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I know, how dare people question the management team or players you'd think they helped pay their wages or something! If only everyone on CTO could just write positive things all day everyday for a whole season we'd be in Europe no problem. Seriously though, so people are not allowed to have an opinion on the management of ICT in a forum for err ICT better just shut the site down now then guys.

I also find it strangely ironic that the current generation of parents seek to complain about the activities of the kids when they are essentially the cause and the ones best placed to bring about change.

The first thing I will say is hear me out. When I say dissolve, I mean restructure but there wasn't enough room in the title. Let there be no mistake, newco Rangers will be in the SPL - money always wins over ethics in football. That's why Qatar will host the World Cup - it's how football works. So let;s run with this because for the first time the other SPL members have some real bargaining power and they should exercise it. At the end of the day while Chairpersons of other clubs are saying that Newco FC can't play in the SPL, the Chief Financial Officer of each club is saying something different. So for the first time in SPL history, the other 10 clubs have real power and they should exercise it. First and foremost the revenue sharing inequity must be fixed. The new entity would need to assess the total amount that would be paid to member clubs, for the sake of my argument, let's call this total amount Member Grants. 70% of this should be paid to members at the start of the season. Each member should get an equal amount of this pool. 30% of this should be paid as prize money according to where you finish on the ladder. Secondly, this is an opportunity to give the other clubs more say in the future in the league. Instead of 11 out of 12 member votes to change the rules, change it to 9. Therefore a two thirds majority is required. This is a massive opportunity - please use it. Discuss

Oh dear. Such sad, dreary comments. Do anyone of the above posters go to the games or just read the newspaper reviews. I have been to all the games this season so far, as usual and, ok, some have been dire, some more dire than others, and some pleasantly surprising (v Killie away - wow!!)(and the last minutes v Dunfermline in the Cup - thanks to the 4th official for the extra minutes due to Dumfarmline's time wasting after they scored = wonder if they learned any lessons that day). But, overall, there have been ups and downs - Johnny Hayes goal v Hibs (away) was a great "up" for example. Goal of the month - remember? Please, folks, look to the postitives, not just the negatives. In my day job I say to candidates - be positive, not negative - I know its not easy, but, folks, the players are only human and have off days just like us all. (We just hope the off days don't occur on Saturdays). Lecture over!!!

I completely disagree. Yes he gives 110% just like Bayne did. Bayne for me was never SPL quality. Neither is Tade. When he first arrived I liked Gillet because he was better than Golabek and Shinnie. Now... I'd say with a lack of serious competition for the left back slot, Gillet has degraded to Shinnies level. And yes, I'm saying both Gillet and Shinnie are both not SPL quality and neither are worthy of being in this squad. Tade is top scorer and Gillet has been arguably our best player this season...i suspect someones on the wind up.

That line up is enough to get me to emigrate. How about a much more entertaining weekend...... Thur 23rd Aug - New Order Fri 24th Aug - The Stereophonics Sat 25th Aug - Primal Scream Sun 26th Aug - Paul Weller

If Rangers go into liquidation why should they be allowed to do anything but join the system at the bottom? Examples in the English system include Halifax,Newport and Aldershot who are all former football league sides who went into liquidation with reformed clubs being admitted to leagues 3, 4 and 5 tiers below where they were when they went bankrupt. And in these cases the clubs had already dropped a level or two in previous years as a result of their financial dificulties. If Rangers go into liquidation then there would be a vacancy in the SPL which might be filled by the club finishing bottom of the SPL not being relegated. That in turn would result at the end of the day in a vacancy in division 3 of the SFL which a new Whiter than Whyte FC would be entitled to apply for along with Linlithgow Rose, Gala Fairydean, Wick Academy and the rest. To place them anywhere else higher up the system would be to flout the rules and would be grossly unfair on other clubs who have been struggling away whilst playing by the rules. Meanwhile the SPL clubs can introduce new rules which prohibit relegation from or promotion to the SPL for 10 years in order that the game in Scotland can develop with the top clubs being able to experiment with attractive attacking football without the fear of relegation cramping their style.

yes please! Anything is worth a try to improve things at the moment even desperate measures

There is a great deal of historical behaviour to suggest that the SPL will find a way to accommodate Govan 1690 or whatever newco rise after liquidation. The behaviour of a lickspittle central belt media and Regan and Doncaster reinforce this. However, liquidation is a much bigger problem for them to deal with in that any accommodation straight into SPL would rid scottish football of it's last vestiges of integrity. Is that a thing that Doncaster et al can afford? If they don't hammer Rangers, there's every possibility that UEFA will (see Sion/ Serviette) As for the television deal, does the lack of one club really affect the long term attractiveness of the deal? ESPN have to keep going with the customer base that they have in Scotland or risk this part of their network going the same way as Setanta. BSkyB also have to keep a scottish presence as part of their UK strategy, and would probably bank on at least some of the bluenoses keeping their subscriptions to watch enviously as scottish football gets on just fine without them. Part time, run down third rate football as a consequence of the Rangers saga and the lack of the OF bigot fest is not a foregone conclusion and there is little or no evidence to suggest it would happen.Lots of opinion, yes, but no evidence. A league that is more competitive for all the sides in it ( it certainly is in terms of the bottom six and top four) would actually improve standards without the distraction of the same two tawdry giants winning everything year after year after year. A more attractive prospect? I think so. It would also force scottish football ( and clubs like our own) to stop relying on cheap/ loan imports from the south and produce more of the Munro's and Duncan's that people on this forum purport to miss so much. It would certainly provide impetus to Mark Wotte's overhaul of the youth system. There are, if you care to look for them, many positives to this situation that make the SPL re-writing the rule book unwise and self defeating. In the end, it might be out of their hands anyway, in that with every passing day another tale of abysmal management and irresponsibility comes to light. There might not be anything left to ressurect after liquidation, and even if there was why the feck should we after what they have done?

I've not mentioned it because I thought the programmes were a waste of TV License payers money. For a start there was no real fan representation in the entire discussion, just the same old group of football chums sitting around having a wee chit chat about how bad it all was and stroking each others egos by saying how great each of them was doing in their own little way to try and bring about improvements. Far to much talk on resurrecting and/or saving old institutions, traditions and ways of doing things and very little about what positive action can, should and is being taken.

The problem with those making the decisions...Chairmen, Boards, Financial Officers...is that they are all "short term" people. Therefore as much as they might like to talk about the long term, the reality is that they are more concerned about things not going tits up under their watch and will only ever worry about the short term. One example is Neil Doncaster who continues to spout the "16 team league would cost the SPL £20 Million a year" line. That figure is based on carrying forward all the figures etc as they sit here and now and only making adjustments for fewer games and (possible) reduced TV income....although I've not seen anything from TV companies to suggest they think the product would be less valuable with a larger league!!! No allowance is made in his calculations for the positive effects of the change....and that is largely due to the fact that the real benefits are long term and go beyond the 2 or 3 year TV deals. What's more, no lessons seem to have been learned from the last time leagues/clubs operated a model based on TV income. Granted, the amount of money from TV now may be less, but to rely on it when we know it could be pulled from under our feet at any given moment is sheer stupidity. For that reason, TV income should be all but taken out of the equation when deciding on a structure and business model that is sustainable for the long term. If individual clubs want to take a risk on operating with a reliance on that income, then that is for them to decide, but it is not something which football governing bodies should be encouraging, far less using as a beating stick to maintain a setup which does nothing to secure the long term future of the game. Whatever way you look at it, it comes back to the fact that the only long term factor that you can rely upon are the fans....but only if you give them the voice and the power to direct not only the clubs they support, but the overall setup of the game in a manner that fits with the wants and needs of the majority. Until that happens, football will continue to lurch from one disaster to the next under a series of short term "fixes" being put in place by short term Chairmen/Directors/League Authorities etc. who are more worried about making themselves look good here and now, than they are about the real long term future of the sport.

When I saw the headline yesterday "Gers out of European competition" it struck me that that makes it 3 European exits in one season I don't think they would have been in administration yet if they had got a few million quid from a European run, but as it is they fell at the first hurdle to Malmo (Malmo!) in the Champions League and then parachuted into the Europa where they fell at the first hurdle to Maribor (Maribor!). To cap off a miserable run of cup defeats they also went out of the League cup to Falkirk (Falkirk!) and then the Scottish Cup at home to Dundee Utd. All in all it has really been one of those horrible anus thingies that their beloved Queen once talked about.

Our football was so much more entertaining to watch in those wonderful Pele days. The big hoof doesn't do it for me no matter who's playing. Our current squad does not have the players (or skills) for the long ball game, that has been very clear to see but we still seem to persist with it.

The fact of the matter is that there will never be a good time. England knows she will be far worse off without the Scots. If Scotland had never been important to England Bannockburn and Culloden would never have happened. This country of ours will survive and prosper as an independant nation. The evidence is all around if anyone wants to bother looking for it. Since devolved power came to Scotland we have put more into the British economy thsat we get back yet we are still able to operate a better health service, better and cheaper education system and have frozen council tax for the fourth year in a row. If this country can do that now then what could we do with full control of revenue? Labour will always oppose independance because they know that without Scottish seats they will never get full control of government. The Tories just dont want the risk of losing their vast swathes of land in Scotland. The final thing I'd say, and the one that always gets on my wick, is the many people who are negative about independence because they want Salmond out of power. Hellloooo.........We are talking a democratic independent Scotland......not a dictatorship. After a positive referendum you can all vote whoever you want into government.

We will always be told that the timing is crap. Timing was good in the 1070's but we were told then that the timing was crap. We were also told a whole heap of arguments why Scotland should not be independent by the government while at the same time the same government classified a report that concluded that Scotland would flurish under independence and be considerably richer than England, one of the strongest nations economically in Europe and be in surplus. Fast forward to today and we again are told the timing is crap and the same reasons that were argued to decieve Scotland then are the same reasons that roll of the tounge of the government today. It's a total nonsense.

I could give several examples but lets just limit it to Tansey, Tade and Sutherland Tansey simply is not a defensive holding midfielder. He has been put in that role becos of the injury and subsequent departure of Cox and the decision to play Foran in central midfield. Tansey's apparent qualities is that he looks adept at oving in to space to receive passes, he has good first control, he does tend to look at options available to him but playing deep he is either under instruction to hoof rather than try summat fancy or he simply gets pressurised and goes in to a bit of panic mode. The holding role is summat that Duncan did to perfection when he had a ball player beside him. He stuck to that position, had the experience to cover and shadow front runners and always tended to seek the simple pass. He often fecked things up when he tried to do summat a little bit too fancy. Cox was of similar ilk. Tade is an enigma. His positives and negatives is that he is totally unpredictable. The opposition cant second guess him, his colleagues never know exactly what is going to happen next and Tade is a headless chicken who probably doesnt know exactly what he is going to do next. But allow him to play as a headless chicken, running manically around the final third of the pitch, hassling and harrying and using his pace on the last line of defence. Sure he will probably feck up 70-80 % of the time but he pays dividends with the other 20-30 %. Sticking him out wide and encouraging him to drop back and defend is a total waste of a player. He hasnt got the know how to play in a tactical role. Recently I have seen him tried as a switching role from wide, central and defence minded - it will never work. To me Sutherland could be the "foil" for Tade and McKay. To me he comes across as more of a traditional centre forward - a target man. Sure his ball control is dodgy and his distribution poor but he has real upper body strength and is adept at holding the ball up and holding off defenders. If he could learn that skill and the added skill of laying the ball off to attacking midfielders then he may progress. Playing him deep or wide or in a switch role simply will not work.

Hellooooo... Wake up call... Our last 5 matches Celtic Celtic Dunfirmline Rangers Dundee United And you're calling for Butcher to go? May I add to that we had a 7-game un-beaten run prior to those 5-games, including wins over third placed Motherwell and a good Hearts side and our SPL bogie team, Aberdeen. And you're calling for Butcher to go? No midfield... Hayes and Doran are both injured. We lost Davies back to Wolves in January. OTJ isn't fully fit and was probably lucky to make the bench yesterday, not to mention the long-term lay off of Andrew Shinnie. Our only fit midfielders are Tansey, Ross and Foran. And you're calling for Butcher to go? I'm not going to dispute the fact performances and 'entertainment value' this season are anything to shout about. And yes, this is now Butchers team. But stop f***** crying over Grant Munro and Russell Duncan. They're gone. Get Over It. Anyway, who are you going to replace Butcher with? Pele? Robbo now he's free? Or maybe you fancy ABV instead....

Unfortunately I do believe there is some credibility in the opening post. A lot of people need to take off the tinted specs. His team tactics and substitutions are sometimes baffling. If he thought that playing long balls up to a small striker was a good idea then he should think again, god knows he has had enough goes at it to see it won't work. Yes the players must shoulder a lot of the blame, but the lack of quality is embarrassing. We had passengers all over the park tonight. Tansey was terrible first half, Foran should have been hooked, Ross was well, just Ross, totally ineffective, Shane struggled to get the ball out from under his feet all night, McKay got no service and Tade was woeful and not for the first time. Thats more than half the team not playing and that put's too much pressure on the defence. Golobart was just back from a serious injury and tried his best, Rossco was just Rossco and Meekings and Gillet stuck manfully to their task. Esson never covered himself in glory either. So, who will Terry blame this time. He picks the players, he got rid of better players and he decides how we play. Let's blame United for being better than us. We matched them until they went ahead, then we went backwards.. No I'm sorry, but sonam is just saying out loudly what a lot more folk are feeling. Terry, take a look at yourself and ask if you could have done more to prevent another humiliating defeat. We have never had such a weak back line as this ever. This is statistically our worst defensive combo yet. I know there are reasons for it, but we are unattractive to watch and your style is turning people away from the gates in their droves.