SIRB_72

Nothing is a pre requisite in this league. I'd say postecoglu goes against trend of Gerrard, Lennon, Rodgers or Smith who were all flexible in their approach and squads.

JL will surprise a lot this season. Beale clearly values him and i thought the tail end of last season was much improved. Hopefully the fitness is improved in general compared to last season with the new management team.

Dessers will be getting added to the list soon.

Don't take drugs and don't look at transfermarket for player valuations kids. Of course every one of us would sell JL for 7.5 considering the majority of his form in the last year and his contract situation (well apart from blacky bear). It's just not real at all though.

Suppose it comes down to quality and price. We picked up a guy like Souttar who was arguably one of the best players outside us and celtic for nothing, despite the injuries its a good player for not that much outlay. I know Ferguson splits opinion on here so I don't want to get into that but he goes to Italy for 3/4 million i think? Where as we pick up someone like Cantwell and Raskin for the same amount in total. Another factor exclusive to Scotland I'd say is crossing the divide. So you have someone like Nisbett who left Hibs for a more reasonable price but is a reported celtic fan. Now that is a weird risk in itself. You could end up with Neil McCann or you could end up with Michael O'Halloran (in terms of mentality). If my job is on the line as a manager or a DoF to sign players I'm not taking that risk. The same could be said for Porteous who clearly has talent but is rash and clearly not pro Rangers. Someone like McKenna is decent but went for mad money as well. In Scotland we should be looking at the low hanging fruit but they have to fit the right criteria as well like John Souttar and Ryan Jack. Much more has to be done internally to develop our own talent as well. We're too quick to let our own go and replace them with other Scottish players who aren't very good. For example, and I'm not saying he would be starting every week for us but some like Ross McCrorie showed at Aberdeen he was extremely dependable, could play in 2/3 positions. Now surely in terms of cost, nationality and talent he could have been much more value to Rangers than Edmundson, Zukowski, Sands or Zungu? Though I understand in that case he did want regular football.

Absolutely. He's definetely closer to an Arfield replacement than a Kamara replacement!

Ideally Butland, Tav, Goldson, Souttar (hopefully another CB), Yilmaz, Raskin, Cifuentes, Cantwell, Lammers, Sima and Dessers should Cifu and Dessers signn. That would be in a flexible 4-3-3. However we're in such a strange league that the best team for one game isn't necesarily the best for the next. Ross County at home is different from Hearts away which is different from any game against celtic which is different from any European game. The most important thing is we have a flexible squad that has players that can do different roles at different time. The perfect example and the peak of that was 20/21. From the profile we're signing it looks like we can go from a 433 with 3 different kinds of midfields to a more defensive shape like against celtic, 4231, 4132 and a 442 diamond. Tbh I'm pretty excited going into next season with all the potential variations and styles we'll have under Beale.

I knew Butland from his time at Stoke and even though he hasn't signed yet I know Jose Cifuentes just through watching MLS during the summers. The rest is just about research and watching wee bits and bobs you can get your hands on through youtube etc. Personally I'm quite positive about the caliber of player we're been linked with/bringing in.

When it comes to them it's actually their parents with the crayons, not the kids

Very ironic I don't think there necesarily needs to be further restrictions. The cap and wind tunnel time will start to come into effect over the next 18 months. It could just be track specific but AM, Ferrari and Mercedes have all seemed to be getting closer to RB in Spain and Canada. Red Bull will already have less wind tunnel time because of being champions and their penalty for going over the cap which will give the rest, especially AM plenty of chance to catch up. It's very tedious just now but over the next year or two we'll see an open championship. Red Bull have been very fortunate to have someone will Adrian Newey who seems to smash these rule changes every time.

Beloved manager leaving and being replaced by the snake that deserted them, arguably their best player leaving out of the blue, a midfielder who played 3/4s of their games retiring out the blue and this kit and the releasing of it with these hostage pictures. Not gonna lie, good start. Hopefully it keeps going like 20/21.

But this is why net matters. It's easier to say celtic spent 56/57 million pound in the last two seasons and then say if we spent 20 million pound we'd have a better chance when it isn't feasible, nor would it be for celtic now. Is the point that we should spend more? Or just that more money wins? The latter up here doesnt really matter when the difference between us and celtic is half of Hearts' budget.

In the last 4 windows (from summer 2021) celtic's net spend is around 5.5 million and according to Keiran Maguire their wage budget rose 7 million. Our net transfer is around -26 million but our wage budget has also increased 7 million pound. In 2021 we had an established squad who had just won the league unbeaten. The club made (in hindsight) a bad decision by keeping the squad together which determined how much money we spent. We wouldn't have been able to spend an extra 20 million unless we got rid of Aribo, Kent and Morelos over the next 12 months which we should have but very few were saying that in summer '21. celtic didnt just find this money behind the back of the couch. They sold players and had to replace them which is why spent so much money. We would have done the same if we sold Aribo, Morelos and Kent - like we did when we sold Bassey and Patterson to varying degrees of success. Last season our wage budget was 54/55 million and I cant see it dropping too much. If we can't build a team to win in Scotland with that much, regardless if celtic spend an extra 5-6 million on wages then we might as well give up the ghost. Bad decisions stopped us winning the league and cups, not budgets.

The majority of these transfers happened within three windows of these big "outlier" transfers outside of Scotland. Demebele for 22 million (2018), Tierney for 27 million (2019) and I'd add to the "outlier" list Edouard and Ajer for a combinined 30 million (2021) because their contracts. Then we add in Bassey for 22/23 million (2022). These types of sales arent really outliers considering there has been 5 in 5 years. Kyogo, Jota and Carter- Vickers were effectvely bought from the Edouard and Ajer sales. Edouard was bought prior to the dembele sale but they leveraged CL or dembele that summer. Also Julien was bought from the Tierney sale. celtic do not sign those 5 players if it wasn't for selling others like we don't spend 15 or so million last year if it wasn't for the Bassey sale.

I wouldn't say it is misleading at all. Both ourselves and celtic have to balance our transfers and typically spend more when they have to. If you want to break it down to just out goings there is about 23 million difference since 2018 between us and celtic. celtic have spent around 109 million where as we've spent 56 million in transfers but we've also increased the wage budget by 30 million in that time. Now that's around 4.5 million celtic in theory are spending per season in transfers but the figures show they aren't spending that money compared to us. In the last 5 seasons we've spent 10 million more than celtic. celtic were only able to spend that 70 million in the last 3 years because they balanced it out with the selling of the likes of frimpong, eduoard, ajer, juranovic and others. The 4 players mentioned brought celtic in somehwere between 45-50 million.

A lot of that has to do where both clubs were at the time. Since Gerrard joined us until this season our net spend on transfers is 3.4 million. Over the last 3 seasons our net spend is -15.4 million. celtic in the last 5 seasons have a net spend of -7.2 million compared to the last 3 years which is a net spend of 6.6 million. From summer 2018 to 2020 we were catching up with celtic who themselves had their squad already that didnt need millions spent on it. From 2020 we were the club with the squad who didn't necesarily need a full rebuild, celtic on the other hand did. We had to rebuild not just spending on transfers but building the wage budget which is roughly within 5 million of celtic's now. In the last 5 season's our net spend has been lower than celtic's once and that was last season. We have invested a lot more in our team over the last 5 years and that's because we've had to but now budgets shouldn't be an excuse especially when we dwarf the spend of even the third best in Scotland.

I agree. Especially when our wage budget dwarfs the third club in Scotland by about 5 times.

We'll be fine, we'll win the league with 100+ points and 100+ goals

That goes without saying really

Knowing the tartan army the latter

Georgia are really heeling it up here

He's the best of what is available. Highly effective for Scotland and big reason why they win the games they do. The likes of mcginn having such a good scoring record and then the likes of mctominey and mclean today scoring is down to his hard work.

That is incredible

Not clear cut pen but Porteous will always give the opposition a sniff.

I always thought Alfie's style would suit West Ham and would be an instant upgrade on Antonio