donegal_ger

Although I would prefer to see a 433 or 4231 formation as it suits the players we have I think it will be much the same as the hibs game with Mervan partnering Healy with Aluko back on the wing in place of Wylde.

Bet there was no mention of the foul on Papac at St Johnstone's goal

Collum is the best of a bad bunch and I am fairly happy with him as ref but after the abuse he took from them and his subsequent demotion from high profile games by the SFA for a very good performance in his last old firm match I hope he dosen't play it safe and give a homer performance we are used to seeing with Thomson, Murray and Brines et al.

I think Whittaker's best position is where Bendiksen played on Saturday just off the striker in a 4-2-3-1, he has great skill, can shoot with either foot ( not afraid to shoot from distance unlike many of our players) and most importantly has no real defensive responsibilities in this position. Playing at fullback he doesn't have the pace to get back in position when we lose the ball, which almost every team we play against knows and they always attack this weakness in our team.

Have to agree with this, his poor form has coincided with the break up of his partnership with Edu in the middle to let McCulloch back in and laterly Bartley, as the old saying goes if it ain't broke don't fix it.

I don't think he was on the bench yesterday because there were 3 u21's on the bench and since Wylde and Fleck were 2 of those u21's and can play similar roles to McKay I think he went with with Bedoya instead if he needed somebody for the right side of midfield.

IIRC he has only started 2 of those 13 away wins at St Johnstone and Hearts he was injured then on the bench for the games at the end of last season. I didn't see the St Johnstone match because I was away on a stag weekend but saw all the other games, and yesterdays game was the same as most games McCulloch starts, lumping the ball long, disjointed midfield performances and generally backs to the wall type games. In the rest of those away matches we have played good stuff, winning fairly comfortably, although I'm very happy with yesterdays result I'm not happy with the type of performance, if it wasn't for Mc Gregor and their man missing an open goal it could have been a similar result to last weekend.

They must have an AGM coming up in the next few days or something Liewell must be trying to do a wee bit of wool pulling over the eyes.

If everyone is fit and with the players we have in the squad I would like to see us go 4-3-3 with Ness, Edu, Davis in midfield and a front 3 of Lafferty, Jelavic and Naismith with the front 3 staying high up the pitch and swapping positions much like the system the Juventus team of the mid 90's played against us in the Champions League.

In the last 18 months any match he has started the tempo has always been slow when he doesn't play we usually play with a fast tempo pin teams back and usually win easily. Any time I see him start I dread to watch the match because he brings players around him down to his level and we either struggle to a win or worse as we've seen this season more often than not we draw or lose.

It was the same in the final few games at the end of last season even the Killie game we were absolutly cruising with McGregor virtually a spectator then on he comes and McGregor has to make a handful of good saves to keep them to 1 goal. For us to have a positive result on Sunday he should not set foot on the park either starting or as sub. I think he'll be on the bench but if he comes on and we are only leading by a goal I wouldn't be confident of holding out. Teams just get to many chances to score when he plays.

Watching McCulloch in midfield is like watching Gareth Barry vs Mesut Ozil over and over again, with almost every opponent he plays against is past him before he can turn and big jig with arms flailing trying to grab a shirt, shorts or socks to commit his usual rugby tackle resulting in a yellow card, then he spends the rest of the game pointing and doing little else.

Your right Booler the reserves were done away with in 1998 and replaced with the U 21 league which played their fixtures on a Tuesday afternoons and stopped playing at Ibrox.

Used to get a right crowd usually a few thousand even bigger for the Old Firm reserve games, always remember the Durrant comeback match when we had around 30 thousand which I think was the biggest crowd in Britain that day!

The Reserves were done away with at the start of the SPL and replaced with the U21 league which played midweek (usually Tuesday afternoons)then this league was done away with a couple of seasons ago. Used to always go to the reserves at Ibrox on a Saturday afternoon when the first team were away and listen to them on the walkman those were the days.

Played 2 league games for Anderlecht scoring twice this season.

He's already played for Anderlecht and Chelsea this season so can't play for any other side this season.

The holding midfielder should be found playing on the pitch 10 yards either side of the centre circle, like they way you see Busquets playing for Barcelona or for those that saw the Copa America Arevalo of Uruguay always first to the loose balls in midfield, first to challange the opponents when they enter your half and when he gets it plays it quickly to the more creative players. All I see McCulloch doing is getting caught up the park when we are attacking leaving a massive gaping hole in the midfield, committing stupid fouls which almost always result in bookings leaving him even more useless on the park, when he's defending he hops skips does his wee jig whilst pointing to where he should be which is where the ball is, but hey he can play a sweeping pass out to the right that spends so much time in the air that when it reaches the target the defender is there to make a tackle! As i've said before, to anyone that still defends him watch the final 3 matches of last season, we completely dominated them the opposition couldn't get out of their own half, as soon as he came on for the last half hour of each game it was open season on our defence and shooty in at McGregor.

We were down to the bare bones, the same 11 started those final 7 or 8 games with only deadwood like Beattie, Foster, Healy and Diouf with Hutton and Fleck making up the rest of the bench with McCulloch (more on him later) on the bench for the final 3 or 4 games after a 6 or 7 week injury therfore, 4-4-2 was our only option. If McCulloch, Bartley and Weiss were fit we would probably played our tugrid 4-5-1 in the run in. Now unless we go back to that line up or something similar with new players we will continue to struggle. Getting back to McCulloch those that still defend him I ask them to watch the final 3 games of the season we were destroying teams they couldn't get out their own half then on he saunters (replacing Edu every time)and within minutes he directs the opposition like a traffic cop into our box. If Ally continues with him it should cost him his Job!

McCulloch is the problem, but he is the blue eyed boy of the management team and many of the posters on here and will unlikley be dropped unless injured or suspended. In the run in last season we were playing dynamic attacking football finishing games off in the first half. Then final few games of the season when he was fit he was on the bench and within minutes of him coming off the bench our performances dropped dramatically, and although I don't particularly rate Edu it has to be him and Davis for me at the moment with Ness replacing Edu when fully fit or bring in an experienced player who plays with a similar style to Ness.

He's 19 at the end of the month was top scorer at the CONCACAF u20 championships has a couple of full caps and should have almost 10 caps by the end of the summer and would probably be available for less than £500K, these are the type of players we should be looking at, and due to his age and Costa Rica being in the top 75 of FIFA's rankings you should get a work permit for him.

Caught the last 20mins of the Costa Rica v Cuba match last night and the young left winger(Joel Campbell) that came on for Costa Rica and scored the 5th goal looked a decent prospect. Although, in all honesty Cuba were a very poor side so its hard to judge if he's any good I would like to see him against better opposition so hopefully he plays when they take part in the Copa America. Costa Rica seem to have a few good players in their early 20's and the only one out of our price range is probably Bryan Ruiz of Twente.

In the film Twin Town Dougray Scott plays a cop and spends most of the film running around in a 1972 Rangers top.

Just finished the first season in Italy in a game with my brother he's Brescia and i'm Bologna. I've played every version of this game since the first Champ Manager game and i've never been relegated but in this one I was 3 points behind Bari going into the last day of the season with equal head to head but I had the better goal difference. I was playing the already relegated Cagliari in the final game of the season away from home and needed to win with Bari losing to keep my place in Serie A, as my brother had finished in mid-table he played first and I found out that Bari lost their final match meaning all I had to do was win to stay up. The final match started off well with Marco Di Vaio(who I had stripped of the captiancy after he fell out with me and decided to leave on a Bosman) putting me in the lead early in the first half but Cagliari equalised midway through the second half so I pushed everybody forward playing overload but no chances came my way and I had resigned myself to my fate and my brother was ripping the piss out of me, then in the 92nd minute up popped that man Di Vaio again with a 20 yarder into the top corner to save me from relegation. Has anybody else had such a great end to the season in injury time in their final match of the season?

I watched them beat Bayern away convincingly 3-1 on Saturday with a team with a average age of 22 and the oldest player on the pitch for them being 26 (Lucas Barrios) and at least 5 of them came through Dortmund's youth system. I hope Ally's transfer policy is to buy players in their early to mid 20's for low fee's that we can get a few seasons out of and if they are successful sell on for profit just like Dortmund are doing now because their starting 11 on Saturday only cost around 10M to assemble and now you would be lucky to get any one of those players for 10M each. I wouldn't mind if we started next season with guy's like Ness, Wylde, Fleck, Hutton and Cole as regulars and got rid of high earning poorly performing players such as Beattie, Lafferty and Edu. I believe if we are to remain successful in the next few seasons we have to have a core of players from our own youth system complimented with a transfer policy of buying young, hungry, cheap players that can be moved on for profit once we have had resonable service out of them.