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Smid

You'll struggle to find any Celtic fan who expected us to be this good.

24 wins out of 25 domestically with the other game being a draw.
3 OF wins out of 3
CL group stages
Some terrific signings.

Beyond any of our wildest dreams for this season in all honesty.

I grew up during some hard times for Celtic fans so I'm enjoying every minute of it fully in the knowledge that Rangers will eventually win the title again one day








Just hope it's not before 2021

I'm not playing down Celtic's season only highlighting that it has made Warburton's job more difficult. But, we have too many players who are not of the right level to make any real challenge .

i always knew that if celtic took my advice we would be fine.

instead of signing hunners off expensive guff.

Fully understand , no more Scheidt, Cifcti, Pukki,Amido Balde,Boerrigter, etc etc.

some people like the look of pukki, and cifcti, and other crap like that.

they hate celtic clearly.

Fair to say that all clubs sign bad players and will continue to do so.

Coop - even the great managers have signed duds

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comment by meuandcoop - Green & Whyte=Shyte (U5293)
posted 2 hours, 35 minutes ago
Fully understand , no more Scheidt, Cifcti, Pukki,Amido Balde,Boerrigter, etc etc.
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Scheidt is a bad example, if anything he is the example that proves JFK wrong. I think to this date he is still our most expensive defender.

That was us going for quality.

We went for the cheap option with guys like Larsson, Dembele and Lubo.

I don't think either strategy is right or wrong to be honest. It's all about good scouting

schite was not going for quality.

he wasnt scouted or anything, he was a dramatic waste of money

big money doesnt equa = good

but if you are signing a striker who averages 5 goals a season then u will get what u pay for, utter schite.

Larsson and Sutton scored 8 and 3 goals the season before we signed them.

In the "Wikipedia" age you would have hounded them out straight away.

Ooft. Mick is making a fool of JFK here.

A fool.

Must be a bitter pill to swallow for old JFK.

The signing of MOH was straight out of the John Brown book of signing anyone who scores against us.

I do think Tav could work out IF he gets the right CB beside him and the right DM to help cover. As much as he was to blame for being missing in action there was a continued lack of cover for him. I'd put some of that blame on Kiernan, especially in the SCF.

Halliday and Holt are squad players, as are Kiernan, Wilson and Hodson. McKay and Windass have real promise, and Crooks and Rossiter can't be judged.

Miller's still great but shouldn't be our best man up front. Waghorn is blowing hot and cold and Garner hasn't settled, and is now out for weeks.

So ones I would give pass marks to are Wes, Hill (just), Wallace, Miller, Windass and McKay, even though he had a dip in form he's a youngster and a very promising one. Probably the most talented we have at the moment.

comment by Stevethebhoy (U17159)
posted 2 hours, 33 minutes ago
Coop - even the great managers have signed duds
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IMO your average manager has a success rate of around 50%.

Any better than that and he'll undoubtedly be doing a fine job.

Any lower, then he might well be struggling.

already knew sutton was good having watched him prior to his big money move to chelsea.

as for larsson - world cup star, manager knew him, scored 50 in 56 games for helsinborg.

sutton - better than 1 in 3 for norwich, better than 1 in 3 for blackburn

i like good strikers

you like schite like pukki

which btw... your prediction of him signing for dortmund has now passed

http://www.ja606.co.uk/comments/viewAllComments/289396/2

A good article Stevie, as ever, giving us the hard truth, if a bit negative

Couple of wee points I disagree with....Rossiter. He may be injury prone but there is a rough diamond in there, just needs a decent run and that's up to our physios / science team to ensure that if he can't make a decent run without injury he should be out the door but he is one i'd like to keep.

I am in agreement that Warburton needs to change things up but I don't think he can? But for you to think that we can be on a level playing field with Celtic within 2 seasons of being back in the SPL is a pure pipe dream, the last OF game showed that there is a massive gulf between us in regard to whole team quality, only Barry McKay would get in their team but only as a squad player....the rest of our team is average at best. I'm not saying Warburton shouldn't get criticism, far from it. I'd also like to know what Davie Weir is actually bringing to the side because as i see it not much especially defensive coaching?

I'm keeping my hopes up as there's been more negatives with the team this season but there are positives to take too, we'll make Europe this season and with a wee bit more investment we can maybe push on with another few signings, will Warburton be the man to do it? I hope so but feel he hasn't got the balls for it....

Smid

I take your point that you would rather have a player at RB that sets up and helps score many goals while selling a few at the back.....however, there is a time and a place for a player like that, and I personally dont believe we can accomodate the risks that come with playing Tav at RB at the moment.

My preference for Hodson over Tav is not only down to the goals that Tav has shipped, it is also down to the fact that both Tav and Hodson are the same age, yet Hodson has almost 100 appearances at Championship level under his belt, played in the Premiership last season and has the experience that 20 caps for your country brings....what has Tav done?

I am also suggesting that we use Tav in a midfield role rather than a defensive one, meaning we can use his qualities going forward with less risk that he will ship goals at the back.

At the end of the day, for me, our biggest problem is not our attacking threat.

Against lesser teams, while we may struggle to break teams down, we can boss games with the team we have

Against better opposition, we struggle to get the ball out from the back, we struggle to impose ourselves in midfield, we struggle to get good service up to our strikers...all resulting in our defence being put under more pressure, which is why we need a stronger defence.

Earlier, you asked what my expectations were for this season.

My expectation was to aim for second and lay the foundations for a team to possibly challenge for the title next season, as said in the OP.

The reality is, we are 6 months into the season, and although we are second, it is basically the team from last year that has got us there, and our recruitment has been so bad we have hardly improved our first XI at all, could even be an argument that the team is worse with the loss of Ball at CB/DM

I dont see progress being made here.

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It's the battle of the long winded posts!

Who will tough it out?!? Who will run out of characters?!? More worryingly, it's been over an hour since either of them posted-have they been typing all that time?!?

Smid, you miss the point entirely.

I am not saying Hodson is a better fotballer than Tavernier...I am saying he is a better defender, and slighty more experienced at a higher level.

At the end of the day, I expect our RB to contribute to goals at points during the season, I do not expect him to contribute directly to 39 goals in a season, and the only reason he has contributed that much going forward is because he is leaving us wide open at the back at times.

If he is still on the park in a midfield role, we can still use his talents going forward, we can still utilise his set pieces, but we remove a lot of the risk he puts on our defence through maruading forward from RB.

As for progress, you can compartmentalise things all you want.

I have not for one minute said we have not progressed at all under Warburton, of course we have.

But I take issue with people who say we have progressed from the end of last season up to this point.

A lot of Rangers fans beleived the team we had at the end of last season was capable of competing with Aberdeen/Hearts this season without many changes.

In my opinion, that is exactly where we are, we have the same team almost, and we are competing with Hearts/Aberdeen as expected.

We spent money in the summer, it so far it has made very little to no difference to the side, it is effectively the same players we had last season that are winning us games, getting us points.

you can see that as progress all you want, and start talking about results at the start of the season comparedd to the last couple of months etc.

For me, the true picture is, the signings we made in the summer have made little impact, and we are where we are because the team we had last season was good enough to get us to this position.

What can be said for that is, Warburton took us form being a bang average side that struggled to win the championship, into a team that may well finish second in the Premierhisp, and it took him about a year to make that change.

The progress we made last year is certainly worhty of praise, but again, the reality now has to hit home, that although we cannot spend to the levels Celtic do at the moment, we do still outspend every other team in this country, and we are now in the same league as teams like Hearts and Aberdeen, so we should be finishing above these teams given our budget compared to thiers, and while the progress made from the summer of 2015 to 2016 was good, the progress from the summer of 2016 to Jan 2017 has been relatively non existant, and we have been working with a playing staff budget that is higher than the clubs finishing 2nd and 3rd in the top tier that entire time.

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