JohnMc

Aside from any political persuasion I find it astonishing that someone can be a Glasgow councillor and profess an interest in football but not know  the history of the Loving Cup ceremony or what it means today. This man is supposed to represent the people of Glasgow, all the people. How is it possible to be ignorant of this? 

As a club we need to be smarter politically. I wonder if we've ever invited Nicola Sturgeon to the Loving Cup ceremony? We should, aside from being First Minister she's an MSP for Glasgow South, and Humza Yousaf MSP for Glasgow Pollok. They might say no of course, but that's on them. I could see a number of the crowd less than happy, but that's on us. Any First Minister should attend important matches at Ibrox, particularly if it's in their constituency and The Loving Cup ceremony should transcend politics, religion or belief. 

Our history is as important as everyone else's we should evangelise more. 

The most surprising thing about that story is that Frank McAveety is now seen as some who stands up for 'us'. Remarkable. 

How many of the posters on here are members of their local community council? Members of a political party? A Trade Union? 

But it's not in the past though, is it? That's not how addiction works, it's not behind him, it's in front of him everyday. He literally needs to deal with it all the time. I mean he's only 'clean' less than 12 months, he could easily relapse if he's not on top of it. 

I didn't read the article as a piece on Rangers but as a piece on Lafferty. Read in conjunction with English's article on Lafferty's addiction issue last year I think English comes across as someone who is concerned for Lafferty's well being. My reading of the latest article is that English has concerns that a high profile, big money, high pressure move to a club like Rangers might not be in Lafferty's long term best interests. Now that might be because English doesn't like the idea of an inform player joining Rangers or it might be because he has genuine concerns around Lafferty's ability to deal with the added pressure. We can all speculate on that. 

Lafferty hasn't conquered his gambling addiction, he's dealing with it, those are two different things. Lafferty's career is littered with missed chances, metaphorical and literal, he's someone who has shown glimpses of his ability, then hidden it away again for long periods. I wan't Lafferty to succeed, he had a good season at Hearts and could be a very useful addition to our squad. But to pretend he doesn't have potential to self-destruct again, to attract the wrong kind of publicity and create issues around the club is naive. 

There's lots we can criticise BBC Scotland about, I'm not convinced this article is one of them. 

We played well, didn't panic trying to get a second, kept it tight and go into the second leg with a lead and no away goals. That's pretty professional and mid-table Russian sides are no mugs either. 

Arfield caused them problems initially but they altered their shape to contain him and that worked. That gave Ejaria more space and I thought he had his best match for us. Our left hand side isn't working as well as it should. With both Flanagan and Kent being right footed we lose the ability to cross early and attack the by-line. Barasic obviously fixes that problem domestically. 

How big is Lafferty now? He was always tall but I don't remember him being so powerful looking! 

It's going to be hard over there but it's in our hands and we should create chances. 

Is it this article that people are unhappy about? - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45276855

Got to be honest and say I'm struggling to see what's wrong with it? I know a few recovering addicts and speaking about their addiction seems to be something they all do as a matter of course. They don't keep it secret, they own the problem. 

The signing of Lafferty is a risk. His career has been blighted by inconsistency, he's undoubtedly 'high-maintenance' (I know of some fairly unimpressive stories of his professionalism when he was first with us) and when you consider that playing for Rangers brings a profile and scrutiny that playing for Hearts simply doesn't then there's going to be pressure on Lafferty that he didn't deal well with before. 

He's older now, and seemingly wiser, certainly his home life seems more stable now. I hope it works out for all concerned. 

2 hours ago, Gonzo79 said:

I'd imagine his responses to bad challenges, his rather furious looking facial expressions and general demeanour, plus the fact he plays for us, are the main reasons he is pin-pointed as a hot head.

 

You're veering into victimhood territory.  

 

He has four domestic goals in three matches, so far, this season.  He's a Buffalo Soldier.  

I'm not seeing victimhood, I simply think his nationality plays a big part in the type of coverage he gets. Morelos has had 2 yellow cards in his last 12 appearances plus the red at Aberdeen that was rescinded and shouldn't have been given. 

Scott Brown has had 2 yellows in the last 13 matches, a similar record to Morelos, yet he's held up as the ultimate Scottish professional. Leigh Griffiths has had 2 yellows in his last 6 matches, Lafferty 2 yellows in the last 5 games and Naismith 3 yellows in his last four appearances. Yet you don't hear Griffiths described as an Edinburgh hothead or Laff as an Ulster hothead or Naismith as the sociopath he clearly is. 

The fact that Morelos doesn't really look like 'us', comes from a country where they speak Spanish and is popularly portrayed as being lawless means he gets the reputation for being angry and petulant when he clearly is no worse than most. 

7 minutes ago, Ser Barristan Selmy said:

I doubt anyone cares what colour he is. You're the only person I've seen bring it up. 

You don't think his nationality and appearance have played a part in the lazy stereotyping? I lost count of the number of 'drug gang', 'cartel' and 'cocaine' references that peppered his early appearances from apparently serious professional journalists. If he'd been a young, white Irish player for example would they have made 'bombing', 'knee-capping' and 'alcohol-abuse' puns do you think? No chance. 

He's clearly no more 'hot-headed' or 'immature' than half the players in the league, yet he's the only one being regularly criticised for it. He got illegally barged three times by the great white hope that's McKenna at Aberdeen, how much criticism have you heard of him since then? 

I've no doubt the fact he's a Columbian gives rise to this bull-shit nonsense that he's hot headed and out of control. He's treated differently and I can only see one explanation for that. 

20 minutes ago, buster. said:

In this case, I think it's more the colour of the shirt, than of his skin that is the underlying reason behind the skewed observations that come his way from the 'usual suspects'.

That raises his profile and fuels their dislike, but his nationality and appearance fuel the lazy stereotypes. 

1 hour ago, Briton said:

Arfield's behaviour yesterday and needless booking was as bad as anything Morelos has done but the latter attracts criticism more than others; has done since he arrived at the club. I doubt this will change.

There's an element of racism in the Morelos criticism. The dark skinned Latin must obviously have a hot temper because that's what all these Latin chaps have, isn't it? I mean players like Naismith, Lafferty, Griffiths and Brown, you know white, British sorts, they never get involved in goading the opposition, or react to persistent fouling or play the game right on the edge. No, it's just those dusky, foreign types that do that and need criticised for it. 

Morelos is judged to a different standard than other players. 

1 hour ago, Gaffer said:

I'm delighted not to be in the media, but that does not prevent me from understanding some facts myself.  I take some of your points John, but we're not (not intentionally anyway) dismissing the BBC in other areas (as Strictly and Still game may be popular for you and many others), but as far as Scottish football is concerned, it is largely irrelevant.  Each day their viewing figures are absolutely insignificant as over 40m tweets/views and 6m Facebook references discuss Scottish football and receive a much broader worldwide audience.  And that doesn't even include the many other forums, blogs and podcasts.  The BBC can only dream of that spread of readership and exposure.

 

And finally, we have to look at the demographics.  The younger generation are not influenced by BBC's coverage of Scottish football.  They don't listen to it on radio, they don't watch their Scottish football programmes (as you'll know), and they certainly don't read about it on their website.  I'd call that an irrelevance.

Where are you seeing evidence that the "younger generation" aren't influenced by the BBC? Is that your observation or is there any empirical evidence for it? What do you class as younger? Under 30, under 25, under 16?

Follow Follow is largely seen as the most influential 'website' in Scottish football. Alexa ranks them as number one, even above Rangers own website as well as all other club or fan based sites. Yet Follow Follow has around a very respectable 39,000 followers on Twitter, RangersMedia has around 33,000. Yet BBC Sportsound has over 80,000 and its Facebook page has over 286,000 followers. BBC Sportsound dwarfs the Daily Record Sport and Radio Clyde's Super Scoreboard, only STV Sport gets close. The only people with more 'influence' on social media in Scottish football are the clubs themselves. I've not seen stats for the BBC sport website Scotland pages, I'm not sure if they're published, but I'd be surprised if they aren't higher than any other Scottish football centric website.  

For what it's worth I work on the fringes of the media, I take an interest in what happens in the media and what might happen in the future. I'm not an expert, I don't have a crystal ball and I get stuff really wrong sometimes.  

So places like Gersnet, FF, Rangersmedia have been around for a while now, other clubs have their versions too. They have influence, ideas are shared, opinions informed, news and gossip exchanged. But because they have influence doesn't mean an established, traditional programme, like BBC Sportsound, doesn't. It's not either or, it's degrees of. 

Podcasts are growing in popularity, as are webcasts and vlogs, but they still make up a very small percentage of the overall media consumed in Scotland. There have been successes in sport Podcasts. Second Captains, out of Dublin, has done very well, with both the Irish Times and RTE (Ireland's BBC) investing and getting associated with them. Indeed their podcast was hosted on the Irish Times website for a while. I'm watching the Heart and Hand podcast, it'll be interesting to see what kind of revenue that could generate. 

For me, BBC Scotland and Sportsound in particular remains the most influential 'media' in Scottish football. Their technology, resources and platforms give them a huge advantage on most of the others and they've adapted to digital media pretty well. 

In my opinion, but I'd be happy to be proved wrong. 

I'm sorry, but anyone who thinks the BBC is "irrelevant" clearly doesn't work in the media. The BBC is far from irrelevant, indeed I'd venture it has more influence and reach now than at anytime since the mid-1980s. 

I think much of this 'confusion' comes from falling ratings for BBC1 and indeed the main ITV channels and the changing way people view and interact with television in particular. There is no doubt that BBC television attracts fewer viewers than it did even 10 years ago, however that's far from the full story. Staying with television the BBC is still a formidable ratings puller. Programmes like Blue Planet and Strictly pulled in in excess of 13 million viewers last year. Nothing on Netflix, Amazon or You Tube comes close to that in the UK. The BBC news and sports programmes also rate highly with viewers. This year the highest rated TV programme in the UK was the England v Sweden match in Russia, an astonishing 20 million people watched it live. 

TV viewing is changing, however the BBC is far better prepared for this than some seem to think. The BBC iPlayer is an excellent 'on-demand' facility and is widely available and used. The BBC are also now releasing series on the iPlayer in one go, rather than one episode at a time. 

It's also worth pointing out that in Scotland we have only two stations catering for a specific local audience; BBC Scotland and STV (Border too although it is largely based in Carlisle and Cumbria). As such BBC Reporting Scotland out performs all other local and regional BBC TV news programmes, as does Scotland Today on STV. For 'local' news they are most certainly not 'irrelevant'. Viewing figures for the always dreadful 'Still Game' are staggering. The finale episode attracted 1.8 million viewers in Scotland, nearly 36% of the population. That's the kind of figures countries that only have one TV channel get!

Looking at radio, an area the BBC still excels at, Scotland remains an outlier. 21% of the population of Scotland listen to Radio Scotland every week, on average listening to 6.9 hours a week. When you add in national BBC radio stations BBC radio has 45% of the market in Scotland. The other 55% is split between national commercial radio and local commercial radio stations. Radio Scot;and has the largest audience of any station broadcasting only in Scotland (so compared to Clyde, Westsound, Forth etc) and both BBC Radio 1 and 2 are the biggest in terms of overall listenership in Scotland. Radio has been largely unaffected by the internet. Most people still listen on an AM/FM device, with growing use of DAB sets as they become more common in cars. BBC radio in Scotland is very influential, to pretend otherwise is folly. 

The real reason dismissing the BBC as irrelevant or a dinosaur is a mistake though is their website. The BBC website is a monstrous success. As of last month it is the 5th most used site in the UK and the most used website actually based in the UK (Google, Amazon, Facebook and You Tube are more visited). It is the go-to website for news and sport in the UK. The BBC's ability to 'cross-platform' is largely unrivalled, the 'red-button', their  phone apps, digital channels and their website are enormously valuable and influential. By October last year the BBC website was getting over 6 billion page views a month, up around 1 billion on 12 months before. 

The BBC has many, many faults, but understanding and adapting to the changes in media and media consumption isn't one of them. It is highly unlikely they will become 'irrelevant' in our lifetime. Their unique funding, market share and charter almost guarantees relevancy. 

59 minutes ago, cooponthewing said:

There is nothing to stop someone reporting from the match. Frankie has already pointed this out. So really you should be taking this up with the BBC?

I don't disagree with you, however I don't have much clout. The SLO might have a bit more, and of course the club have considerable clout, so for me they should be driving this. We suffer whilst others posture. 

12 hours ago, pete said:

let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!

Everybody does things you later regret.

Patrick kluivert killed a man with reckless driving and was convicted of manslaughter. it didn't hurt his career much.

If we are going to look at everybody's history with a fine toothed comb we won't sign anyone.

Really Pete? To compare him to Kluivert is the ultimate strawman, why not compare him to the thousands of other footballers who didn't get drunk and beat up a woman instead? 

Everyone may well do things they later regret but there are consequences and just because the guy might be a decent player his actions shouldn't be overlooked. He shouldn't be anywhere near Rangers, we should have standards of decency that exclude wife-beaters from wearing our jersey. We should absolutely look at everyone's history and if it turns out they're dangerous fuckwits we shouldn't sign them. To suggest everyone has a history that's anywhere close to this low-lifes is total bollocks Pete. 

I love 'The Old Lady of Edmiston Drive' as a title. It's a tradition that grand, extraordinary buildings, ships and so forth have female gender. 

Archibald Leach (slightly different spelling) was also the movie star Cary Grant's real name. 

The club deserve criticism for the handling of this though. Whatever happened over the course of the season or in the dressing room that day, whatever supposedly bad influences Miller and Wallace have been, fining them was a mistake. Miller had literally weeks left on his contract, if the club wanted him out then send him home, tell him to train on his own and that's it dealt with. Likewise with Wallace, if his time at the club has come to an end then tell him that, tell him he's being put on the transfer list and stripped of the captaincy. That's what happens in football, it's a brutal business at times but the players know that and get on with it. By fining them all we've done is save some money, that we might end up having to pay them back anyway, created two embittered players who, whether we like it or not, do have influence and friends in the dressing room and the media, and created the circumstances where this will now drag on for weeks if not months. 

Fining players makes sense if you're keeping them. It's a punishment they have to take on the chin to get back into the fold but fining them and then releasing them is a poor strategy. The players have nothing to lose by appealing. 

For those who say the players didn't show Murty respect and undermined him and that can't be tolerated they should remember that our club's Chairman threw Murty under a bus just days before that game, undermining his authority and position far more seriously than any player could have. 

4 hours ago, Gonzo79 said:

I take it you're a fan of the music? 

I wasn't being entirely serious, I mean who wants rattles back? 

I think complaining about the type of music or the volume of music being played just about anywhere is simply a sign of getting old. As I'm now reaching the age of average life expectancy for large parts of of Glasgow I'm reluctant to publicly admit to my doddering state by complaining about music. 

I mean it would be great if we didn't need signing sections and ultras and choreographed displays and everyone stayed until the end and the East Enclosure spontaneously burst into song 20 minutes into the first half and kept it up all game, but that's not how it works these days, it seems. 

So I'm a bit meh about the music, shrugging my shoulders and accepting that shit changes whether I want it too or not. 

But let's be clear one one thing Gonzo, you're fuckin way out of line on Madness, all sorts of wrong on that one sir. 

We should bring battle rattles too. And the maximum wage, and Scarlet Fever. 

We could get hung up on age instead of looking at capability. McAuley is experienced and has been playing at a good level for the last few years, way higher than SPFL. With his background he shouldn't have any problem 'fitting in' and having an experienced centre half sounds like a smart move to me. If he can guide young McCrorie like Davie Weir did to Danny Wilson once upon a time he'll be a good bit of business. 

The squad needs experience, we're very light on that now, a handful of older senior pros is essential. 

I see no quotes from Tav himself in the article, what does he say about it? I've got a collie cross from Cardonald and know nothing about American Bulldogs and why you might cut their ears. Why is it done, is it like tail docking? That was banned but then reversed in Scotland last year. From the  outside it seems cruel but I'd like to understand why it's done and what Tav has to say about it first. 

17 minutes ago, pete said:

We normally agree on most things but i am surprised you say that we don't need to strengthen the midfield. Dorrans, Halliday and Holt are not good enough. Windass is the only really attacking midfielder we have and there are certainly questions about him. Jack never really set the grass on fire but his presence was very short. I actually think he started to play better when McCrorie came in as a defensive mid and Jack moved slightly more forward. Docherty is still young and more for the future if he improves. He isn't ready to lead the midfield yet.

Arfield, Murphy, Candieas, Dorrans, Windass, Jack, Docherty, McCrorie (he's a midfielder, not a defender in my opinion), Holt, Halliday, Rossiter and Barjonas. We've got options in midfield and I agree it can always be strengthened I'm just not sure McGeough does that significantly. Plus, he left us for them, so it's a hard no from me ;-) 

For Maclennan to have survived for so long in the dirty, dirty world of newspapers shows he's not only canny but also a skilled political operator. It's impossible to have worked in newspaper management in the last decade and not have annoyed journalists. Cost cutting and managed decline have been the order of the day, that's never popular on the 'shop floor'. For MacLennan to have thrived he must have met his targets and pleased his bosses. 

Desmond and O'Brien are both serious businessmen and nobody's fools, they wouldn't have agreed to his employment if they didn't think he'd bring value to the business but also be looking out for their interests, whatever they might be. So for anyone to state publicly that MacLennan isn't there to do their bidding is naive in the extreme. MacLennan is an employee with a long track record of delivering what his bosses want. 

The only way there isn't a conflict of interest with MacLennan is if Celtic and every other Scottish club's directors want the same thing, and at this moment in time I doubt that very much. 

I'm not sure about McGeough, when you leave us to join Celtic that for me closes the door on you forever.

He's had a good couple of seasons but midfield is arguably the one area we don't need to strengthen currently.