DMAA

Surprised Hamilton are winning this league. Is this normal at youth level? How can they compete with us given the different budgets and less attractive facilities?

Of course not. Gerrard was always bound to have pals who were willing to sacrifice their wage and come and be part of this. I just don’t want to see us shelling out millions on these guys or to have too much of the wage allowance going out to them. But there’s no question Skrtel and Lucas in particular are way above our standard. Well it’s too soon to say what he can pull off yet. EPL academy prospects have a poor record up here, and the best ones are sent to the Championship instead. It will be interesting to see if he can pull off one that is unusually good, similar to Roberts at Celtic.

As I said above it’s about the strategy. With less money to spend they wouldn’t be in 6th place but they’d still have had a similar level of appreciation in player values across the squad and in turn strengthened their position as a club considerably.

My response to this would be that both Rangers and Celtic are in a very different place to back then. The main point being that we have a huge financial gap to close. As long as that gap is gaping (and widening) we can forget about being no 1 any time soon.

Oops I was a bit lazy in not looking that up ? Yes but the point is the strategy which is clearly paying off (literally!). On those figures the value of each acquisition has risen by a multiple of 3.5. RB Salzburg have even better figures and Monaco are another good example.

To be fair there is no suggestion Rangers would be paying those sums. However under a loan or transfer Rangers would probably pay around 20-25k, which is hard to justify for even more players with no sell on value. We need to be building something with a mid to long term perspective or - like Hibs and Aberdeen - any success will be short term and built on the sand of loans and aging players. This approach weakens the club over the mid to long term whereas an investment-based recruitment strategy makes the club stronger gradually even if it doesn't offer the same prospect of instant results. RB Leipzig are a great example of this approach. They barely sign a player over the age of 23, and with a transfer deficit of £94m over the past 6 years have assembled a squad with an apparent value of £316m which finished 6th in their first season in the Bundesliga. With their patient approach, Bayern and Dortmund will fear them far more than if they were signing ageing players and loan players scrambling for instant success.

Did he confirm interest in both?

Who is this? He probably was one of the highest earners in the side given his history so it was probably a cost benefit analysis. They definitely need more defensively minded full backs. However I don't like the idea of half decent senior players on the bench (Hodson style). I'd rather have a few quality subs with the rest of bench being made up of young hot prospects.

Having said all that, I'd imagine he struggled being part of a defence that was constantly being attacked. He sounds like a left back who would look far better in a team with posession and on the front foot.

Well they specifically said he wasn't offered a deal. Had a quick look at the responses to the announcement on Twitter and the Dundee fans don't seem to care, they're more concerned about Holt who apparently started ahead of him for almost all of the second half of the season. Jon Aurtenetxe apparently got off to a great start and then started putting in some poor performances.

It really begs the question why though. It’s really hard to imagine why Dundee would choose to release a Rangers quality left back.

Hopefully this is more rubbish.

So do I, I wasn’t actually advocating for 4-2-3-1 I was just commentating that we lack a real playmaker.

It’s a good sign that he’s just won player of the year at Hull and apparently been offered a lucrative contract to stay. Hopefully his contract with us is fairly modest because our wage bill will be rising this year.

The problem is when it is denied the latter usage and definition of the word exists when it clearly does, and I’d suggest it is now by some margin the primary understanding of the word in Glasgow.

Some of the criticism of Allardyce is very unfair. He has an excellent track record of immediately drastically improving the defensive performance of his sides. The only manager in about 2 decades to come away from managing Sunderland with an improved reputation. Why is defensive performance so undervalued these days? Do I think his style is right for Rangers? No. But he is a quality manager who has proven his ability time and time again and will not struggle to find another EPL job if he wants one.

After getting close to their record last season I think their numbers will be well down this season after so many drab performances, including 4 home league games they couldn't even score in.

I'm expecting Alves to stay and I think he deserves another season with better players around him. If Skrtel was free and we didn't have Alves then you'd definitely take him but not for millions of pounds.

Yes, it's the foundation of your annual revenue really and it will always be a battle to beat them as long as they are generating that additional revenue.

Ah but according to some on this forum "fen1an" has nothing do with religion it just means republican revolutionary. I'm sure that what the trolls meant...

Must be more than 43k if it's a record. That was set after Paul Le Guen's appointment. Wish Ibrox could be expanded though. It doesn't look good for the club when your rivals sell 10k more season tickets than you.

Interesting how the pragmatists get brought in to save clubs from relegation and then when they deliver they just get replaced with more Guardiola wannabes

To be fair he was escorted out of the country buy our own players

After being linked with a £4m bid for a 33 year old it's good to see us linked to guys like Burke and Goldson. Both sound like they would be very good signings of the right age.

He is that kind of player. He's made some unfortunate choices