DMAA

45 minutes ago, buster. said:

Middleton is raw

You'd assume so at his age but I actually haven’t seen evidence of this. He came on against Shkupi and changed the game. We weren't getting a second goal without him.

Contrast that to Sadiq who looks raw after about 15 seconds on the pitch.

I'm excited to see how Middleton performs in the league. I think he'll flourish in this team and will make us a more dangerous side than we are without him.

Assuming Murphy is missing a good number of games which looks likely, should we be signing someone in Murphy's position or should we let Middleton step up?

Currently we have Kent and Candeias with Arfield a more defensive option on either side. Lafferty, if signed, could play there too although I don't think it would be his best position.

I'd love to see Middleton capitalise on Murphy's injury and prove his ability at the top level because I think he's got it! I've been a bit disappointed he hasn't been given a run out. Real pace and an eye for goal too.

4 hours ago, pete said:

I was in the linesman should have seen it camp until I saw this Photo. I doubt the linesman can see that to be honest.

I agree when you take into account the speed at which it happens. He has to be sure. It’s not blatant anyway. 

That’s a fantastic preview of Ufa. If we’re not clinical at Ibrox it could be very tough.

They needed away goals to get past Domzale who are slightly worse than Maribor. Needed a last minute goal to sneak past Progres. In the league they've been better though, drawing to the champions Spartak, comfortably beat Anzhi 3-0 who were almost relegated last year and narrowly losting to Krasnador who finished 4th.

We should be favourites on that evidence. The home game is huge, we'll want to go over there with a buffer like with Maribor.

What annoyed me was how little time they gave to it. There was a 1 hour show after the Celtic game the other night whereas last night we had to share 22 minutes with Hibs and we got 9 minutes of that.

Could be they'll spend time on it tonight but I was in the car at the time and expecting to hear their take on the game and I'd missed the 9 minutes they did give to it!

Just now, buster. said:

Not a lot gets by the big clubs talent hoover #Gilmour

Molde's record transfer is £4m for sold Diouf when he went to Man Utd. I thought at only 18 he might be valued around there but the world's gone mad with transfer fees. Leipzig probably agreed to let Molde keep him till the deadline day.

2 minutes ago, buster. said:

Hope the same person has won the lottery and is feeling generous.

Didn’t know he was valued so highly and big clubs were already in for him

5 minutes ago, Devil's advocaat said:

Yep, also talk of him being valued at 10 million, so maybe not....

Looks like you're right. Turns out Arsenal and RB Leipzig are linked with him.

Apologies not a rumour, but Erling Braut Håland pretty much single handedly knocked out Hibs according to both Lennon and Solskaer. Just turned 18, 6 foot 3 striker and is already banging them in. Hope someone at Rangers has taken notice!

2 minutes ago, buster. said:

I think there are several teams in that bracket.

Rennes are the main team they'll want to avoid and I don't think many will fancy a visit to Red Star Belgrade either.

@Ser Barristan Selmy - they didn't look great but you have to look at their record in Europe (especially at home) and they are clearly a decent European side. In the last 3/4 years Sevilla, Spartak Moscow, Chelsea, Sporting Lisbon, Maccabi Tel Aviv and another half dozen smaller teams have failed to win at their ground. Only Liverpool and Schalke have done that.

I think Gerrard has built a very solid team that makes good attacking sides look ordinary. And I thought a good bit of the joy they did get wouldn't have happened with Coulibaly/Barisic/Flanagan on the park.

We could be more clinical but Gerrard is in the process of adding to the team in that area.

Thought the referee was poor, he was flashing yellows at our players for fun but let their guys off with plenty. One in particular was the definition of a professional foul (and therefore yellow card) when one of our guys skinned their big centre back and he just stuck out his arm to take him down.

9 hours ago, buster. said:

We have to qualify first but here is..............

 

Once the 4th qualifying round (or play-off round) has been completed, the 48 remaining clubs are drawn into twelve groups of four clubs each. Clubs from the same association will not be drawn into the same group.

 

Below it is assumed that lowest seeded teams of the 4th qualifying round of the Champions League qualify for the group stage of the Europa League, and that the highest seeded teams of the 4th EL-qualifying round also qualify.

 

 

Group Stage (48 teams)

Pot 1 coef. Pot 2 coef. ------------------------ --- ---------------- ------------------------ --- ---------------- Sevilla ** Esp 113.000 Sporting CP Lisbon Por 40.000 Arsenal Eng 93.000 Ludogorets Razgrad @2 Bul 37.000 Chelsea Eng 82.000 FC København * Den 34.000 Zenit St. Petersburg *3 Rus 78.000 Olympique Marseille Fra 32.000 FC Basel @2 Sui 71.000 Celtic @3 Sco 31.000 Bayer Leverkusen Ger 66.000 PAOK Thessaloniki @4 Gre 29.500 Besiktas ** Tur 57.000 AC Milan Ita 28.000 Olympiakos Piraeus *3 Gre 54.000 FCSB ** Rom 27.500 Ajax @4 Ned 53.500 APOEL Nicosia @1 Cyp 27.000 Villarreal Esp 52.000 AA Gent *3 Bel 27.000 Anderlecht Bel 48.000 Racing Genk ** Bel 27.000 Lazio Ita 41.000 Fenerbahçe @3 Tur 23.500 Pot 3 coef. Pot 4 coef. ------------------------ --- ---------------- ------------------------ --- ---------------- FK Krasnodar Rus 23.500 Stade Rennais Fra 11.283 Maccabi Tel-Aviv * Isr 22.500 Red Star Belgrade @4 Srb 10.750 Real Betis Esp 21.399 FC Ufa ** Rus 10.676 Garabag Agdam @3 Azb 20.500 Rosenborg BK @2 Nor 9.000 BATE Borisov @4 Bls 20.500 Vorskla Poltava Ukr 8.226 Dinamo Zagreb @4 Cro 17.500 Slavia Praha @3 Cze 7.500 RB Leipzig ** Ger 17.000 Akhisarspor Tur 7.160 Eintracht Frankfurt Ger 14.285 FK Jablonec Cze 6.035 Malmö FF @3 Swe 14.000 AS Trencín * Svk 5.000 Spartak Moscow @3 Rus 13.500 Videoton Fehérvár @4 Hun 4.250 Standard Liège @3 Bel 12.500 CFR Cluj @2 Rom 4.090 FC Zürich Sui 12.000 Spartak Trnava @3  Svk 3.500

 

We're not listed here but I take it we would be in the place of Ufa there, so in Pot 4? That would means we'd have a much harder group than Celtic who are in Pot 2.

27 minutes ago, buster. said:

4th Qualifying or Playoff Round
Sigma Olomouc	Cze	Sevilla	Esp
Sarpsborg 08	Nor	Maccabi Tel-Aviv	Isr
AA Gent	Bel	Girondins Bordeaux	Fra
Partizan Belgrade	Srb	Besiktas	Tur
Rapid Wien	Aut	FCSB	Rom
Apollon Limassol	Cyp	FC Basel	Sui
Glasgow Rangers	Sco	FC Ufa	Rus
Atalanta	Ita	FC København	Den
Zenit St. Petersburg	Rus	Molde FK	Nor
AS Trencín	Svk	AEK Larnaca	Cyp
Racing Genk	Bel	Brøndby IF	Den
Olympiakos Piraeus	Gre	Burnley FC	Eng
Zorya Luhansk	Ukr	RB Leipzig	Ger
Olimpija Ljubljana	Slo	Spartak Trnava	Svk
APOEL Nicosia	Cyp	FK Astana	Kaz
Rosenborg BK	Nor	Shkendija Tetovo	Mac
F91 Dudelange	Lux	CFR Cluj	Rom
Suduva Marijampole	Lit	Celtic	Sco
Sheriff Tiraspol	Mol	Garabag Agdam	Azb
Malmö FF	Swe	FC Midtjylland	Den
Torpedo Kutaisi	Geo	Ludogorets Razgrad	Bul

 

 

 

Already Qualified for Group Stages

 

Group Stage
Arsenal	Eng
Chelsea	Eng
Bayer Leverkusen	Ger
Villarreal	Esp
Anderlecht	Bel
Lazio	Ita
Sporting CP Lisbon	Por
Olympique Marseille	Fra
AC Milan	Ita
FK Krasnodar	Rus
Real Betis	Esp
Eintracht Frankfurt	Ger
FC Zürich	Sui
Stade Rennais	Fra
Vorskla Poltava	Ukr
Akhisarspor	Tur
FK Jablonec	Cze
Standard Liège	Bel
Fenerbahçe	Tur
Spartak Moscow	Rus
Slavia Praha	Cze

 

 

So will our group be made up of teams in that section from Rapid to Kobenhavn? Or is it just ordered randomly?

Gutting, I was worried after Gerrard even mentioned the word fatigue

6 minutes ago, pete said:

Thank god you are not valuing him.

I have valued him, do you disagree?

23 minutes ago, der Berliner said:

It would be cool if we could cool down this thread a little to real transfer activity ...

Bids made for our players are always going to provoke discussion though

31 minutes ago, trublusince1982 said:

sees them below facebook and youtube. Two places the club has a growing influence.

Youtube is absolutely huge with young people. They are completely addicted to it. Sad to see to be honest, but the club should be doing as much as possible to put quality Rangers content on there. Great place to win fans.

When Alan Shearer was 21 he only scored 13 in 41 games in the second tier. At 21 Andy Cole only managed 12 in 29 games in the second tier. Ally McCoist managed 8 in 30. By 23/24 years old each one of the above had hit 34 top league goals in a season.

Morelos scored 14 in 38 league games aged 21. We could have a 30+ goal striker on our hands if we hold on to him and develop his goalscoring. Time to get McCoist back in the coaching team?

A born businessman

15 minutes ago, JohnMc said:

I'm sorry, but anyone who thinks the BBC is "irrelevant" clearly doesn't work in the media. The BBC is far from irrelevant, indeed I'd venture it has more influence and reach now than at anytime since the mid-1980s. 

 

I think much of this 'confusion' comes from falling ratings for BBC1 and indeed the main ITV channels and the changing way people view and interact with television in particular. There is no doubt that BBC television attracts fewer viewers than it did even 10 years ago, however that's far from the full story. Staying with television the BBC is still a formidable ratings puller. Programmes like Blue Planet and Strictly pulled in in excess of 13 million viewers last year. Nothing on Netflix, Amazon or You Tube comes close to that in the UK. The BBC news and sports programmes also rate highly with viewers. This year the highest rated TV programme in the UK was the England v Sweden match in Russia, an astonishing 20 million people watched it live. 

 

TV viewing is changing, however the BBC is far better prepared for this than some seem to think. The BBC iPlayer is an excellent 'on-demand' facility and is widely available and used. The BBC are also now releasing series on the iPlayer in one go, rather than one episode at a time. 

 

It's also worth pointing out that in Scotland we have only two stations catering for a specific local audience; BBC Scotland and STV (Border too although it is largely based in Carlisle and Cumbria). As such BBC Reporting Scotland out performs all other local and regional BBC TV news programmes, as does Scotland Today on STV. For 'local' news they are most certainly not 'irrelevant'. Viewing figures for the always dreadful 'Still Game' are staggering. The finale episode attracted 1.8 million viewers in Scotland, nearly 36% of the population. That's the kind of figures countries that only have one TV channel get!

 

Looking at radio, an area the BBC still excels at, Scotland remains an outlier. 21% of the population of Scotland listen to Radio Scotland every week, on average listening to 6.9 hours a week. When you add in national BBC radio stations BBC radio has 45% of the market in Scotland. The other 55% is split between national commercial radio and local commercial radio stations. Radio Scot;and has the largest audience of any station broadcasting only in Scotland (so compared to Clyde, Westsound, Forth etc) and both BBC Radio 1 and 2 are the biggest in terms of overall listenership in Scotland. Radio has been largely unaffected by the internet. Most people still listen on an AM/FM device, with growing use of DAB sets as they become more common in cars. BBC radio in Scotland is very influential, to pretend otherwise is folly. 

 

The real reason dismissing the BBC as irrelevant or a dinosaur is a mistake though is their website. The BBC website is a monstrous success. As of last month it is the 5th most used site in the UK and the most used website actually based in the UK (Google, Amazon, Facebook and You Tube are more visited). It is the go-to website for news and sport in the UK. The BBC's ability to 'cross-platform' is largely unrivalled, the 'red-button', their  phone apps, digital channels and their website are enormously valuable and influential. By October last year the BBC website was getting over 6 billion page views a month, up around 1 billion on 12 months before. 

 

The BBC has many, many faults, but understanding and adapting to the changes in media and media consumption isn't one of them. It is highly unlikely they will become 'irrelevant' in our lifetime. Their unique funding, market share and charter almost guarantees relevancy. 

 

 

Thanks for that John. The BBC absolutely dominates the radio, it must have an exclusive rights deal for football, so some of the comments about the BBC coverage being irrelevant are way off the mark. 

The BBC Sport website/app is also very good and by a country mile the most popular place for Scottish football fans to check on the football and get updates. It’s been a big disappointment for Rangers fans since we stopped getting proper game updates on there. 

27 minutes ago, craig said:

Why didn't that happen when Fergie or Redknapp ban BBC then ?  They sent alternative reporters....

That’s a good question Craig and one the club have hopefully raised with them. However i think it’s that they chose to be inconsistent those instances rather than stick to their principles. 

1 hour ago, Bill said:

We do get coverage. Far better coverage and more extensive coverage than the BBC will ever offer

I obviously meant no coverage from the BBC

43 minutes ago, Gaffer said:

but let's not be fooled into thinking that it has any material impact on our club or the vast majority of supporters (or potential supporters)

Looks like a few of us will just have to agree to disagree on this, I think you're way off on that one but there's no benefit in repeating reasons given on previous pages

7 minutes ago, Darthter said:

Where the goals were scored & against what teams are ultimately irrelevant

Not when valuing players. Morelos only cost us £1m because of the level he was playing at. The same applies in Scotland, there's a cap on how much people will pay for players playing at this level.

9 minutes ago, Darthter said:

As Gaffer says, we should be talking up the quality & value of our players....

I've slapped a £10m price tag on him so I think I've done that because I don't think anybody is going to pay that just now.