DMAA

And by the way I think Andrew Robertson is a gift to Celtic in terms of inflating Tierney's value. Suddenly there's an example of a Scottish left back who has gone all the way.

It was hard to listen to tbh, I was just doing a wee run to the dump but couldn’t keep it on for long. They were seriously saying it would need to be a title challenger like Man City or Liverpool to take him away from the club he loves, winning silverware. And Turnbull is the next Iniesta too by the way. And Rangers did get a mention, we don’t have saleable assets like Celtic do. Fanzine is exactly the word.

I was listening on Saturday and they were honestly saying Arsenal wasn’t a big enough club for Tierney. And I’m sure they said Celtic should hold out for £30m. It was like listening to a Celtic fans podcast.

Barisic could do well in the 4-3-2-1 because he’ll be tasked with doing what he’s good at like Tav on the other side. Despite the criticism he could be brilliant this season. In games where we are under pressure defensively Flanagan comes in. Lowe not needed.

Great news. Significantly improved the squad. Hard to say at this stage how much it impacts the starting line-up of course but certainly looks like he could displace any of the 3 centre mids. It’ll be interesting to see who leaves now out of Halliday, Holt, Dorrans, Rossiter and Docherty. 9 senior centre mids is crazy.

Maybe it's just me but when we only play 1 striker I think 2 senior strikers are enough (Morelos & Defoe) and the 3rd should be a youth player like Rudden or Hardie. Waste of money paying Lafferty's wages.

Yeh I just meant I was expecting those guys to be told he was signing today and they obviously haven’t benn. Looks like we won’t hear today.

Of course but it is reasonable to temper expectations. I thought Worrall did a fine job but was strongly disliked by a lot of our fans and had a much stronger CV than Edmundson.

I was expecting Aribo to be announced today but the ITKers are very quite

That will move the Sep 1st. Last time we returned from Ufa to play at Parkhead after they had played at home on the Thursday. Hopefully this time we get the luck, that game was a huge one for the league despite being so early in the season.

There's absolutely no question about it. Rangers will never get back to where they were on the European stage again unless we join the English leagues. The only thing stopping it is nationalism.

It's pretty easy compared to last season. The away fixtures this time are Kilmarnock, St Mirren & St Johnstone instead of Aberdeen, Celtic & Motherwell. A good starts set the tone and is very importantly psychologically. You want our own players to be top of the league from day one and believe they are the best, and you want opposition players to believe the same and fear us. I think we have a good chance of getting off to a flyer with those fixtures.

Yes but they won’t do that, developing their own players makes them money. Cammy Palmer is a player who has the potential to break through one day. The kind of centre mid who is everywhere and wins the ball back constantly.

Yes but the point made is really that Rangers can't risk playing these youngsters because we demand the highest standards whereas at Motherwell and Hearts it doesn't matter. This argument doesn't stand up scrutiny because those clubs take a big risk playing youngsters in tight and tough games where there is a lot to lose. Motherwell were 9th and not far off the play-off spot when they started playing Turnbull and Hastie. They are never cruising at 3-4 nil up with half an hour to play like we are. The point about regular first team football does apply of course but it's not true that it's harder for us to give them chances to play.

This theory only applies to a degree imo. It's true that youngsters can become first team regulars more easily when the quality of player is lower. However I don't really agree that it's easier for Motherwell or Hearts to blood youngsters than us. I can't remember the exact number but we won something like 15 games by at least 3 goals last season. I imagine Levein would love to be able to ease his youngsters in in those circumstances rather than chucking them in in what are almost always very close games which could result in Hearts dropping down the table. We could easily have given our youngsters loads of game time last season if we wanted to and we'd know far more about them. The problem is we've left no space in the squad for them.

Turnbull has shown again althat 19 isn’t too young if you have the talent. McPake is about to turn 18 and imo could be ready for loan because when he reaches 19 I’d hope to see him making the bench.

An interesting read. However I'm skeptical of the idea that Aribo is a no 10. I think he is most similar to Ryan Jack in terms of what he aims to do for the team and I don't think he would be played in the Arfield/Kent position in the 4-3-2-1.

Haha, you are much more reasonable than the fanboys on FF trust me.

At least Celtic got the same bad luck as us. We’re going to Kosovo and they’re going to Sarajevo.

McPake was too old for the Alkass tournament but played all over Europe with the youths last season and will be well known to these big clubs. We need to keep hold of him, he's the long term answer to our no 10 problem in my opinion and won't cost us anything. I still can't believe we're trying to sign Kent with the number of attacking midfielders already on the books. Liverpool apparently looking for a hefty loan fee compared to last season too. Another season of me moaning about his lack of goals and assists and another season of all the fanboys saying "the goals and assists will come" and then decrying the usage of stats and americanisation of the game when they don't ?

I watched his Youtube compilation so I similarly consider myself a bit of an Ojo expert. For me he has more ability than Kent. Better at dribbling and just as fast but the same question marks over end product. The bigger question will be application and attitude. If he can match Kent's then I think he could have a great season.

I was waiting for you to comment @JohnMc because like me you seem to have more exposure to Rangers fans outside the central belt bubble where all the anti-Rangers issues are magnified. Most Rangers fans in Scotland don't know what the BBC thing is all about, they don't know what our problem with the SFA is and they don't make it to many games. They still buy the strips for their kids and watch any Rangers games that are on tele and listen to them on the radio. But the idea that the ordinary Rangers fan doesn't support Scotland sounds reasonable only to those who regularly frequent fans forums. To those who don't, they would probably think you meant Celtic fans.

I did a wee bit of maths and Kilmarnock got 8 points less in the second of the season than if they had performed the same as they did in the first half. I said when we signed Jones that if we were looking at a Killie player it should be Stewart and I said that Killie would fall away without him. I made the mistake of underestimating Clarke obviously but 8 points more would have seen them finish only 3 points behind us. They lost Stewart but brought in Alex Bruce, Mulumbu and a youth player from Liverpool so you could even say the loss of Stewart alone would have cost far more than 8 points if they hadn't brought in 3 decent players at the same time.

Spot on @pete. Killie aren’t very technical but Clarke was clever enough to use him properly.

There are far more Rangers fans in the country than any other. Any result other than this would have been a shock.