

Who is to say the plan was not to keep the score at 0-0 till half time and then use the second half tactics to score the goal we actually needed to go through?

 

Don't presume to tell me what I ought to know.

 

Eh? I have to presume this - especially if you don't want too much explanation or repetition...

 

The only person here not allowing for more than one possibility is you. But, nonetheless, my being convinced of my opinion does make yours wrong when we're discussing matters of opinion.

 

Eh? The point I'm arguing is that there are multiple points of view in the face of everyone just instinctively subscribing to one. Much of what people are saying does not match my view of the majority of game I watched. People have preconceptions on here and at half time they were proven to be false. What happened in the second half seems to be ignored. Maybe they are right but the stats and logic and my viewpoint scream, "No" to me.

 

At the risk of repetition, people are using the fact we played more attacking for most of the game to conclude that we were overly-defensive... You've come to a more convoluted opinion that makes more sense, but still come to the same conclusion.

 

This is going round in circles.

 

With a bit of debate instead of argument, it could be a spiral with successive iterations... It depends where you want to take it, but I can guess. It feels a bit like the argument sketch, just as it starts to get interesting, your time is up...

 

You're entitled to your opinion. You remind me a bit of Socrates, moaning that Athens was giving him a hard time while he was, all the while, telling them their lives weren't worth living because they didn't subscribe to his absurd sense of rationality.

 

Perhaps, but I'd rather be compared to Socrates than the baying lynch mob... (not aimed at you personally).

[Zappa 0]

:gw: for me...

[maineflyer 0]

Agreed, it was Gregg Wylde, who also let a small ray of sunshine into the perpetual gloom of Walter Smith's defensive winter.

[aftershock 0]

Gregg Wylde for me too by a long way, so we wont see him on Sunday.....

[calscot 0]

With the deafening silence to what I believe are cogent arguments on here I was going to leave it alone until I found a report by the evening times where their synopsis of the match was:

 

"Despite being shorn of the services of several key players, the Gers battled valiantly for a place in the quarter-finals for 90 minutes.

 

"All their efforts, though, were ultimately in vain as a fine Dutch side won 1-0 to progress to the last eight of the competition."

 

Now, either the normally down on Rangers press have done a massive u-turn to be total sycophants or the official view of Gersnet, a fan site, is now more negative than your average journalist, which seems a bit strange. To be fair our "official" synopsis does reflect the majority of feeling on here but ironically having an official attitude that is detrimental to Rangers is something often accused at the board for their lack of defence of some of the more unsavoury actions of Rangers fans.

 

I think this leads to another delicious irony in that the those accusing Smith of negative tactics, are in fact guilty of negative tactics themselves - how do you resolve that? I also think there is a difference in that the motives of Walter are always to do what he thinks will be good for the club - he may get it wrong sometimes but his honour is true. Not only that but to be the most successful club in Scotland and compete well in the European arena is not an easy task; however, a fan being more positive about his team should be a trivial task - so what is the motivation for doing the opposite, where is the honour in it?

 

Frankie, you say you respect Walter but he is not immune from criticisms for his negative tactics, the corollary is that neither are you and I'm criticising you for this despite the respect I have for you. It's up to you whether you take the criticism on the chin, the way you expect our manager to so, challenge it and objectively judge yourself, or whether you deflect by the inference that someone with a minority viewpoint on a minority site, should just conform and join the baying crowd. Or you could put your hands over your ears and sing, "la, la, la".

 

You are entitled to your opinion as everyone else, but when you go public, there is a responsibility to the integrity of Rangers and even this forum - just as we expect from the board and the likes of RST. I think you've been highly influence by the entrenched viewpoints on this site that are reflected in the hysteria directed towards a different viewpoint. I think you have let Rangers down by not only painting the manager and team in a less flattering light than they deserve, but also handing ammunition to our enemies.

 

You may be as "positive as the next man" on this site but if you can't be as positive as a journalist in a time where Rangers are a magnet for negative diatribe in the press, then perhaps you need to have a look at where you stand from a wider viewpoint.

[Gazza_8 233]

With the deafening silence to what I believe are cogent arguments on here I was going to leave it alone until I found a report by the evening times where their synopsis of the match was:

 

"Despite being shorn of the services of several key players, the Gers battled valiantly for a place in the quarter-finals for 90 minutes.

 

"All their efforts, though, were ultimately in vain as a fine Dutch side won 1-0 to progress to the last eight of the competition."

 

You can be defensive and play poorly yet still huff and puff so I don't see what point you attempted to make there!

 

You're the only person who saw something positive in that game. Doesn't that tell you something?

[calscot 0]

Yeah, we huffed and puffed and dominated for most of the game like Man U did against us, the main difference is, they got their penalty - we should have had two...

 

When journalists who are usually derogatory see the game more like I did, that tells me that I'm not the only one and that just because lots of people around you disagree with you, it doesn't mean you should just blindly accept their point of view.

[Gazza_8 233]

Yeah, we huffed and puffed and dominated for most of the game like Man U did against us, the main difference is, they got their penalty - we should have had two...

 

And there will have been many a time over the seasons where we've gotten away with a few dodgy decisions. It's swings and roundabouts. Get over it!