Tannochsidebear

As his first two games came back to back with really no time at all to get to work with the players, I will reserve judgement on McCall for now as we all know that he inherited a squad totally lacking in confidence, with players hiding in games, or going through the motions without putting in a maximum effort, and with senior players who should be nailed on for starting slots all underperforming, but probably had to be given a chance to impress. He now has 5 days before Sundays trip to Easter Road to work on these players, watch more videos of our earlier games, get reports from U20 coaches on our fringe players, and to try to build the confidence up a bit, although that usually happens by winning games, not often by training sessions. McCulloch, Boyd, Law, Daly, Miller, Black, should all be told they wont feature any more. They have completely failed and while most have been good players at some point, all have been guilty of not being anywhere good enough for us this season (and in some cases for many seasons - Jig). There are no lack of options, only a lack of guts if the manager plays the above lot again. I watched Nicky Law quite closely last night and he went into hiding at all times, never looked for the ball, looked to get rid of it quickly without taking into account that the player he was passing to was marked and would be unable to do anything with it, and generally jogged around the park. I do not remember one tackle he put in all night, for a centre midfielder playing against a team that floods the midfield and plays very compact between the width of the box that is almost impossible. Jig costs the first goal by diving in unneccassarily at a throw in he had no chance of getting, was turned by the Alloa player, and the break leads to the free kick that they score from. Jig is marking nobody at the resultant free kick, just pointing at everyone else to mark the opponents while he stands in the middle doing nothing. That is not a one-off either, he does it every time, every week. I thought Cammy Bell was at fault for the second goal as he had no need to come out into no mans land and make it easy for the striker to lift it over him. He was never going to score from that angle under some pressure if Bell had stayed in his goal, but some ring-rust is to be expected. Not sure where Jig was, but he clearly wasn't in the right place to prevent the goal, which is his job. There were some decent signs of roots coming through. I liked the tactical change to a back 3 to chase the game and create some width. I liked the way he forced Walsh to come right over to the touchline to try to spread the Alloa back line when we didnt have the ball and the ball was over the other side. I was unsure of Shiels playing so deep but he was probably our best player albeit he fell out the game for a spell (perhaps expected given his lack of game time). I liked Clark playing right up top and getting into the box more often, and he took his goals well. I am going to Edinburgh on Sunday, I dont know why exactly (habit more than anything) but there is absolutely no excuse now for McCall to be playing Jig and his band of losers. When the team is announced an hour before kick off, we will all know if he has a chance of becoming permanent Rangers manager or not by his selection more than the result.

I felt it was not good enough to just click "agree" for this excellent post that sums up my, and IMO a huge number of Bears, feelings on this subject. Well said Hildy!

The new board needs to get it's marketing department to get working on driving numbers back to the matches, but a lot of it is to do with those of us who have been going to the games (or returned since boardroom/management change) telling our mates that the football is much better now than before, and that in itself will attract more bears back to the matches. Obviously the product served up needs to actually be better than the current fare before we can say that, and that is down to the manager and players to entertain those of us who will turn up anyway to get us excited and tell our mates and encourage those who have not returned to come back. The marketing, perhaps with some special ticket prices/offers, has to be right also. Getting a player to hold up a cardboard poster with the match details on it is terribly lame, but it is all I saw for Saturday's game. We know and understand that the apathy and discontent was not confined to the playing staff at our club, but was spread throughout all the departments, and work has to be done to revitalize all our departments into believing in ourselves again.

The play offs are a long way away. Plenty of time for any decent manager (and I think McCall is a decent manager) to turn this around and get us through it. I expect to see some more personnel/tactical changes tomorrow night, and more again on Sunday, and signs of improvement week by week. Saturday was an improvement for about 20 minutes at the start of the match, and perhaps the first 10 minutes or so of the second half, but the players quickly resorted to lazy play and the lack of confidence was all too clear. That is where the manager will earn his money, trying to turn the confidence around. He also needs to believe in our younger players and not pick on name alone, as the bigger the name, the bigger the disappointment this season.

It most certainly is not a lie. An opinion maybe, and having watched him in a variety of positions over his time at the club, an opinion formed over a very long time. He can't tackle, has no pace, doesn't read the game at all, can't make a telling pass, needs 2/3 touches to control the ball, does nothing to inspire confidence in his team mates, and his heading is usually either a foul , misplaced, or beaten in the challenge. He has been tried in a number of positions because he is well liked, must be a good trainer and a good laugh in training, but the cold hard facts are that he is terrible at wide midfield, the game passes him by in centre midfield, he is the worst centre half I have ever seen at Ibrox and that includes the several PLG tried, and while he scored a few penalties and tap ins at CF, his overall work rate, link up play, lack of pace & poor finishing seen him moved away from that position as well, and that was in the third/fourth tier of football. The very worst captain as a footballer our club has ever had. My opinion.

Apologies for my inference that he was fired as I don't know, but it looks that way to me given the statement released. Either they fired him or they pounced on his offer of resignation, either way it's a major blunder IMO.

8 years of absolute failure and he wants a 9th! Speechless!

Gordon is a good guy but with former RST vice-chair John Gilligan on the board alongside other Bears in King, Murray & Park I didnt think, and still don't, that a fans rep is required at this time. I would prefer the reinstatement of the RFB with new elections for office bearers at the start of next season when more fans will be eligible for election and also to vote for the candidates. That is 3 huge mistakes in their first week for the new board in my book, thanking the Rhebel, firing Graham, and appointing an interim manager. Hope to be proved wrong on the last one and at least it was a good guy like McCall that got the chance and not one of others linked, but I am really disgusted at their capitulation at the slightest pressure over Graham, and I was equally disgusted at thanking the proven Rangers hating Rhebel in public. I don't think I will ever get over that and Murray better up his game, and fast. Pandering to the bheasts was his namesakes legacy, it had better not be his also.

Nearly choked when I read the bit about Celtic playing "fast flowing high energy football". Not according to any Celtic fans I speak to or any games I have seen of them, which granted is only their European (mainly defeats) and the cup semi bore-fest against us. To claim they were thinking outside the box in appointing Delia is also stretching the truth somewhat, and that is that he was the only one willing to take the massive pay cut in the salary offered compared to the previous bigot, and the fact his squad was going to be reduced in both quality and cost each season. Not exactly what I would call forward thinking and worthy of praise. Perhaps the author would have been better sticking to his words on Rangers and leave that paragraph out, sucking up to the bheasts is not a sport I cherish reading about on a Rangers forum, especially given recent events. Other than that the article was a decent read. Don't agree with a lot of it but it was still a decent read and I can respect his opinion and liked the way he laid it out. Leave out praising bheasts though.

Disgusted at our board's capitulation. I wonder if Paul Murray still wants to thank the Daily Rhebel for it's help.

Well this thread has went way way off course! It would seem events like the appointment of our new (interim) manager and the fantastic pictures and story of the celtic captain lying pished in the gutter days before a cup final have overtaken this (non) story anyway, as it should be. I would imagine the phone-ins will be full of the Sun's sensational story about a professional football and captain of the current (tainted) champions unprofessionalism and calling for him to be sacked, dropped, fined, banned etc. That he "should" be dropped from the upcoming Scotland squad is a certainty, that he wont be is equally certain.

Let us not forget that we were in a very dirty war with the old board, and any and all ammunition was fair game for them to use, so I see no reason why the RFB could not and should not have used the ammo Leach supplied with his outrageous and unsubstantiated claim about T3B. All is fair in love and war and all that! Is putting the process of disbanding the RFB in motion out of spite only days from them being sacked something a respectable person would do? Tells you everything about the charlatans that are Llambias & Leach, and makes the RFB decision to include the remark in their minutes even more credible. There is no moral high ground when the enemy are crawling around in the gutter using every dirty trick to try to retain their positions of power for the sole reason of being able to steal our clubs resources for themselves. L&L are utter scum and totally indefensible.

Good statement from the club, including all the right sentiments from both the board and Kenny himself. Hopefully he didn't screw too much out of us in severance pay, as he was well rewarded for his failure in recent months/years.

Finally put out of his (and ours) misery, thankfully. Now please confirm Ally has accepted his P45 without the need for a further pay-off and we can move on from the Ally era.

It seems extra days off have been the norm for a while for us, basically because nobody wants to be there. The players, coaches, management, old directors - nobody wanted to be around the place, so it was easier to fit in an extra day off.

CG has tweeted a lot of absolute garbage in amongst his many many excellent points, and all of this should have been tempered once he was appointed as RST rep. It shows a shocking lack of foresight/commom sense to be tweeting offensive stuff for a clearly ambitious and clever guy, and not at all necessary at times. When he was falling out with the mods at RM his choice of language about fellow bears was shocking, but he was getting some outrageous, incredible personal abuse from so-called fellow bears at the time and decided that was the way to fight back. I am happy enough for him to be appointed as RST spokesman, and now as RST rep on the board, but he has a lot of growing up to do for a 38 year old and needs to show better judgement and learn to stand back and not just shout out at everything you dont like. As previously posted, I hope the board stand full square behind him and out the journos agenda here which is nothing to do with the cartoon he re-tweeted and everything to do with the way he has fought with the scum in our media over the last year or two. This is our boards (and level 5) chance to lay down a marker that we are no longer a free hit and that there are consequences for lazy, sensationalist, anti-Rangers journalism.

Seems a bit strange if this is true that the club have not even announced his appointment yet he is taking training. I like the sound of the players day off being cancelled though, so I can only hope that Devlin is capable of tweeting something accurate about Rangers occasionally and that this is one of those occasions.

Still no confirmation yet, doesn't look good for McCall accepting IMO. I can understand why, as he is on a hiding to nothing if he is only going to be there until the end of the season. If he turns things around and gets us up, it is only what should have happened with our squad anyway. If he fails, another bad mark on his CV. It is also a lot more difficult to come in and motivate players, most of whom are out of contract in 2 months, when the same players know that the new manager is only going to be there the same length of time as them. If it was a permanent appointment, players all of a sudden are bursting to play to earn a new deal, and to get themselves into the team as a permanent fixture. It becomes all that much easier. It is pretty much like when we appointed Alex McLeish IMO. The fans, who had just lived through the Advocaat era, wanted another big name to fix the broken dressing room that evolved through the Dutch clique, and most were greatly disappointed by McLeish's appointment, given his achievements to date with Motherwell & Hibs were not exactly earth-shattering but were decent and positive efforts, a bit like McCall in fact. Given we will not have bucket loads of cash to spend and need an experienced manager who also knows about the expectation levels at our club, the "permanent" appointment of a Stuart McCall would be an understandable move at this time. With managerial appointments only lasting a couple of years nowadays anyway, it is then up to McCall to rebuild and earn himself a new deal past an initial 2.5 year deal which would take him to the end of 16-17. Talk of a root and branch change of all things football at our club would be welcome but time waits for no man and we just do not have the time to get this done at this time.

An early indication that the media are going to continue with their all-out war against our club. This is an earlier than expected test for our new board and level 5 to see how we are going to deal with the media attacking our club. Chris Graham took on all journalists over social media and it was inevitable that some of his language and tweets would come back to haunt him at some point, given the lift in profile his appointment as Director has given him, unexpectedly i'm sure. I am quite certain that unless this is dealt with positively and proactively by our board and PR company, there will be many more examples where his tweets can be deemed offensive by the permanently-offended brigade, and the trickle effect will take away time and efforts from what we are wanting our board and PR company to be doing for us, which is exactly what our enemies want us to do. This is why this is so important that our board act positively and decisively, we cannot ignore this as and we cannot fudge it, we must retaliate immediately and aggressively with a properly worded statement that not only deals with today's anti-Rangers story, but also tomorrows that will come if this is not dealt with correctly. Also a reminder to our fans that there are NO newspapers worthy of our shilling and they should be avoided entirely. There are enough news outlets online to get your fix from on an hourly basis, never mind daily, and I cannot see why anyone would ever buy a newspaper again. I have not purchased a newspaper for over a decade and while I might miss out on the wee funny stories about mis-shaped veg, or some of the drier economic analysis that can be useful, it is a small price to pay to show my dissatisfaction at how we are treated by these TWATs.

All I have seen is "suggestions" he has been OFFERED the position by the club, absolutely nothing about him accepting or any club official giving this story any credibility whatsoever. I agree it seems to be a story being run by most journos so it is unlikely to be without any foundation, but a lack of official confirmation makes me wary that this is far from completed.

Have I missed something but I haven't seen any confirmation anywhere that this has happened. Journalists don't count without named quotes.

I was expecting closer to 40K last night, and I am expecting 45K on Saturday. What sort of crowd we get for Tuesday may well depend on who is managing the team on Saturday and how we play. There could be as much as 10,000 of a difference depending on the answer.

MD was there as part of the Union of Fans, the individuals involved in that were all invited to the Directors Box last night as a gesture of the new board's thanks for the UOF's efforts in pressurising the old board. Craig Houston, Monty, MD, and a few others were all there under that invite.

Our interim chairman will need to do better than to praise the Rangers-hating scumfest that is the Daily Rhebel. By all means give Jackson some credit for being his mouthpiece and allowing our opposition to the board to get some mainstream coverage, but just like a broken clock being right twice a day, the Rhebel remains far more anti-Rangers than balanced/neutral. My near 20 year ban of buying the Rhebel will most certainly be continuing, and it will take a lot more than this puff piece to change my views.

I am guessing this was the last couple of lots of shares the RST/RF bought when the result was still in the balance and this is the register just getting around to being updated.