buster.

Ashely got a public mauling from this Judge and at a time when his 'image' and business interests are suffering from mucho negative publicity, I'm not surprised he'd be prepared to pay a price to try and prevent further damaging truths being laid bare. Justice Peter Smith had a handle on his real MO behind the action to put DK inside and in retrospect I'm surprised he didn't throw the towel in after the initial hearing in London.

Might be the price !... I'd imagine Rangers will make a short statement. Good sign and hopefully the beginning of a 'withdrawal'.

Given circumstances around the up and coming trial, I doubt the public (unless attendees at court) are going to know much detail of ongoing prceedings and are basically going to have to wait until the written judgement akin to War & Peace is made public (if this happens in criminal cases / not sure). The Crown made what I'd assume to be an unusual step of going public with a warning to social media users regards 'public/online prejudicial conversations' and I think the same thinking will be behind probable heavy reporting restrictions all the way through proceedings so as to lessen the risk......... Social media and it's easy access must make this difficult to police so anything that can be done to prevent is advisable. If you want to keep up to date you'll have to attend and I wonder if within the law/court regulations......... they'll want names and addresses to go with a warning about 'contempt'.

The 20,915 against Cowdenbeath was excellent if you look back over the last few years for SC games at Ibrox at a similar stage. It wasn't that long ago (Nov 2014) that we had a home SC tie against Kilmarnock on a Sunday and 14,412 attended. In 2015 we went out to Raith Rovers in front of 11,422. Even back in 2012 just before Admin, 17,822 were at the Dundee Utd SC tie. If we get anywhere near 25,000 it will be excellent but somewhere around 22K is more likely.

There are many things you could mention from back in the day but WS is still a 'big draw' for Rangers fans at a social event and there is obviously no bad feeling there. However it could be argued that Ally is to a degree temporarily toxic.

Was it not closer to the start rather than the "end" ? You'd expect a manager to react in a negative way to such a campaign,...regardless of it's merits. Then you add the political side with Sir Duped calling on him and a lot of others to come out and shout it down. As for "change", the situation today is very different from 2009.

Everything changes at some point and now is the time we have to. The important thing for me is the order of play. That the club changes (lays solid foundations) before the manager does.

Going by the thread title I thought it was dinner and a dance with Walter Smith for your 50 notes !

A Long and Winding Road..................................................

BM is the first player in the MW era to come into the category of..... Player due to negotiate future whilst producing outstanding performances = significant increase in 'value'. Agent will be looking to capitalise one way or tuther.

Halliday out and Ball in meant a bench without a defender. It seems as we have enough to cope with the absence of one defender but anymore and we either change formation, promote youth or make someone play way out of position. Any possible emergency option of bringing Gasparotto back has been nullified due to a fairly serious injury for the lad....although I guess there will be unattached players out there if the same happened to one of our first-team.

I'd have thought there will be heavy reporting restrictions today, beyond and probably all the long way through the trial. This may mean that the likes of STV and even Doleman give-up attending.

Wrt numbers, we are very light at the back. Question How many yellows = suspension ? So far (yellows) / according to soccerway website) Tav 3 LW 4 RK 5 DW 4 DBall 3

I understand what you are saying and to a degree I'd agree but I'm not so sure 'our market' will be the same as before and certainly hope & expect that our business model will be very different. The Champions League format is up for discussion with the bigger clubs looking for change that suits their interests, would probably see smaller leagues and most of their clubs being further marginalised. As clubs Rangers and Celtic (probably together) need to be lobbying as hard as they can to prevent ending up too far down the European financial pecking order regards competition revenue. We aren't going to reach the levels we want by spending mucho on transfer fees and high wages, IMO it's going to have to be the 'other way'. This would present many challenges and questions in an uncertain future, not least dealing with fan expectation and maintaining/increasing revenue.

First and foremost you have to work within budget so it is I think fair to assume that we won't be throwing millions at transfer fees (and relatively high wages) anytime soon. Priority is remain solvent and not add in a significant way to cashflow issues. The reason the board brought in MW&Co and his way of operating was that it was a good fit for the then circumstances and the vision looking forward. MW views the footballing infrastructure as being geared towards adding value from various angles to what comes down to football players performing on the pitch in a blue shirt. I believe that THE most important thing at Ibrox at the moment is getting the FOOTBALLING INFRASTRUCTURE right and cementing it's foundations for continued use as various individuals come and go. We need to consistently develop and add value to players, improve them, have them collectively perform and get results. If you can do something along those lines it also means you have to spend less money on transfer fees. There are various other ways of getting players.... Bosmans, Frees, Loans, Development being some of those and in the next few years,....we're going to have to make good use of them. The club could do with communicating with the support so as to prevent or at least mitigate the media pantomine about what we should and shouldn't be spending in future transfer windows..

The important measure is value for that money....and not getting into a stupid bragging war about 'we spent XM' or being pushed down the 'but we haven't spent XXM that was promised'. I don't think I've seen a better immediate return on money spent on various players during the decades I've supported the club.

May depend on the clauses. #StatetheBleedinObvious

An encouraging thing about last summer was the speed with which MW brought in players and moulded them into a team. The main thing for me about this summer is that MW stays.

On twitter Doleman said he had asked and was answered 'how long is a piece of string'. ie. We don't know.

Squad needs a top-up even if it be with a couple more 5 month loans.

Whilst touching on journalists, the general perception and first hand experience.............. Alex Thomson of C4 has been presented as an impartial reporter on the Rangers saga since he got involved. I'd take issue with that and could go into many strands of what is circumstancial evidence to back-up my view but in this case I can draw on personal experience aswell. I conversed with him by e-mail and made certain views/opinions clear which AT proceeded to use in one of his first blogs on the opinion of Rangers fans. Problem was he had twisted my words to suit his narrative. I got what could be described as a qualified apology of sorts but the blog was out there.

He'd have to change his style, his work ethic and become reasonably objective.

A sort of journalistic equivalent to Mark Burchill. He's essentially a 'fraud' and a man who became lazy and unprofessional. Instead of striving to improve as an all round journalist, he chose to take a particular route regards his career. One that dealt with a very subjective issue and it's ironic that in recent days he finds himself on social media indirectly moaning about a lack of free speech.

If as a business we had sufficient cash then the major shareholders wouldn't periodicaly need to lend the club large sums of money, knowing that it is only a matter of time until the next time. The intention is to turn this money lent into equity but when does it add up to an amount that swallows most of or all of the desired share issue ? The club need to become sustainable or a lot nearer to it, as quickly as possible but have to balance that against on-field needs that make Promotion neccessary and when we get it, improving the squad for the top tier.....so as to in turn maintain/increase matchday revenue, etc. The days of spending cash on large transfer fees are gone. The club is looking at developing a football infrastructure that will look to maintain/improve the level of on-field quality without the need to over spend on players. It looks for value in every pound spent. eg. if the club think MO'H is worth 300K, then it simply won't pay 500-600K. There is obviously a budget but it will be limited because of ongoing circumstances, some of which are unpredictable. However a good footballing operation can achieve without publicly throwing money at things as we've been accustomed to over the years. A good and relevant example is Hearts and how they have went about their return to the top flight. What we have is a situation where the media and others have got a hold of some comments on 'spending/investment intentions' that probably shouldn't have been made in such detail and using them to continually generate headlines, controversy and where possible, anger amongst our support. To a degree MW has had to publicly deal with the ongoing 'noise' but I'd like to see the board come out and remind/communicate/update what they can regards plans going forward.

I think that this has been the most annoying and tiresome transfer window that I have ever known. - Featuring shit-stirring media, bloggers and even many of our own (should be used to it by now). - Fans failure to understand our present circumstances and being hooked by general noise. - Our own fans who are like kids at Xmas who don't think they'll get what they want.