DMAA

Surprised McCrorie wasn’t starting. Maybe he’ll start the next game.

I sometimes go on Celtic News Now just to see if they have any transfers in the works, and it’s always full of articles, from a variety of bloggers, about Rangers! Absolutely mad.

Very interesting. It's as if because they are smaller they want to engaging with the fans in a way that bigger kit manufacturers wouldn't. Also, is Hummel's Twitter page normally Orange themed..??

I've covered this on a separate thread. We leaked goals like a bottom half side yes, but we only scored a decent amount. Our goals total was nothing to brag about, it was our worst total since Paul Le Guen. And everyone in this forum knows that there were loads of home games this season where nobody in our team looked like scoring. All the best Rangers sides over the years have had goalscoring midfielders and defenders, and Celtic do just now.

I'm glad to hear he's in France, it's market full of players with huge potential. Just had a quick look at the Ligue 2 top assists and top scorer charts and a few names stand out; Zinedine Ferhat, set the record for most assists in a season with 20. Just turned 25, in Algeria's squad for the World Cup. Le Havre missed out on promotion on penalties so he could be within our reach Umut Bozok, top goalscorer with 24 goals and he's 23 years old Jean-Philippe Mateta, 17 goals and 20 years old Theoson-Jordan SiebatcheuI, 17 goals and 6 assists and just turned 22 You could go on and on. There's loads of huge prospects coming out of France just now.

I agree. Appears a no brainer but we have so many similar players on the books already. We also need to be recruiting more goal scoring midfielders. Our midfield often just doesn’t have goals in it. There will always be games when your strikers need bailed out by a long shot from midfield or a free kick specialist or a big man with a header. McGeoch didn’t score in 42 games last season.

SPFL Radar haven't made a graph on him but they've commented that they think what McGinn does is harder than what McGeoch does and McGinn makes McGeoch to look better. Have to say that's my impression of McGeoch, he does the basics well (keeping possession etc) but he's never stood out in the way that McGinn often does.

A free transfer of a highly rated 25 year old Scottish International from a rival is always going to sound pretty good. Personally I haven't seen enough of him to comment and I don't think it's a priority position for us.

DR on the wind up again

The attacks on the youth academy and Mark Allen are over the line. What is wrong him? Further evidence that the DR (as well as the BBC) have little interest in healing relations with Rangers and are enjoying having free reign to attack the club and anyone related to it. You’d never see anything vociferous like this written about any part of Celtic.

Never seen the guy play but he fits the profile of the kind of signing we should go for and I'm quite excited about him. Although England is an expensive market it doesn’t follow that every player is overpriced. Goldson appears to have been 3rd choice centre back at Brighton and was very unlucky to be behind Dunk and Duffy (record signing) who both played all but 1 league match! Centre back is a position which is rarely substituted too which explains how few appearances he made last season.

I know I didn’t mean that I think it’s true, just that it’s an embarassing link whether true or not

Yep. Another embarrassing link given there was talk of a warchest for Gerrard only a couple weeks ago. Worth noting that Collins would be 35 by the time the league starts too.

I'm choosing to be optimistic that a squad rehaul and the Gerrard buzz will see us perform well in the qualifiers. I suppose our expectations will be aligned with how good our signings are over the next month.

Thomas Isherwood certainly fits the profile of the kind of player we should be going for at that age. 6 foot 4, Bayern reserve, 20 years old and available for free. Worth a punt surely. £4m on McBurnie is well worth it. Big potential for resale value, and a proper target man with goals in him who is a Rangers fan. If we miss out on him now I think he'll be outwith our reach financially till he's in his 30s.

A stronger league with more money would be in the best interests of all. Scotland's coefficient has suffered by constant first round exits against tiny teams in the Uefa Cup.

I agree. But I think that there’s often truth in the interest bit, and if so then it doesn’t bode very well. Our UK scout is John Brown, who may be a good guy but I don’t exactly trust him as a scout. However it’s very early days

This is the most depressing rumour yet. I’m going to choose not to believe it.

A bit of a strange one. He’s had a decent but not great scoring record in the 2nd and 3rd tier in Spain up until last season when he scored 32 aged 28/29. It’s worth noting that 8 of those were penalties, so 24 goals in 36 league games is a fairer reflection of his goal scoring ability in my opinion. Luca Toni was 26/27 in his breakout season in Serie B with Palermo when he scored 30 goals. Up until then his goal scoring record was very average. Of course the rest is history. However at 6 foot 4, 2 years younger and probably less penalties in his tally if any at all he arguably had much more potential than Mata today.

You’re overlooking his achievements because of his brand of football. The test for mediocrity is not how many trophies you’ve won, that is a very narrow minded way of looking at it. The test is what a manager has achieved, how successful he has been. Allardyce has delivered success in pretty much every post, often success which was well beyond the expectations of the board.

Great player but please let’s try and make our money work for us by signing younger players on a permanent basis.

It’s one thing for it to be an honour to player for Gerrard, it’s another thing to essentially pay about £2.5m out of your own pocket to do it. He is apparently on 70k a week and we would probably only offer about 20-25k.

I think it would certainly be inconceivable back then that Rangers could afford to hoover up the best of the rest of the league without even having to play them (Christie, Cifci, GMS, Allan, Hayes).

What difference did this make?

I’ve had a quick look at the transfers of the main Scottish clubs over the last number of years compared to the 90s and it does appear clubs had far more to spend back then. In the last few years clubs have spent next to nothing and when they sell players only a % of it goes into their budget. In the cases of Hibs and Dundee United they’ve run huge surpluses over the years. In the late 80s and 90s it seems the enormous budget inequality we know today wasn’t there, everyone was spending quite a lot of money (even before inflation) and not many were making money out of the transfer market. On that basis it seems it was definitely a tougher league back then.