ascender

That has to be a nonsense story right? If Morelos wanted to go and there was any chance of a fee like that I can't see any club turning that sort of money down, let alone us when we're trying to rebuild. Players are only worth what someone will pay for them at any one time and as we've found, English clubs see Scotland as some sort of bargain basement store - our club even moreso given what's happened to us.

I can see why people would have an issue with that bit in bold, but the rest all sounds fair enough from someone who is wondering what's going on and where the next pay cheque is coming from. How old was he at the time, 26? I'm not sure I'd hold that against him, it was maybe naive at best, but do you genuinely think he meant that?

There's a few players in there who have the potential to go on to become great players for us I think. For all their critics, and I do think we're far too harsh on our own at times... I really rate Tav, Foderingham and McCorie for example. Morelos is showing great potential. Jack could go far too. Even Candeias does a lot right and is creating chances - if we had a more experienced goalscorer up there alongside Morelos things could be very different. I still think that we have the basis of a good team here - the squad's consistency (at being inconsistent) under a few managers now is making it very hard to be optimistic and I can imagine its not doing much for the players' confidence either. That's why I am liking some of the players we seem to be targeting at the moment and even the move to bring in Jimmy Nicholl. I guess you could see it as uninspiring, or you could see it as a realisation we need to stabilise and get the basics right first.

I'll be honest, i've totally forgotten what Naismith said exactly about the Club being dead, but I understand some haven't - can you remind me what he said and when? We've a threadbare squad and even if he's not as good as he was when he left, I would put money on him being an upgrade on who we do have and could maybe be just the sort of link-up player Morelos would thrive on - especially as with Murphy we should now have better service from the left to compliment Candeias' efforts from the right. He's not going to play for free but it would appear Norwich are happy to pay for some (or all) of his wages as presumably he's not part of their long term plans. And if Naismith has been sensible with his money, wants to come back to Scotland, its not a big leap to assume he's not going to be wanting top dollar wages from his next deal. Given where we are, I just don't see a downside to this one but can understand why people hold his comments against him (genuinely can't remember what they were).

Absolutely agree with this and if we're not going to have to pay any of his wages, or even just a small percentage, its relatively risk free surely?

I think its a good appointment under the circumstances - whether you look at Nicholl's experience, reputation and/or character, it makes perfect sense given where we are and how Murty appears to be getting on. I think you're under-estimating the role an assistance manager has to play Magic Hat, whether its in the day to day handling of practical stuff like training, bouncing ideas off the manager or even man management where its often very beneficial to have different sorts of characters to interact with players. You can argue that we should be aiming higher, we deserve better etc, but we are where we are.

Couple of things.... Mark Allen - any time he’s mentioned on a forum, someone brings up that they’ve heard bad things about him and how his time is limited, but never seems to give details. Is that just another one of those rumours which only exists because one person has heard something, posts it up and it then becomes the truth because it gets repeated by other people on other forums, social media, in the pub etc before going full circle and being posted again some time later? That story is clearly all about him getting his version of events out there and you could also read bits as a bit of a dig at the board. Murty - I’d love to know what’s gone on behind the scenes with this as I thought he was never interested in the job, so while it’s great he’s stepped up, I really do think he’s been hung out to dry by the board. He’s a youth coach ffs. Surely they could have found someone to manage us to the end of the season who would have more experience of a top club, be it at Rangers or somewhere else? Which kind of leads me to the next point... Just how bad are our board? And how culpable have they been in a number of the things which have happened over the last couple of years? Because they seem to be the one constant now, presiding over a series of events which have been handled shambolically as they’ve played out in the press with the club pointing the finger of blame at a number of individuals whilst absolving themselves of any wrongdoing.

I'm guessing there's an acceptable level of communication between clubs and targets which takes place everywhere- i.e. there's initial chat to see if they'd be open to a formal approach. That stuff presumably goes on all the time and makes sense to save a lot of wasted time. If they're interested, it gets formalised, if not, they move. I'm guessing "tapping up" these days refers to some sort of line being overstepped without someone's club being involved?

You've followed our results over the last few years right? I don't think its being pessimistic at all. When was the last time we won't three on the trot? I'm as optimistic as I've been in a long time that we'll do it and go on a run, but I'm just saying if we don't, we shouldn't forget these aren't Murty's players.

I really hope this goes well for Murty and the fans don't get on his back if the team reverts to type shown for the last few years with some spineless performances.

I meant in detail. Presumably someone said to him would you be interested in the job, yes or no? He might have said can you confirm a few things, we've done that and he's said yes, so we've proceeded.

I disagree Rab. Sunderland are an absolute basket case of a club - anybody going there needs their head examined. Have you see how they've been run these last few years and how big their wage bills is? I suspect DM did his due diligence and realised just what a gamble it would be to go there. If it was nearly any other club down there, I'd agree about the lack of ambition part.

The Aberdeen statement was still a wee bit ambiguous and open to interpretation depending how you read it or how much you dissect it. It all just seems really, really strange. As Frankie says, presumably we were lead to believe he was seriously interested, hence the formal approach. But it looks like we never got to talk to him in detail, so its not even got to the point of budgets, staff, expectations etc.

I do agree with the sentiment that they're damned if they do, damned if they don't. So it was good to get a statement from the Club last night, but wtf wrote it? There's a way to say things without coming across as petulant, spoiled brats, aiming cheap shots as you go. You can still be assured, authoritative and get your point across without resorting to that surely? Not to mention a tone befitting our great Club would have been nice. Strange times indeed.

I thought the word was that Murty didn't want it and is happy with his role working with the youths?

So yes, we asked for permission to speak to him, Milne said no, has had a chat with him about things and McInnes is now staying so won't be getting the chance to speak to us. Not sure why its taken nearly two days for him to come to that decision though. Onwards and upwards, that should be his one and only chance to manage Rangers. Move on.

Oh well, that's pretty final then although I'm not sure why it too so long for him to make his mind up. On the one hand I think the team is in as safe a pair of hands as it could be under the circumstances, especially when you look at our next few games, but on the other, this doesn't really reflect well on anybody at a Board level does it?

This bit doesn't suggest an impasse between the clubs though - "STV understands the Dons manager will not replace Pedro Caixinha at Ibrox." Could just be lazy journalism as usual.

Is starting to look that way.... Edited...... Or not!

Well f*ck me. Presumably we know before approaching Aberdeen formally whether or not he was interested as that's how these things work. Who knows what's happened in the last 24 hours or so. Plan Z it is..... I can only imagine this is going to be the return of Big Eck or something.

I know its Aberdeen, so the bit of giving them money for him really grates with me, but surely this is just the price of doing business with any other club which is run sensibly? After Dave King's comments about the fee we got for McKay, I can only hope we'll learn from those mistakes and change things in the future when it comes to contracts.

We're in second place and if we hadn't lost those two games would only be a point off first. I don't think we necessarily have a bad squad, in fact I think its improved a lot over the last while in terms of quality, but clearly its not going to challenge Celtic's. I think if McInnes can sort out the underlying issues with confidence, stamp out the silly mistakes and make us a bit harder to beat, we're then in a position to put the last few years behind us and kick on. I only say that because under the last two men, there's been worrying trends on the park which never seem to get addressed and i'm really hoping someone like McInnes can finally sort them out.

I take it we're still in the same position where the press don't know anything, the "in the know" crowd don't know anything and the Board are continuing to play their cards close to their chest?

In my spare time I organise events and there's been a move recently by similar events to ours to embrace this LGBT charter and publish it on our website. The problem I have with this is that it suggests a change in ethos from us and suddenly we're "welcoming all", or that there was an issue before. Thing is, everyone has always been welcome, we wouldn't discriminate in any way and if we found anybody connected with the race or even participating in the race behaving in any way contradictory to this, they'd be booted out. I like to think that the way we conduct ourselves in public and the feedback posted online about our events would mean any one with concerns could feel happy to contact us. So sometimes stuff like this can be seen as an admission that there was a problem before. I've definitely seen responses in our industry which seem like people jumping on the latest PC and fashionable bandwagon. Regardless of why organisations sign up to show support of this sort of thing, should we care? I don't think anybody would argue that the intentions of this movement aren't anything but well meaning and positive. Anyway, long winded way to come round to the fact that I guess football is a bit different in terms of its historic attitudes and culture when it comes to anybody who is "different", so I think its a good thing for the club to be proactively involved in. PR apart, anything which encourages a feeling of inclusivity and people being welcome at Irbox has to be a good thing? It would also be nice for the club to get some credit for this as I've seen many a post online and had chats in pubs with people from all sorts of ethnic background who love following the Gers, but sadly the media hardly ever choose to cover this really positive story.

I guess McInnes might have been the first and obvious choice amongst some of the Board when Pedro left, but if they got lots of CVs, they'd need to do the due diligence of at least going through them as well as consulting with Allen and maybe some external people too? And that's before you get to arranging interviews and negotiating with clubs, agents etc. That's just my guess. But I literally know nothing.