bmck

^ yeah, i dont think the queen's actually truly representative, or the head of, or the defender of anything like protestantism, or anything. i couldnt even properly be described as a protestant. just that, simply by having that title, whatever it means, it could be described as sectarian to say FTQ - and who could argue sayings its all just words?

I have to ask in the interests of a balanced debate what is sectarian about FTQ? Her Majesty is not the leader of a religion or sect!

she's the royal defender of the protestant faith in britain.

it was your cheery optimism we missed in your enforced absence m8 :devil: :uzi:

^ hehe.

they just jealous, and because they work for the council and are, hence, necessarily, tims, by the incontrovertible logic of the song, they just canny dae the bouncy.

hence the ban.

its terrible.

Cool, that would be most appreciated.

 

Cammy F

btw, not forgot m8, am just consulting mine own little library to get proper names and whatnot.

I'll wait to i've seen the deal/proposals in full before i make my mind up.

 

We've also got a s**t load of local issues to deal with. Our manager has been taking a few liberties in regards to savings. :uzi:

take your sweet time, man, i'm not waiting on anything at all.

^ well worth reading all the way through.

not me

wish i was. i miss my st.

man, i have a few book recommendations for you on that front, if you'd like. one by a tim, no less.

are they an independent company or a council subsiduary, out of interest?

though if it is true, you really dont want the carriage getting derailed.

cammy, afaik you're not actually a presbyterian either, are you?

I would have McCulloch in my team every week, I would also have Boyd in my team every week! I would pick Naismith, Beasley, Novo or Adam before Buffel and Gow although I am looking forward to seeing Gow getting a chance soon.

 

 

:uzi:

coming to think about it, i totally agree with this (aparts from adam). i do think gow's got something though, but he's thoroughly unproven.

My 1st post on here - evening folks!

 

5 of us going, managed to get 4 tickets - looking like a nightmare game of shortest straw!

welcome to the boards

hopefully you'll get another one over there somehow, man.

It may be more like 50-50 after all. At least we, the Rangers fan accept we have a problem and are trying to solve it, you lot are acting like wee stubborn kids - "it's them no us".

the fans are acting like that, while their chief exec arranges secret meetings to stop this non-problem occuring. its all very strange.

I believe that a great many Rangers fans are intolerant of catholics. The number of Celtic fans intolerant of protestants in my opinion is far smaller.

i really have to wonder how you came to know this at all. have you went around surveying them? it may just be the unlucky few you've came across are. when i think to every season ticket holder i know, i dont really know any that are actually intolerant of catholics. i know plenty who hate catholicism as a religion (these are actually evenly spread out across rangers and celtic fans, are usually atheists/agnostic), but precious few who hate catholics because they're catholic. but maybe its just because i mostly know people quite like me. maybe you dont see the extremes in your support because you mostly know people quite like you.

catholics suffer no persecution in our contemporary social/political context. those guys that done the initial research into it in the 80s to prove that they did have re-researched it and said "yeah, there used to be a bias against catholics in scotland, now there's not".

i really think its a figment of your imagination, man. both sides have their extremists, 99% of fans couldn't care one or the other about religion at all.

i mean, i could offer a counter example - i've got a mate from the deepest darkest butney (well, when it wasn't all knocked down - though its still a little provo stronghold, takings taken for the ira every week etc) and he went to john paul and promptly announced that "i cant believe you're a fucking proddy man, you're brand new" once we'd spoke for a bit the first time i met him.

turns out i was actually the first 'proddy' he'd actually properly spoken to, so, though its a convenient example for me, i have to wonder if the imaginary place he got his mindset is the same place you've got yours.

personally i think the whole problems a load of shit anyway. as i said in my article before, i dont have a problem with people singing ******s, huns, orange bastards, fucking popes, queens, williams of orange, calvin or whatever - people's beliefs should be strong enough not to run about greetin' when they get offended.

i may just be madwaeit, but this conversation seems surreal to me. do you honestly think that all rangers fans hate catholics, and all celtic fans are maganimous towards rangers fans? or at least more celtic supporters tolerate protestants than protestants tolerate catholics?

is that honestly what you're arguing? what planet are you on man. i'd venture that the people who actually hate each other know fuck all about their own supposed religion on either side.

you dont get rangers fans beating up celtic fans over the perpetual virginity and the implicit idolatary therein, do youu ffs? or celtic fans beating up rangers fans for forsakign apostle passed down tradition to elevate their own reason solely to the application of the bible?

the rangers and celtic fans that hate each other's 'religion' do so because they just hate people of a different sort. if there weren't a religious language to wrap it in, they'd still hate each other - hibs fans hate hearts fans and vice versa.

99% of people in ibrox or parkhead every other saturday are at best agnostic.

No, there is the very rare example of a catholic supporting Rangers, but there is no example of Rangers fans loving catholics.

as a christian (despite my gripes with both protestant and catholic theology) i have every love for catholics.

if only they'd wash.

kidding.

i not only love catholics in general, but specific catholics such as my aunt and the entirity of my wife's family.

wtf are you talking about?

bryce reading somehwat critically, man, you've not really answered any of his questions. it seems like prosey handwaving.

mental. i cant really be bothered with international football, but moan the scots.

^ the above would work better with hutton and smith as fullbacks - that way buffel and gow could be allowed to make intelligent little runs inside while the fullbacks still provided width.

Frankie..... that statement above is mathematically impossible - 1,200,000 million is more people than the world has in it. I would reckon you mean either 1,200,000 or 1.2 million.

 

Sorry for being pedantic, it is an accountant thing.

sorry for being pedantic, but that the world doesn't have 1,200,000 million is a factual, as opposed to mathematical, error, and may not even be an impossibility at all!

its a poet born in the age dominated by linguistic/analytic philosophy thing. :devil:

give him a greenock top. it'll be so random he'll never forget.

great rant cammy.

the one thing that worries me is that, at the moment, we have a settled european/of philosophy that cant organically adapt into a spl formation/philosophy. that is, we cant seem to field the same 11 and comfortably adopt to an attacking mode to win games.

in an ideal world, i would like there to be a Rangers Way. a philosophy thats installed from the ground up that we perfect. kind of like in mixed martial art fighting - its not necessarily who is stronger, or whose martial art is better, but a mix of who is most proficient in their chosen skill, *all the time*. that is the core nucleus of our footballing philosophy. we integrate this with a cutting incisive forward thinking philosophy - ie: when we have the ball we're a movement-running-into-short-pass-out-down-the-channels type team.

these are just examples, but i think we need to have this core idea down - when we dont have the ball we are like X, and when we do have the ball we're like Y. the only thing that changes, then, is whether the onus is going to be on X (as in the champions league) or Y (as in the spl).

we seem to have a solid behind-the-ball philosophy for europe, but not a solid with-the-ball one for the spl. but they should be really two edges of the same sword - if we're going to play the way we do in europe with those players, we need to see how having those same players would work in an attacking sense when we have the ball. that is, instead of hemdani/thomson/ferguson sitting in on front of the back four as in europe, where should they be? i reckon even the 11 we put out midweek with one up front could work for us against any spl side if the players understand what they're meant to be doing when they're going forward - that they have some clearly defined plan like they do for sitting back in europe.

our going forward plan seems to consist of give-the-ball-to-barry and hope-we-nick-something-up-front. this makes our european defensive outlook seem much more sophisticated.

for instance, we could keep the same midfield trio and make them expert triangle passers, for instance. drum it into them how to use three midfielders in close quarters to turn a siutation to our advantage, and how then to use our other players best given this. i dont know the details, but it seems obvious to me that any 11 we put out should be better than most other spl teams, so why not keep the same team home and away, and in europe, with the same philosophy drummed into them - its just sometimes they'll need to have more of a balance towards defending, and sometimes towards attacking.

as it stands, we've only got a smart defensive policy - we only know how to use our packed midfield in a defensive way. there are teams who play with a lone striker and play lovely attacking football (roma, say), we just need to be confident enough about how we play going forward.

what everyone seems to be presupposing is that walter does want to employ a rotation system. but he's not really said that - other than once saying hemdani was better suited to certain types of game.

maybe he genuinly doesn't know who his best team is yet, and is still experimenting. not saying thats the case - but its a possibility. i think the main problem is his experimentation seems limited to shuffling a few players about - certain players do not get dropped, so its not much of a rotation system.

i think you can over-analyse over a one or two game stretch - manager's tend to work in times: its either a time of struggling or a time of increasing hope, and i think this is a few poor results in a general trend towards more hopeful times than we've been used to. all my analysis, as with all of us probably, is a bit of a fun exercise, but i do trust smith to fundamentally look at these things and address them.

Hemdani accepts rotation policy

Hemdani says he does not have a problem with the rotation policy

Rangers midfielder Brahim Hemdani says he accepts manager Walter Smith's squad rotation policy - despite making only two SPL appearances this season.

Hemdani, who has been superb for Rangers in the Champions League, said: "I accept the choices of the manager and I've said it many times."

The midfielder was linked with a move away from Ibrox earlier in the season.

"It was only speculation. There were many noises at this time, I don't know why," he told the club's website.

Hemdani said he was happy at Ibrox and that he was aiming to play as many games as possible.

Regarding Smith's squad rotation policy, Hemdani said: "This is how it is at the moment.

"If you are playing in the Champions League it is not easy for everybody. But if you play at Rangers you know the situation.

"It's always important to have the support of the fans, and I carry on and try to give me best for the team and the club."

Hemdani said he believed Rangers could win the SPL title this season, despite losing 1-0 to Hibs at Ibrox on Saturday.

"We are here to do it," he said.

"I think we have a big chance to win the league. If we have consistency - which we didn't have last year - then I think we can do well."

----

you've got to wonder how much you read is pure speculation and nothing more. in the world of the modern media the 'no smoke without fire' maxim cant be as generally accepted.

if we are really to believe hemdani in this interview then he's willing just to do what smith says for the benefit of the team. anything else is just mischief-making.

but what to believe?