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Thank God.

After the best part of five months and what feels like an eternity, Rangers are finally back in SPFL action tomorrow lunch-time. And, off the back of a fairly impressive friendly programme, fans are excited to see what Steven Gerrard in his third season as Rangers manager can deliver during this campaign. Can we offer a sustained title challenge? Can we take an extra step in the domestic cups? Will we be able to maintain our progress in European competition? None of these questions are easy to answer. For the last two seasons any challenge offered to Celtic has faltered after the winter break whilst we've been unable to secure a domestic cup for almost ten years - despite leading in one against Hibs and outclassing Celtic in another last year. Fortunately, our performances in Europe has perhaps been a more accurate barometer of progress with good work against several decent continental outfits across the last two seasons. Indeed, we're still not officially out of last years Europa League just yet! With all this in mind, it's interesting to note that this summer squad changes have, so far at least, been kept to an absolute minimum for Gerrard's third season. The global pandemic may have ensured a stagnated transfer market but is this also a sign that our manager feels his squad is capable of delivering trophies? With only Ianis Hagi arriving as a genuine first XI player then, as it stands, we certainly have to hope that's the manager's thinking. Yes, Jon McLaughlin, Calvin Bassey and Leon Balogun have also strengthened the squad but with Niko Katic injured for the longer term and the likes of Andy Halliday and Jon Flanagan not having their contracts renewed, that means a more streamlined look to our squad with a nod to youth in certain areas, particularly at right back in the exciting Nathan Patterson. Of course it would be remiss of me not to mention the Alfredo Morelos situation. At the time of writing it appears a renewed bid has been made from France for his services and it's nearing the (inevitable?) stage where the Colombian will move on sooner rather than later. In fact, it's not a guarantee he'll play in tomorrow's opener given his uncertain situation and one only need look at our opponents to see how an injury can affect the possible sale of your biggest asset. Aberdeen will be missing both their first choice strikers and, with Defoe again injured for us, it's been a big surprise and disappointment that we've not brought in another striker ahead of the game. Irrespective of Morelos' status, we need another centre forward and it's an undoubted gamble not to have back-up at this stage. It has been suggested that Gerrard doesn't want squad players (such as Kamberi) but genuine quality so if a suitable fee is agreed for Morelos, the manager may think the gamble of waiting will pay off with two new strikers capable of competing for the role brought in on the bulk of any transfer proceeds. As it stands though, I don't think the manager will hesitate to play the Colombian tomorrow, even if we've seen other attackers such as Barker, Stewart, Murphy and Hagi all work well together across the front-line in pre-season. Indeed, if we look again at the starting XI for those friendly games, the manager seemed fairly consistent in his favoured side and coincidentally that is the same sort of XI we seen in our last league game in March. At that time James Tavernier and Ryan Jack were struggling with injury but those two players aside, the team that started against Ross County is effectively the one that took us through pre-season undefeated and likely to be the one that will open our season tomorrow. Our defence is fairly easy to predict. A couple of summer niggles and a positive start to Jon McLaughlin's Rangers career aside, Allan McGregor remains our first choice 'keeper and a key player when it comes to a winning mentality. In front of him, our back four should also be a consistent one as the season progresses with only the left centre back uncertain for now. George Edmundson should retain his place until Filip Helander is fully fit once more but the big Swede showed enough pre-Christmas last season to be Connor Goldson's preferred partner. At full back James Tavernier and Borna Barisic remain two important players, particularly in a creative sense, but both will need to demonstrate the mental strength required to ensure they can lift trophies as Rangers players. Moving into midfield and the deeper part of our system especially, we have four players battling for three positions. Steven Davis, Ryan Jack, Glen Kamara and Joe Aribo are all fine players but the manager has often found it tricky to find the right blend in some domestic matches. That amalgam of defensive wherewithal along with the ability to move the ball quickly and vertically remains one of our biggest challenges in the stuffy arenas and artificial pitches of the Scottish Premiership. This perhaps explains why Ross Wilson and the manager are happy to pay the best part of £3million for Bongani Zungu who may well arrive imminently. Davis will miss tomorrow's game with a niggle but should be available for the midweek trip to Germany. We also have several options further forward. Signing Ianis Hagi on a permanent deal should be a good move in terms of creativity and a goal threat whilst the form of Kent and Brandon Barker across pre-season also bodes well for the real thing. Achieving consistency from these players, as well as enough game-time for the rest of our forward options will be the key to unlocking this squad's full potential. Hitherto fringe players such as Barker, Stewart, Jones and Murphy really need to be playing regularly to show their best form but this is difficult with others ahead of them in the reckoning. Scott Arfield is another who can play in the advanced or defensive roles and we'll be hoping for a better season from him as well. We've already discussed how short we are for strikers but we are where we are for now so let's hope Morelos can get back on the goal trail quickly until such a time he does leave. However, the responsibility of scoring goals should not be placed on just one player. All things considered, we clearly still have a good squad of players with an agreeable mix of experience and potential with undoubted quality across the manager's preferred 4-3-3 system. However, a cursory look at last season's results show we weren't clinical enough in certain situations and it's no secret we struggle to break down teams utilising low/medium blocks and concede cheap goals when we lose our own positional discipline when pushing for goals. The management team will have to prove they can overcome that if we're to win trophies and Pittodrie will prove a good initial test of that tomorrow. In conclusion, this is a big year for Steven Gerrard. In terms of his position as Rangers manager, he's in a unique situation with the Covid virus offering difficulties no other has had previously in the post-WWII era. Yet, he's now been in the job for two years so he's no longer the inexperienced youth coach that arrived from Liverpool. Therefore, as he did as a player, he now needs to show he's learned from every minute of being in charge; from the lows to the highs, and bring success back to Rangers, just as he's seen happen at his former club. Conversely, for our part as fans, we have to remain patient. I have no doubt in my mind that Steven Gerrard is the right man for this job and whilst it may have taken a bit longer than I have hoped for him to win trophies, I firmly believe he will this coming season. In that respect, leagues aren't won on the first day of any new campaign but we have to get off on the front foot and there cannot be any excuses as we move further into the competition. Once more unto the breach, dear friends... Possible team (4-3-3):

Don't be silly - it's more like this:

Secret footage of Aberdeen training has been obtained...

Credit to him for two good assists in Europe but it was a strange signing from the start. A winger who excels on the counter attack signed for a system that doesn’t play wingers and plays against packed defences.

Right now I am pessimistic, but there is a lot of uncertainty regarding who will be signed with the Morelos money. Last season we fell short due to a lack of creativity and quality in the final third. There was also a lack of bottle and leadership. We are starting this season with the exact same team but we don’t know how the team will change when things start to move. I am happy with our defence (including depth). In the 3 midfield positions i think we can improve. Jack and Aribo are good enough but the third position needs strengthened. in the 2 attacking midfield positions Hagi is good enough but the other side needs strengthened. Kent has strengths and has a role to play but he’s not a starting 11 player for me who can be relied on to unlock deep lying defences. Up front, I for one won’t mind replacing Morelos. 12 goals in 26 league games isn’t good enough, it cost us. 7 of those 12 came in easy games we won by at least 4 goals, and only 2 directly won us points (4). Yes, this is a very simplistic summary but I think we need someone who will score more goals domestically. The constant jeering clearly gets to Alfredo. Defoe got a fraction of the minutes and ended as our top goal scorer in the league.

I bet the PL would shite themselves if they had to make a decision.

Very smart. So far Castore seem to have the edge on other recent designs

Re Jones ... and Stewart, Barker etc. ... all the same issue really. Not that they "are not good enough", but we seriously underused them and their strengths even in games and at times when we badly needed them. I know people will disagree with gusto, but those last two seasons, if not four, we far too often stuck to tactics and line-ups that simply didn't suit the Scottish game for a whole season. We saw how Jones could hurt teams on the counter, but hardly ever used them in games where it was necessary. We hardly ever used the trickery and willingness of Stewart in lots of sticky and dire affairs at Livingston, Hamilton et al. Weston ... is 16. I do not regard him as "a real signing" just yet. And whether he will come good in 2 years time (or actually is been given a chance) is anyone's guess.

Is that Cosgrove taking out Stevie May?

Perhaps a wee bit early, but... we're back! Aberdeen 0 - 2 Rangers FGS Hagi

?????

It's 30 league goals in 30 league games with 3 assists. Picked up 5 yellow cards and 1 straight red in those 30 games. Swiss cup 3 games producing 4 goals and 1 assist. CL qualifying 2 games 0 goals with 1 assist and 1 yellow card. Europa league 6 games producing 2 goals 0 assists, 1 yellow card. That's a total of 41 games with 36 goals and 5 assists. Played a total of 3,349 minutes averaging a goal every 93 minutes.

White eh we might be mistaken for Real Madrid ? that will be more money from a poor old man living on a pension ?

If the FA and others are so concerned about this infusion of Arab money why dont they urge their players and other nations to boycott the next world cup in Qatar which has a human rights record that stinks and a lot of the workforce could be said to be modern day slaves .

This, from the Irish Independent, was sent to me and seems to cover those awkward background questions. (You're welcome.) https://www.independent.ie/woman/celeb-news/all-about-steve-26410750.html All about Steve April 16 2006 12:11 AM 'OK, this is where I have to be careful that I don't burst into tears," says Steve Carson. It's a surprising admission, though it shouldn't be. "I didn't ever really miss my mum until I saw my own first child," Carson continues. "Until I saw my own children having a mother, then I realised that this was how it should have been. "Jesus," he says, lifting his chin as if to rein in the tears, "It's Monday morning and I'm getting into this. But, you know, that opened the floodgates for a load of different things and I can see now what I missed. Fundamentally, though, it's my mum who missed it. Really, it's saddest for the one who dies." Carson's sudden rush of emotion occurs as if a button has been pushed, unleashing something over which he has no control. It is only surprising because the subject of his mother, Pat Carson, who died when he was four years old, has arisen already and been addressed calmly and coolly. When he comes to talk about his wife, Miriam O'Callaghan, and the birth of the first of their four sons, however, Carson wells up. It is a flood of feeling for the little boy who lost and barely remembers his mother, of course, but also an honest appreciation of what he has, a family and a future that was taken from Pat Carson. "We're repopulating the South with Carsons," laughs the Belfast-born, award-winning documentary producer and director, while confessing to understanding the public fascination with the houseful of kids he shares with O'Callaghan. It was all fine until a few years ago, he says, when his wife did one of her first interviews with the RTE Guide and mentioned she had (then) seven children. Four with her first husband, journalist and broadcaster, Tom McGurk - Alanah, now 18, Clara, 14, Jessica and Georgia, 13 - and with Carson, three boys, Jack, 8, Daniel, 7, Conor, 4. The family expanded to eight in February, when Jamie("or James, or Seamus") was born, "the last, definitely", accordingto Carson. "When Miriam and I were first together," he smiles, "We talked about kids and she asked how many I would ideally have liked and I said, 'Oh, about three'. And said, 'Right, but that would mean we'd end up with seven,' and we both fell about the place laughing. It seemed even ludicrous to us." In reality, though, what has unfolded feels right, though as he relates his earlier years, Steve Carson eventually observes that his story'What I didn't realise was that I'd feel a tribe apart in England too' "maybe sounds like I was always a fish out of water". Which is useful when one works as an observer of other people's lives and stories, and it informs Carson's work with Mint Productions, which he founded with O'Callaghan in 2001, but it's not necessarily a trait that promotes personal happiness. Steve Carson was born in east Belfast in 1968, the only son of Tom and Pat Carson. His sisters, Linda and Carol - "good Protestant names, no chances taken there" - who were seven and eight years older than him, refer to their younger brother as "Damien", the Antichrist from the Omen films. It's one of those family in-jokes we all recognise, the kind that hurt a little bit, help a little bit and carry a deal of truth. "My dad used to shoot home movies," Steve attempts to explain, "And it was all summer scenes of little girls running around the garden and both my parents. And then I was born, then the Troubles started, then Mum dies and then we lost the house." None of it was his fault, but it might well have felt like it and Carson grew up with a strong sense that he was out of step, that he'd arrived too late into the family his sisters had enjoyed. Tom Carson, a journalist with the Belfast Telegraph, and his wife, Pat, were members of the Northern Ireland Labour Party in the Sixties. They were liberal, non-sectarian, and were devastated when "the Northern Ireland that seemed possible in the early Sixties, one that was modern and forward-thinking, that had Van Morrison, and the Rolling Stones coming to Belfast, just fell apart". When the Labour Party split, many members joined the SDLP, but people like the Carsons were left adrift and eventually became founder members of the Alliance Party. Pat Carson was the first Alliance Party councillor elected in Belfast, but she died before she could take her seat, at the age of 48. "I don't know if she knew she was dying," he says, "I don't know very much about her, to be honest. "I was a totally anonymous kid," Carson insists, while explaining how difficult it must have been for his dad, alone with a small boy and two teenage girls in the Seventies. His mother's sister and her husband were a great support, but what Carson calls the loss of the family home illustrates the strain on his father. "To this day I don't know what happened," he says, "But it was something to do with the oil price shock. But why it hit us so badly, I don't know. And we didn't lose the house, we just moved into a much smaller one. Really, I think my dad feared the end of the world." His journalist father was a huge influence on Carson, who wanted to follow him into that profession from a young age. Tom Carson tried to discourage him, insisting it was a tough business for which his son was too soft. THERE were two sides to Steve Carson growing up, though. The scooter in the hall of Mint Production's Rathmines office is a reminder of his days as a teenage mod, while the programmes in which Mint specialises, such as the Haughey series, Pearse: Fanatic Heart, Dear Frankie or the forthcoming 1916: The Man Who Lost Ireland, speak of his youthful love of books and Irish history. "I used to hang around with the east Belfast mods," recalls Carson, "So I had this totally schizo thing where we'd be up drinking and being quite rough, really, and getting into fights on Easter Monday with rockers. They were my local friends, but because I got my 11+, I went to school in south Belfast, where I had a completely different network of friends, not necessarily bookish sorts, but not into beating people up for no apparent reason. But even in the mod gang, I never really fit in. I was more watching them beating people up, being the JD Salinger of the gang, and everyone had a nickname but me. There was 'Budgy' and 'Boiler' and 'Zipper' and Steve. I think I never quite fit in." The adolescent Steve Carson's burning ambition to get out of Northern Ireland would have contributed to this sense of being not quite engaged. Why get involved if you're not going to stay? He left after A-levels, for college in Manchester, and believed he'd stay in England forever. A lowly position in the BBC came straight after graduation and then Carson became a reporter in youth programming in Manchester, directing his own items and learning fast about television production. It was fantastic, he says, before laughing that youth programmes didn't sit right with him, that he always imagined his father's slightly disdainful voice in his ear. "What I didn't realise was that I'd feel a tribe apart in England too," Carson explains. "I left Belfast in 1987 basically thinking 'a plague on all your houses' and tried to make myself the model little BBC producer,but that kind of never felt comfortable either." As a young 'lower middle-class Prod' Carson had never looked to the South as a potential home for himself, though he had devoured books on Irish history as a kid and, eventually, it was only love took him away from England. In 1994, after a stint as a researcher in current affairs, Steve Carson became a producer on BBC's Newsnight in London. It was there he met Miriam O'Callaghan, who was working for RTE in Dublin, but also as an Ireland correspondent for Newsnight. "And she had four kids, I don't know how she did it," he says, voicing the disbelief he now shares with half the country. There was no romance for overa year, he says, by which time O'Callaghan was no longer with Tom McGurk. Carson and O'Callaghan worked together regularly on Irish items and in Northern Ireland and it was, he says, "a nice way of getting to know someone. "I realised my feelings had changed one time at the top of the White Rock Road," Carson recalls, laughing at just how unromantic it was. "There were all these cars on fire and she was doing a piece to camera to close off the piece and it was getting dark and the atmosphere was very bad. And I remember my emotional feeling took over from my feeling of having to get this in the can." Not romantic, but significant given Carson's own admission that he's a "hard taskmaster, a terrible perfectionist, probably not a natural manager". In 1997, Steve Carson moved to Dublin. "It wasn't exactly a marrying-your-childhood-sweetheart situation, I suppose, and looking back, it was testament to how much I loved her," he says, before quickly correcting himself. "Or, really, how much she must have loved me, because it was totally insane. I wasn't exactly a good match from her point of view, coming from living in London with two other lads, to basically going straight into married-with-kids and she took a hell of a risk on me. But Miriam is amazing, she makes everything very easy." Carson was not fazed by the prospect of instant stepfatherhood and within two months of his arrival, Jack was born and he was afather himself. With O'Callaghan and fatherhood, things fell into place personally for Carson, but the move to Dublin was the unexpectedly difficult thing. "It was strange coming here, because I had never imagined myself leaving England," he says, "And you think you kind of know Ireland, because you know the history and read about it as a boy, the South and the Civil War and all, but then when you're in the middle of it, I don't know, it's strange." Initially, Carson worked in RTE, but in 2001 the couple decided they should set up a production company, which he would run. Carson says this was not the result of any huge entrepreneurial drive on his part, though the volume of work Mint Productions turns around and the reputation it has gained in five years are testimony to some sort of drive. Carson credits his wife with a lot of the ideas - Unit 8 for example, the series of stories from Holles Street's newborn babies ward - and confesses that while some might think he only gets work because he's well-connected "no one's ever said that to my face". On that subject, however, Carson recalls that in the early days, when he was paying himself "tuppence-halfpenny", there were some at meetings who would ask, to his irritation, "where did you park the helicopter?" "There were hungry times," he says, "And we put most of the money on screen, but where RTE used to commission about eight documentaries a year, now it's a case of blink and you'll miss one." When they set up Mint in Dublin, Carson was also keen that they have a Belfast branch. "I always had this terrible guilt," he says, "And this comes from my dad, that my generation had just buggered off and left them to it and not that producing shows like Let's Talk (the BBC NI Questions & Answers) makes up for that, but there is a feeling that it is good to have a company up there too. And as much as it's been interesting to immerse myself in down here, it's been weird and interesting to reimmerse myself in up there. "What has happened with Mint, though," he says, "is that we have tended to do a lot of history documentaries [Pearse, Emmet, Haughey], a sort of pantheon of history greats, if you want - or not-so-greats - and I think my take on them can be interesting, because although I'm not of this state I find it utterly fascinating." He was surprised, however, that Haughey received so muchnegative attention. The only equivalent he can think of would bePaisley - about whom his father's feelings are strong - but evenat that, Carson would love todo a documentary about Big Ian,as much as he loved doing Haughey, now nominated as Best Documentary at the Smart Telecom TVNow Awards. "After doing that, a difficult programme to make, difficult people to get to talk, a 30-week edit and then reading about it, everywhere, forever, nothing will ever freak me out again," Carson laughs. "It's an insecure business and things can go wrong, but I've come to realise that if it works out, it works out and if it goes wrong, it's not the end of the world." Before Christmas, Steve Carson got pneumonia and was out of action for several weeks. "Everyone coped alarmingly well without me," he laughs, before going on to explain that around the same time, he and O'Callaghan were told that Jamie might be born very early, so early that he might have long-term difficulties. It was horrible and terrifying and it put everything in perspective and while Jamie was born a full-term, healthy baby, Carson is taking nothing for granted. He knows what he has, maybe more so because he knows what he once lost and, in a way, having happiness in the present has made him begin to think his family past is his to explore. "I have heard from other people," Steve Carson says, "thatmy mother was a very impressive woman and that's strange tohear. Through work, I met Oliver Napier [the first leader of the Alliance Party] and I mentioned in passing that he might have known my mother. When I told him her name, he was so taken aback and he told me he had known her well and he called in his wife, whoit turned out had been a great friend of hers and she was in floods of tears. "And it was weird, you know, it was a bit like this, a Monday morning, and they were crying and I was just sitting there with my notepad, wondering if we should get back to talking about the documentary. Afterwards," he says, "I thought how strange it was to see their reaction and maybe, I think, it's time to try to find out more about her."

Methodist married to an RC according to other sources which can be hysterically reliable or reliably hysterical, so evenly balanced on the face of it. On the other hand to get on in the bbc especially bbc sco’llan’ you have to be of a mindset that does not favour Unionism nor the adherents thereto.

Exactly. It was clear as day he wasn’t the type who would fit our system. And I thought it was clear that he was an Aberdeen level player too.

Not surprised at all, would be more surprised/disappointed if I heard SG saying he wanted him to stay. Proved he didnt have what it takes when he got himself sent off against the bheasts, it was stupid, reckless and it cost him any chance he had of a long Rangers career. Good luck to him wherever he lands, and I agree with others who say it was a strange signing given his main strength is using his pace in a counter-attack, which was discussed plenty here when his pre-contract signing was announced, so it makes you wonder if mere customers like us can see it why our scouts/management didnt take this into account before wasting a good contract on someone who was never likely to be a success.

To be fair , we have a long record of signing players who play if a specific position , then expect them to excel in a completely different formation , Boli springs to mind

Thread now updated with full peview. PS: Steven Davis is injured for tomorrow.

Der Spiegel claims new Manchester City emails cast doubt on Cas verdict. Der Spiegel means, if I recall correctly, The Mirror, appropriately enough for this looking glass world. Manchester City said: ‘The questions and matters raised by Der Spiegel appear to be a cynical attempt to publicly re-litigate and undermine a case that has been fully adjudicated.’ Miss Mandy Rice-Davies responded.......... From today's Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/jul/30/der-spiegel-claims-new-manchester-city-emails-cast-doubt-on-cas-verdict Der Spiegel claims new Manchester City emails cast doubt on Cas verdict New ‘leaked’ emails relate to City’s sponsorship by Etihad Club refuse to comment on emails but have denied wrongdoing David Conn Thu 30 Jul 2020 20.02 BSTLast modified on Fri 31 Jul 2020 04.37 BST Manchester City said: ‘The questions and matters raised by Der Spiegel appear to be a cynical attempt to publicly re-litigate and undermine a case that has been fully adjudicated.’ The German magazine Der Spiegel has published new “leaked” emails relating to Manchester City’s past sponsorships by Abu Dhabi state companies, which it claims cast doubt on the court of arbitration for sport judgment that overturned City’s ban by Uefa. In one of the emails, a City director, Simon Pearce, who was also a senior executive in an Abu Dhabi government authority, set out that he was “forwarding” the airline £91m of £99m that Etihad owed to the club for its sponsorship, with Etihad providing only £8m. City refused to comment on the substance of the new emails, maintaining as the club has since the first “leaks” in November 2018 that their emails were “criminally obtained”. Spiegel’s source, Rui Pinto, who is charged with computer hacking in his native Portugal, which he denies, has denied that he obtained the emails by criminal means. City have vehemently denied that the Etihad sponsorship was subsidised by the club’s owner, Sheikh Mansour of the Abu Dhabi ruling family, or any other Abu Dhabi entity, since Spiegel first published the emails, and throughout the subsequent investigation and ultimate guilty finding by Uefa’s Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) adjudicatory chamber (AC). Pearce and senior Etihad executives gave evidence at the Cas hearing, categorically denying the finding, largely based on the published emails, that the airline did not pay the sponsorships in full. The emails considered by the CFCB and Cas included three from City’s then financial officers to Pearce, a City board member and senior adviser on the Executive Affairs Authority (EAA), a strategic Abu Dhabi government authority. The finance officers set out that in 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2015-16 Etihad paid only £8m of sponsorship deals City stated to be £35m, £65m and £67.5m respectively. The rest, they wrote, was being paid by Mansour’s company ownership vehicle, the Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG). City had refused requests from the CFCB for Pearce and other senior people to give evidence, and Cas severely criticised the club and imposed a €10m (£9m) fine for their failure to cooperate and obstruction of the investigation. Pearce did appear before Cas, as did James Hogan, the former Etihad chief executive, and other senior figures, and based largely on their evidence, the Cas panel overturned by a 2-1 majority the CFCB conclusion that Mansour “disguised” his own funding as Etihad sponsorship. Spiegel published the new emails two days after Cas released the full 93-page judgment that detailed its reasons. One of the new emails was sent by Pearce in December 2013, from his Executive Affairs Authority address to Peter Baumgartner, then Etihad’s chief commercial officer, with the subject “payments”. Pearce set out that under its sponsorship agreement Etihad had owed City £31.5m for the 2012-13 season, and £67.5m for the £2013-14 season, a total of £99m. “So we should be receiving a total of £99m – of which you will provide £8m,” he wrote to Baumgartner. ”I therefore should have forwarded £91m and instead have sent you only £88.5m. I effectively owe you £2.5m.” Pearce offered Baumgartner two options to reconcile the missing £2.5m. The first was for Etihad to pay only £65m of the £67.5m sponsorship for 2013-14 and pay the £2.5m the following year. The second option, Pearce wrote, was: “You pay the £65m now and I will forward the £2.5m in a couple of months – at which point you can forward it on.” Pearce apologised to Baumgartner for the missing £2.5m he had not sent, writing: “As I am sure you knew, embarrassingly it would seem that rather than overpaying you I have underpaid you!” The figure of £88.5m Pearce apparently sent to Etihad for forwarding to City tallies with the same figure, £88.5m, set out to Pearce in one of the previously published emails. That was sent five days earlier by Jorge Chumillas, City’s then chief financial officer, who said the breakdown of Etihad’s sponsorship of City was £88.5m from ADUG, while Etihad was paying £8m. Pearce’s evidence to Cas about the City’s finance officers writing in their emails that only £8m was coming from Etihad, was that the arrangements had caused “some confusion among individuals at the club” and “a misunderstanding that ADUG was making funds available to Etihad”. City declined to provide a response to the contents of the new emails, as they did publicly in 2018, so they did not explain why or in what capacity Pearce was apparently sending £91m to the chief commercial officer of Etihad for its sponsorship of City. The club said in a statement: “The questions and matters raised by Der Spiegel appear to be a cynical attempt to publicly re-litigate and undermine a case that has been fully adjudicated, after detailed proceedings and due process, by the court of arbitration for sport. “Manchester City’s policy remains not to comment on out of context materials purported to have been criminally obtained from City Football Group and Manchester City personnel.”

A very strange start to the season. The team who starts this game could be very different from the team who starts the 3rd/4th game.

Not at all , very good friend , but I also never believe everything that I read in autobiographies, in most cases 25% is pure bullshite

Lifted from FF: Jordan Jones has been told he can leave Rangers.Steven Gerrard has informed the Northern Ireland international that he is not in his first-team plans.The Rangers boss has told the 25-year-old they won’t stand in his way if he can get a move this summer.Gerrard signed Jones from Kilmarnock on a free transfer last summer but he has struggled to make an impact under him.Jones has been on the Ibrox fringes since he got sent off for a wild lunge against Celtic back in September, which left him with a serious knee injury.He came back at the end of the season but struggled for game time and was made available for loan in January, although nobody could agree a deal with the Ibrox giants.Jones, who still has two years left on his Ibrox contract, worked hard during the lockdown to keep himself in top shape to get back into Gerrard’s first-team plans.He was involved in some of the early pre-season games but was put down to the B team for their recent friendly with Dundee United.Jones then went to speak to Gerrard where he was told he is not part of his top-team plans.A number of Championship clubs, including Middlesbrough, Blackburn and Stoke City, are all interested but they are unlikely to do any early business with their campaigns just finished.

Far too many it should remain status quo except bring in rule for keeper to be substituted at any time iif injured still can't believe football authorities have not brought this in.

Why are you publishing this competition? I spotted this on Twitter and was hoping I was the only one to enter! Quick, delete this thread!

That’s my worry - as is a manager who doesn’t believe he has a leadership problem.

Can you imagine anything better than an endless debate about re-signing a former Rangers player? How about an endless debate about re-signing two former Rangers players? Add Josh Windass to Kamberi plz.

I’d be absolutely certain that SG couldn’t give two shits for the scenario you painted if the player in question was performing better than everyone else each week. Loyalty in football is pretty much dead. Has been for years.

Hopeful but definitely not optimistic. The changes required to take us from failure to success simply haven’t taken place yet and without them optimism would be pointless.

Were you complaining during the late 90s and early 2000's when we were getting in much more funding than anyone else (from ENIC, King, NTL, MIH) which distorted the competition? Look at the funding we've received over the past 4 years which is much more than any other club in Scotland. Are we also doing financial doping? Where do you draw the line?