Bring on Falkirk

Tomorrows game against Falkirk will be quite a day as the main stand officially becomes the Bill Struth stand and will hopefully see Barry ferguson return to top team action.

In my view it is high time that one of the stands was named after Mr Struth as he gave 40 odd years of his life to the club in various capacities and set in stone so many standards that many a manager would never come close to matching, I realise that no one will ever manage Rangers for 34 years again but the standards he set were that only being top matters as he said with the legendary quote.

"Let the others come after us, we welcome the chase." which is spot on as we should be the benchmark that others must match and we should always strive to stay at least one step ahead.

Now there are other players we should name stands after and I think the Govan stand should be next and in my book Alan Morton, Jim Baxter and John Greig should be the candidates, lets hope that this happens at some point.
Onto the on field action and this is my predicted line up:

------------------------------------McGregor-------------------------------------

Bardsley----------------J-Rod---------Papac----------------------------Smith

----------------------Ferguson----------------Clement------------------------

Sionko---------------------------Prso----------------------------------Martin

-----------------------------------Boyd----------------------------------------

Ferguson will not last the game if he starts, that is, and Hemdani will come on for him or vice versa. Hemdani has been a stand out and I hate to see him getting dropped, but Fergusons snarl and leadership is needed in there and that is one thing we have missed this season. McGregor hopefully will not be in goal after this game and quite right as he does not inspire confidence in his tewam mates nor the fans and once we have Letizi back or even der Goalie then things will settele down.
Falkirk will not cause many problems other than having a lot of possesion but they do not do much with it anyway so frustrtaion will be our biggest obstacle tomorrow but that will be remedied with an early goal hopefully.

Papac In

Back at last after my move and other stresses these past few days. At last we got Papac I have never seen him play but he sounds like a good player and has experience which is what is needed. Its all very well having a young team but you need a balance and signing someone with a few, but not too many years experience under his belt can only be a good thing.

Kris Boyd added to his reputation on Saturday by getting 2 and I hope that being dropped for the Scotland game tomorrow does not knock his confidence but I doubt it will.

Other than that not much going on it all boilsd down to Saturday now against Falkirk and the Bill Struth tribute so watch this space for more insightful comment and analysis from me.

Scotland looked good...

in defeating Faroe Islands handily. If only Rangers could take after Boyd more often themselves as he seems to like fires in both squads that only one takes advantage of.

Rangers need to come out of this mini-break firing...we will see though.

Another Let Down

Once again we were let down by two main factors in yesterdays disappointing game.
1)Alan Hutton again showed himself to be a liabilty and let himself and the team down.
2)Wasteful finishing

I know Alan Hutton made a good block to deny Danny Invincible but to give away a handball right at the death is unacceptable and this is another addition to his list of mistakes which is growing each game. Hopefully the next game we will have Bardsley back in the side and we will see a decrease in the mistakes made by our defence. The other member of the defence wqho needs to sort his game out is Svennson. If he is wanting to be the Sweden captain he has a hell of a lot to do and right now I wouldn't make him captain of anything. I am sure he will come good but that must happen sooner rather than later. Stevie Smith and Rodriguez deserve pass marks and are growing in stature all the time.

Now as for the wasteful finishing in particular from Prso, this is one area he needs to work on, other than that he has been a revelation and has been a tower of strength in the team but he had chances to score and didn't take them and not just yesterday. Boyd however did well to persevere and the two goals he doid get were well taken and if his all round game needs worked on, his finishing sure doesn't and that is what he is best at. Scoring.

Other than that it is hard to find fault with the team and I am sure that we will be better this season that last season, it was never going to happen overnight and fans need to be patient. Have faith and keep believing is all we can do as fans. The foundations are there but lets get the walls up.

Killie Lineup

------------------------------------Leitzi-----------------------------------


Bardsley---------------J-Rod----------------Svennson-------------Smith

----------------------Hemdani------------Clement----------------------


Sionko------------------------Prso----------------------------------Martin

-------------------------------Boyd-----------------------------------------

So same again then guys please. Killie will not cause too many problems and their one danger man is Steven Naismith, and it will be quite a duel between him and our defence. I predict a 3-1 win for Rangers and for Boyd to get 2 in front of his old fans.
Going back to the friendly on Wednesday and what we saw was confirmation of who is not Rangers class. I am referring to Nacho Novo and Allan McGregor in particular. Sebo was ok but I think he charges about too much and lacks a certain finess. He is not a first team pick in my book and has a lot to do if he wants to be a regular. Alan Hutton time and time again got caught out on the right and this has been happening all season and going back to last season and it gives me no pleasure to say that.
Right enough of my ramblings. Adios.

A Good September?

So after Wednesdays excuse of a game its back to business now for the Gers and with yesterdays UEFA Cup draw it looks like it could be a good September for the club. In fact apart from Wednesday it has been a good week for the club. The fact we made a profit for one is a sign that we are out of the woods financially and that we now know not to go down the road of overspending again. I t was fun while it lasted but with the huge losses on the balance sheet it didn't make for a healthy dose of reading. Lets hope some of the profit goes to strengthening the team or the youth structure.

The UEFA cup draw has been kind to us and while I have a feeling that there may be banana skin potential, this is one tie that we do not looking like losing. We now have a relatively healthy squad and with all the competition for places in the team and the desire that we are seeing now, I cannot realistically see us losing but it may be a tight game due to typical gay Norwegian tactics. They are bottom of the Norwegian top flight and only got into Europe due to winning the cup and as we have seen the past few years from Scottish teams anyway, teams that get in through that door usually do badly.

On to tomorrow then and its Killie away. The major change is that Burke is out after the reckless challenge from some guy called Fernando Ricksen caused damage to the same ankle he injured in South Africa. Leitzi may be out after having hamstring problems, but other than that I think it will be almost the same as last weeks line up that did so well.