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Only in the world according to Kenny Miller. Contracted to 2025. Injury prone. Like O'Halloran before him, saves his best for games against Rangers. His affiliations likely to lean elsewhere in any case. And if that's not enough, we ain't gonna be held to ransom by the spoon burners for an inflated fee. In summary, one of the worst suggestions so far in this thread imo.

I just wish someone would show mercy on the rest of us and close this fukking topic.

xG can also predict the long term success of a team. Ange's first season saw Celtic top the xG table - they were creating the most chances in the league - and many were rubbishing it because we were actually top at the time. All it was saying was that Celtic were creating more chances, which is more sustainable in terms of wins over the long term. We were creating fewer chances, and less likely to keep on winning. Over a match, a team with less xG can win, but over a season the team that can create consistently high xG will win the league. Eventually the actual table matched the xG table and they won the league. CammyF was waxing lyrical about our 4 goal win against Hearts a season or two back. I thought the performance was rubbish. Eventually that 4 goal win was shown to be an aberration; the performances went on being rubbish and the results eventually matched.

Apologies for snide comments. Just trying to lighten the thread up slightly.

I'll pass Rousseau. I'd rather wait and see how this season pans out with all the new recruits. Our failings from last season mean nothing. That's the past and I'm only interested in the present and how that effects our future. This team has played 3 games. Let's give them time. 4-0 vs Livingston with other chances created and missed is good enough for me at this stage of the season.

Liverpool now might come in for Glen Kamar— *Kamara rejects Liverpool for Leeds*

Now we know. Tavernier posts here as r-s.

IMHO, as last season showed with Goldosn, we seriously need an upgrade on all our three defensive warhorses, Goldson, Tavernier, and Barisic. Maybe Sterlin is one answer, Ridvan is okay, but we need better than Goldson and Davies, not least in Europe.

Hook, line, and sinker! ... honestly, I only did that for you and left out the "midfield diamond" remark too.

Oh they tried to get rid of Wright too. Unfortunately they tried to transfer him to a Turkish re-education camp. I don't think Wright was too keen on that idea.

i liked our work out of possession yesterday and the quality of the goals was excellent.

About time. It's been too long.

I would like Cifuentes to play from the start.

Oh, no - we're getting pumped... #BadJuju

Or just shoot more. The amount of times there's a shot on and we pass it wide instead does my nut in. I blame Arsene Wenger.

He's another Michael O'Halloran, not what we need.

Wasn't that just a Kenny Miller suggestion in today's media?

Handbags away, ladies. To change tack slightly, I thought Beale deserved some credit for his substitutions. Livi were leaving space in the channels and we weren’t attacking it with balls over the top or into the channel. It was evident for a good while before the subs were made so it was interesting to hear Beale say that he left things to see if the team could work it out. When he did make the changes, instantly we had more pace and width, which also then challenged some tiring Livi legs and we got the late goals. There have been hundreds of league games at ibrox that have gone in a similar fashion. A work in progress but we’re moving in the right direction.

I have another memory of that Scottish Cup final replay victory over ra Yahoos in 1966. It was after the game and my Grandfather, Father and, myself made our way down Polmadie Road. We were level with the old British Oxygen plant when a flat bed lorry(coal wagon) passed with several dozen Bears on the back celebrating. The truck had to brake suddenly and all but a few Bears fell off the wagon, most climbed back on and the party continued. We can only assume King Kai's 25 yard raker had relaxed the Rangers support and were thus immune to injury? The song being sung on the back of the wagon was : Singing Kai aye yippee yippee aye, singing Kai aye yippee yippee aye, singing Kai aye yippee , Jock Stein's a fcuking hippy, singing Kai aye yippee yippee aye. Catchy?

Rousseau struggling to get past Cammy's low block on this thread. It's just like Ibrox because the spectators and bored/frustrated and several are leaving early.

I've got 7pts after two games. I think I got 6 pts over the whole season last year. I feel practically giddy.

At least Dick Turpin wore a mask when he robbed people. 🤣😂

Thanks for that I'm away for a headache tablet now😀

I have absolutely no idea what our best team is, nor what our best formation is, so not going to take a guess at the line up the manager will come up with. For what it’s worth I don’t think MB has a clue what his best team is either, so it will be very interesting to see who he goes for. I know I certainly don’t want to see certain players in the lineup as I believe them to be of insufficient quality but MB likes them (Lundstrum for one!). Our joy in previous Euro away games has come by being quick on the counter, so maybe Sima gets another chance to shine. Thankfully I’m not picking the team, but just for this thread I’ll go for; Butland Tav Balogun Souttar Barasic Jack Cifuentes Sima Raskin Cantwell Danilo

Bugger...

'xG' is specifically for football as far as I know. Probability models could be replicated anywhere, though. I could be wrong.

Just a quick reminder to the Tamondo Resurrection Loyal itching for him to undertake a starring role in Servette tomorrow. night. He's not in the CLQ's squad! 😭😭😭

Low blocks i.e. packed defence I presume,xG still confused what it means, there again I still think in yards/feet/inches and also pounds/ounces so will take me a long time still to absorb all the"NEW TO ME" jargon.🙄

Souttar has looked good recently but he was largely responsible for the goal we conceded at Killie. Some of the praise for him (and Balogun) for a performance against Livingston seems a bit OTT (to me).

Erm... I'd be happy* with that... *Providing we get through

Looks to be a guy who knows what's happening at Leeds. I hadn't heard there was a release clause before.

I understood your point. However given you were calling for the manager to be replaced 2 games into the season, it seems that you're looking reasons to criticise. We scored 4 goals. Danilo, Souttar and Sima missed good chances and Cifu had a goal chopped off. Dessers even had 3 half chances. That's not bad for a team that's still trying to gel and I just don't know how many chances people are expecting us to create against Livingston.

I like a good guessing game. Was it Twatface or Lookatme? 🤣

I didn't need to look 😜

I would keep Souttar and Balogun in CD, play Jack in front of them, and Raskin plus Cifuentes. The latter two are box to box guys and willing to shoot, while Jack does the cover. We will sure play with Tavernier and Barisic, simply because we lack options (Ridvan injured and Sterling hardly played). So ... Butland Tavernier - Souttar - Balogun - Barisic Jack Raskin - Cifuentes Cantwell/Lammers Danilo - Dessers

You've not read my point, so you've made up a silly argument. I don't think we created enough against the low block. That's it; that's my whole point. I've then used the xG to prove we didn't create enough. The result was great. I'm happy with the result.

If our xG was 6, there'd be moans that we weren't taking our chances. We won 4-0 so let's use statistics to have a go, given we can't do it on the result.....

But what's the XG for shots from further than 18 yards out?

I spent an hour or so the other night watching the highlights of our European games since Gerrard took charge. It was great viewing but what struck me was how we've competed against decent sides. Lech Poznan, Villareal, Spartak Moscow, Rapid Vienna, Porto, Feyernoord, Benfica, Legia Warsaw, Borussia Dortmund, Red Star, Braga, Standard Leige, Leipzig. What also struck is that Servette are not a patch on most of these teams from what I witnessed last week. Go out take the game to them and put this to bed Rangers.

It's not subjective: they've added up all the times a player actually scored. It's an objective fact. It takes that, to suggest a probability of a player in the same position scoring in the future. They take hundreds of thousands of past shots, going back decades, from every conceivable position on the pitch. In practice, that means if a chance has 0.2xG, it should be scored 20% of the time, because out of those hundreds of thousands of past shots they've looked at, the player scored 20% of the time. They take into account many more variables than just position on the pitch: Distance to the goal Angle to the goal Did the player strike it with his feet or was it a header? In what passage of play did it happen? (e.g. open play, direct free-kick, corner kick, counter-attack) Has the player just beaten an opponent? We do it in our heads all the time, using our judgement and past experience of watching games, when we say, 'that's a sitter - he has to score that'. The xG tells you how many times players in the past have actually scored from that position - and taking into account all the other variables. It's a lot more objective than someone's judgement. Compare how many games an xG model is based on (tens of thousands of matches, hundreds of thousands of shots, going back decades) compared to how many games you or I have watched in our lifetime. It's not even close. I could watch every single Rangers game in the league, so my judgement on whether a player has missed a sitter is based on 38 games a season. An xG model has covered every match of every single club in the league, and every club in the top 15 (and more) European leagues, going back decades. In that way it's objective. There's no subjectivity in it.

A wee bit of trivia when the late Bobby Robson was at Ipswich Town in his 13 year tenure he only signed 14 players in the transfer market.

My brother won a goldfish shooting at the shows. We called him Kitchenbrand. The fish, not my brother. Don Kitchenbrand or Maxie Murray? The debate was never settled until Jimmy Millar put an end to it.

The referee put in a rather outstanding performance - the type known as 'making it up as you go along'.

Quite right. His main job was to create and score goals, not to give the ball away.