Thought we might be in for a long night when Ojo missed that early chance but the team played very well to all but clinch it by half-time.  Great to be able to relax and just enjoy the football. 

6 minutes ago, Scott7 said:

I hope he can do better than Ricksen. If he achieves the standard that Papac did he’ll do well. Strange comparison in a way because they are different types. 

Well Ricksen started as a full back but the comparison is in how they've come back from bad starts.

15 minutes ago, der Berliner said:

IMHO, Barisic needed to find his feet (well, he sure knew all along where they were) in the Scottish game and has done so by now. And a Croatian international sure has a certain quality in him anyway.

Yes he's looking the part at the moment.    A bit like Fernando Ricksen and Sasa Papac he had a dodgy start, hopefully he can emulate them.

20 minutes ago, der Berliner said:

...a quality guy like Barisic...

How quickly a player's status can change.

17 minutes ago, Gaffer said:

I would love to think that we will eventually get a player in my lifetime who can replace Laudrup as the best ever Rangers player.  He's by far the best I've ever seen in a Rangers jersey.

 

After him it's:  Gazza, Souness, Negri (in my opinion the best goal scorer we've ever had), and Durrant.

 

I'm sure Mols would have been in my top five if he hadn't suffered that injury, but other notable considerations include Trevor Steven, McCoist, Butcher and Goram.

My favourite list is very different from my top players list.  Isn't that a different thing?

1. Colin Stein

2. Willie Johnston

3. Derek Johnstone

4. John Greig

5. Dado Prso

21 hours ago, Frankie said:

As I said on last night's pod, we don't have any low risk games at the moment so that's why it's tricky to try and rotate in a Polster or Flanagan.

When's our next low risk game, after the title has been clinched?   

I too disagreed with the sponsors vote; Davis played relatvely well but made several bad paasses that could have cost us.  It was one of those games though where just everybody made mistakes and there was no outstanding candidate for me with Borna Barisic being the best.  I might have gone for Kent had he been up there as I thought his introduction got us going.

1 minute ago, Frankie said:

Yes, but only by the away fans who thought (wrongly) that he'd dived to win the penalty.

Ah okay.  I thought he was booed when he hit a poor free-kick first half straight at a defender.  Groans are one thing but booing quite another.

3 minutes ago, Scott7 said:

No one. compo is only expressing his opinion. I share his sentiment but I concede that the coefficient booster posters are right. I just want celtic to lose every game no matter that my foot gets shot in the process.

Yes but it's Rangers' feet that matter.  Saying that it's fair enough to want Celtic to lose every game*; I'm not saying we should want them to win as it is in some way advantageous to the club.   Actually only history can show how Scottish teams results have affected others.  I find it very interesting; it's even possible that Rangers getting to the final of the Europa could work out advantageous to the other side long term and vice versa.  

*The coefficient tables give you a lot more teams that you can want to lose every game, although probably not with the same fervour.  ?

10 hours ago, RANGERRAB said:

I thought both Barker & Stewart struggled today which gave us a problem in we weren’t creating anything in wide areas in the first half. 

Stewrat surely?   ?   Did anyone notice that?  Great name, he should keep it.

Was Tav booed yesterday?  

Not a great performance but we deserved the points.   Loved the irony of the goalkeeper moaning about not being allowed to get on with it and getting himself booked.

Quick thinking by McGregor.  His quick distribution has been a factor this year.

18 minutes ago, Rousseau said:

It's quite an offensive central three too; with Aribo, Davis, Arfield. 

A goal each would be nice.  

1 minute ago, Uilleam said:

McInnes has them defeated before they take to the pitch.

When he said Aberdeen wont give up second place easily, I knew we'd missed a bullet with him.

These things change.  We were miles behind for the first few weeks of the season and we clawed that back.  They are back on form it seems but I didn't expect such capitulation. 

22 hours ago, compo said:

Forget the rest our job is to keep winning and forget about rankings 

Who made you the judge of what we should or should not take an interest in?  

6 hours ago, pete said:

Cyprus enforces Russian mafia law - Hoofdinhoud

Met dank overgenomen van EUobserver (EUOBSERVER), gepubliceerd op dinsdag 1 december 2015, 17:53.
Auteur: Andrew Rettman

Cyprus is helping Russian officials to hush up a mafia scam and to hunt down the people who exposed it.

Its justice ministry, last week, invited Russian sleuths to conduct a joint raid with Cypriot police on the offices, in Nicosia, of lawyers acting on behalf of Bill Browder.

Browder is the former employer of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian auditor who, in 2007, uncovered a huge tax embezzlement scam by Russian officials acting in league with an organised crime syndicate, the Kluyev Group.

When Magnitsky went public, his office was raided, he was jailed, and later killed in prison. The stolen money was never recovered.

Browder has campaigned for EU sanctions against the killers and for member states to seize the money, which was, in part, laundered in European banks.

Back in 2012, he gave 133 pages of documents, seen by this website, to Cyprus' anti-corruption agency, Mokas, showing that the Kluyev gang moved $31 million of the funds out of Russia via Cypriot banks: Alpha Bank; Cyprus Popular Bank; FBME Bank; Privatbank International; and Komercbanka.

Mokas never recovered the funds.

Instead, in an echo of events in Moscow in 2007, Cypriot police, on Friday (29 November), together with two Russian investigators, Sergei Petryashov and Artem Ranchenkov, snatched Hermitage Fund documents and interrogated its lawyers.

EUobserver contacted the Cypriot foreign ministry for a comment on Monday.

It said on Tuesday afternoon: “Your questions have been forwarded to the competent authorities … and we will forward to you their reply when we have it.”

This website understands Cyprus granted the request for legal assistance in relation to Russia’s prosecution of Magnitsky, posthumously, and Browder, in absentia, for fraud.

The prosecution has been ridiculed, not least by the EU, as an attempt to conceal the tax embezzlement.

The EU foreign service, in 2013, spoke of “unconvicing evidence” and called it “a disturbing message to those who fight corruption in Russia.”

The UK, by contrast, denied similar requests for legal assistance. Other EU states, such as Luxembourg, also froze stolen funds.

Friend of Russia

Cyprus is often described by EU diplomats as a “friend of Russia.”

Also in November, it extradited to Russia Natalia Konovalova, a former employee of Yukos Oil, the energy firm seized by the Kremlin when its then owner, Mikheil Khodorkovsky, tried to enter politics.

The Cypriot president, Nicos Anastasiades was the only EU leader at Russia’s WWII parade in Moscow in May.

He says the EU should lift Russia sanctions and recently let Russian warships use Cypriot ports.

Meanwhile, Cyprus’ appetite for dodgy Russian money was exposed by German intelligence during the 2012 talks on its EU bailout.

The BND intelligence service compiled a report, leaked to German media, showing that Russian oligarchs and organised crime chiefs held deposits worth $26 billion (€25 billion) in Cypriot banks.

The figure is roughly equivalent to Cyprus’ annual GDP.

Ah the 'Russian Mafia'.  Surprised I hadn't seen this story. 

56 minutes ago, pete said:

Mafia??

Wrong island.  ?

Another thing to consider is that over the next few years Scotland will gain on all the more relevant countries as three poor scoring years drop off.  

3 minutes ago, Rousseau said:

Yeah -- probably because APOEL, I think, have qualified for the CL group stage for a few years on the bounce.

 

Edit: Just had a look: they've qualified for the CL group stages 4 times in the last 10 years, including reaching the Quarter-finals! They've had a decent showing in the Europa League too. 

I thought they must be spending a lot of money but looking at FM it doesn't seem that way.  

Going a bit OT...when I think of Cyprus I think of Colin Stein scoring 4 for Scotland in an 8-0 WCQ win.  I think he was initially credited with 5; he scored a couple in the return game as well.

11 hours ago, pete said:

Possibly totally across the goal would have hit the defender but the ball was at a perfect height to head it down or to the left of the keeper. This isn't a great save as the ball is hit right at him. Morelos should have scored and I am sure Colin Stein, Mark Hately . Derek Johnstone and probably even BBC Thommo would agree with me.

If McGregor had made that save a lot of Bears would be calling it a great save (the most inaccurately used term in football IMO, just behind 'good save'). 

Amazing that Cyprus have climbed so high.  

Scottish clubs have almost equaled last years total but you'd think the smaller clubs were going out of their way to drag the total down.  This was the same years ago when we had two places in the CL.  Obviously you don't expect them to match Rangers or Celtic but their contribution over the years has been beyond pathetic.  Kilmarnock took that to a new low this year.