phreeky

A year without Champions League money was always going to happen one day. What mistake was a business plan that relied on it.

He is a young man and sounds like he is struggling emotionally. Sometimes you're better off just cutting your losses, clearing your mind and starting fresh.

No, it's the constant attempt to buy talent, throw it on the park and grind out results. It has escalated recently and the football is ugly to watch too. Craig Whyte may not be a popular man but when costs > revenue for an extended period of time then you're in a bad place, regardless of the other stuff going on.

Why did it take so long to move Matty on? I think he could've been brilliant but if you're not gonna play him then it's a massive waste of money. Good luck Matt!

Way too hard to predict a line-up, let alone a result. I highly doubt the full current squad will be around much longer. Personally I think it should be 100% attacking mode from the team, take risks and play possession football from defence to attack and entertain the fans as they deserve it, they are after all the greatest asset to this club and the only asset that cannot be sold!

There'd be a good mix of player salaries in there. Some will be on great money, but some of the younger and/or fringe players wont be raking it in and you can hardly blame them for looking after themselves.

Their choice may be to either move or be unemployed (and on the long list of creditors). What they'd choose would very much be up to each individual player, but I cannot see anyone wanting to continue their footballing career not being at a club of some form.

I just hope that the players are informed in full ASAP. Last thing the club needs at the moment is players on the pitch that don't know where they stand. As for who will be released, I can only assume that other clubs will be vulture-like and will be waiting/hoping for torn up contracts rather than waiting to pay up in the transfer window. I think the high wage players will be first to go, cutting costs is surely their first move. Who knows what sort of squad will be left but it's hard to imagine low-wage players will be released, but could instead become regulars. There is good reason for some balance though, cutting costs is one thing but keeping the fans turning up is financially also of utmost importance. Having been "released" from a business in dire financial circumstances it's a c*nt of a situation that I do not wish on anyone.

Should be one touch football, working the triangles and tire them out. Ally doesn't like playing possession football though, he just wants it up the park.

I just caught one

Is there a cough getting about?

You know it's a sad situation when you start to believe that a run of bad results to force changes could be in the best interests of the long term.

One big issue now is that if Ally decides to start playing McKay and he plays very well, what sort of questions is that going to raise? Especially troublesome if he was signed against Ally's wishes and hasn't been played in spite. That's a very big IF, I realise.

IIRC he has even filled in at left-back for some reason and did an OK job at it (not as good as a solid LB though). But he is best off commanding the passing just left of midfield in attack and drawing the oppositions defence out of position and finding the pass to exploit it. Patient, possession football transitioning into attack. I hope he gets enough bounce games to stay reasonably sharp because it's crazy to assume we'll have many other options at the current rate.

TBH I'm sick of the McCoist sympathy by some. The results have been in a downward spiral long before the transfer window.

That's a very good point. Problem is that cup games have already been lost and league points dropped, there is no buffer for poor games anymore and that normally means that most managers would take a safe approach rather than playing youth. It's so sad that it's almost midnight Monday night here and I'm sitting here with a very hard drink on ice.

I think it's all about taking a step back and looking at what we have in the squad. There are no doubt conflicts in plans, especially when it comes to cashflow, and what the manager needs to do is ignore WHY and HOW people were brought into the squad, ignore what we DON'T have, and work with what is AVAILABLE. Perhaps Ally isn't happy with how McKay and Bedoya were signed, but if he is putting his personal agenda before the club then that would be more than disappointing. On McKay specifically, something people may not have noticed in the short appearances he has had is his work rate. He might be considered an attacking midfielder but he doesn't stop moving and just constantly hassles defences, defending from the front. It might look like a headless chook but that's only because nobody else in the Rangers side does the same and the defenders are able to pass around. Good sides force mistakes, and really good sides force those mistakes high up the park.

You have a point. There was certainly a place for a striker during the transfer window, though I wonder whether Ally was obsessed with getting a multi million pound striker and we probably could've aimed lower. In reality there are some quite cheap strikers consistently knocking balls past keepers in various leagues when they're getting good service, and we shouldn't need any more up front to handle the SPL. Unfortunately strikers producing goals out of nothing cannot be on our radar in the current financial state.

That's a poor excuse. The midfielders weren't even putting nice balls across the box or passing around and drawing the defence out of position, how exactly is a striker going to help that unless it's some sheer piece of individual brilliance that we simply cannot afford? And do we really want to be an inefficient big-buying club? Defensively our structure was, well, unstructured, and we were beaten down the flanks as well. Our midfielders couldn't maintain possession and the attacking midfielders were not even pressuring the DU defence, let alone getting good balls in. And when one of the MANY high and long balls got lumped at the strikers from a poor and predictable angle we didn't have a tall man to get on the end of it, let alone a 2nd man up there to head it down to. Not one component of the Rangers side played well in its own right, let alone transitioning between them and playing well as a whole team. It was a disorganised nightmare, the type that can only happen so uniformly across a side when it's the result of poor management. DU were a more organised unit and it showed. Anyone seen the side train lately? WTF do they do?

How about no more of this bullshit of relying on individual brilliance to save games and instead focusing on getting the current squad to play proper football as an organised unit? It's one thing having to watch the team play like they are, it's even worse being on the other side of the world and having to stay up past midnight to do so. Not just pissed off, but tired and pissed off.

Quite an amusing question isn't it? Considering he is the only one who'd know first hand.

Highly likely Whether Ally doesn't think they're good enough though I don't know. There's also the possibility that it pissed Ally off so much that he refuses to play them regardless of whether they're any good. McKay doesn't appear to be interested in going anywhere though, so how long will it take (or how bad will the results have to get) before McKay is genuinely considered? McKay has a knack of bringing the ball very deep into the box, something we desperately need with the current striker lineup.

You're just shifting names around. The (dis)organisation of the team happens at training before the game, it's a royal fuckup of Ally.

It's because they're more organised. Worrying stuff.

Just needs someone with a good work rate and solid passing to stabilise it a bit