Gaffer

Good point about what is classed as younger. I'll find that out for you because I'm interested also. I'm assuming (based on the need I had for this information) that it's under 25 but I'll check. The data I'm looking at (and I'll try to summarise later) shows that if you are younger (whatever that category is), only 14% would even recognise the BBC as a source of information relating to Scottish football. And that of course doesn't mean they'll all subscribe to it. It also shows that the opinions and habits of younger people is heavily influenced by twitter (in particular based on likes and retweets), snapchat and Facebook, but not by any opinions from mainstream media (including newspapers on and offline, and mainstream TV). Actually, that's not quite true because the anomaly is Sky Sports which seems to have a reasonable degree of influence with 29% appearing to be influenced by it. I don't like Sky Sports so that last one is an inconvenient truth for me to accept. Having said all this, as I said there's no doubt that for older bears there's a service we could enjoy from the BBC but can't. The great thing for Rangers is that the BBC has perhaps helped drive people towards Rangers TV. I'd like to know the number of subscribers because that would be interesting, but if RTV realises how much of an opportunity it has right now, and puts the resources into promoting and developing its services, it could become a strong influence indeed.

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.

I agree 100% with this. As I've mentioned before, the BBC is only relevant to a small minority of people these days. That's not to say that it doesn't have a big impact on that minority's ability to follow Rangers. I appreciate it does, but let's not be fooled into thinking that it has any material impact on our club or the vast majority of supporters (or potential supporters). If you asked the majority of fans how they communicate with the club, I'd imagine only a handful would mention the BBC at all. It's a prehistoric organisation, run by dinosaurs. It's being quickly followed by mainstream media which has also become an irrelevance. If you want to communicate, use Twitter, Facebook, forums like this, or podcasts. Rangers TV does an amazingly job, and I just hope they find a way to broadcast via radio too because that could become an amazing service for bears all over the world too. People don't use radios anymore, but they do listen to radio via their smartphones. I don't want the club to waste a single second trying to resolve things with the BBC. I just want them to focus on the things that make a difference to our club. The BBC will be extinct soon anyway.

We all have our own opinions about the value of players and of,course, only the buying club can demonstrate it by bidding. I don't know of any bids for 'their' players so does that mean clubs are just not interested? As for Morelos, we should be taking up his value because he's an excellent asset for our club. Let others try to put us down, but they don't need help from you. What do you think he's worth?

I heard this too and I have to say I was more than a little surprised at the way he spoke about them. Having said that, he does a decent job of trying not to show his allegiances. Last night however, I would suggest he looked quite amused at them going out, so maybe this was his way of recovering the situation and overcompensating from his obvious bias last night.

As football fans, I think it's quite reasonable (and normal) to make such a sweeping statement after a short period of assessment. I'll make judgements on teams after ten minutes, so if JFK has taken longer to decide, maybe he's just slow, or meticulous. ? It only took me 2 minutes of reading Josh Windass' tweets to decide he was an idiot. But then again, it took me 4 months before I realised Pena wasn't mentally fit enough to play for us. But seriously, it's always a difficult assessment to make but having watched the games against both so far this season, I really did believe that Osijek were better than Maribor. Having said that, it could just be that we made Maribor look poorer because of our play, especially in the second half. Their only goal was a fluke, when an attempted cross ended up looking like a good shot. I felt that Osijek was a technically excellent team, and possibly the best team technically we will face this season. Maybe Maribor have more tactical awareness (and experience) and that does concern me, but we have nothing to fear. If we go out and perform even close to the level of last week, I'm confident.

I cancelled my other sports subscription and moved to RTV. I'm really only interested in watching Rangers games anyway and it's so much better on RTV. If the opposition scores, its mentally easier to deal with when the commentators are as gutted as I am. And when we score it's more enjoyable when you imagine that the commentators are jumping around as happy as I am. BT and Sky commentating just makes me angry, frustrated and bored, even when we're winning. I just don't need that. I'd recommend RTV for every gers fan. For someone like me who travels a lot, it's fantastic and well worth the subscription.

We could use it to buy a second hand (albeit good as new) set of disco lights. I think we should also set some aside for ADMIN 4, 5, 6, etc since according to our deluded cousins, these events are coming up in a few weeks.

Please stop all of this positive posting. I'm starting to develop the symptoms of a good news junky. ? This is normally where SBS would respond and bring us crashing back to earth but even he's been driving the Stevie G bandwagon this season so I guess we're all in trouble now.

Brilliant listen again guys. Great topics and opinion as usual. Special mention to Ross for making me burst out laughing. The way he delivered that line about 'having' someone's wife and then returning to steal the tele ..... comedy gold. ? The quality of the podcasts is excellent. Keep them coming!

This issue of attracting and retaining younger bears is one I've mentioned many times before on here. The thing that makes the biggest difference is a winning team. This will attract more youngsters than anything else. The next thing they need is an idol. What's great is that the younger ones are now taking about Morelos, Coulibaly, Kent and Goldson. They want to be able to identify with key players. On the issue of exposure in the BBC, I can tell you that this is just NOT important at all for younger fans or potential fans. Almost no youngsters would ever think of listening to the radio. Even fewer wouldn't think about going to a BBC app. They live a breathe social media now and almost all of their interactions begin with a notification on twitter, Facebook, or similar. Its for this reason that the stance of the BBC is largely irrelevant to the younger ones, although we all recognise it's a disgrace. We just need to make sure that they get to see tweets (and similar) of positive things to do with Rangers and that will do more than anything to maintain their attention and attraction for the club. The premier league did a brillain't job in England because they launched lots of social media rounds, and created lots of additional points of interest such as the fantasy league. The SPL is run by dinosaurs and it's time they should realised the old spheres of influence will die of with us, the older generations. The BBC will die off long before that though, and I won't be disappointed. They might last a little longer than the various newspapers though.

My son just showed me the incident. If that's any other player in our game it's the easiest decision to make. The fact he's not been banned for a few games is utterly ridiculous and is yet another example of how corrupt the system is. Why isn't this being discussed by the media? We know the answer, but it's a disgrace.

The key difference between Ball and McCrorie is where the incident took place. When the clear goal scoring opportunity is prevented outside the box, the instruction to referees is to show a red card. If it happens inside the box, the instruction is to give the penalty and a yellow. It's to prevent a double punishment for a single incident. Hopefully that clarifies the difference and the reasons for the decisions. Our players didn't seem to know about that rule last week when they were claiming that Ball should be sent off. That's was never going to happen, and quite rightly in my opinion.

I'm more concerned about the cover at centreback. Who could we rely on if one of the centre two got injured or suspended? We need someone else in there before the window closes.

Excellent post Doc! You make many good points there, and the one that stands out for me is why us? He knew most people feel it's a thankless task at a time when Celtic should roll us over for the foreseeable future. And yet, as you say, he decided we were the right club to match his needs/ambitions at this time. He's got confidence and determination, but also that ability to accept and thrive on expectation. As you say, he's lived with that for much of his career. Im sure though even he could not have predicted the turnaround he could have achieved in such a short time. We don't know if it's enough to challenge Celtic, and based on the depth of our squad in defence, it said way to early to think we could compete in all fronts for en entire season. However, there is so much to be encouraged by. At the same time, there appears to be trouble in paradise as anyone will know who listened to Brenda's post match interview. Based on that, I can't see him being their manager by the end of the season. While the Celtic fans revelled in our financial issues, their focus was lost from their own club. Do they realise that they are just one bad season away from a financial meltdown? Anyway, that's their problem. My point on this is that Gerrard seems to have arrived at the start of a storm. If he is capable of navigating us through this season while that other lot timplode, it could be the stuff of dreams. There's a long way to go of course, but we are on the right track. If we get three points today and then push Celtic next weekend, I think we will see a new order begin to take shape in Scotland. Lets get three points today though. If we do that, who knows what might happen in the course of a week.

I'd love this to be true, but isn't it just a case of us replacing the boards back after the Europa league match? I think there are certain restrictions on advertising for all UEFA run competitions. As I said though, I hope I'm wrong.

I had a look back to this time last year when we played a similar level of opponent. Our prediction league had a total of 18 goals predicted for Rangers. This year, we currently have 90 goals predicted from 22 predictions. The score doesn't really matter (although if I got my 7-0 correct, I'll be delighted of course) but it just shows the level optimism around the club at the moment. Every supporter I've spoken to is feeling similar emotions, the main one being excitement. There isn't a single bear who isn't counting down the days and hours for our next match. The buzz on Thursday was incredible and we all want more of it. As others have said, this game brings a different pressure as we go into this one expected to win comfortably. I just don't have the same concerns though, because i feel that this group of players are mentally strong, just as they are physically fit and strong. And it's always reassuring to know that if any of them forget, the manager will be there to "remind" them at half time. St Mirren are a decent team. They've always been a good footballing team (at least for the past 6 or 7 years), and Stubbs will have them well drilled, because that's his way. As usual, we will have to be disciplined and focussed at the back, and going forward it will be a test of our creative players as they try to find a way through ten men camped on the edge of their own box. I can't wait.

If you can't be at the game, you should watch it, or listen to it on Rangers TV. There's no hatred or negativity on there, and the commentators actually make sense when they speak. Try it, it's brilliant!

I agree with you on that Rousseau, but to be honest I don't know what he IS. He's fast and can hit a good shot, but he just doesn't have the rounded attributes to take a slot in our team. I look at our squad now and can't see how he can even be a sub for us. Who would he have replaced on our subs bench? Either way, he's gone now and I'll be thankful for any Rangers player for their contribution. I just won't be sad to see him leave. The way I'm looking at this is that we sold him for the same price we bought Barisic. In other words, we've swapped an enigma for a quality player so I'm delighted. I think we still need a striker and a centre back. If we do that business, this will be a perfect (if that's possible) transfer window.

They had a couple of chances, but we created so many and should have won by a lot more. The difference now however is that we are winning games and the confidence is growing. The team knew their goal was a fluke. Their player clearly tried to cross it, but mishit it into our net. Either way, I thought we looked comfortable all the way through that game. We look fit, strong, and capable of competing. It really is such an exciting time for us.

Don't know about you guys, but other than that goal for them, I'm loving this. Some of our football is excellent. I can't believe this is Rangers I'm watching. Let's go.

Did you not think so though? I thought we dominated them for 89 minutes. Had we kept Morelos on the pitch, that game was heading for a cricket score. We all see things differently I suppose.

Great preview Pete. Really enjoyed reading that. Maybe Mark Allan can help you with your car too. There's no doubt Maribor will be the toughest test we've faced, but what's different about this round is that we have nothing to lose. We've banished the ghost of Progres last year, and let's face it, were not expected by anyone to get through this round. The pressure is off, and I suspect this is the last time we'll have a no pressure game (or two). I just hope we continue to build on the performances we've put in so far. I'm enjoying the games again. I'm not wincing every time we give the ball away, or every time a cross comes into our box. I just hope we give a good account of ourselves, continue to build the momentum, and then get stuck into the league season. If I'm honest, I'm now just desperate for the game against Celtic. We blew Aberdeen away, so I'm now looking to see how much we've developed.

Thanks Gonzo. It was a serious question I ask because although I don't vote for any party (I have up to now felt they're all the same waste of space), I wouldn't be happy to vote to at least achieve a level playing field and stop the madness up here. I just don't know if it would make a difference to vote in another government, or if the task is to try and cause a change to happen in the existing government. Rick's article was really good, although alarming in that it's very true. Disgustingly true!!!

Tell me Gonzo. What colour of rosette represents the pro Rangers party? That might be useful for us to know.