SonicWill

Renewed at £761 in CD3. It's a lot of money but I love my seat (bar the legroom), it's a below-inflation increase and going to see Rangers is probably the thing I most look forward to so it's a small price to pay. ...Plus my wife gets it for me as a joint Christmas/birthday present so the cost matters less to me!

Favourite part of the match was Cantwell sprinting back half the pitch in the 92nd minute to win a meaningless ball on the wing. If you’ve got effort and commitment like that it’s half the battle.

My enduring memory of this guy is someone who was only too happy to be front and centre when times are good - jumping in photos when the team qualified for the CL and grinning like a Cheshire cat outside Ibrox when we signed Ramsey, but was nowhere to be seen during difficult periods. The ultimate example of someone wanting all of the credit but none of the blame.

Yes and they’re the exception that proves the rule. They lucked out by hiring a manager with an extensive knowledge of an affordable and untapped market. But look at the level of player turnover they went through. That’s not sustainable every time they hire a new manager. And will their next manager play a similar style of football to Postecoglu? If not, they may well require significant financial backing to get players in that fit his system.

Nope, it's imperative in modern football - particularly for a club like us who don't have huge amounts of money. With managers in football staying in jobs for shorter periods of time than years gone by, we can't afford to chop and change players solely based upon a new manager's tactical preferences and desires. Done properly, a DOF ensures that the team has a coherent tactical approach and philosophy that spans beyond the reign of one manager and ensures that when a new coach takes over the players there will generally be suitable to his needs. Obviously a manager may have individual targets and the club can choose to pursue these if they fit the team's overall philosophy. Football has changed and there's a reason basically every top club operates like this.

As delighted as I would be to see the back of him, it's vital that the club have a contingency plan in place in terms of a replacement. We're probably quite lucky with Beale, as he'll have extensive knowledge of England, its lower leagues and youth players. If we didn't have anyone in place we could do worse than giving him a greater say in transfers until we have a new man in. I'd love to see us make an ambitious appointment but it would realistically be a struggle to find anyone worse than Wilson, so I'm positive.

Read my post again. Clancy got the call wrong, obviously. I don’t think any sane person is disputing that. I also think it’s obvious that he is bad at his job. Perhaps that is why he shouldn’t ref at this level but, frankly, do you think the standard of refs throughout Scotland mean that things would improve if he was replaced? I just don’t believe he’s a cheat, or that there’s a concerted effort by refs to screw us over. That’s the sort of paranoid nonsense that the other lot peddle and it’s not for me. We benefit from shite decisions as well.

Realistically what would you expect the club to do beyond what they’ve done right now? I’m not asking to be arsey, it’s a genuine question as lots of people are saying they should be doing more.

Too many people in this thread need to give themselves a shake. Imagine thinking it’s okay for a guy to get battered and trying to justify he and his family being threatened because of a game of football. Take the tinfoil hats off, lads. There’s no conspiracy and no great desire to cheat us. The referee just had a shite game. He’s had lots of them. He’s not good at his job. Most refs in Scotland aren’t. Incompetence doesn’t mean malice, though. There’s been plenty of decisions we’ve benefited from that should have went the other way. It doesn’t make Saturday any more acceptable or easy to swallow, but it’s the truth. Instead of going down the conspiracy route like the other mob, we as a fan base and as a club would be better served putting forward ways to improve the quality of the officiating in our country, because it’s a systemic problem.

Youre right - price is key. I should have made that clear in my initial comment. If the price is £2m, then it's clearly too high. We know Hearts will want more than £500k but if the final figure was around £1m then I think it'd be a solid investment. I suspect you're right and Hearts will want more, but we don't know if there's a clause in his contract or what their financial situation is like. Putting money to one side, I definitely think he's good enough to do a job for us.

It's Lewis Ferguson all over again. Because we're linked to a Scottish player playing for a club in our division automatically it's fashionable to say they're shite. He's not who I'd want as a first-choice striker, but the fact he has 18 goals in 30 games this season means he would be a very valuable squad player and substitute, not to mention being a home-grown player for squad purposes. He's also 27, so a good age. I notice the people who were saying Ferguson could never play at our level have shut up now that he's performing very well in Serie A. I'm not for a moment saying Shankland is that level of player, but clearly he's a good SPL player and could do a job for us.

An awful error (although McGregor should have bailed him out), but otherwise I thought he was very assured. There's clearly huge injury concerns remaining, but i'm not going to write him off on the basis of a poor 45 mins at Livingston when he wasn't fit and one mistake in a match. He showed me enough here to suggest he can play at our level.

We gave Beale crap after the last match but he got his tactics right and set the team up correctly. There’s no way as a coach you can legislate for the two individual errors (three, actually, as McGregor should have made an attempt to stop Jota getting the ball) that cost us goals, or for a shambolic VAR decision. We can go into the semi final with confidence and look to kick on in the summer with better investment.

Colak having a howler here. Get him hooked.

About as close to a perfect performance as you can get following the early Hibs goal. I thought Hibs played right into our hands but the manager got his tactics spot on and our pressing and one touch passing was a joy to behold. So many excellent performances but the midfield three were absolutely superb. A great assist and goal by Sakala, also. We rightly gave the team and the manager flack after the league cup final but since then three out of the four halves we’ve played have been very high-quality football. Hopefully we field a strong team at the weekend and keep the momentum going.

Really good half and Sakala again looking dangerous. Beale definitely deserves credit for this because he's looking a much, much better player under the new manager than at any point in his Rangers career. Still raw as fuck and not good enough at the top level but is definitely contributing more. Hoping that we can keep the intensity up in the second half and string together a good 90 minutes. We were equally good in the first half against Killie at the weekend and wilted badly after half time.

Raskin was a combination of excellent in the first half but very sloppy in the second. Cantwell was excellent. Brave on the ball, good pressing intensity and always looking to drive forward. Just wish we could get a 90 minute performance like the first half. Thought it’s probably the best I can remember us playing at home under Beale.

Don’t know if anyone else heard it but in the Club Deck there was some quiet booing when he came on. Hopefully this doesn’t catch on. We shouldn’t be booing our own unless it’s exceptional circumstances.

The assists for Lundstram vs Dortmund and Leipzig last year, off the top of my head.

Kent - stay, Morelos - go. Kent has shown enough under Beale to suggest he can still be a big player for us. More than that, we'd struggle to find a player with his trickery and work rate for the budget we have. Given that we've now got more creative players such as Cantwell and Tillman, this will hopefully lessen the occasions that Kent gets double or triple marked by the opposition. Morelos is too far gone. He's in clear physical decline at 26 and will be a disaster at 30. We need to move on.

People need to take a breath. We've played 15, won 13 and lost one. The loss was in a cup final and against our biggest rivals but let's not panic. celtic are a better team than us, and any fan who says otherwise is in denial. Beale was brought in to close that gap and overtake them and he's been here less than three months. Let's give him time to build a squad, learn from his past encounters with them and put in place a style of play. Obsessing over every syllable in a press conference will just drive you crazy.

Clearly not good enough but it's worth remembering he was immense away at PSV to help us qualify for the Champions League. Thanks for his efforts and all the best going forward.

Let's be honest, the board have put their hands in their pockets at times. However, they've consistently missed out on key opportunities to upgrade our squad at moments of strength. As mentioned in the initial post, post-55 and after CL qualification should have seen a significant improvement to the playing squad. It's also worth noting that celtic appointed a good manager who had extensive knowledge of an excellent, untapped market. It's annoying as they basically lucked into it, given he clearly wasn't their first choice, but even with significant investment last year we'd still have been in a close title race, such was the level of improvement under Postecoglu and the players he brought in.

You're probably right and I'm likely being too harsh in the heat of things. In saying that, he definitely wasn't causing the celtic defence too many headaches. Morelos' inability to run in behind means that, if you're a strong CB like Carter-Vickers, you're going to have a relatively easy day watching him play in front of you.

It's time to cut bait with Morelos. He scored today but his general play was abysmal. The mobile, strong striker that could lead a frontline on his own and terrorise defences is a thing of the past and more likely than not isn't coming back. He's 26 now and any new contract is likely going to take him up to his 30th birthday. We know he doesn't properly look after his body and, if he's already declining at 26, what is he going to look like three years from now? We need a better centre forward if we're going to close the gap on celtic. We also need our next forward to be more prolific - Morelos has only scored more than 15 goals once in a league season for us and has never hit more than 20.