Rousseau

2 minutes ago, Barebear said:

I’m no saying that we haven’t improved. Of course we have. But even in terms of quality I still think there is a gap. Maybe only a small one that a couple of good buys in the summer will fix. Established international players like McArthur, maybe Davis, Id have had Berra before Martin, but Martin might turn out to be good. 

I agree there's still a gap; I didn't claim there wasn't. 

I only said that the gap is closing; which it clearly is.

We've still got a way to go.  

1 minute ago, Unicorn said:

The second half today was pretty humiliating.  

No it wasn't. 

It was infuriating. 

Second place was always the target this season. 

I'm much more confident of achieving that now than I was a few months ago. 

6 minutes ago, gisabeer said:

thats three sitters in the six yard box against celtic alone.   not good enough mate.

Of course it's not good enough. He needs to learn -- I'm not sure how dropping him, or releasing him improves the situation; he's still our top goalscorer.  

2 minutes ago, Barebear said:

I don’t agree we have closed the gap. We haven’t beaten them over 90 minutes in f***ing ages! 

 

They beat us with 10 men at Ibrox.

 

We are going to be 12 points behind. 

 

There is still a gap!

I didn't mean in terms of points, but in terms of quality. 

Going from being humiliated regularly to being absolutely enraged at a narrow defeat is most certainly progress. 

Cardoso is poor one-on-one -- Bates or McCrorie would'nt have let Edward (?) onto his right-foot -- but we didn't have any other options. 

Something for the Coaches and DoF to think about for the summer. 

2 minutes ago, gisabeer said:

should have taken the money when we had the chance.    he misses far too many like the one today and i think he will find it very difficult to come back from this.

 

I'd certainly have taken the money, but I'm also pleased to still have him. 

He's only 21; he's still got a lot of development to go. If he's £11M now, what value would he be when he stops missing these sitters? 

He'll be fine. He takes a tantrum at missing an impossible chance, only to get on with it and score the next again week; he'll be fine. 

4 minutes ago, Bill said:

I'd say there were definitely more positives than negatives and it wouldn't do some fans any harm to remember where we were just a few months ago, wallowing aimlessly in mid table after having been humbled by the mighty Progres Niederkorn. I'd say we've come a long way and if we keep progressing the corner will be turned sooner or later.

 

Edit: The Scottish Cup game is clearly there to be won.

I agree, but it's understandable: we want to, and should have, beat these f*ckers; It's hard to get past that. 

We've closed the gap. 

Still nope. 

He's ours, and the League's, top scorer. So he misses a few chances; what striker doesn't? How else is he supposed to learn and develop? We expect players to magically improve. He'll learn and move on.

That doesn't mean I'm not fuming at that miss -- it was a f*cking joke. Outside of the foot rather than side-footing it into an empty net. So frustrating. 

The quality into the box was poor, no doubt about it, but I can't help but feel that tactic was not the way to go since they basically sat back and soaked it up. We needed something different.

I've got mixed feelings.

On the one hand I am absolutely fuming and pissed off that we couldn't find a way to score again; dominated the ball, but the quality in the final third and decision-making was so frustrating. 

On the other hand, we competed quite easily; they're not ahead of us from what I can see. It's been a long time coming to get to a stage where I don't feel like we'll roll over against them. We're getting there.

I don't blame Murty per se -- the quality wasn't there from the team -- but I can't help feel a more experienced manager would've (a) made changes earlier, and (b) made better ones; it just seemed like more of the same. Tremendous credit to Murty for getting us this far, though.

Morelos is frustrating, but he's still a youngster really; he'll develop and learn to be more clinical.

(Is Windass still a dud?   ) 

Arguably our strongest squad, but wowee the nervs are kicking in now!

Battle fever has well and truly set in!

This sums up my mood this morning...

10 hours ago, Tannochsidebear said:

Nervously looking forward to this. As always it will come to who wants it more, who takes their chances, and what influence the referee decides to exert on the game.

I will be reasonably content as long as we win the first of those, the other two are to an extent out of our hands.

I have no realistic ambition for the title, that died when Pedro wasn't sacked on the plane home from Lux, so a victory will only be good to extend our lead over dolly to 8 points with 8 games left, and should ensure we finish within 10 of the bheasts. The bookies agree, Celtic are 1/200 to win the title while we are 25/1, that of course will change if we can get a victory tomorrow.

I must admit that 14/5 at home in an OF game is a huge price that I can't turn down so I have stuck a few quid on us, however there is a large amount of tims I know that have lumped on at even money.

If Murphy & John are fit and both start I will be much more confident than if we start with Halliday & Miller (eeekkkk!!!)

Cmon Rangers, give it everything and at the very least let them know we are getting our act together and put a marker down for the SF which to me is far more important than the 3 points.

I agree.

However, to be fair, I don't think Miller is really a starting option any more under Murty -- which pleases me. He may be a good experienced head to bring on, off the bench.

I was watching it. The Liverpool 'dominance' was limited to a spell at the end of the second half -- interestingly, Mourinho made changes very early to combat it -- and although they may have had the majority of possession throughout, Liverpool were second best. 

Typical Mourinho performance: solid to break down, and lethal on the break. 

There was some power on Rashford's first goal.

Moreover, Liverpool's goal was an OG, out of nothing!

Excellent news!

Superb read!

I'm ready!

(Apologies in advance: this gif will be rolled out a lot over the next few days...)

What a man.

Jock Wallace's battle fever management would not survive the sneers

It is an immutable law of pub talk that if you introduce the topic of Brian Clough, you will hear at least one of the following cliches within 60 seconds: He was the best manager England never had, he was the best manager of all time, and he could not have thrived in the modern game. . What you are less likely to hear is an exploration of the uncomfortable paradox, that Clough was exceptional then but would be unsuitable now, and to what extent that reflects poorly on modern football.

Fans regularly lament the extinction of the hard man, yet just as striking is the disappearance of the hard manager. If Clough's instinctive idiosyncrasy was his major strength, then his regular demonstrations of the toughest love were also integral to his unparalleled success. He would regularly get his players to run through nettles, and once slugged Roy Keane to the floor as punishment for playing a backpass.

Clough's mentor was Harry Storer, a man who proudly boasted: "I have a team of bastards, and I am the biggest bastard of them all." This was an era when masculinity was an extreme sport, when household items like tea cups, plates and hairdryers found an alternative use or an alternative meaning. It was not just a British trait. The legendary Internazionale coach Helenio Herrera once ordered two players to walk six miles back to the team base because they were 20 seconds late for the coach.

Nobody encapsulated that school of management better than the late Jock Wallace, one of Rangers' greatest managers. Wallace was a chillingly hard man with a granite face, an even stronger will, and a voice that rarely softened from its default growl. His army background shaped so much of his management. Wallace was stationed in Northern Ireland and the Malay peninsula in the 1950s, engaged in jungle warfare and surviving by eating what he called "monkey steaks".

Wallace's militarism was such that his dressing room might have been a scene from the film Full Metal Jacket. Gary Lineker recalls a reserve game at Leicester when, at half time, Wallace threw him against a wall. Leicester were 2-0 up. Lineker had scored them both.

His most famous act at Leicester was to introduce a gloriously sadistic form of pre-season training. During his time at Rangers, while having a picnic with his wife, Wallace stumbled across the sand dunes of Gullane, jauntily entitled "Murder Hill". He made his players run up and down the hill until they could run no more – and then he made them do it again.

When he got to Leicester, Wallace scouted a similar incline. There is a wonderful clip of the Leicester players panting their way through a session with Wallace barking "Hands off that bloody sand!" every two seconds. Pre-season training should have been called Wallace and Vomit: players were frequently sick as their bodies surrendered.

Some will comfortably dismiss Wallace as an antiquated barbarian, yet it is difficult to reconcile that with the fact most of his players adored him. Ted McMinn, who Wallace took to Sevilla when he managed them in the 1980s, described him as "everything to me, a dad really". Wallace could inspire most players to run to the ends of the earth – or, worse still, up Murder Hill. "I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Jock Wallace," said Manolo Jiménez, who played under Wallace at Sevilla and later managed them. "He was a great, great manager who instilled in me my belief and fighting spirit."

He also instilled a winning mentality. At Rangers, Wallace ended Celtic's run of nine consecutive titles, and then won two trebles in three seasons. In a TV interview before the 1984 League Cup final against Celtic, Wallace announced: "I fancy us very strongly. We've got the battle fever on today." They won 3-2 and the phrase stuck, a mantra for Rangers fans.

Wallace's focus on fitness made him something of a visionary, even if his methodology was emphatically of its time. He was the Arsène Wenger of his day, only armed with sand rather than pasta.

John Greig, perhaps Rangers' greatest ever player, says Wallace's regime was the reason he was able to play until he was 35. Others felt the value of the training was as much psychological as physical. Wallace may have made some of his players vomit, but then there could be no battle fever without sickness.

He also knew that hardship begot hardness. Wallace was obsessed with character-building, having built a deceptively complex character of his own. In many respects, Wallace was a gentle beast. On the day Rangers won their first title for 11 years, he sent on a palpably unfit Greig for the last two minutes so that he could drink in the moment and collect the trophy. Wallace also forged a friendship with Johan Cruyff and nearly persuaded him to join Leicester in 1981.

"They don't come with giant character and personality like 'Big Man' Jock Wallace any more," wrote Sir Alex Ferguson – and that was in 1994, before the game really started to change. Wallace would have no chance with the whirligig of snidery that is modern football, particularly with player power rampant. But he is a perfect reminder of an age when football well and truly had the battle fever on.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2011/aug/23/jock-wallace-hard-football-manager

This is one of the most thought-provoking threads I've ever read.

It's 'deleted', yet it exists. It's an existential paradox! Can it be both true, and false? 

Deep.

Celtic fan? What? I had to get through a fair bit of the 'article' to find that out.

Could he not have just waited for his mates?

Link doesn't work.

I saw it on Twitter yesterday -- lovely gesture.