wokinginashearerwonderland

Basically a Rangers reserve team. Should be winning this one.

Some result from Arsenal last night. Cannot make up my mind if Arteta is extremely lucky or a tactical genius as it was the first time in a while that I have seen Arsenal play. So many players to me looked like they were playing in the wrong position. The left back must have spent more than half the game in the centre of midfield, the wingers were each on their wrong foot, Odegaard was basically playing on the right touchline for half the game, Rice playing a left sided position and the guy playing up front was a midfielder. Bizarre tactics yet incredible outcome.

That’s right but if you have to have at least half your team as Scottish, there is effectively a limit as to how much of your cash you can spend. In the same kind of way as with Newcastle, they are the richest club in the world but they ain’t allowed to just buy up anyone they want to.

I see the abolition of the three foreigner rule as the point at which our league started to become ridiculously uncompetitive as far as the title is concerned. Historically the old firm always bought up the best players from the other scottish clubs and that will always happen, Dundee are never going to be able to hold onto a player that Rangers want to sign but the gap between the glasgow clubs and the rest was never un-bridgeable like it is now.

I might be in the minority but I like our current league of 12. 38 games for a season seems about right and I think the split works very well and have never understood the argument by people who think otherwise. This season is maybe slightly different but usually when the league splits everyone has something to play for. If you are say 10th at the split, you get the opportunity to play those around you rather than having to play less winnable games against those higher up the league. Those in the top six are normally battling each other for Europe so you can get some competitive last games and theoretically the top couple should be battling for the title. The main issue is of course that unless something massively changes, we are unlikely to have a new title winner any time soon but a bigger league would make no difference to that. Personally, I don't think playing Motherwell and Hibs twice instead of four times and replacing that with two games each against Falkirk and Ayr United would make the league any better at all. As for the idea of playing young players, that is totally counterproductive because that in itself creates meaningless games if no one is particularly bothered about the result other than giving a few young guys a run out. Pains me to say it but we need them. The TV deal would not happen without them and the other clubs need them to boost revenue when they host them. Distribution of TV and prize money more fairly is the best solution to making our game more competitive. You are starting to see it happen in England. For years the big clubs nicked players from the smaller ones because the smaller clubs had to sell. Nowadays the smaller EPL clubs get millions from the TV deals, the disparity between top and middle tier clubs is less therefore you are seeing clubs like Forest, Villa and Brighton shake up the natural order. The other option to making a more competitive league would be to have a compulsory amount of Scottish players in the starting line up. If you stated that six players in each side had to be Scottish, you would instantly cut the gap between the top two clubs and the rest. Of course it will never happen.

Could do a lot worse than Greg Taylor on a free to replace McKenzie at left back.

Let me correct that for you Panda

Makes sense. Those are the best 11 players in that squad. The whole Robertson/Tierney thing about desperately trying to get them both in the team is just stupid. With Tierney’s injury record and Robertson’s game time, just play one tonight and the other on Sunday.

That can’t always be the answer though, it’s just not sustainable to be spending £3-4M on players every year. What happened to actually making players better? You can’t just be buying a player, giving him 20 games then chucking him aside saying he’s not good enough. Thelin (presumably) was brought in for his tactical knowledge/coaching ability. We should be improving these guys, working on the training ground to make them better. He took over a team who did well in the last 10 games of last season and the first 20 of this season yet now he has had time to work with them, the results are worse! Has Thelin actually improved one player since he came in the door? Aside from Shinnie, Clarkson and maybe Morris, the others who will be here at the end of the season were only signed in the last year or so. We shouldn’t be gutting the squad and if we really need to, the people that recruited all these guys should be going too.

Might be an old school POV but Rubezic should be nowhere near the team sheet nor the subs bench after asking to come off last week. The ship is sinking fast enough as it is without including players that are not up for the fight.

Another case of be careful what you wish for. Motherwell are fifth, hard to see anyone taking them higher. They are 4 points behind us with their £5M wage bill versus our £12M wage bill. Eye bleeding shitey winning fitba v Nae wins in 13 fitba. Sounds like an old argument.

Davie C been in touch to discuss the strategy?

Nisbet did nothing last weekend to suggest he deserves a place in front of Ambrose. Ambrose may have his technical faults but he's a trier. Nisbet is a lazy bastard and wouldn't even make my bench.

aye, poor buggers having to play fitba again

That's a fair point but also have to bear in mind that six(?) of that starting line up last night were signed by Thelin so it is HIS team now. He can't use that excuse any more. On the plus side, the goalie is proving a lot of the doubters wrong, starting to look decent.

I think you probably do really. Anyway, the basic issue is that if we end up by next season having a squad where 95% of them are foreign what the hell is the point in supporting your local team? May as well just start watching Liverpool or Man Utd if I want to see 11 foreigners running about in red shirts.

Most of these boys were signed over 3 years ago. There has been a real move to foreign signings since then. If you look at the true "foreign" players we have brought in over the last 3 years, I would argue the only one who has truly made the team better and become properly settled and stayed for a decent spell, is Miovski.

Not sure where you guys are getting that from to be honest. If you look at our signings over the last three years when we had Glass, Goodwin, Robson etc in charge, the only regulars we signed who are Scottish players were Shinnie and Devlin. I don't see why that is likely to change now we have a manager from outwith but time will tell. I agree with that general sentiment Rico but even just UK and Irish players in my view tend to fit in better in this country. We've had a few Irish players in particular of late who have done well. I think players from over here whether they are Scottish, English, Irish, have the same kind of mentality, sense of humour, christ even the same language helps forge a better team spirit. It's got to be hard for someone like Duk, Gueye or Ambrose to get the crack in the dressing room much more so than it was for Joe Lewis, Jonny Hayes or Molloy.

Really hope the club start to target some Scottish players. Looks like we are likely to lose Jack McKenzie which would only leave Shinnie and Devlin as the only Scottish first team regulars. Massively important issue for me this. Not sure about the rest of you guys but for me, it's just not the same without a core of Scottish blood both in the squad and management team. A bit the same as when we had a national team filled with people with dodgy passports. I said previously (and was shot down by someone for it) that foreign players rarely work out for us/stick around for long and that has been proved so far in the main, aside from Miovski.

I don't know. Yes, the season started in July but those early league cup games really just replaced the normal pre season friendlies in all but name. This is the easiest start to a season we could have possibly had in terms of intensity. Piss easy fixtures in the cup plus the easiest possible run of league fixtures you could want over the first 7 or 8 games and no european football. God help this team if we have to play in Europe next season and we have a few tough away games in the league early on. If you have a look at Killie's run of fixtures for example, they have played 22 in the league plus 6 european games (3 involving foreign travel obviously) and a league cup game away to Motherwell including extra time. Add to that 2 of their opening 3 games were away at Parkhead and Pittodrie and their budget I'm guessing will be a fraction of what ours is. We have had it easy.

Not disagreeing with this statement but would question why it's the case? We don't have European football and very few international players. So we have played 21 league games in five months plus one meaningful game in the cup (I'm not counting the other games against the diddy teams which were nothing more than glorified friendlies). Add to that, the players had international breaks in September, October and November..............and yes, Devlin was called up but didn't really play. Why the hell are our players tired? These guys are not 36 and 37, they are 31 and 33. For arguments sake I just googled the name of 30 year old Andy Robertson and already this season he has played 25 games for Liverpool and 5 games for Scotland and he runs about a hell of a lot more during a game than any of the above three.

- just getting in early before someone else posts on this thread

I'd argue Clarkson has been shite since we signed him permanently. Possibly a bigger waste of £1M than Paul Bernard actually. McGrath's a terrific player but you have to factor in that he had an operation in mid November. Can't be easy coming right back into the team after that but he's been the only guy other than Miovski who has consistently scored goals for us these last couple of years.

Wolves showing how you don't need to fuck about when sacking a manager. It doesn't need to take five months. O'Neil fired on Sunday, his replacement hired today.

He might be a tim bastard but gotta love Ange. He seems to be one of the very few managers that gets the fact people go to a match to be entertained. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/videos/c87x92g1jzvo