The McCoist debate - Some balance.

[D'Artagnan 173]

i would add that last year we gripped about the set pieces. this year we have scored shed loads from set pieces.

 

We have GS and that perhaps tells its own story.

 

I dont think we have played with particular fluency or style at all this season - we have relied (too much in my opinion) on the aerial prowess of Daly, who has been exceptional. But playing the high ball into him may be playing to his strength but it will do little for the development of Clark. As the standard of defender improves I think this will prove to be less & less fruitful.

 

Furthermore Daly's aerial ability against lesser defenders is covering up a glaring failing on the right side of midfield, I dont recall Arnold ever hitting the by line to cross a ball back - he tends to swing it in from the 3/4 zone. Against better teams that will be totally ineffective.

[Tom Davison 0]

Is it just not the case that in most other countries, the standard of player is higher elsewhere than here in Scotland. Results of our teams in Europe seem to confirm this and the very few home based players, who are named in the starting eleven of our fairly average national team is a further indication. The overall standard within our Scottish leagues is poor and just why anyone thinks that Rangers should be capable of playing above this standard is puzzling. Sure, we would like to see a much better quality of football but without players of the calibre that Advocaat had available to him, it ain't going to happen. No one wants to be unambitious in their hopes for Rangers but whether it is Ally or anyone else at the helm, there are few reasons to be optimistic in the short to medium term.

[calscot 0]

Cal, essentially you are telling us that we should know our place, that we should accept it unquestioningly, and that we should do nothing to challenge or change the situation as it already stands.

 

I never said that, what I'm saying is that you should know your parameters and boundaries. You can only change what you have the power to change, it's best to learn how to cope best with what you can't change. That's pretty good advice for anything in life.

 

This pessimism, this defeatism, wrapped up in a tidy bundle labeled 'realism', should be alien thinking to a club like ours, but I know that you are not alone, sadly, in your belief that we should be content to be a peripheral force in the world game.

 

You're saying we shouldn't be realistic? You're saying we need to be unreal... I don't know how you can call it defeatism - as having ambition beyond your abilities always ends in defeat. It is so by definition. What makes our club different from any other? If you can answer that, then maybe you will be able to answer why our club is currently different from Bayern.

 

Going by your own philosophy, you must be a billionaire by now - please supply Rangers with £300M a year and your dreams for the club will possibly come true. If you're not a billionaire then it's obvious your philosophy doesn't work.

 

David Murray asked that he be judged by our efforts in Europe. Now, we have fans praising the fitness of our postmen as an excuse for the incompetence that runs through our club like the Clyde runs through Glasgow. We have fallen so far that we are coming up with the most feeble excuses imaginable to disguise our shortcomings and inadequacies.

 

So what are your feeble excuses for not supplying Rangers with the required cash? I'm expecting a lot more from you.

 

Raise your sights from the acronyms that have watered down your ambition and demand that the club be all it can be - not all that you believe it can be - which doesn't appear to be very much.

 

Those acronyms are used to remind people of tries and tested ways of being properly prepared to achieve your goals. They work much better than just hopes, dreams and infeasibly high expectations. I take you haven't read much on how to go about achieving your goals in life?

 

I'm going to bow out here as very difficult to rationalise with the "you can do anything you want to" attitude. The last time I heard that type of stuff was from a teenager who's proof was that she badly wanted to go to Thailand and now she was definitely going. Asked how she had achieved this, her answer was, "Daddy's paying".

[UCF2008 0]

Our opposition at this level are often credited with raising their game against us as though they were playing a cup final. Just for the sake of it I decided to check our stats on cup games against lower league sides...

 

Rangers last 50 games in domestic cup competitions against lower league sides. (1997-2013)*

 

Wins - 43

 

Won by a single goal - 12

Won by 2 goals - 7

Won by 3 goals - 9

Won by 4 goals - 6

Won by 5 goals or more – 9

 

Draws - 4

 

Defeats - 3

 

Lost by a single goal – 2

Lost by 2 goals – 1

 

* Not counting Ramsden Cup games. Lower league sides = Not SPL.

 

 

Rangers last 50 league games

 

Wins - 41

 

Won by a single goal - 7

Won by 2 goals - 15

Won by 3 goals - 9

Won by 4 goals - 6

Won by 5 goals or more - 4

 

Draws - 6

 

Defeats - 3

 

Lost by a single goal – 3

 

It's interesting to note that while we haven't been racking up cricket scores in just as many of our league games as those historical cup ties, this is balanced out by the number of games where far better Rangers squads only managed to scrape through by the skin of their teeth.

 

All things considered, I'd say that overall we haven't been doing too badly at all. There is definitely room for improvement, but when is that never the case at Rangers?

[chilledbear 16]

We have GS and that perhaps tells its own story.

 

I dont think we have played with particular fluency or style at all this season - we have relied (too much in my opinion) on the aerial prowess of Daly' date=' who has been exceptional. But playing the high ball into him may be playing to his strength but it will do little for the development of Clark. As the standard of defender improves I think this will prove to be less & less fruitful.

 

Furthermore Daly's aerial ability against lesser defenders is covering up a glaring failing on the right side of midfield, I dont recall Arnold ever hitting the by line to cross a ball back - he tends to swing it in from the 3/4 zone. Against better teams that will be totally ineffective.[/quote']

 

I have criticised Ally often, both team selections and standard of play, but I thought Sunday took the biscuit. We have two potent players who can hit the by-line regularly Wallace and Aird. Yet we played them on the same side of the park to accommodate Peralta. Apart from Aird going inside I'm not sure how they were supposed to operate, whatever way it was nullifying one of our strengths.

[the gunslinger 3,366]

We certainly have a problem on the right. Aird is young and perhaps not good enough. Perlata puts in a quality ball but is slow and generally poor. On top of that im not sure we own a rb.

[BEARGER 1,829]

McCoist is the worst manager we have had in my time following Rangers. Our play is slow slow slow, no width, players playing out of position etc. We win most our games due to all our 11 players on the field being individually better than the opposition 11 players. We should also be fitter although the manager thinks there is no difference in fitness between FT and PT players.

[Guest TravelingWilBEARy]

McCoist is the worst manager we have had in my time following Rangers. Our play is slow slow slow, no width, players playing out of position etc. We win most our games due to all our 11 players on the field being individually better than the opposition 11 players. We should also be fitter although the manager thinks there is no difference in fitness between FT and PT players.

 

Unlike, well, every other manager and team we've had since Souness?

[Guest The Godfather]

The results have been good however the football is still as turgid as it was last season.

[Hildy 0]

Cal, potentially, and I would agree that this is an overused term in the Rangers support, we can be so much better and so much bigger. We have many things going for us, most notably our fanbase, but that will begin to erode unless we recover and get the show back on the road in a big way.

 

Do you really see the next hundred years being a battle played out between us and Celtic without some kind of change happening? Sooner or later, preferably sooner, a change will occur, but we need to do all that we can now to hurry beneficial change along.

 

Celtic, as I understand it, are doing their utmost to find a way of abandoning Scottish football's wreckage. If they have to, they will go it alone somewhere else. If they succeed in getting out without us, we'll be marooned indefinitely in a football landscape that will gradually suffocate us.

 

We can't afford to sit back and pretend that the future will be as glorious as our domestic past. We have to be working on and off the field to either be on the gravy train - or to help others crash it.

 

We are on the wrong end of a huge imbalance in European football. We can either accept this, and trundle along unremarkably, or we can put our house in order and make sure that Rangers is on the right side of history as big business carves the game up.

 

If we don't show the ambition that a club our size needs to properly survive, we will be left behind in the football equivalent of the third world.