bmck

seems to be as much about vgbear promotion as of any cause. not that fussed about the cause, and unmoved about vgbears, so i'll give it a miss. definitely applaud the willingness to take a stand, though.

it would be idiocy to replace the management team now. short termism of the worst sort.

i quite like crocker, he's occasionally really witty. he just repeats himself so much, though.

taking a look at the whole, it was a case of - give the ball to the defenders who either played a short ball to the midfield who played a shoulder height ball to the strikers, or they played it themselves. as the ball inevitably dropped off the pitching-wedge-shoulder-height-passes, hearts packed midfield won every second ball. our wide playeers weren't truly wide - they, too, took the ball short, then played it back for more pitching wedge passes, never forced hearts to stand up and face them at anything other than headers. pish, utter pish. we let outselves down in most of the components, and in the whole. bf gets a little extra blame because he's just sauntered back in without having to work for it, and he is looked to, to instigate things. no movement, no creativity, long balls. awful. but the system we decided to play had a lot to answer for. if we're going to be a long ball team then we dont need darcheville, or even novo. we dont need wingers if we're essentially just going to punt the ball up the park. the best system for a punting-the-ball was martin o'neills. big strikers, and players who would pick up what they knocked down. the sort of football we're trying to play just doesnt match up to the sort you would expect from the players that are played. its a complete mess. it seems completely ill thought out and without any sort of gameplan at all.

barry ferguson was utterly horrible today. completely disgraceful. loose passing, looks overweight. far too similar to mendez and even less involved. too hasty laying too much at his door though.

the thing that annoys me is how much he complains and gives stupid things away when we're losing.

anyone listening to that hearts manager just now? he gave the most accurate analysis of rangers game that i've heard. "mendez/ferguson confused - easy long balls - just shots from the 'second line'. made it very easy for us."

I do find the standard of commentators English getting poorer and their are plenty of regional dialect instances that get on my nerves, the worst for me being pronouncing silent H's and dropping the ones that should be pronounced coupled with using "an" instead of "a" - eg "an 'otel" instead of "a hotel". They do the latter on BBC news too, but it's just poor knowledge of English and the standard should be much higher on national news.

i've no idea idea why people get annoyed by this. its absolutely nothing to do with a poor knowledge of english. nothing at all. there's no 'higher' standard. linguistically, there is absolutely nothing to choose between them. all it is, is prestige and taste. no information is lost - you just associate it with common people. when you take a sample of english speakers and let them hear dfferent accents reading the news, say, they'll think a cockney is less trustworthy than someone who uses RP. however, you take it to the other side of the world english speakers, who have no local associations built up, and they cant make any such judgements. no such thing as correct pronunciation, just normative pronunciation.

sorry to delve into sociolinguistic mode, but there's no such thing as correct pronunciation of anything. it's just normative. for instance, we tend to think of bbc english as 'correct' pronunciation when it was really just chosen as it was a southern-english dialect - the dialect of the rich folk in that area. everything's accent - there's no accent-less. so, there's no correct pronunciation. there is, however, annoying pronunciation, which is being discussed here!

its a pitty it'll be nonsense. i like DA's dictatorish tendencies. he can go a bit far, obviously, but he's a man selfishly after his own greatness, which is better than a man selfishly tired of struggling for greatness.

excellent. why even bother with the judicial process at all? we could maybe just have trial by media. we can seek out all the most sensitive people, ask them who they'd really like killed/jailed, and just shortcut the need for lawyers and juries and all that sort of stuff.

gribz people are blind to the illumaniti because its just nonsense. agendas used in the sane sense refer to roughly subconscious motives. while we all think NBM are a bunch of petty protestant haters, and that they have an agenda i don't think they got together and had a meeting about how to set up a an organisation that would best infiltrate and reap and sew bad seeds maintaining more sectarianism than they prevent, and bring down the name of rangers. an agenda is not the same as a conspiracy.

paaarrrtyyyyyy. nothing like the death of something that ought to be killed to put you in a good mood.

cammy you're right about everything but che guevara. he wasn't a nice guy contrary to popular mythology. kind of like celtic supporters.

i think the fact that murray doesn't see anything in rangers or our fans to be proud about says it all. he didn't even seem exciting that 200k people would follow his club to european final. he's not interested, and he clearly sees little to be positive about. it would be best for him to go, but he cant, because for everyone's posturing - anyone remember reclaim rangers? - and negativity there's not one person who is willing to buy the club. so we're screwed.

excellent article frankie. i think that the main problem is that in every statement murray makes he doesnt really seem to like rangers or rangers fans that much. even in terms of creating a better image to sell he still isnt motivated to it.

oh, the link at the bottom doesn't go to the survey.

as much as gribz is a conspiratorial nutter (), much news is pre-packaged. though its less extravagent than power-hoarding-reptiles-who-secretly-lord-it-over-humanity, its true all newspapers do is reflect debates within current structures (ie: those at the top heard, those at the bottom ignored) with no end or goal, and call it news. so, you'll hear gordon strachan and walter smith's take on bigotry regardless of whether the person in the pub is really hte man with the wisdom. or, you'll hear "good news" that the tax rate has dropped because most people will think its good news - small personal lenders, however, will disagree but you don't get to hear them. so the media tends to reflect perspectives rather than the events, but still thinks and talks like its reflecting events.

then you just get graham spiers. i used to hate him, i think i just pity him now. i really hope its all a windup - i could respect that. someone who dedicates their whole life to creating the most annoying things that'll get a lot of people annoyed in the most annoying language, it's not my cup of tea, but i could at least understand it. if he actually believes any of the nonsense he writes though then he is a lost, lost, little soul, entirely defined by what he's against. and what he's against is so petty, and barely existent, that it would make his whole life defined as arguing uneloquently against his own stupidity. sad days for him - sadder days for anyone who reads along nodding enthusiastically.

Journalism is really quite easy.

that's why they're so uptight about the internet. the only difference between online writing and newspaper writing is power structures - they get first hand access to the 'news'. that's it.

so much of the article is strange. such confused allegiances and horrible phrases.

sorry, he looks a bit fat.

try not to get too animated, its what he wants

--

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/scotland/article5219609.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=1

Graeme Souness was right about one thing ââ?¬â? not a conclusion I reach often ââ?¬â? when he spoke about Sir David Murray. The chairman of Rangers, whatever else he has got wrong, ââ?¬Å?has gutsââ?¬Â, to quote Sounessââ?¬â?¢s famous testimony. In recent times, coinciding with his 20 years of owning Rangers, Murray has shown in various contexts that he will not go away quietly from Ibrox.

Last week there was a weird accord found between Murray and John Reid, the Celtic chairman, even though Murray was supposed to be attacking his Old Firm opposite number. Reid had recently attacked a section of Rangers fans for being ââ?¬Å?racistââ?¬Â and ââ?¬Å?bigotedââ?¬Â ââ?¬â? hardly fresh charges ââ?¬â? and Murray, while defending his clubââ?¬â?¢s honour, in part agreed with Reid.

To attack your own supporters ââ?¬â? now that does take courage. Yet when Murray told reporters that ââ?¬Å?so much is hard to defendââ?¬Â about this core of Ibrox diehards ââ?¬â? and this on top of his recent comment about the ââ?¬Å?bileââ?¬Â that comes from those same Rangers supporters ââ?¬â? it was clear that he is long past mincing his words.

A part of Murray is being brutally honest here. Yes, so many problems in Scottish football are being laid at the door of Rangers FC, and perhaps it has looked unfair. The club have provided so much that is good in Scottish life ââ?¬â? you almost forget that aspect. But when Murray scoffed at the so-called ââ?¬Å?bad PRââ?¬Â of Rangers, as if the rioting in Manchester or the undying embers of bigotry are easy to talk up, you knew that he was tired of having to explain away the intellectual and economic underclass that has attached itself to his club.

Murray then caused reporters to smile when he spoke about the sudden timidity of his severest critics at Rangers � in part, because we have all been there and met them. A small group of Rangers fans are going demented in their passion to have Murray flung out of the Ibrox door and are as brave as lions when posting their angry, sub-literate ramblings in glorious anonymity on the web.

ââ?¬Å?And you know what?ââ?¬Â Murray said. ââ?¬Å?I identified some of these guys and I went to meet them. And they were like mice.ââ?¬Â Well, you donââ?¬â?¢t say!

In this whole debate, it is unfair to tar any group of football fans with the same brush. Rangers, like any club, have a healthy cross-section of supporters who just love their club and want to see them do well. These men and women are not really into the vague, unrefined, theologically ignorant passion for a sort of dumbed-down Protestantism that some of the Rangers supporters� groups crave. And, more than anything, just like Murray, when you meet these latter groups of fans, you find they cannot really make their arguments stand up.

A few years ago I went down to Ibrox to meet, among others, some representatives of the Rangers Supporters Assembly and the Rangers Supporters Trust. In an alarming number of them it was obvious that, lurking beneath was a quest to preserve ââ?¬Å?the tradition of Rangersââ?¬Â, a phrase that always seems to elude more specific definition.

By this, of course, the real hardcore actually mean ââ?¬Å?a Protestant Rangersââ?¬Â, though they cannot quite articulate it as such. The more adept among them try to find more emollient phrases for this passion for ââ?¬Å?a Protestant Rangersââ?¬Â but, in this quest, vagueness and vacuity become their speciality. The truth is, it is hard trying to make the old ways sound acceptable in modern Britain.

These are the people that Murray tires of, the people that he feels embarrass Rangers and hold the club back. Mercifully, they are confined to the internet bunkers, and are not taken seriously by a wider constituency of Rangers fans, but they are still down there festering away.

In this context Rangers FC is ensnared between those (the majority, surely) who wish for a modern, progressive, liberal representation of their club, and those others who hanker hopelessly after the old days.

The irony is that, when Murray does eventually sell Rangers, the new owner or owners, if the club has any luck, will belong to the new, modern breed. Can you imagine a Roman Abramovich or an American investor, born of the modern age with modern values, coming in to Rangers and banging on about 1690, King Billy and the rest of it? The very idea is laughable.

Rangers FC is a great institution that does not deserve to be embarrassed or held back. And it won�t be. Thank goodness, even in sport, the tide of modern thinking is too strong.

And another thing...

The party should be over for Old Firm goalkeepers

Don�t you wonder what is going on with the Old Firm�s goalkeepers? From where I sit � and the view is sometimes obscured � Artur Boruc and Allan McGregor enjoy a party, preferably with beers to hand and a pretty girl on their lap.

Boruc was pictured last week in the tabs happily chomping away on some female friend back in Poland, a cigar close to hand.

Subsequently, the Pole shows up at Love Street to play St Mirren on Saturday and, not content with clattering Craig Dargo, goes around doing quite a bit of flapping at crosses and generally looking unconvincing.

We saw a similar fuzziness earlier this season in McGregor, a man whom Walter Smith euphemistically said had ââ?¬Å?lost his focusââ?¬Â.

Funnily enough, that focus also seemed to disappear while McGregor was living the high life. On that occasion, Smith, beginning to look like the general-secretary of the Temperance Society, decided to drop McGregor and ordered him to shape up.

Both Smith and Strachan, I belive, are uneasy about taking lectures in morality from anyone in the media � to be blunt, they know that we all like a bit of action ourselves

Strachan, indeed, was all the more determined to select Boruc on Saturday, having sat through such earnest inquiries as ââ?¬Å?dââ?¬â?¢you think Arturââ?¬â?¢s mind is fully focused on the job, Gordon?ââ?¬Â the previous day.

On such occasions I just think football managers have to play the Jim Baxter card. Slim Jim, it is widely attested, knew how to enjoy himself, but so long as he performed on the park, could anyone \ care?

Not easily embarrassed

I dare say that his critics would be hoping that ââ?¬Å?the poor crowdââ?¬Â at Hampden last Wednesday for the Scotland-Argentina game might be another stick with which to beat Gordon Smith, the SFA chief executive. But, like many of the so-called Smith failings, such criticism wouldnââ?¬â?¢t really stack up.

A Hampden crowd of 33,000 for the Argentina game maybe wasn�t quite what the SFA had hoped for, but can it really be called a failure? Actually, it seemed not a bad figure for wet, mid-November at the beginning of a recession. Perhaps the SFA suffered a slight loss on the deal, but it won�t have been enough to embarrass Smith, below. George Burley, too, was quite right to enjoy the occasion. With Holland looming in March, Scotland are much better facing Argentina than the usual Baltic dross.

i think charlie adam's actually a pretty effective player. if he could lose a bit of weight, and get a run of games he could mature a bit. he's still young.

he looks a bit charlie adam nowadays.

reid's typically responded with some "just defending the fans" pish.

think he's just saying what everyone's already assumed anyway. still dont see mccoist as a manager, but you never know.