Midfield_General

This man is 33 years old. 7 years younger than Cristiano Ronaldo.

Saints promoted as runners-up to Sheffield United, getting pipped on goal difference on the last day of the season because we never win the league, whatever division we're in. Coventry to lose to Ipswich in the play-off final. We'll narrowly beat the Skates at theirs, and smash them at ours. Everyone will make a big deal of the Charlton games because of Jones but we'll beat them comfortably home and away. Leicester to start on -12, never get going and finish outside play-offs, causing their fans to go into meltdown over their ownership. Oxford, Wednesday and the Skates relegated.

Armstrong's reported to be on £60k per week. Even if he took a 50% pay cut, £30k per week would still immediately make him one of Rangers' highest paid players. He's also valued at around €13m. Rangers record transfer fee of all time is £12m and they're really excited by the prospect of a 'cash injection' from their new owners of a laughable £20m, which they'll expect to cover 4 or 5 signings. Half their regular starters last season were signed for less than £1m and they consider £30k per week to be very big money. They're not in a position to afford any players of ours for whom there might be any other real interest from the top of the Champ or the bottom of the PL. That's why the Downes rumour yesterday was so ridiculous. This is going to be a recurring thing with any players that Martin wants to take, or with most of our players who people think would do well in Scotland. The transfer fees and wages they're able to pay up there are an order of magnitude less than the top of the Championship, let alone the Prem. We've got bang average players like Armstrong and Aribo who have got used to being paid sixty grand a week, and elsewhere in the Championship there are no-mark players like Mike Tresor and Zeki Amdouni being signed for transfer fees of £16m, £17m, £18m. Rangers can't get anywhere near that. Rangers are a big club in terms of crowds and stadium etc, but they are small fry when it comes to spending power. A £12m record fee paid puts them in and around the same bracket as Swansea, Stoke or Cardiff. And they paid that 25 years ago when they were much more of a force than they are now and before they went bust.

So what's a pixie?

I got tear gassed in Marseille at England vs. Tunisia in 1998. The planning for that match was like it had been scientifically calibrated to guarantee as much crowd trouble as possible. England, with their notorious hooligan following, have been drawn to play Tunisia, so let's play it in Marseille, which has the biggest North African population in France outside Paris, including 128,000 Tunisians, and where half the police are of North African descent. Chuck in a baking hot day and a 2.30pm kick off time allowing plenty of time for a load of wankers to get tanked up and boom. Carnage.

If we’re just going to hoof it long and lump it into the mixer then maybe, but I’d hope Still has got a bit more about him than that and I very much doubt that’s how we’re looking to play if we’re serious about promotion. Onuachu can’t press for shit. He’s blowing out of his arse after 30 minutes. He’s basically just an expensive misfit, and if someone’s willing to buy him then we should just get whatever we can for him, get him off the wage bill and move on.

What a transfer window that was. £22m on Sulemana, £18m on Onuachu and £8m on Orsic, to fit the style of Nathan Jones who we sacked eight weeks later. £48 million pounds.

Well with that whopping £20m cash injection from their new owners who can stop them, we might as well just hand him over. £10m buys you Eli Junior Kroupi or Lewis Dobbin. Not an English 26 year-old first team regular with two seasons of Premier League experience. That's embarrassing, even for Nixon. On the Rangers boards they're saying that even at £10m he'd be well out of their range. Downes as a realistic target for them is a laughable suggestion. They might as well say they 'want to raid' Arsenal for Declan Rice, because it's about as likely to happen.

So you're saying you'd prefer to sell the shit ones and keep the good ones. It's pretty radical thinking.

Tavernier’s been there donkey’s years and Martin actually played alongside him during his short playing stint at Rangers so they probably know each other fairly well.

Horrible, horrible attempt to play out there. They could have easily cleared that about six times.

'Wolverhampton Wanderers and Southampton are waiting for a sign from Lazio before making a concrete move for goalkeeper Christos Mandas.' 'That’s according to Il Messaggero, via La Lazio Siamo Noi, who say both sides have show ‘concrete interest’ in the 23-year-old.' 'They’ve shown concrete interest in the goalkeeper according to Il Messaggero but are waiting for a signal from Formello before they ‘manifest themselves concretely’.' Presumably he's useful against teams who look to get it in the mixer.

What actually was 'Death Metal Football'? Presumably it was meant to be about high energy, pressing, aggression, making life horrible for the opposition. Given how much they went on about it when he joined, did we ever see even one instance of it under him? We definitely cut out the suicidal passing at the back and went more direct, more often, but did the energy and aggression levels really rise, given it was meant to be his thing?

The best centre back we’ve got

They really like him up there

Yep. Said it before, but the first few months of his tenure are going to be critical. If they do well in the CL qualifiers and/or the first Old Firm game, he'll be off and running. But if they bomb in those games and/or gift stupid goals, then he will be under a hell of a lot of pressure very quickly, and then he needs to show he can cope with that pressure better than he did here where the mask slipped and he reacted badly when he was asked fair and valid questions about the suitability of his approach etc. By all accounts the squad he's inherited is not great, and is certainly not a natural fit for his playing-out style - Butland and the CBs are no good with the ball at their feet, Tavernier the club captain is in decline and not very mobile, etc. He's only got six weeks to get them ready for their first CL game, during which he will presumably want to play 'his way'. I couldn't really care less whether he succeeds or not, but you're right that it's going to be very interesting to watch it play out.

I was listening to some Rangers fans yesterday who were explaining the extent of the packed defences that Celtic and Rangers are faced with every week. They said that with the exception of the Old Firm and European games, no-one will attack them and almost every other team in the league will set up to try and grind out a 0-0 or to nick something from a set-piece. But what's funny is that even if that opposition team concedes, then it's not unusual for them to literally defend a 1-0 defeat, as they still consider that a very good result from a goal difference perspective. So you get the spectacle of teams continuing to time-waste when they're a goal down. So all this revisionist crap about how Martin's system is so effective at unlocking a low block is going to get very thoroughly tested, because he's going to come up against a fleet of parked buses that he's going to need to break down every week they're playing someone other than Celtic. Their fans don't just expect them to win every week, they expect them to do it by an acceptable number of goals, the way they remember them doing when they dominated Scottish football and won 9 league titles on the bounce. It's a very different type of pressure. The media love-in has got them expecting fast, aggressive, free-flowing, attacking football. I think they're in for a bit of a shock.

27 defensive errors leading to shots on our goal

Is there anything in this thread that is actually about Aaron Ramsdale?

He certainly doesn’t look very happy in that photo. That is a look that says ‘this had better fucking work’ 🤣

Because he made a few suggestive, non-committal comments in the press to get them nervous that as a lifelong Cardiff fan he might be considering it, presumably to use as leverage in negotiations for a new, five-year contract. Very few managers get offered five years, so he's played a blinder, to be fair.

He's not going to have loads of money to spend, so of our players I could 100% see him coming in for Armstrong, who would probably do very well in that league. He will also know that Stephens is out of contract next year, so you never know.