Ibroxholm

Essential, we don’t lose the first goal and keep eleven players on the park if we’re going to get a result. If level going into the latter part of the game, I hope we go for the win rather than settling for a draw.

I’m all to well aware of Goldson’s shortcomings in his time with us but, over the piece, he has been one of our more consistent performers. He’s not been in great form of late but it seems over the top to mark him out as the scapegoat in what is, to be honest, a pretty poor Rangers team this season (who have overachieved largely due to the manager). John Greig, one of our greatest players, played for ten seasons without being in a league winning team. By the opinion of some fans today, that would define him as a ‘bottler’ (which he certainly wasn’t). Think I’ll trust John’s opinion on who his award should go to.

You can argue about Tav not being good enough defensively and his performances dipping significantly from where they were but I’m not having the ‘bottler’ argument. Time and time again, he has stood up and taken vital penalties for us and pretty well converted them all under the severest of pressure. He’s no bottler. Unless a good offer comes in for him over the summer, it would be stupid not to keep Tav (same with Goldson). However, they should be viewed as backup, phasing them out over the next season similar to what we did with Steve Davis. We know they don’t have that bit extra to get us over the line, we need new blood in there.

They were extremely fortunate to end up with the Australian as manager after being rejected by their main target and profiting from the equivalent of insider information on the Japanese market, a market largely overlooked in Europe. Their signings since he departed have arguably not been any better than ours.

Looks like it’s going to be pretty windy tomorrow night also. If the game goes ahead, it’s likely to be a bit of a lottery in more ways than one.

So on the back of a reaction to a bad performance yesterday, you going discard him. And bring in who? Who is this magic player aiming in the wings that’s going to solve our problems? And yes, persevering is the right word in the world Rangers function in at the moment. We need to persevere with the players we have who we think have some quality because the days of going out and buying a DeBoer, Van Brockhurst and Gazza are long gone. Any new players we bring in are essentially out of the bargain bin and we saw from our dealings last summer the level of success that brings. Even with a good manager such a Clement, he’ll struggle to get good young players in our price range this summer. The relative success of Clement since he came in has been perseverance with not the greatest squad or the most talented of players. Although more than likely they’ll be a few signings this summer, it’ll still be the same next season.

But I do know what Lawrence was like pre-injury. Is that player gone? You clearly think so, I think he’s worth persevering with because we don’t have a great deal of quality in our team in regard to composure and picking the right final pass. Ok, arguably the three/four you mention have had been the pick of the bunch this season. Only four though, we need 7 or 8 at least.

Starting midfield of Lundstram, Sterling and Diomande (maybe slightly advanced) would be my choice. Can bring on Cantwell or Lawrence later on in the game if we need a bit of invention. Its our defence that gives me the fear.

I hope I’m right and you’re wrong. Although I think it’ll need a good preseason to see the best of him, we do need him to produce the quality I think he has in our remaining games. It could just make the difference and we need our better players to produce because, to be honest, we’re not a great team at the present time.

Clearly his appearances have been limited by long term injury but he looked the pick of the bunch before he got injured. Do any of our current team match up to your requirement to give standout, impactive performances. I don’t think so. All I’m saying is he’s a good player in terms of what we have available at the club at the moment.

I’ll trust my own judgement on that which at the moment seems to align with our manager.

Doesn’t seem to be vastly overrated on here this morning. He had a poor game yesterday along with the rest of the team. On that evidence, none of our current players are good enough to get where we want to get to (wherever that may be) I still think he’s a player who can contribute and improve us. Clearly, there are better players out there if we can afford them. Again, that could be said for anyone in our team.

Any of our players can be sold if we get the right price for them or indeed pick up a bad injury. Still doesn’t take away from the fact that he’s a good player on his day and will contribute next season if he’s still with us.

That was enough to show he had good quality. Also saw him play for Derby and he was the best player they had.

Similarly, I’ve lost count of the players over the years that fans have dismissed when coming back from injury and have gone to be major contributors to us once they get back up to full match sharpness.