bmck

yes you may sir. i'll even join you:

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas.

:D

Nonsense. I was talking about what he thinks - not what I think. Please read before launching.

damnit. your right. did misread you. bit excited the noo. :cheers:

how are you coping?

I think Cousin's attitude would have been a whole lot better if JCD hadn't got first shout most weeks. That might not be much of a justification but I'm sure he doesn't feel he's got the recognition he deserved from Smith.

nonsense. a player should be professional whether they're getting a game or not.

i'm not saying one approach is subtle; the other forceful. i'm not saying we just have two different tastes that each have their own virtues. i'm saying one is a complete waste of time.

 

IT'S GOOD YOU CONCEED THE POINT HEH

if you think im abbrasive, you should check out my geneaology.

inflected languages are the new sex.

ach, i agree with you all really. think it's worth the debate though. will try the ol' advocatus diaboli approach later though.

whinging to papers = pointless. grabbing a hold of new media = fruitful.

i'm not just saying i dislike the blunter approach, i'm saying it's a waste of time. i mean, if it's something you enjoy, then fair enough. i wouldn't waste my own time with it.

the reason we've had someone from one of the tv channels, and papers, 'borrow' or court our opinions, is because new media is the only long term threat to the authority of newspapers. if people can get well written, insightful, free, articles from someone openly in love with the club, and they are online in work/at home everyday, then the very least newspapers will have to do is mirror the sentiments or they will simply be squeezed out of the market.

i've set this up as an either/or because i think it is. i dont want or care if the newspapers print crap, because they don't get any of my money anyway. the sooner people do that the better. if people are stupid enough to buy stuff that insults them, then they deserve it. if they are then willing to waste their time essentially begging (which is all you can do after you've said "i wont buy your paper anymore" and they say "ok, we like your custom, but given that we earn millions, gtf") and not just investing their time in using and promoting the genuine alternatives then they'll get nowhere.

frankie used the example of graham spiers about whom there was lots and lots of complaints. he ended up resigning/getting fired, and now writes for another newspaper, talks on the radio and is getting his own tv show.

i'm not saying one approach is subtle; the other forceful. i'm not saying we just have two different tastes that each have their own virtues. i'm saying one is a complete waste of time.

Well at least that makes one of us. Personally, I think our support have been overcome by apathy on one hand and the mhedia onslaught on the other to such an extent that you couldn't tell them apart from the 'petty-rent-a-cause-reactionaries' from the east end.

 

As soon as we missed out on 10-in-a-row the 'tide was turning' for us. Then through the millions spent during the Advocaat era and cash strapped famine of McLeish's reign we managed to win our fair share of titles, but as far as the mhedia propeganda was concerned we were the 'underdogs' to a 'dominant Celtic' ...and the worst of it is that we bought into their bullshit - Not just the fans mind you - The players and management joined in the chorus.

 

I thought it was embarrassing enough for PLG to be declaring that lot as the benchmark, but then when Walter took over (the one man I would expect to stand up to the ba$$as) and spouted the same pi$h I knew we really had hit rock bottom. The truth (as far as I'm concerned) is that for the past decade there has been very little to separate Rangers and Celtic both in terms of ability and achievements. The mhedia however have persistently painted a very different picture and it seems virtually everyone has taken on board their biased revisionist history sensationalism as fact.

 

As a result we're on to our fourth manager in a decade (would have been 5th if it wasn't Walter) and we're still complaining, rioting, protesting and generally making an ar$e of ourselves. At least we're not 'petty' though

UCF2008 posted the above in the other thread. my original rent-a-cause-reactionaries comment was about their general make-everyone-love-us philosophy. their persecution complex and immediate support for anything, no matter how contradictory, to maintain their romantic rebels image.

that being said, i do think his point is worth a debate. recent times have seen ranting as never before. its seen protesting. a whole culture of complaining has developed - but i do think that there are also valid societal reasons for this (information culture/credit crunch/anxieties about pluralism) as well as good arguments for the fact that everything is not as well as it could be within ibrox (murray wants out/rangers fans consistently paying their money to be called bigots by all and sundry etc).

that said, i think the anti-murray/anti-smith tone has just got rabid in recent times - a kind of rabid that can only happen on the faceless internet and in small groups. when it takes itself to real life (like the reported protest the other week) it falters.

but, then, i begin to think it is all justified again - the protests seem to have spurred the new signings, and it took for mass protests etc for celtic to get turned around.

so, all in all, have we become bitter tims?

So we sit back and take a passive role seems to be your response, if I interpret your words correctly.

no, as you anticipated you didnt interpret my words correctly.

i just think lobbying newspapers is a waste of time. its not passivity, its pragmatics. i have better alternatives, and i use them. if more people do the same the papers will change. if not, they deserve everything they get (read).

442

Whittaker - Bougherra - Weir - Papac

----- davis ------- thomson

-------------Mendes ------ Lafferty

------ Boyd ------- Novo/Miller

the midfield quartet would be quite fluid, and whittaker could overlap. miller/novo could stretch them, boyd could do heehaw until it falls onto his toe and he stabs it into the net.

Hope you're right with regard to the 'media landscape' changing thanks to our intervention. By the same token, do you think the RFC management team read this forum? Would be nice to think so, but going by recent team selections, perhaps not!

it's said in jest, but i do think the management structure at rangers do think we haven't fundamentally changed as a support in recent times. all walter smith's comments about miller/manchester seem to presuppose the support has pretty much the same attitudes as they did under his first spell, and i think murray thinks approximately the same.

but there is a New Rangers fan, i think, and at the club they'd do well to recognise and defend it rigidly. in time it'll become a more wholesale model for what is expected. i'm glad we're not petty-rent-a-cause-reactionaries like the tims: i'd rather be considered the big bad establishment club. "no-one likes us; we dont care" is a good enough attitude for our day. i think, as a culture, we're getting sick of weakness and the romantic image of the rebel - we're becoming less pluralistic, and less scared to offend. so long as we get rid of the bigotry, leave in stuff that cant possibly be considered bigotry, i think there's an attitude and a basis for an attitude that the club could get behind and endorse as appropriate for our times.

i just think walter smith/murray just aren't uptodate at all on what the supporters are like and are hence more likely to fold to the inaccurate picture in the media.

so, aye - the club could do with reading places like this. there's not a bigot here, but there's no faux-cuddly-cuddly-everyone-be-our-pal-please pish either like those jolly liberal and confused celtic supporters that the media is attracted to because they reflect their own bias.

it's good to have an objective record of these things, so the next time the tims moan about being hard done by, you can just point there and say "no!" simultaneously.

i do think they are just crap though.

personally i just dont care. i dont think websites should be lobbyists at all. websites should stick to what they are good at - discussing what's going on and changing the news-reading market rather than lobbying the news-making companies.

i'm quite sure, going by some of the stuff that's read, and understanding how capitalism works, that the major newspapers read forums like this one to get at their target audience. gersnet and websites like it have more power in setting up an alternative to shoddy journalism than lobbying for it to regulate itself. the interaction and large scale opinion that websites can influence will itself force newspapers to realign themselves with their increasingly discerning market.

i dont think we should ask them to change. if we continue to get as good information online, written by rangers fans, as we do from their papers, and that this trend increases as it now is, newspapers will be forced to change. newspapers have to adopt to the tastes and prejudices of its readership - they are a reflection of us. as it stands enough people are willing to buy and read this kind of journalism and until that changes no amount of individual lobbying will work.

simply by doing what we naturally do the media landscape changes; not with confusing our take on rangers with that of a supporters organisation or lobby group.

fine piece of writing. do you mind if we stick it on the main site?

i was helping out at a cycle run thing on saturday and was getting text updates on game from a mate. he said it was clearly onside; never thought it'd be *this* clearly onside. feck.sake.

LOL! welcome aboard!

right, another thread of abuse for me. i was trying to fix something and broke everything again. not slept in a while, going to go sleep my lunch hour now. i promise i wont try to fix anything ever again, or at least until i'm awake enough to do it competently. :admin:

it was only an hour though, i'm sure all your employers will be pleased.

sorry again.

i think it's a bit harsh. he probably just had some painintheass journalist in front of him, and he just said what he thought they wanted to hear. he's only a lad.

Danny Wilson is very highly thought of but is still a bit young to play regularly.

 

Central defence is definitely an area of the team where I prefer decent experience.

agreed - though experience is not the same as pensionable. i think davie weir has been one of our better signings but we need to start building a defense that'll be playing together for a considerable period of time. there's experience in individuals and experience of defences as a whole. i think we need both.

And I completely disagree with just about everything you have ever said about Gersave, here and elsewhere. There we'll have to leave it. I will only add that the outcome seems to be reinforcing my point of view, not yours.

that's just the same as saying "let's not talk about this, but i'm right". gersave seems like an obviously good idea (if done properly) but it'd be good to hear another perspective.

cheers m8. i'll give it a read through this afternoon.

i was raging that no-one at ibrox came out and said, after manchester, "manchester probably has that much trouble on any given weekend, thanks for all those thousands upon thousands who came and enjoyed it all cheerfully", but no amount of PR is going to make that happen.

the way i look at it is that if someone equates me with being a bigot because i'm a rangers fan then they are welcome to their idiocy - we probably wouldnt have been friends anyway.

i can understand why people think differently, but this is what i think.

i would absolutely love, love, love if someone could go through the publically available data and draw up an undeniable list of things that have and havent happened with the money. how much murray has invested, how much he's taken out. these sorts of things.

i get the impression that many of murray's detractors are just regurgitating what other murray detractors have said. "what about the albion carpark?". aye - what about the albion carpark? very few people seem to know for certain what happened and what the reasoning was. ideologues mostly.

anyone who thinks murray is whiter than white is clearly an idiot. i'm not more impressed by those detractors who dont seem to be in it for more than the fact that its currently fashionable, or that people round about them with strong wills and opinions think its *obvious* he's a baddie.

i think we need to compile some sort of list of murray complaints, and try and investigate them all thoroughly - list the minimum things that can be said for certain, and what people's conclusions from this are. there's too much propoganda kicking about - a lot of people with half-hidden motives are making a lot of noise just now. if we had some sort of objective report of wtf has went on - good and bad - in murray's tenure we could best decide who, of all the noisy people, are the ones worth listening to.

Mate,

 

Given the wide platform the likes of Spiers et al still have to spread malicious lies and gossip about our club, I don't think ignorance is a realistic option.

 

It's well worth countering any nonsense and while that may keep their profile high, it won't help their reputation.

i know this you think this man, and i know why. a lie gets repeated often enough and it takes on the appearances of truth (the bouncy being an insane case in point) and the only people who suffer are those who are being disparaged and they are the very people who have no platform to respond.

but i've listened to these phone ins man, and there are seldom many sane people on them. i remember a guy came here and wrote a brilliant article - i took him to task on it at first until i realised it was a response to phone in punters, upon which it all made sense.

no-one in any of these businesses (radio, papers, anywhere) are in the market for charitable analysis - both sides just want to "here, here" any old pish that gets regurgitated either way.

i still think ignoring is the best policy. when it comes to empirical data, i dont think you'll find all the sense in the world makes one bit of difference to what goes on there. as soon as you step into it you step into the absurd theatricality of it all.

in my experience no-one cares about the facts - not even rangers fans.