JohnMc

Oh he wanted Laudrup and expected him to be there when he joined. Murray had told Advocaat he was confident he could persuade Laudrup to remain at Rangers. Murray was nothing if not confident about most things. For all his tactical shortcomings Walter Smith was able to build incredible team spirit and Laudrup bought into, and enjoyed, that aspect of Rangers. As has been said by others I also would have loved to see Laudrup under Advocaat, however Advocaat was a Marmite type manager capable of falling out with his best players, so who knows what might have happened.

100% agree. If anyone is any doubt that Laudrup was indeed 'world class' I suggest they watch the Brazil v Denmark World Cup quarter final match from 1998. Laudrup was astonishing in that game, a game a country of 5 million people had no right to be in, against the eventual World Cup runners up.

I saw Sturridge had been released by Liverpool and woendered if Gerrard, who must know him fairly well, might be interested. He was a superb player but his injury record is a worry and Klopp all but questioned his commitment a season or so ago in public. I suspect he's still capable of commanding a hefty salary from someone too. I thought Wallace was home bird and wouldn't leave Scotland? Maybe he thinks he's signing for Queens Park...

Nope, you really didn't say that Pete, you said "Laudrup had failed in pretty much with Bayern and was pretty much a bench sitter in Italy so he was also a bit of a risk." No mention he "was good player but not world class" only that he was a bench sitter and a failure. By all means criticise Laudrup, but to describe him that way is laughable and insulting to those of us who were lucky enough to watch him.

C'mon, Laudrup played 31 times for Fiorentina, almost every match that season. He struggled to get into the AC Milan side but be fair, that Milan side were the best team in the world at the time. They won Serie A and the European Cup that season. The 3 foreigner rule was in place so he was competing for a starting spot with Boban, Desailly, Savicevic, Papin, Radicioui and Van Basten as well as most of the Italian national side. Not getting into that side hardly made him unproven. Every signing is a risk but with a player like Laudrup or Gascoigne, or today someone like Arfield or Defoe, you already know they can play at our level, they've already proven themselves at a higher level. They are still a risk of course after all they might not settle or there might be a personality clash but they're proven at our level, that's why they're paid so much. A player like Polster is a different type of risk because he's not proven at our level yet. The gamble is can he step up, improve his game, develop and adapt.

You've chosen an odd hill to die on dB. Comparing Polster to Gazza or Laudrup is just bizarre. Polster has played 3 seasons with struggling MLS side and has one US cap, a friendly against Bosnia. Gascoigne was one of the most high profile players in the world when he joined Rangers, a first choice internationalist who's played and starred in top flight football in England and Italy. Laudrup was also joining from Serie A, having previously starred in the Bundesliga, he was also a first choice international and had played in the winning European Champions team. Weir was an experienced player who'd worked with Smith successfully and was seen as a short term stop gap. Polster, on the other hand, is the very definition of 'unproven'. He might turn into a Kamara or a Goldson or he might be a Grezda or an Ojaria. He's unproven, so we'll just have to see.

To be fair to Richard Gordon it is hard to consider players from a team you refuse to watch...

We were good at developing keepers. Goram went from a good keeper at Hibs to one of the best on the planet while at Rangers. Klos was excellent when he arrived and remained excellent throughout his time with us. Antti Neimi couldn't break into our side but proved himself to be a very high quality keeper when he left. McGregor first time round was superb and is still very good even in the twilight of his career. Big Wes is a better keeper today than when he joined us. Liam Kelly's form with Livingston suggests our keeper development remains strong, hopefully the 'other' McCrorie will continue that run. Our inability to produce a forward player of any note since Robert Fleck is a source of some embarrassment though.

Some of those English stats are astonishing, no way is that sustainable. As for us if the figures are correct then that's not great reading, however the issues around merchandise are a contributing factor and something our directors are aware of. We clearly need to get our income up as I suspect our wage bill will rise this summer, that's inevitable if you want to sign better players. That said the costs involved in paying off Caixinha and some of the signings that didn't work out might be included in those figures. I suppose this comes down to trusting our current directors to protect the club and not overreach.

I've no particular dog in this fight but I do think you're being harsh on Ajax here. Feyonoord didn't make it to the Champion's League semi-final playing some sensational football whilst defeating Juventus and Barcelona along the way. That's what makes Ajax so appealing to old duffers like me who are hacked off how a handful of Spanish and English sides can simply buy anyone they want and dominate football. It's great to see a side we can realistically hope to emulate doing that. Also, when you add in former Ajax players like Eriksen, Alderweireld, and Vertoghen being in the side that put them out as a neutral you have to say as a club they're pretty impressive. I'm sure it pisses off some Dutch (and Scots apparently) but Ajax have a mystique about them, since the 70s they consistently produced world class footballers, even when they themselves weren't doing anything on the international stage, their alumni were. Plus that banner when they last played Celtic, clearly not fancying a 'special relationship' and letting them know it made me laugh.

I've got some sympathy for Clyde on this. Firstly I think we have to accept that child abuse is a very difficult subject to talk about on a sport's programme. Super Scoreboard has a wide audience age wise, that creates problems in subject matter, it's on in the early evening when children could be listening. Personally I'd turn over a programme that was discussing child abuse if my 11 year old was listening. It's not an appropriate subject and it is most certainly not an appropriate programme to be discussing it. Secondly no one on that programme is even remotely qualified to discuss the subject matter. I mean the presenters and guests struggle to say anything vaguely informative on football, what possible insight could they bring to this subject? And a phone-in on it is a horrifying thought. I understand why some people feel there's double standards being displayed. After all no one on Super Scoreboard is an insolvency or tax expert yet they were happy to discuss and comment on that for months on end. However, I think there's a huge difference between spouting ill-informed gibberish about EBTs and spouting it about a paedophile ring. For me the latter is a subject that should only be covered by the 'news' shows. Whilst it concerns a 'sports' club it's not a suitable story for sport journalists to cover. It's news story, it's a big news story, potentially a huge one. A paedophile ring operating inside one of the biggest and most successful sporting institutes in this country, apparently for decades, requires a level of investigation and analysis no sport's programme is capable of providing. I agree with those that have called for a public enquiry, that's not point scoring either. I knew boys who played for Celtic Boys Club, their families were so proud of them. Even as a Rangers supporter you recognised the kudos that came with being able to say you were good enough to play for them. Evil, evil men preyed on young boys, deceived their families, lied and abused their positions and ultimately destroyed the lives of who knows how many people. That shouldn't be allowed to simply be forgotten.

Nah, you're all wrong so far. POTY is Connor Goldson, the most under-rated player in our side. He's the defensive colossus the side's been built around, that's transformed our 'goals against' column this season. He's had to work with 3 different centre-half partners, yet has maintained a level of consistency that we simply now take for granted. He's been almost ever present, playing 54 matches. His discipline is exceptional, only 10 bookings all season and no red cards, unusual for a centre half in modern football, particularly when playing for Rangers. Most importantly he didn't give the ball away at Parkhead in the last minute for no explicable reason. BTW No Candieas in the poll? His stats are better than Kent's, he just does it with less fuss.

Burt held a lot of promise at one time, but he's been unlucky with injuries and that seems to have hampered his progress. I suspect they'll all find clubs at some level, who knows what still might happen for them.

I think the improvement in our midfield is the reason our defence is looking better, but I'll concede you might have a point. Being charitable to Flanagan he needs a run at right back before I can fully right him off as the Scouse Kevin Muscat.

Having read the Record's front page and the following double page spread inside I think the writer involved must have missed Peter's call because the article is damning, probably the most damning piece as yet published on this scandal in Scotland so far.

I mean Flanagan's rubbish and I dislike him as a player and as a person, but you still took me a little too seriously. I'll put winking emojis on in future.

I know he's been better recently but the longer Flanagan is banned for the better as far as I'm concerned... Also, I think we need to bear in mind that if anyone is an expert on looking ridiculous it's Keith Jackson. An expert speaks, we should all listen. I quite liked the "rhyming slang" line though. I'm happy for the club to point out the constant inconsistencies and to do it publicly, at some point maybe a journalist will start to look into them instead of slagging us for pointing them out.

Early 2000s? That sounds more like Roman Polanski.

You really need to start listening to the podcast dB, both Mexer and Milner were mentioned...

In my limited experience the legal wheels do indeed turn slowly, very slowly at times, but they do turn. Whatever we think of politicians when an MSP writes to a public servant they need to respond in a satisfactory way, they can't just ignore him or palm him off.

Was Defoe not a doubt before the Aberdeen match? If Defoe is playing with an injury we should start Morelos, but if Defoe is fit he should keep his place and Morelos should be on the bench. What a great dilemma to have.

Don't you think many people can separate those aspects of Rangers from the rest of their lives? I'm old enough to remember going to Ibrox on a Saturday and singing GSTQ then going to Hampden on a Wednesday for a Scotland match and booing GSTQ when it was played as the Scottish national anthem. That probably sounds ridiculous today, and for good reason, but I wasn't alone in that. The bulk of the Scotland crowd was made up of Rangers supporters in those days and they could sing and boo GSTQ without having an identity crisis, l suspect a lot of them still can. I accept the point you're making and agree the more hardline Scottish nationalists probably do find the trappings of Ibrox anathema to them. However, there are thousands of 'soft' nationalists, people who now vote SNP because they tired of Labour, they felt their lives weren't improving or they bought into Salmond or Sturgeon over McConnell and Dugdale. For a lot of them, and I know quite a few like that, they are Rangers supporters at the same time.

It's also telling that Tomkins is English and Fraser from Inverness, rather than the west of Scotland where the bulk of the population actually live, both are 'list' MSPs rather than constituency elected too. There will probably be a couple more if we really looked but it's a poor return from a possible 188 MPs and MSPs.

My point Bluedell is that no one is working for us, the best we get is ambivalence, and the worst is people who clearly dislike us and make it quite well known. Why is that? Why are there no votes, or at least why is the perception there are no votes, for politicians in being publicly pro-Rangers? To me, these threads come across as some posters using it to have a go at the SNP, to underline their own political beliefs. The SNP didn't invent it, it's been around for a couple of decades now across all political stripes. For me you're not identifying the problem at all, the issue isn't Susan Aitken being a dick on Facebook chat, it's why someone like Susan Aitken feels that's acceptable, indeed maybe desirable. In the end she's doing what the people in power before her also did, and they had a very different political belief. For me, if you want to fix this, you need to address why we have no political capital no matter who is in power. You're making this about the SNP, it's not about them, it's much bigger than that.

It's possible, I doubt it'll do Ms Aitken much harm politically. I'm not conscious of a Labour revival in Glasgow, but I suppose the SNP might fear Labour somehow harnessing some sort of grassroots 'Catholics as victims' to rebuild their vote. Certainly some people have been very keen to play up the 'sectarianism is alive' trope recently, despite most evidence to the contrary.