JohnMc

Every side gets injuries DMAA, that's what we've got a squad for (Morelos wasn't injured, he was suspended). Successful sides cope, they have a balanced squad and are able to provide cover. I mean it's not like we were forced to throw in young boys last night, kids with no experience. If we've no cover at full back or upfront then that's fairly damning on it's own. It hurts to type this but Celtic played us in a cup final without a recognised forward on the pitch and still somehow managed to lift the trophy. I don't think Gerrard should be sacked, far from it, but I don't accept that injuries are behind this. Last night's side was only missing Barasic and maybe Helander, we should be able to beat Kilmarnock. As for Hearts, frankly, there is no excuse for that defeat, none at all.

If we have another trophy-less season then for me this does become a discussion we should have. I remain bewildered that Ojo and Barker remain at the club and Jamie Murphy is sent out on loan, or that Jordan Jones, a player who must be comfortable on the Rugby Park surface can't even get on as a sub. Gerrard has given us some great moments and, until January, was on a steady upward trajectory, however since the Celtic match we've been abject and the management team need scrutinised for that. What's really concerning is we seem to have made the same 'mistake' two seasons running, we head off on a winter break and come back like a different side. The energy and fluidity has gone, our shape disappears, our midfield can no longer control a match and most damning of all we've no heart or fight, the opposition know they can hurt us if they hang in long enough. We don't seem to be learning from our mistakes and that's poor management. A concern about Gerrard is his ability to manage players that aren't top professionals, that aren't brilliant trainers or laser focussed. This is the Scottish league, not the Champion's League, the manager needs to be able to get the most from his players, he needs to be able to get performances from 'average pros' too. I'm not yet ready to throw in the towel for this season, it's going to be hard but there will be twists and turns to come. But Gerrard shouldn't be beyond questioning or criticising, but for now he needs our support and should get it.

I can't help but feel that getting cuffed by Athletico Madrid is much better preparation for our young players than horsing Thistle in the Glasgow Cup. The harder the matches these boys play the better, it shouldn't be about winning leagues or even matches at that level, but improving them as players.

What skills do people think Souness has? He's an ex footballer, so he has insights into the game, but he stopped playing over 30 years ago now and hasn't managed for close to 15 years so how current those insights are would need assessed. I'd have thought our Director of Football and a large and expensive backroom staff could provide all the football insights our board need though. From what I can see he has no business acumen to speak of and has made a number decisions over the years that certainly make me question his judgement. His relationship with Willy Mckay should automatically exclude him from any decision making at our club. Souness was the right man to come to the club in the mid 1980s, lift our profile, set higher standards and provide the impetus for growth and success. I'll always be grateful to him for doing that. But that doesn't get him a job at the club now, particularly one he's not qualified to carry out.

I'll forever be grateful for what Souness did for Rangers and I'm happy for him to be involved with us but I'd be concerned if he got a place on the board or any executive position. Souness has regularly displayed poor judgement and pig-headedness. That stubborn streak that made him a great player doesn't serve him well in other areas of life. He's an entertaining pundit, personally I hope he sticks to that.

Sorry, I disagree @Frankie and @ranger_syntax the producer will have the final say. Now, a programme like Off The Ball, with two experienced and long serving presenters will see them have a considerable amount of input into the show, but ultimately it's the producer who calls the shots, agrees what topics they can discuss and the tone and direction it will take. That's not to say Cosgrove and Cowan aren't expressing their own views, I suspect they are, simply that those views are shared by the people behind the show and are probably shared by those in the sport and comedy departments at BBC Scotland.

It's worth remembering that Off The Ball has a producer too, that person is ultimately responsible for the content broadcast by its presenters. They must have given the start and the overall tone the green light, if not suggested it in the first place. That strongly suggests the prevailing view in BBC Scotland.

Great stuff 26th.

Every golf club I've ever been in contained people who make Donald Trump seem like a liberal feminist. A good walk spoiled.

I think I've only heard on the Si Ferry interviews, and no one looks good on them! ?

That makes as much sense as any other theory I've heard. Traynor is a sport's journalist, not a PR professional. Many journalists make the change from one to the other, but simply knowing the media landscape isn't the same as understanding how PR works.

Genuine question, does anyone think Rangers PR department and Traynor in particular are doing a good job? I've some insight into how PR 'works' and fully accept that it's a bit like an iceberg in that you can see 20% of it but the other 80% you can't. But the Morelos interview translation is a farce, I've no idea who carried out the translation but this wasn't some mistranslation of a colloquialism, this was someone adding stuff Morelos simply didn't say. Who would do that, and why? Rangers must have sanctioned Morelos to do this interview, they must have known what the line of questioning was going to be and had a good idea what Morelos was going to say in reply. So I assume someone from Rangers was involved and sanctioned this. Morelos has been largely kept from the media, other than Rangers TV he's been conspicuous by his absence from the tabloids and broadcast media so I'm struggling to believe this wasn't agreed at a fairly high level at the club beforehand. Following the Morelos car story it's really not a great few days for us, and Morelos, who is entirely blameless is all of this, continues to be at the eye of a bad PR storm. Michael Stewart isn't daft, he's cultivated his 'shock-jock' straight talking, not afraid to upset people persona pretty well which is why he's in demand from broadcasters. Believe it or not people will listen to him, controversy brings listeners/viewers, far more than insight or considered opinion does. Them's the times we live in, folks. Stewart has a problem because he ignored his producer, who I suspect was shouting in his ear the other night not to slander Jim Traynor or the Daily Record or anyone else for that matter, and Stewart ignored them and carried on with his diatribe. That's actually a problem at the BBC, even in the sport's department ignoring the producer see's you being taken off air for a period of time. I'd be very surprised if anyone sues anyone else. Stewart will get a gig somewhere else, he'll continue to develop himself as the poor-man's Scottish fitba Rush Limbaugh instead of offering genuine insight into teams and players, he'll start quarrels and kick those he feels will further his persona. Scottish football is crying out for an authoritative voice, someone with genuine insights and understanding and who is capable of explaining the intricacies of the beautiful game to us ignorant fans. That person could have been Stewart, but it won't be. Realising his potential has always been a problem for Micheal Stewart.

I hear Sky have now pulled the interview and Celtic have made a formal complaint about it, apparently Morelos doesn't mention them in it but the subtitles did. What should have been an eagerly awaited interview with the most exciting player in the country has turned into a farce.

So did Rangers prepare this and give it to Sky as an exclusive or did Sky do it? Because if the translation is as bad as is being suggested surely someone Sky or the club realised someone from the 572 Million Spanish speakers in the world might see it and notice. Does @der Berliner speak Spanish, perhaps he can tell us what it really says?

His son made his debut for AC Milan at the weekend. He's an attacking midfielder apparently, not a defender like his father and grandfather.

Something like 'your mother is a mattress' apparently a well known insult in South America. This link should show you it - https://images.app.goo.gl/UEQRvBuPVHQKnh8C7

In my head his dad was a Barcelona player, that's the side I associate him with. Yet I read earlier he only played 30 odd matches for them and actually played double that for Real Madrid, I didn't realise he'd ever played for them. It must be difficult for the sons of great players, no matter what he does he'll always be unfavourably compared to his father. I didn't actually know he existed until yesterday, so i've no clue how good he is, but he's an interesting signing and should give the squad a boost.

Well, we've got better players, a better manager and better backroom staff, we're doing better in the league, we're at home and their form is pretty poor. So if you're just taking that sentence on it's own, that's how I reach that conclusion. The rest of the paragraph following that sentence was meant to explain why that might not end up being the case though.

The late Jock Wallace is often characterised as the archetypal old school manager; gruff, authoritarian, intimidating, bellowing orders and ruling through fear. Some of that might be true, but it’s also true of many football managers of that era. What’s so often overlooked about Wallace was his subtle use of psychology. Wallace was faced with a daunting task when he assumed the mantel of Rangers manager. Not only was he in direct competition with Jock Stein, a manager of incredible ability, but also a Celtic side containing hugely talented and experienced players who knew how to win the league. Wallace’s first season in charge saw Rangers finish 5 points behind the champions and one point behind second place Hibs. Wallace knew that Rangers had good players, we’d won the Cup Winners Cup only a couple of years before, and any squad that contained Greig, Jardine, McLean, MacDonald and Johnstone was as good as any in the league. Wallace understood that what was missing was belief and a mental toughness. Wallace needed something that made his players believe they were unbeatable, something that gave them a psychological edge over their opposition. Wallace found the answer on a beach overlooking the Firth of Forth close to where he was raised. Murder Hill, as it came to be known, is simply a long, steep sand dune. Wallace knew about it from his childhood, local sports clubs, including Hearts, had trained on the Gullane sands for years before Wallace took his Rangers side there. But most of the Rangers players didn’t know about it. The squad were made to run up and down it, sometimes carrying medicine balls, sometimes teammates. The mix of the coastal wind and the sand made the players thirsty, the sand would get everywhere making them uncomfortable and the gruelling nature of the training exhausted this band of fit young men, as all pre-season training does. Wallace was able to convince his players that this pre-season work had made them fitter than they had ever been before. He convinced them they were now the fittest team in the league, that no other side could live with their strength. His final masterstroke was telling the press about it. Not only did the Rangers players believe it but so did the support and, importantly, the opposition too. We welcome, if that’s the right word, Aberdeen to Ibrox this Saturday. Unusually for a match between the clubs it takes place at 3pm on a Saturday. Aberdeen arrive in poor form with only one win in their last four, a scrappy 1-0 over Dumbarton in the cup. Their support are restless, the turgid, pragmatic football Derek McInnes sets his side up to play can be tolerated when it brings victories but finds you friendless when it doesn’t. It’s almost surreal to think 24 months ago we were still smarting from being unable to prise him from Aberdeen’s grasp. As Ross Bennett on the Gersnet Podcast quipped it’s the greatest bullet dodge since The Matrix. I expect Aberdeen to bring a defensive mindset, giving us the ball until the final third, then filling it with bodies and closing the space. They’ll aim to frustrate our players and perhaps our support. Prepare for a physical match, lots of niggles, off the ball stuff and gamesmanship. We enter the match still missing our captain and first choice right back and our most influential midfielder in Jack along with Helander and Defoe. At the time of writing we look to be signing Hagi and possibly one or two others. I wouldn’t expect any of them to start though our bench might contain some new faces. Polster should retain his place, personally I think anyone looks good when compared to Flanagan, but in the case of Polster he does seem to bring something to the team. Aberdeen will be a test of his attacking ability, he’ll spend most of the match in their half, so his passing and crossing will be vital. I expect Arfield will also retain his place in midfield, along with Davis and Kamara. Whether Ojo has done enough to keep a starting spot is harder to guess, I suspect not and think Aribo with start along with Kent. Defoe’s absence is lessened by the return of Morelos. Morelos will be targeted by the Aberdeen players and probably their support. A support who think nothing of singing about the 66 football supporters who tragically died whilst at the site of that disaster are almost beyond redemption. I suspect Ian Durrant will get a mention too. Morelos has more reason than most to be fearful of opposition supporters. Already this week police are investigating an incident with his car and intruder close to his home and a man called Sean Baillie appeared in court charged in relation with throwing a cup of scalding liquid at Morelos during a recent Motherwell match. Morelos has to face this whilst living thousands of miles from home and with his wife expecting their first child. Gerrard has played down the incidents and their affect on Morelos, as is Gerrard’s style, but I’m not sure if I believe him. The hatred Morelos faces has long ago crossed the line from supporter rivalry and into something altogether more sinister. The man in court this week is 30 years old, he’s not some daft teenager. For me this is the culmination of years of public demonisation of Rangers. The neanderthal narrative some love to peddle stops being banter and turns into something much darker when it fuels the kind of incidents we’re seeing now. That we face Aberdeen this weekend, one of the more enthusiastic participants in the denigration of our club and our support, is fitting. That they went to the bother of creating a banner, in Spanish, aimed squarely at Morelos tells you all you need to know about the mindset of some of their support. This act by their support was ignored by the SPFL and the police, but hey, it’s only the funny wee foreign lad after all. It’s been open season on the league’s top scorer for a while now, players, managers, referees, supporters and the media have all been complicit in this. As for the match itself we should win comfortably. But then we should have won our last encounter with Aberdeen comfortably too. Throwing away a 2 goal league was very disappointing, particularly after having dominated the match. We were mentally weak that night, unable to match Aberdeen’s rise in tempo and direct style. That weakness was evident again last weekend at Tynecastle. This will be our third league match in 7 days, surely we’re now over any rustiness that set in after the winter break. The clever thing about Murder Hill of course is that you don’t actually get any fitter running up and down sand dunes than you would running on a treadmill or round a track; you just think you do. Wallace understood this, he knew the dunes helped the side’s mental strength far more than its collective stamina. Gerrard needs to find his Murder Hill, the thing that galvanises the squad and makes them fully believe they are unbeatable. Saturday would be the perfect day discover it.

This is my favourite thread in all of Rangers messageboard-dom, I look forward to 26th’s posts, they are invariably witty, prescient and well written. I don’t know 26th, I’ve never spoken to him far less met him, so like so many people you see online you create your own impression of them based on what they post. These assumptions could be well wide of reality of course, I suspect most of us are a lot more nuanced in real life than online. Anyway, for what it’s worth I don’t think 26th of Foot is anti-Irish, but I can understand how a new poster only reading posts 2149 and 2150 might think he is. I’d recommend a wider reading of 26th’s posts PoohBear, they’re usually pretty good. I too have an Irish wife, (and will soon have children sporting Irish passports, thanks for that Brexit…) and spent a few years living on that side of the Irish Sea. It certainly gave me a different perspective on things, particularly on the nuances we all have. I don’t know what ‘anti-British’ actually means. Do we mean the Irish government is ‘anti-British’? Is it the Irish people? All of them? Most of them? Just a minority perhaps? And are they anti everyone and everything in Britain, just the government perhaps, or maybe certain politicians and policies? It’s a difficult thing to define, isn’t it. So here’s my experience, others will have had different ones. Ireland has a complicated relationship with the UK. The war of independence and its precursors and aftermath still play a big part in the culture of the country. This year has already seen controversy as we approach important centenaries in Irish history. But in the 25 years I’ve been visiting Ireland it has changed enormously. Ireland was a very conservative country, wary of change and slow to adopt many of the things other European countries took for granted. There is no way an openly gay man of half Asian parentage could have become Irish Prime Minister 25 years ago for example. The influence of the Catholic Church is diminished to be almost irrelevant now, certainly in terms of governmental policy and wider cultural norms. From the top down it’s a very different country to the one I first visited. In terms of their relationship with the UK it’s fair to say it’s complicated. Almost everyone in the Republic of Ireland has family in the UK, they’ve all visited, they’ve all consumed ‘British’ culture from the day they were born, be that music, television or, to try and get relevant again, sport. The best supported football team in the whole of Ireland is Manchester United. Second best supported is Liverpool. Very few people take much interest in ‘local’ football, both north and South of the border. It’s not a great standard and English football has been available to watch live for decades now, long before the advent of Sky. Most Irish I speak to treat Scottish football with a mix of curiosity and disdain. Most will ‘have a Scottish team’, this normally takes the form of a side they’d rather see win but wouldn’t actually cross the road to watch. In the North this is usually Rangers, elsewhere Celtic are more popular. I’ve pointed out the error of this many times, but it can be hard to argue when one side is flying Irish flags and, well, the other side isn’t. But in actual fact most of them couldn’t care less who wins in Scotland, they’d rather talk about Rashford or Mane. I’ve met bigots in Ireland. Small minded, scared people incapable of seeing the other persons point of view. Some of them were inconsequential and easily ignored, some of them, unfortunately, were harder to ignore. But Ireland is complicated, its history has created things that are hard. I’m not Arlene Foster’s biggest fan, but I can see why seeing your father shot outside your house and having your school bus bombed might colour how you see life and the compromises you’re willing to make. Likewise I can now understand why someone from the Creggan might not see the Poppy symbol in the same way I do. We don’t all have to see the world the same way. For what it’s worth my Irish wife has been largely made very welcome in Scotland. She considers Glasgow her home, we chose to raise our children here, almost everyone is friendly to her. But, on rare occasions there have been snide remarks, the occasional insult, sometimes not intended, but felt all the same. Someone recently was incredulous that she got to vote in the General Election (she’s lived in Scotland for 17 years and the UK for 25) and told her she had no right to a say in what happened ‘here’. There are morons everywhere, Ireland has some, Scotland does too. Don’t judge an entire country on them is my one piece of advice.

I've lived in Glasgow most of my life and I'm stunned by this. If this is true and it doesn't turn out to be some sort theft or petty vandalism then we've really turned a corner into a very dark place. I genuinely hope it turns out to be someone trying to steal his car because the alternative I'm struggling to comprehend.

You might be right, I hope you are. I agree every side will drop points, my concern has been the manner of them. We didn't lose them to sides who are better than us (even on the day), we lost them to sides that worked harder and dug in and fought for the ball. I do see that as a mentality issue. When our short, slick passing style is working we're a joy to watch, even in the cup final when we lost I can accept that it was just one of those things, the ball simply wouldn't go in. But against Aberdeen and Hearts, having been leading, we should have seen both games out. We didn't seem able to match their physicality and desire. I believe our players are as fit as theirs and are man for man better footballers. All that's left is mental strength. We bounced back from the Aberdeen draw fairly well, hopefully the Hearts defeat will prove to be a catalyst for a similar bounce. But there's a fragility to Rangers just now, and I'd argue that includes our support as well as our players. We've lost our last 3 domestic cup finals, it's nine years since we won something of consequence, it's inevitable that has some affect on the club.

It can only be 'mental', a side that can play Celtic off the park in their own ground but capitulate to a rotten Hearts side has a mental problem. Losing Morelos clearly affects our performance but a mentally strong side finds a way to win, and win ugly. The points dropped at Pittodrie and Tynecastle against limited sides while we were leading in both games is a concern. We've two players in our side who have ever won a league title, I'd be looking for more from both of them currently.

Because of the result and overall performance Kent's goal yesterday is being overlooked a bit, which is a shame as it was a cracker. Great surging run from Kent, nice lay off to the impressive overlap from Barasic and a clever cross/pass from him, Kent didn't stop but continued his run right into the box and gets on the end of Aribo's lay off. It was a nice finish too. I was critical of Kent after the last Aberdeen match, felt both him and Aribo needed to do more from a creative perspective. To be fair Kent has since then, he's chipped in with goals and assists, generally works hard and creates something in every match. Time will tell if we paid too much for him, I don't think he's storming the league but he's scored 5 from 11 appearances which is a decent return and he is still better than Ojo, Barker or Jones I'd say. He also has the happy knack of scoring against Celtic, something to endear him to us. I suspect we'd recoup most of our fee for him still, Leeds were willing to pay it in the summer, I suspect there are other clubs like them who would see that as a decent investment. I think he'll prove to be an astute signing as long as he can steer clear of injuries.

Put me in the 'we really missed Morelos' camp. I don't think Defoe is physically capable of playing 3 full matches in 8 days and his lack of pace was really shown today, twice caught when put through by a defender a good 3 or 4 feet behind him initially. As an option coming off the bench he's perfect, his touch and speed of thought in the final 20 minutes of a match when defenders are tiring remain an asset. You have to wonder about the wisdom of releasing Hardie and Rudden. Neither seem like they had long term futures at the club, but holding onto Rudden in particular until the summer at least offers us some cover up front. While the midfield was poor yesterday Morelos ability to hold the ball up, make runs that create space for others and come deep to link was sorely missed yesterday, that kind of ability helps midfielders, it allows them to play it early if needed knowing Morelos can chase it down, hold it up or draw a foul. Morelos missing doesn't excuse us throwing away a lead or some of the puzzling decisions (Ojo coming on??) made, but for me it further underlines his huge importance to our side.