DMAA

18 minutes ago, Frankie said:

I think Ross is injured so he's returned to us for R&R.

 

I still think he has a future here and is capable of improvement if he can stay clear of injury and get another loan move.

Gerrard's style of play asks the 3 centre mids to have a mastery over the ball and to dominate possession. Our whole style of play is built on this at the moment and McCrorie doesn't fit into it. Of course I wish him all the best and I hope he proves me wrong but I can't see it at the moment.

To be honest I wonder if it was Portsmouth's decision rather than ours. He hasn't featured very much. I really like Ross McCrorie but sadly I just don't think he's technically good enough to be part of the team going forward and the McCrorie with a big future at Rangers will be Alan McGregor's replacement Robbie.

2 hours ago, Gaffer said:

We've shown that we can be shrewd in buying great players for very little, and now if Ross Wilson can get rid of the few that didn't work, we will be in a great position.

 

Can anyone remember a time when:

 

- we bought as well as we have done in the past 2 seasons; or

- played as well in terms of a style of football; or

- improved so many players after buying them?

 

I can't!  Why has it taken nearly 50 years of me supporting Rangers to experience this?  Why have we never been able to see an improvement in players with our coaching before?  Why have we never really had a style of football we could be proud of before?  Was there something of an endemic at our club that somehow either prevented this, or at least failed to recognise the importance of it?  I think it's important to try to understand so that we keep this going even when this current management team eventually leaves.  All three of these aspects of our club will be so important moving forward and yet we have had none of them in our successful history.  Strange!

There's a lot of talk of Celtic having better individual players and we rightfully resent that but I think what is striking at the moment is how good our coaching and tactics are. I think Gerrard's team are doing a fantastic job tactically which is allowing us to outperform stronger sides and consistently perform to a very high level. The real brainwave has been the switch to a narrow 4-3-3 (the christmas tree). We've played Celtic 4 times since switching to it and we've outplayed them 3 of those 4 times and the loss at Ibrox has been an outlier with different factors involved.

This is why this season feels different to me. This time last year I was pouring cold water on all the post old firm enthusiasm because I felt you can't just ignore a dismal December because of one strong home performance. But this season our record is excellent and we are actually getting better as the season progresses. 

I also suspect that the Liverpool heavy backroom team have taken a lot of knowledge with them from Klopp and Liverpool and maybe even have ongoing contact with them. There are certainly interesting similarities between our styles with the marauding full backs and three centre mids with no number 10.

1 hour ago, JohnMc said:

A guy I sort of know was a guest on Off The Ball at the weekend, I suspect @DMAA will know him too. I didn't hear the show so I've no idea how it went. But he's a bluenose too so the staunch quota must have been particularly high in Pacific Quay for a change. 

 

I've always found Pat Nevin to be pretty fair, he's publicly stated he stopped his children going to Parkhead because of the sectarianism around them. There's not many will say that openly. 

By total chance I had just gone out in the car and put the radio on when he came on air. Yes I know him very well and he's certainly a Rangers fan. I didn't get the listen to the whole show so I didn't get to hear whether he got to talk about Rangers at all.

23 minutes ago, der Berliner said:

I would assume nothing will be said, but you hope we got some money for Grezda ...

Word is that we have got something. It's possible there were payments still to be made that have been written off. It's easy to forget that he is rated very highly by Osijek though and they will see this as a big signing. The only thing is what has happened with his wages, he doesn't strike you as the kind of guy who happily gives up 10-15 grand a week to play regular football.

1 hour ago, ian1964 said:

 

I would be a bit surprised if this was happening in this window tbh. We’ve managed all season without a third striker and Defoe is an excellent number 2. It would be a very poor use of cash in this window when there are other positions which could are not so well covered like left back. 

He is referring to Allan

9 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

Yeah I thought that too. Possibly Docherty.

That’s a good shout. Docherty is 5 years younger than Allan so it’s a good deal for Hibs, but Allan would add a dimension to our team in a way that Docherty doesn’t really. Hibs are also desperate for a Docherty type player, their midfield is badly lacking physicality. 

42 minutes ago, Stevie - 4lads Blog said:

Having saw the reports, I don’t think we will go for a foreign attacking midfielder this January especially one costing potentially millions 

 

I think perhaps a Scottish one, capable of producing a magnificent pass, is more likely - much more actually 

 

 

I’m really surprised by this. Scott Allan is tied down till 2022 and Hibs will always charge us extra for their players. He’s also a very important player for them. If true there must be a player or two going in the other direction as well as a fee.  

8 hours ago, Dragosani said:

So any rumours of players coming in??

Keep an eye on the Lovro Majer rumour. There’s a guy on FF saying there is genuine interest from both player and Rangers in this window. He’s a left footed, very technically capable centre mid. He looks like he would be very good in games we need to break teams down, definitely a type of player we don’t really have. 

1 hour ago, JFK-1 said:

 

Visa issues make a move to England unlikely as he would have to submit a fresh work permit application to the Football Association.

 

Instead, he will be staying north of the border amid interest from at least three Ladbrokes Premiership clubs.

 

Great. If we are smart we will send as many fringe players as possible to the rest of the league as they can play a far bigger part in this title race playing against Celtic than they can in our reserves. 

On 01/01/2020 at 08:05, buster. said:

 

 

I think the fact that the Arsenal scouts have attended so many games of our games indicates serious interest in at least one player.

 

Memo to Arteta: If interested, come back in the summer.

 

Given recent circumstances at Arsenal and our collective performances in those six games, I wonder if those scouts who attended secretly think they should have tried to appoint SG&Co at the Emirates.

 

 

Surely the only Rangers player Arsenal would be looking at at this stage would be Morelos. I find it very hard to believe they’d seriously consider Aribo at this stage in his development.  

It’s a good article. English has actually been saying this kind of thing for a while though, he has come across much more balanced than many other BBC pundits at times, especially after old firm games. 

What I am worried about is injuries and suspensions because we don’t have the depth Celtic have. In the games we have dropped points we have had key players missing. No Barisic, Kent and Helander in the first old firm game, no Davis and Barisic in the Aberdeen game and no Jack, Helander and Kent (came on after an hour when chasing game) vs Hearts.

We badly lack a threat on the left when Barisic in particular is missing and it’s no coincidence we’ve only dropped 2 points this season’s in games he’s played. 

If we can avoid disaster with injuries only referees can stop us and they haven’t managed so far. 

That was absolutely delicious in so many ways. 

They genuinely thought they were the bees knees. They have explained away every success we have had this season and bigged up their own. The combined old firm 11 on the BBC website had 2 Rangers players before kick off, the journalists wrote us off. We destroyed them at a neutral venue a few weeks ago but ultimately the pundits concluded that it wasn’t the fault of the officials it was down to a winning mentality that they have and we don’t. 

Now, as many of us expected we have outplayed them on their own park and won this time despite all the luck going their way. The penalty is a farce. It did not deny him the header, he wasn’t getting near it and the tugging is not penalised anything like consistently. It makes a mockery of the rules when you only apply them in the really big games and they aren’t even applied to both teams in those games. The goal is a disgrace, the ball is rising and suddenly deflects down the way. All this nonsense about “maybe he didn’t see it”, it is basic physics, the ball didn’t deflect downwards off his stomach. Then there is Morelos’ first booking, how on earth is that a booking? He didn’t even do anything, you would be booking every player in every team we play against if you book that consistently. Then there’s the added time out of nothing. 

To be so comfortably defeated despite all those advantages will be another shock to them. The only problem now is they’ve bought into the narratives on all their players so much that even if they were to splash the cash how would they decide which wonderkid to ditch? They genuinely think all their players are brilliant so they have no idea where to go from here. 

This season has been different from the start and if we can avoid injuries and (more) silly suspensions the league should be ours. 

Have to say I wish Stewart would get more of a chance in those kind of games. I think his style of play works far better than Kent’s against a side like Kilmarnock who have no attacking ambitions. 

21 minutes ago, Bill said:

For the entire match today the BBC website had Kilmarnock enjoying the majority of possession. At the final whistle the BBC adjusted to a 50-50 share. 

 

When our "national broadcaster" has to resort to adolescent games like this to have a go at Rangers, you can only imagine how much the Pacific Quay CSC is shitting themselves.

This really bugs me every time. I’m a bit of a stats guy and I like to know what level of possession we have in these games but time after time this season we’ve been let down by this. Never happens with Celtic games. 

 That was simply outstanding last night. Fabulous football and Defoe showing again he is probably our most underrated player.

I did venture on the Hibs forum to see how they saw the game and one guy said he’s never seen Hibs dominated like that at Easter Road. Meanwhile, the BBC match report has us on 50% possession. Hmmm ?

Very good draw, but hard to predict given the disparity between their dismal league form and their outstanding european form.

Fantastic performance. Bit of a lack of quality with the finishing but if we keep this up we’ll be fine. 

I'll be waiting for the media outcry with baited breath...

Yesterday was a rare chance to see Rangers face Celtic at a neutral venue, while both sides were in top form and equally motivated for the occasion.

Under those conditions, our players proved that they are a better team than this mob and should have no doubts whatsoever that they can win this league.

Make no mistake about it, that was the toughest game Celtic have had this season and it will have come as a shock to every single one of them how one-sided it was and they now know they will have to fight tooth and nail for this league title because our boys are clearly up for the fight.

17 minutes ago, Bill said:

I do hope that's not a banana

It is

A couple of comments on last night. First half hour was outstanding. But it’s worrying that even when we are in cruise control we all know that we could lose it. They pull one back and somehow we know deep down our players aren’t going to cope well with this. They equalise and we all know deep down we aren’t winning the game anymore. Maybe I’m just a pessimist but there’s a mentality issue there and very poor game management despite having a lot of experienced heads in the side. They still had a huge amount of luck with that second goal, what are the chances the deflection would set him up for an open goal. 

Final comment, boy did we miss Barisic. 

Aberdeen have turned around their form with 6 games undefeated and 5 wins from those. However it was an particularly easy run of the games with only 1 of those being against a top 6 side. Considering Celtic beat them 4-0 at Pittodrie we should really be expecting to win the game comfortably, showing them no respect whatsoever. St Johnstone are absolutely dire and took 2 points off them 10 days ago. 

Last season they won the league with 91 points, 20 ahead of Basel and with a ridiculous goal difference.

This season they are still a point ahead but with a very poor record of conceding goals, 24 conceded in 16 league games and in 7 European games they've conceded in 6. We surely have to fancy our chances of scoring a couple at Ibrox to get through.