JohnMc

Danny Wilson and Scott Allan are both perfect examples of what could have been. Both started their careers brightly before getting their heads turned by money. Had Allan stayed at Dundee Utd for a couple of seasons after breaking into their first team he'd be at a bigger club now, probably in England either challenging for promotion from the Championship or fighting relegation from the Premier League. As it is he wasted the most important years of his development and now finds himself at Hibs. He's 23 now, no longer a youngster, and has only played 68 first team games in his entire career, a number of them from the bench. Stuart Armstrong, who is the same age and broke into the Utd side at the same time has played 136 first team games. Tell me, who do you think will have the better career? Wilson is very similar. He played 14 times for Rangers and was on course to being a first choice defender. He left when he shouldn't have and played a total of 9 first team matches in three years. It was only his loan spell at hearts and subsequent transfer that saw his career going back on track. Had he remained at rangers i've no doubt he'd be a better player and playing at a higher level than the Scottish Championship. Nothing is better than first team football for players between 18 - 22 years, nothing. That's where they learn their trade, understand pressure, deal with different types of opponents, the anger of fans as well as the praise. No academy or training facility can replicate that. I wouldn't want either of them at Rangers, both have shown disloyalty and a lack of intelligence in their short careers, someone else is welcome to them.

Has a non British manager ever been successful in Scotland? Advocaat had a level of success certainly, but he had a significantly bigger budget than all the rest at first and when Celtic started to compete financially under O'Neil he struggled. Wim Janson won the league with the Tims but he still only lasted one season and we'd imploded half way through which really helped him, Hearts won a cup with someone or other from abroad in charge but the Scottish national side, Motherwell, Dundee Utd, Aberdeen, Dundee, Hibs, Rangers and Celtic have all tried 'foreign' managers with really poor results. Picking who'll make a good manager is nigh on impossible, particularly for supporters who don't actually see the personalities and dynamics up close. If you looked at the playing career of Jock Stein or Jock Wallace you'd never have picked them to have the later success they did. Who thought Robbie Neilson was going to be a good coach? First and foremost our club has to win in Scotland and that puts certain restrictions on us. Secondly I think we've a duty as a club to look to have a side that represents the support and that means finding the best players and managers from here and building the team that way. Sure supplement that with outside influence but all football clubs should represent their support. There are managers who are doing well with the resources they've got. Murray at Dumbarton and Fowler at QOTS spring to mind, both those clubs are over-achieving currently and when you see how Alex Neill did with Hamilton and now Norwich you can see the our current league can develop managers. Finding someone with a pedigree is nigh on impossible, we're simply not in that market just now, finding someone with potential is much more realistic. Over to you Dave.

The answer to Spence's continued presence is one of necessity. BBC Scotland must produce a certain amount of airtime from studios outside of Glasgow. For example Janice Forsyth and her production team have to travel from their Glasgow homes through to Edinburgh to produce her daily show so they can say it's made in Edinburgh. Spence being in Dundee means his time on air when studio based counts for this 'quota' as programming made outside Glasgow. Was Spence a Glasgow based journalist he wouldn't be on air, ever. He must be finding this difficult now though as his role as spokesperson in chief for Stephen Thomson becomes less palatable as Thomson is shown to be the money grabbing slimeball he is.

With respect how would you know who was or wasn't interested in taking McCulloch as a free agent three years ago. With no transfer fee a player could expect a signing-on fee in excess of £600,000 on top of his salary, the average salary in League 1 is nearly £4,000 a week.

That's possible certainly. But it's worth remembering that Wallace has had a wretched season until about three weeks ago, none of the other centre-backs have looked good, Foster was getting booed by our support before his injury, Black has been poor in the holding midfield role, Law only started playing a fortnight ago and neither Simonson or Robinson inspired confidence in anyone. McCulloch is not the long term answer to any question however he's only one player in a side that has defended badly as a team, he's not been anymore culpable than most of the others. If the midfield aren't retaining the ball or winning it, if the full backs aren't stopping crosses and if the keepers aren't commanding their box then even the best centre-half is going to get exposed. An interesting thing happened on Sunday when McCulloch was sent off. McCall chose to take off a midfielder when a lot of people would have expected him to take off Miller or Clark and play one up. McCall realised that our forwards were not allowing the Hearts defence the time to build from the back, in short our defending started the second they took possession. When the side defends as a team even the slowest centre-half looks less exposed.

The way some of us speak about our own players has always angered and baffled me, McCulloch is just the most recent example. He's a very good professional and a very good example to young players. He's coming to the end of his career, that's all. I've read on numerous occasions that 'he only stayed because no one else would give him the money'. Had McCulloch left and joined a League One side in England for example he'd have been on a good salary and with no transfer fee to pay he'd have a received a handsome signing-on fee. The fact that McCall has continued to pick McCulloch tells us far more about the application and dedication of the other centre-halves at the club than it does about McCulloch.

It's a great idea but the wrong person doing it. That's not meant as a slight to Mr Dingwall who've I've never met, simply that his profile is too high. I really don't think Ashley's lawyers will have a lot of difficulty convincing a judge that letting the owner of Follow Follow have a full list of SD shareholders might constitute a potential threat to them. Now I don't think for two seconds it actually does, but finding a series of posts from some unhinged or simply angry poster on FF to demonstrate shouldn't be that hard and a home counties judge might agree they constitute a potential threat. Had he got someone 'unknown' to do this it might have got a bit further. Shame, as it's a really good idea.

So important I had to say it twice...

Jeez, it's like an Albanian blood feud on here. In the grand scheme of people who've fucked Rangers over in the last few years Naismith's name doesn't even make the top ten, yet the antagonism he generates suggests he personally destroyed the club before ripping the picture of the Queen off the dressing room wall and defecating on the disaster memorial on his way to Merseyside. So, honesty time. When we failed to leave administration I didn't know how I felt about the 'new club' either. For a week or so it was all up in the air and so were my feelings about the club. Would it really still be my Rangers, was the liquidation actually the end and the 'new club' simply wouldn't engender the same feelings as before? I didn't know, it had never happened before. It wasn't until that first game when I saw Ally McCoist (another who draws hatred from a section of our support so out of proportion) standing on the touchline that I knew we were okay, everything was going to be alright, we were the same. I was wrong to question it but there you go, I've made mistakes before and I'll make them again. People go on about the press conference Naismith gave, he's pilloried for it. Here's the thing, the guy told the truth as he saw it at that time. Naismith was/is also a supporter, it was his view at the time, his view might well have changed but because he decided to explain to the support his feelings and his decision he's become a pariah. No wonder players only speak in platitudes and cliches the rest of the time, if supporters don't like your views they'll hate with a fervour normally reserved for child molesters. Bloody hell. I also think the anger towards Naismith is partly because we recognised ourselves in him. Local boy, boyhood supporter, articulate, thoughtful and probably our most effective player. We all wanted to be Naismith, we could see the side being built around him for years to come. So when he left it hurt. It hurt far more than Whittaker leaving, he can leave everyday if he wants the useless Hibee tosser (sorry, was that anger over the top?). We're like jilted lovers, unable to get over the beautiful girl (boy, whatever) who decided to move on. Do you carry this anger and pain around forever, do you badmouth her whenever her name comes up? Or do you let it go, write it off to experience, remember the happy times and accept that perhaps that person also knows they made a mistake. I'd take Naismith back in a heartbeat, he's the best Scottish player of his generation, nothing else matters. He can make it up to me by scoring a hat-trick against Celtic.

I certainly don't feel like celebrating and don't think of myself as being on any lunatic fringe. I'm not surprised he's resigned, if a professional PR company was consulted I'd be astonished if they'd have suggested anything else. I've no insight into his reasoning, but until you've actual been in the centre of a media storm you shouldn't judge those involved. Most of us have absolutely no idea what it's like to suddenly become public property and have every aspect of our lives scrutinised, none at all. What pressure that puts on an individual, his family and friends is considerable. This wasn't going away and it wasn't going to blow over, he's done the right thing for himself, his family and his sanity in my opinion.

He may have been and I might have misunderstood him. Chris Graham is going to feel heat from the media because he's made a number of enemies there in recent years. I don't see it as part of anything more than that. Paul Murray gets a fairly easy ride from the media because he's cultivated a number of friendships over the years. It's not rocket science.

I didn't accuse him of Islamaphobia nor do I think he is only that sending that tweet directly to a muslim cleric demonstrated a lack of judgement. That he wasn't a director of Rangers at the time isn't really the issue but it didn't happen 20 years ago. I'm assuming he doesn't know the imam in question, in which case he chose to send something he knew would be offensive to someone he dislikes and with who he disagrees even though he's never met them. I'm sorry but how can that be viewed as anything other than inflammatory and aggressive? I was as horrified by those killings as Chris Graham but somehow I managed not to send offensive pictures to imams I've never met. I don't feel it is a weak point, it's fairly well known that drawings of Mohamad cause varying degrees of offence to muslims, in that one he's giving someone a hand-job. That's not satire or a making a clever social point, that's just done purely to offend. How anyone can see that as anything but a lack of good judgement I don't know. I'm not drawing any parallels between that cartoon tweet and someone making fun of the Ibrox disaster, simply making the point that claiming freedom of expression needs more thought. Aberdeen fans sing about it because they know it causes offence and outrage, exactly the same emotions that cartoon is intended to stir in an awful lot of people.

I'm not sure I agree with that. Chris Graham is being criticised because he now has a high profile position and as far as the media are concerned that makes him public property and fair game. I'm not condoning that I'm just telling it like it is. He wasn't criticised at the time because it wasn't 'newsworthy'. Rest assured had you been given the director position your Twitter feed and posts would have received heavy scrutiny. This is only 'news' because of his position. The issue isn't what he tweeted on it's own it's that combined with his new role. Had he remained a vocal supporter alone this would never had made the light of day. We need to be careful not to conflate two issues. Defending the cartoon and the retweeting of it directly to a muslim cleric and defending Chris Graham. Graham has made enemies in the media, that's the reality, he might be able to ride this one out but they'll come for him again if he sneezes the wrong way. I don't accept that that tomorrow it'll be all of us, most of us have never made any enemies in the media.

Is Chris Graham getting some 'payback' for his stance towards many in the media? Undoubtedly in my opinion. When you've been as strident as he's been about reporting standards and quality you set yourself up as a target. There's revenge at play here and those who offered him the position should have seen that coming. However that doesn't make this story on him wrong. It was an insane thing to 'tweet' and demonstrates a staggering lack of judgement, that alone should throw a question over his new role. Every right thinking person was horrified and disgusted by the Charlie Hebdo attacks but most of us didn't choose to draw something crude and deliberately provocative and send it to a Muslim cleric, whatever our view of his 'beliefs'. There are an estimated 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, the vast majority of who would have found that drawing deeply offensive, that after all was its aim. It's all very well championing freedom of speech but that doesn't take away personal responsibility. Had someone drawn a crude cartoon deliberately mocking the Ibrox disaster how would we feel if two months later that person was made a director of a senior football club? I've a feeling we wouldn't be defending his freedom of expression. I've no idea what Chris Graham's views are on Islam and I'd have little difficulty accepting this was a knee-jerk reaction done in the heat of the moment and with perspective he might now regret it. But he needs to say that and see what the fall out is. Either way if (and I think it highly likely) an intelligent and reasonable muslim commentator criticises him for this he'll come under huge pressure to step down.

This thread has gone from hugely depressing to very, very funny.

I'm pleased with this. We get an experienced manager a new voice in the changing room and training pitch, new ideas and hopefully the 'bounce' every new manager gets. McCall also knows the club and the support, he gets what it's about. If he does well then great, his hat's in the ring for the gig permanently if he wants it, if he doesn't we're no worse off and it gives the board a few months to source and sound out a long term management team. Welcome back wee man and the very best of luck to you.

You could, or you could face the fact that a section of our support have no clue what's really important and are determined to show that. We've a lot of problems, the Daily Record are miles down that list.

Jeez, it didn't take long for some to find something to have a go at Paul Murray about, did it. Rangers have been fucked sideways by people actually inside the club for years and some couldn't bring themselves to criticise them. Day one and Paul Murray get's his collar felt for speaking to a newspaper. Good to see you've got your priorities right...

Isn't Sandy Easdale still on the football board? The tide might have turned but the ship hasn't sailed just yet, we won a battle yesterday, an important one at that, but the war's not over yet. Anyway, I've never met McMurdo junior but I met his dad an he was (is?) certainly a big bluenose, gave me two tickets free of charge once at Macdairmid Park in the old days of going to away matches with no tickets and trying to buy them from buses on the A9.

Yip, fair point, it's not low cost forever. But until the summer it might not cost us much.

Whilst I also think Llambias and Leach are playing games and doing their masters bidding I'm less concerned about it now. If it was me and I found £10 mil in the bank come Friday evening I'd use it to rebuild the club. It's a very low cost loan as long as we meet the repayment terms, and I doubt anyone else is going to lend us money as things stand even with new directors in place. If that means keeping Llambias and Leach on the board so be it, they'll be out voted if they oppose anything. The future success of the next group of directors will be predicated on their ability to generate income for the club, how difficult that'll be we'll find out in the coming months. If having Llambias and Leach on board proves problematic then pay Ashley what he's owed and get rid of them. But I'd call their bluff on this one just now.

You probably need a new broadband provider...

If Miller and Simonson leave in the summer they'll in all likelihood be the last players born in the 70s to play for us. I guess that means I'll finally have to accept I'll never play for Rangers... I'd be sorry to see Jim Stewart leave, he's highly regarded as a specialist goalkeeper coach. When you see that list you realise the scale of the job the next manager has. We're literally looking at signing a whole new team, that's considerably harder than most realise.

Wow, they still have Teletext in Germany! No wonder the Greeks are revolting.

18% of children in Australia attend a 'catholic' school, either private or public funded, RCs make up 25% of the Australian population. So that's fairly similar to Scotland. In England 12% of children attend an RC school so a bit lower than here. Neither country have any significant issues similar to Scotland. I've tried to make it clear in this thread that I don't actually support RC schools or any specific religious school if state funded. Scotland already has two Jewish primary schools and three Episcopalian schools in the state sector and will almost certainly have a Muslim primary in the near future. I'm not in favour of them and don't support their growth. However, I don't believe they are the biggest factor in the existence of 'sectarianism' in Scotland. Churches should provide religion and schools should provide education, parents can decide how much of either their children should partake in. I only posted in this thread because one of the first replies said they "gave up at it's not the schools" followed shortly after by other posters describing RC schools as "apartheid". Apart from feeling quite strongly that it's an inappropriate term to use I also feel too many Rangers supporters use this excuse to explain why some in our support and in society at large still cling to sectarian songs, chants and attitudes. The report in the opening post was compiled by academics over a period of time using resources probably not available to most Gersnet posters. The report makes some interesting points. Firstly that 'sectarianism' isn't that big a problem despite most people thinking it is and that you are far more likely to experience prejudice if you are black, Asian or gay. Blacks, Asians and gays don't have separate schools so I'm assuming we're not explaining those prejudices on schooling. I'll try and reply to everyone who replied to me, but it'll be later tonight or tomorrow before I'll have time.