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Hildy

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Everything posted by Hildy

  1. Hildy
    Picking sides? The board is more damaged than Maria Miller MP but it will still have the support of fans who perceive themselves to be faultlessly loyal. They would back the board if it consisted of George Galloway, Jack McConnell, Alex Salmond and the Yorkshire Ripper. They don't allow themselves the luxury of contemplation. They will back the board come hell or high water. Then there's the revolutionaries. Just sack the board. Who cares what comes later - just sack the board. Enter the King Loyalists; a new man to bow down to, a reason to doff the cap, tug the forelock and hang on his every word. Oh, and he has Richard Gough on his side so he must be the real deal. Mustn't he? Politicians speak about the electorate being sophisticated, but they were surely excluding us. Sadly, we're far from being sophisticated, and we're even further from being an electorate.
  2. Hildy
    I want the ownership of the club to change. I do however have concerns about King if he becomes the club's owner. Would Walter Smith return as a director? Would Richard Gough be given a job? Would Ally and his staff remain in position? Would Martin Bain return? I want a Rangers future where the names of the past remain in the past. I want a clean break from the previous era. I want a new look board, a new look coaching staff and a new look team.
  3. Hildy
    From now on, when we're not busy playing darts, we're going to learn to play a game that you might not be familiar with . . .
  4. Hildy
    If King wants to stir things up, and it certainly looks that way, his timing is excellent.
  5. Hildy
    "Right lads, we're playing the Barca of Dundee tomorrow, so at all times, I want each and every one of you to be behind this".
  6. Hildy
    If nothing changes at Rangers in terms of management, I will expect to see McCulloch in the team until he himself decides that he no longer merits a place, and I won't be surprised if we give him a role on the coaching staff at that point. Incredibly, he's actually talking about playing in Europe again. He was out of his depth the last time we played at this level and yet he seems to have an expectation that he's going to get another shot at it. His comments today, if taken seriously, are very worrying.
  7. Hildy
    I said on here a few weeks ago that McCulloch would be a certain starter when we get back to the top tier and now he's talking about playing in Europe. As long as McCoist is in charge, McCulloch will be the first name on the teamsheet. No wonder people are chucking it.
  8. Hildy
    A sign of the times: I come on to see what the season ticket situation is and find myself contemplating an annual ticket to the cinema.
  9. Hildy
    No surprise. From the official site: "Mr King was helpful in outlining the concerns of supporters in relation to communications from the Club and was reassured by plans to announce the results of the business review and trading update in the next few weeks, ahead of the season ticket renewal deadline, as part of the Club's commitment to improved supporter communication."
  10. Hildy
    In Scotland, most footballers have had a limited formal education. Their footballing talent allowed them to pursue sport instead of going to college or university. It's probably fair to say that few of them could have been lawyers, doctors, airline pilots or teachers and yet when it comes to football management, we mostly limit ourselves to selecting from a group in society that was never trained or groomed to be anything other than footballers. Of course there are articulate and motivated exceptions who will succeed in life after their football careers are over, but probably not enough in number to put footballers as a group anywhere near the traditional professional classes in terms of knowledge and intelligence. By limiting the pool of people available to fill jobs in football management to a group not noted for being well-educated, football deprives itself of bright people who might have played a lot less, but who understand strategy, management, psychology and coaching much more. It might sound snobbish, but the biggest snobs in football are the 'show us your medals' brigade which would prefer all lucrative coaching and management positions to be reserved exclusively for them. Football clubs should open their doors to talented people from other walks of life who have greater management attributes but next to no chance of being employed because, essentially, they were too smart to have ever been given the chance. Even if clubs feel that the position of manager needs to be filled by ex-players, they should stop them employing mates as assistants. Instead, let the club employ professional back-up to help with strategy, coaching, tactics, psychology and training. There is room for improvement in football management. We can see that quite clearly at our own club. Isn't it time that we tried something a little different?
  11. Hildy
    With all due respect, Zappa, the fact that we have people trying to prop up this statistic with excuses is one of the reasons why we are where we are. You may not be one of them, but we have fans who will defend everything that Walter did and everything that Ally does out of a misguided sense of loyalty. We should prioritise the club over every individual who has played for the team or who is likely to play for it in the future. If a manager has us playing like cavemen, there's only one place for him - out the door - whether he was a great player in the past or not. One win in twenty-five is a disgrace for a club like ours in any context. We either start believing that we are better than this, and cut out the excuses, do the sackings, seek out better and be done with it, or we will linger on interminably having conversations like this as failure becomes our new norm. If we have ambitions to be the best, we have to rid ourselves of people who are incapable of making us the best.
  12. Hildy
    We definitely need a ruthless streak, an intolerance of mediocrity, no more jobs for the boys and top performers in top positions. I'm basically asking for the club to be run along professional lines and demanding that standards are high at every level. I don't think this is unreasonable. I see it as a minimum requirement.
  13. Hildy
    That's the kind of argument trotted out by the likes of St Mirren and Falkirk when they have similar poor runs - "half a dozen of those games were against the Old Firm". It doesn't wash with their fans and it shouldn't wash with us. Rangers, during the last 25 European games, and even further back, have committed crimes against football. We soiled the beautiful game by adopting the most basic and crude tactic of all, heaping flesh and bone in front of our goal and hoping that fate would look kindly on us. I am sick of watching football for dunces from Rangers. We go to Ibrox on European nights and end up wishing for the final whistle minutes after the game kicks kick-off. We talk about a lack of atmosphere, but there is nothing to cheer as the team huddles close to its own goal and gets a nosebleed if it briefly crosses the halfway line. And this from a club that endlessly boasts about being a huge institution, an international brand and an iconic football entity. It's time to stop the excuses. If everyone played like us, football would get closed down. If we really are a big club, let's start acting like one and being absolutely ruthless in our quest to be entertaining and successful. The dinosaurs have had their day. Let's finally dip our toes in the 21st century and see what happens. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk
  14. Hildy
    Lennon has successfully taken Celtic through the CL qualifiers in recent years and this season he had to win three ties to get into the CL. I wouldn't put a thin dime on McCoist's Rangers winning three qualifiers even if he could pick his own opponents. We have become so used to parking the bus in Europe that we don't knows how to win competitive games any more. The football culture at Ibrox is rotten. It started under Smith and has been continued under McCoist. We need to find coaching staff that can create a team that has a hunger for possession instead of tolerating a team that resembles a couple of lines of blue and white traffic cones when we compete in Europe. Our football culture, frankly, is retarded and suitable only for the bin.
  15. Hildy
    The sad truth is that none of us would be missed if we stopped contributing. There are a number of good / interesting / articulate / controversial / wise and able posters in the section of the internet that is forever Rangers but the world will keep turning if they stop posting. These are frustrating times for all of us and we know the reasons why. Inevitably, passions run high, tempers get overheated, language descends to gutter level, hatred spills over and entrenched bitterness overtakes the weaker in our midst. A shared passion will always lead to angry exchanges as people accuse others of not caring as much as they do. I respectfully suggest that D'Artagnan changes his mind. If he wants the support to behave in a particular way, it will more likely happen if he, and others like him, keep spreading the good news.
  16. Hildy
    It wasn't so long ago that people were saying that they'd rather win the league than the UEFA Cup, or as some called it, the Thursday Cup. They thought that we were above the UEFA Cup and that a club of our stature belonged naturally in the Champions League. It's not so long ago either that we had fans wanting the League Cup abandoned or turned into an under 21 competition. Apparently, it cluttered the football calendar and undermined our European exploits. Now we have excitement being generated for a competition that a short time ago would have been dismissed as a Diddy Cup. It's a funny old game, isn't it?
  17. Hildy
    People don't like to admit it, but it's true. We need Hearts to recover and be strong.
  18. Hildy
    I'm glad this has been raised publicly. The attitude of the police is more antagonistic than helpful. On the either side of the coin, I hope the pyro pranksters realise that their actions have contributed to this sad state of affairs.
  19. Hildy
    My experience is this, and it is shared by several Rangers fan friends. The higher Rangers fans fly in society, the more they are likely to leave Rangers behind. The more they achieve, the more they have to lose, and some find their interest in Rangers waning because an allegiance to Rangers doesn't tick the right boxes in modern society. The educated middle class; doctors, teachers and lawyers etc seem uncomfortable with a Rangers association and are inclined to let it fade and sometimes disappear. If this is true, and I'm not suggesting that it's hard fact, it's no wonder that we can't get fan leaders - or club owners - who are movers and shakers in upper tier society. Rangers have been denigrated for so long in Scotland that respectable people would rather their sons and grandsons had a fashionable English club shirt to wear than a Rangers one. Some parents are actively encouraging their children to support anyone but Rangers. Martin Bain was CEO at Rangers for years and proudly admitted that his sons followed English clubs. The day will never dawn when a Celtic CEO makes a similar admission. I think there is a problem brewing for Rangers that will not easily be resolved.
  20. Hildy
    This is a problem. We claim to have a large support running into hundreds of thousands, but very few want to be fan group leaders and those who do would often rather start new groups than join existing ones. There are undoubtedly many reasons for this lack of volunteers, and I'll suggest a couple. Firstly, the club has such a poor reputation that people think twice about a public association with it, and secondly, and perhaps more controversially, what might be termed the middle class within the support is diminishing as a proportion of the whole. I know people hate getting bogged down in class issues and a definition of middle class is never one which meets with universal approval, but it's an issue which has come up in discussions with friends and is surely worth thinking about.
  21. Hildy
    The Assembly initially claimed to represent over 30,000 fans and was directly funded by Rangers, but the results of this survey have been skewed due to it being open to fans of other teams. It's hard to take the figures seriously although I have no doubt that the real figure represented by fan groups is quite low, and I'd actually be surprised if it was as much as 5%. Given that the club is ready to create Assembly 2.0, it's time for the first one to be formally closed.
  22. Hildy
    Imagine. Rangers have a last-gasp effort cleared from a position that looks to be over the line. The referee and assistant don't immediately award a goal because they aren't sure, but one of the officials behind the goal states that the ball was over the line and that a goal should be awarded. Television pictures confirm that it is indeed a legitimate goal. Rangers win 1-0. A fortnight of Radio Clyde and BBC Scotland analysis follows; why were extra officials required for this game, who requested them, was it Rangers, is it an establishment plot, is it a conspiracy, should UEFA be consulted - should the government intervene? If it happens the other way though - a universal 'well done' to the SFA for employing extra officials. Am I paranoid? Or am I right?
  23. Hildy
    The tone of the piece is sickeningly sanctimonious, and those Rangers fans who have dared to speak out against the club are dismissed as 'rebels' as though they have something in common with our rivals. It is however a microcosm of the way we are all perceived, so when we look at the article and recoil in horror at its content, we should remember that the type of fan this new group seems keen to attract is a Rangers fan caricature; staunch, intolerant, unthinking, upstanding and loyal to an outrageous degree: exactly as Rangers fans are portrayed in the media and beyond in our own country. When we see articles like this and despair at the attitude displayed, we should remember that this is the same reaction that 'neutrals' have when they think of Rangers and Rangers fans. Is it any wonder they don't like us? If this new 'group' flops, it will be a sign that there really is hope for a better future.
  24. Hildy
    A good solid statement, Andy, and it couldn't be more clear now. You support Rangersfirst because it's NOT about fan ownership. BuyRangers is the obvious vehicle then for people who DO support fan ownership. Your statement helps a lot. Much appreciated.
  25. Hildy
    I said in the past that it was about fan ownership lite, but I think you are correct - it doesn't appear to be the path to fan ownership at all. It even appears to be downplaying the concept: "Very few people want actual fan ownership".
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