Poetry_In_Blue

When I saw those that were called up I was initially surprised in all honesty, then I remembered it's Levein and not Burley, McGregor I can understand if there is a possibility that he isn't fully fit, but good to see that he recognizes that Alexander is a good goalie, better than the shit Burley would call up!

Totally different to what he said earlier on, maybe he woke up and realised what an asshole he had been with his previous article!

Think this season Wilson has done more to be in the senior Scotland squad than Fleck, but would have expected Fleck to be in the under 21s, don't think the idea that Stark would have expected Fleck to be with the seniors stands as I'm sure if there was any common sense he would have discussed it first with Levein!

Gallacher (Goalie), Perry & Wilson (Defenders), Shinnie (Midfield) and Loy (Striker) have all been called up for Scotland's under 21 squad to face Azerbaijan at the Falkirk stadium on the 2nd of March. Really surprised that there has been no call up though for Fleck!

Kinniburgh is back and got some game time, good to hear, no Perry?

If my local is showing the game then I will probably participate in a few beverages, it depends if there is a shitty English team playing or not at the same time.

Simples, DJ is a tosser and should keep his mouth shut, as long as McGregor continues to perform on the pitch to the standard he has been then there is no need to get rid of him, and I would be disappointed if what's happened recently was used as an excuse to raise cash.

The curve ball would be that we play our players to their strengths and NOT play a player to double up on one of theirs, if we get at them from the start then they'll be on the back foot and players like McGreaty, Brown and Keane will just start to sulk and lose their way in the game.

With the news that McGregor might not be fit enough to play I would start with the following: :alexander: :papac: :weir: :bougherra: :broadfoot: :novo: :thomson: :davis: :whittaker: :miller: :boyd: Oh, that's interesting, new system turns it round the other way if you're not careful, that's the players not necessary in that line up, i.e. Papac on the left not the right! By the way, when we win this game, there will be cries of derision, as people will be saying our last game was postponed by the Establishment so we wouldn't pick up any injuries or suspensions!

Have absolutely no concerns if Alexander plays, both players have their strengths and weaknesses, but Alexander has shown time and time again that he can play in the big games and play well. All I can say is that I'm glad we have two very good goalies on our books.

Agree to a certain extent, especially the first paragraph, but the second paragraph is the same for England, Wales and Ireland, some of the managers have tried to make a proposal to the SFA/SPL that the season starts earlier so we have better game time under our belts for these games, and to try and implement a break at winter again, they were basically told to take a running jump.

My local will probably be showing some English game, oh well, at least I can watch it at home with a few cans. Oh you bollox, bollox, bollox, I have a few days of the week prior, if I'd taken the Monday and Tuesday of after the game I might have gotten up to Glasgow for it!

I think it is wrong to criticize Boyd for not signing a new contract yet, as has been said there is a lot of uncertainty at the club, he will be aware of the current situation, but he won't be aware of who the new manager will be if it's not Walter, this could have an effect on his decision. I'm a glass half full kind of guy, and looking at it from a positive point of view, yes he might not have signed a new contract with us yet, but there is no indication that he has signed a pre-contract agreement with another team!

Not necessarily, might be a central midfield of Davis with either KT or McCulloch, with Beasley and Novo on the wings?

Possibly the same staring 11 that played together most of December?

As this is a work's computer I am limited with what I can download, but since the upgrade in the site I was having real problems so went fuck it, downloaded Firefox portable, hid it away in one of my folders and the site now works brilliant for me.

Nothing. He was free to sign a pre-contract with a club in January. Losing Boyd for nothing would be a disaster. Tell that to smith and murray they are the guys who didn't rate him, they are the guys who tried to punt him. All in all letting someone like Boyd go for nothing should be a sacking offence for all concerned. If Boyd doesn't sign a new contract then we don't have a choice but to let him go for nothing, as for when he was originally going to be punted just prior to that he was playing shit, something which was basically agreed on by the majority of the members on this board, since then he has vastly improved and that is why the club have offered him a contract.

Brilliant good lad

With Walter Smith incahrge, not many, but there are better players in the SPL, who could play with Boyd, but that doesn't really matter. What did Kevin Thomson cost, £2m... ? He's already repaid that with his performances! As for Lafferty, I wish he was moved on. Not good enough, far too inconsistant, is not a striker nor winger. He'll have one or two good halves of football in 20 games, and that's not good enough. Sadly, his price tag means he will continue to get a game, no matter how poor his performances have been. I was talking about Whittaker, and some of his performances this season, mainly including his contributions with goals, a player who plays better when confident and once again he seems to have found that confidence not KT, I said KT is getting back to a form of old following his injuries. As I said about Lafferty, an enigma, yet this is a guy who is fairly a regular for NI?

I agree he would never displace a fit Boyd/Miller partnership, but then again who else in the SPL would? If he is to get game time then he should be played up front as a striker and no where else, and when I heard the team sheet last night I did give a wee groan. What I couldn't understand was why him and Boyd didn't play up front and Novo on the wing as for some reason Novo seems to be playing there pretty well. Agree DMB could be given a pay per play contract, if he keeps himself fit, but don't agree about getting rid of Broadfoot, would be ideal if we could get Broadfoot and Whittaker genetically cloned together as we would have the best of two worlds, but Broadfoot is good as a squad player. Novo is playing on sentiment, but he has good flashes at times, but the same could be said about the majority of the squad at times, as for the comment from someone about KT and Whittaker, to me that is ludicrous, KT appears to be finding the form again of old, and I think Whittaker's involvement this season alone has more than paid for his transfer fee. Lafferty is an annoying enigma, when he got his chance as a striker, I think he tried to hard and that caused him problems, as he was trying too hard, we know he isn't a wide player, but recently when he was brought on he has actually performed quite well.

After Manchester, we needed build on the hard-working midfield with some width and/or creativity. We didn't need strikers! Or certainly the 2 mentioned. All IMO. Others said it too on the board. Err, I think I made it quite clear why I thought Lafferty was bought? You talk about the two that were signed but in all honesty it doesn't matter if you are a big name or not, you might not cut it at a club like Rangers. Again, some of us whinge and whine about not giving our most promising youth a chance, and here is you saying we should have bought some more midfielders, if we had Fleck would never have gotten any game time, and neither would have Wylde (even though too limited for my liking) It sounds more to me like people wanting their cake and eating it, either that or not being able to even see or acknowledge the positives as the mindset is in of total negativity, might just be the way some people are, but look at the table, look at how few goals we've conceded, and look at how many goals we've scored, again I point out there must have been some form of attacking play going on to score that many goals, or were they all own goals and penalties?

What if Walter is offered a new contract and declines? Nobody seems to have contemplated this scenario. The who? question that I keep getting asked then gets turned around. Well I wanted Hiddink, but he's became the manager of Turkey! I don't know as they're a lot of factors that have to be taken into consideration, does the manager that Rangers go for already manage a club, and if so would we be able to afford the compensation we would have to pay, sort of goes back to the financial situation. Even if the possible manager doesn't have a current club, and even though they would be aware that they will have a steady wage, would they want to take the challenge on, in the knowledge that they won't be able to buy players and some players may be sold? (Worse case scenario that is)

you really think another manager would come in and change that, with no money to buy new players? imo walter has got some standard players playing some very good football. Dont get me wrong, i would probably replace a good few of the players if we had the finances to do so. But we don't and i don't think anyone else could do as good a job at rangers right now. I honestly believe that we had decent players that can compete in the CL, maybe not hitting the heights of the latter stages but surely disposing of the "Stuttgarts" and other teams of similar stature. I think that his tactics in Europe were completely out and that if we had just went for it instead of the 4-5-1 at home then we could have progressed. Disregard Seville, and the teams in our group were beatable, we can outplay them, at least i believe that, i think if we had boldly went with two strikers and say Davis in an attacking role we could have shown them what we have and brought our SPL prowess into the CL. Mabye, but those were the tactics that took us to the UEFA cup final? All ifs and buts, but in the last campaign if we had been awarded the penalty we should have got against Seville then that scoreline may have been different, and if we had converted the chances we had in Stuttgart etc etc etc.

As to this, I give Aaron...a loan signing who wasn't played or the wasted money when he had some on Velicka, Lafferty or the complaining of a lack of a wide player when there was DMB there and he never used before that complaint! And where is Aaron now? He has really set the world on fire after leaving us hasn't he? When Velicka was at Hearts he had a pretty impressive scoring record, as for Lafferty, jury is still out, but there must be something about him if he is a fully capped NI internationalist at his fairly young age? Not as yet but it seemed Ally was keen on him whereas Walter wasn't, going by quotes. We haven't see that 'something about him' enough and for £3.5 million it may well end up being the chestnut Walter leaves us with when that momey could have went to buy midfielders - after all bluedell has admitted we wouldn't have been able to afford anybody else without the Carlos money. I personally don't think we needed any more midfielders, thank you very much, if we had then some of our youngsters would definitely have never been given a chance! As for buying Lafferty as a striker, I think part of that reasoning might have been because Walter might have expected Boyd to be sold at the time, but hindsight is a wonderful thing and I don't think that Walter can tell the future! The only area I felt we should have been trying to strengthen at the time was the defense, but we must be doing something right seeing that we haven't conceded that many goals compared to the rest of the teams.

It could be argued that all this started happening when Walter wasn't even manager, and it was during Advocaat's tenure as manager, therefore nothing to do with Walter. Walter was asked to come back to steady the ship after the PLG fiasco, who I actually think is a pretty good manager but totally underestimated the Scottish game and our expectations. Walter wanted to expand after steadying the ship, and to a certain degree he has, and it's mainly due to his ability as a manager that finds us top of the league and still with a possible treble, how can he be blamed for the financial meltdown which affected the whole nation, as remember there are other factors which have caused the current financial situation not just for us but the whole nation. You seem adamant on slagging Walter off, and clearly want rid of him, but if you can answer me this then please do. Who on earth could come in and not just do a good job, but would actually want the challenge? I've attempted to answer this in post #104, but like the protesters, you may not like the answer you seek. I hadn't reached that post at the time of posting! I've mentioned as have others, that unless things change drastically financially then keeping Walter at the helm is the best thing for Rangers for the forseeable future.