Tannochsidebear

It really isnt rocket science as Cammy points out above. But in recent years we seem to have chosen players who up their game for the big Euro nights, and do not reach anything like those standards in our domestic games, especially away from home. We need to be choosing players who really want to win titles and cups here and understand that the Euro action is the bonus. Unfortunately I think the players we can attract seem to know the shop window only opens on Thursday nights and that a stirring performance against Kilmarnock or Motherwell isnt going to attract similar attention in their ambition to move upwards. I again agree that a lot of these problems can be alleviated by a style of play that beats the low block that we face in over 3/4 of our domestic games. We dont ever seem to have enough goals in us, despite spending big on strikers they dont deliver often enough, and we dont have midfielders that chip in often enough to take up the slack. Playing 2 defensive midfielders and continually playing number 10's wide instead of in the 10 has been a failure of more than one manager. The domestic title, and therefore entry to the CL, is absolutely there for us to grasp, and it wont take hundreds of millions or years to achieve, just a decent manager, style of play, board, DoF and owners all on the same page. To beat the rest consistently should be the ambition. The rest can all come from there.

I would like the new owners to absolutely rule out safe standing areas within Ibrox. The current board appear to have got something right. Lets not pander to the trouble in our support until they can go at least a full season without causing us any fines or reduced capacity.

Delighted with that resolute performance. A real fighting performance from our big-game Charlies which keeps the tie alive which I thought after 10 minutes would be stone dead. It just goes to show that it is not easy for any side to play against a well organised defensive park the bus shape. We have better players than what we face domestically when we struggle to break them down, so when we do it, better sides than us similarly struggle to break it down. I loved the 2008 throwback we embraced last night with every keeper kickout being aimed high left towards Hagi whose job was just to flick it on out of play into the far corner and let us regroup and get into shape before they attack again. Walter employed this tactic in that great Euro run to Manchester when Barry was captain, so it was funny to see a real anti-football tactic being brought back a generation later. It worked well for us as it denied them the opportunity to counter us.

Kelly for me too. Applause for wee Ridvan, his best defensive performance to date for me and if he could get to that level consistently I could be persuaded he has a future with us. Hagi was immense for all the wrong reasons you normally assoicate with him, he worked just as hard as Raskin who was everywhere, helped Ridvan when required and closed and harried them all day. Was running out of steam a bit before he got subbed. Balogun seemed to stroll it against top quality strikers.

Wow that is quite a selection gamble there. Smells a bit desperate rather than tactical. Time will tell if it is genius or insanity!

Here's hoping our Jekyll & Hyde team turn up with the right attitude tonight, and that our interim manager can pick the right side in the right formation and make the right subs at the right times, and that our opponent take us lightly (I assume they had us watched v Hibs so might think this will be easy!) and we manage to take a chance or two and our keeper remembers what his gloves are for. If we get all of the above going our way, we can have another incredible experience at Ibrox on a Thursday night. Anything less than this and I really fear what this could end up. I am hoping we go to a back 5 with Tav Sterling Propper Balogun Jefte, then I expect 3 in midfield of Barron Raskin and maybe Lawrence (would prefer Hagi) with Cerny supporting Dessers up front but I would probably go for Igamane myself. I expect Butland to keep the gloves. Jeezo typing that and having to put 2 players in for Souttar and Diomande really weakens the side. Cant think of anyone else who can play in Dio's position if we are playing 3 in there. Hoping i've forgotten someone decent!! Mon the Gers, lets pull out another cracking performance.

One thing I am not is arrogant, apologies if it comes over that way. Pretty sure im in the minority and sounding like a dinosaur for not buying into these new-fangled stats side of football discussions, but when there are such clear errors in the data they make a decent discussion point do they not? I dont mind xG as a discussion point, but it is being accepted as facts, when it is quite clearly not facts. Dont be ridiculous Cammy it doesnt say anything like that anywhere. What i do say is that Dessers misses a bucketful of chances regularly, and if he was more clinical, we might not be miles behind domestically. There was a suggestion that because he is matching this mythical xG that he is performing well for the team, which I disagree with.

He could easily have had 9 in just the last 2 games, not 3, but instead has 1. It’s not an internal xG model I prefer it’s trusting your own eyes instead of nonsensical stats. If you would rather believe that Dessers should only be on 12 goals for the season because Opta say so, and that he is giving us value for a £5M price tag and a massive wage then you keep defending stattoland. All the while we will end up trophyless and miles behind a dreadful bheasts side due partly to the amount of chances he has missed in big games all season long, for the second year running. Single match shot maps are interesting to see where we are shooting from, but they don’t count the great chances he has where instead of shooting he tries to cut back into trouble, which he seems to do more regularly than any striker I’ve ever seen. Do Opta even count those as chances because incredibly the striker chose not to shoot but just to get tackled instead?

I understand the stats behind it but I disagree with it almost entirely. There are not thousands of chances at Ibrox playing for Rangers for a £5M striker to compare against. I dispute the chances being compared to his actually being similar. If a centre half finds himself through on goal like that and fails to hit the target then fans sigh but are not surprised. A striker on hot form scores those chances. Also, a chance falling to a striker in the final minute of a 4-0 win is not the same as a chance at 0-0 after 10 minutes. But they are treated the same by stattos and both are counted the same for xG. Of course they are not similar, it’s ridiculous to suggest they are. This computerisation of football to spew meaningless stats out just to make talking points is abhorrent and totally unnecessary. I trust my eyes to tell me if when a Rangers striker is through on goal if it is a good chance, a great chance or not much of a chance. Dessers had 4 really good chances on Saturday, and didn’t even force a save from the keeper on any of them. These misses now make other strikers similar misses look ordinary because they will be counted in someone else’s xG comparison. For xG to say we should only have got 1 goal out of 15 chances is just making the stats look ridiculous. Anyone in attendance would tell you Dessers should have had a hat-trick to go along with his double hat-trick from Dundee, but instead we have xG telling us he is performing just as expected. Absolute bollocks to that. I appreciate you love the stats side of the game Rousseau, and they make interesting analysis at times, but I find more and more they paint a picture that is totally alien to the game it refers to. The wee passing wheels and average positional stuff is interesting because it is based on facts, xG is not based on facts. It compares apples and oranges and tells us they are both bananas.

This is a good example of my problem with xG. Dessers had 4 really good chances on Saturday that most people watching would have said he should have scored maybe 7 times out of ten, so each should have an xG of around 0.70 and yet the total xG combined is only 1.05 and looks like we created nothing. We created better chances than Hibs did (3 chances 2 goals) but we have Dessers and Hibs dont.

Rangers 3 Hibs 2 fgs Cerny

Dundee 0 Rangers 3 fgs Dessers

oh ffs this will be a hard watch with those officials. Dickinson is a different kind of incompetent cheat altogether, and will be ably assisted by the tim's tim franky bhoy connor, he of the cheating at the cup final pasture. Why we didnt ensure that cheat never officiated again at this level was a real open-goal opportunity missed. Expect the usual mixture of honest mistakes, you can see why he gave it calls, soft decisions for Dundee and very lightly awarded cards for our players. And we will again do nothing about it afterwards. I hope we still pump them, those victories are all the sweeter to know you have ruined their weekend as well.

Thanks for that R, adding where these guys are puts a bit more perspective on it and I agree that from the looks of it we should be an attractive options for that list given their current employers. I also agree that the usual lazy names that get banded about like those you mention are uninspiring also. I dont have any names myself, I dont have the time to watch a ton of football other than our games and some EPL top games and some Champions League so dont really see any managers that could be potential suitors. Although names I would suggest would likely be awful anyway as I didnt want Walter first time or McLeish and they both went on to prove me completely wrong! I did fancy PLG as well and that didnt turn out well. I think im pretty much in the camp that as long as I dont know the guy, and it isnt a staunch appointment, then I will be happy to give the guy a chance. I am much more comfortable now I understand the Park family will have no influence on the appointment!

Agree with Bluedell & Rousseau above. The very top player in the squad, worth the most money, pretty much has to be sold every year. No matter the argument. If you sell the top one for big money, you can maybe keep the next two in line and look for them to become the best player the following year and so on. In addition to removing some who havent worked out each year, and always trying to recoup the cost, this allows the budget to bring in slightly better quality than we brought in the year before, and over 2-3 years the squad looks much better. Cant happen overnight and nobody is the key piece of the jigsaw that cannot be sold.