Depends how you look at it. At the time Ashley Young was our top earner on £50k a week. So there really shouldn't have been many players on £40k.

http://youtu.be/OJZJnr5E3MI

Nice.

Quite the goal.

Good to see Brazil still have low scoreing, defensive, games.

BTW Ronaldinho scored a hat-trick in this game.

Just as I was about to give Neymar credit

FC Twente - Worst dive ever

Without clicking I assume it's Peter Wisgerhof. He's a great defender though. I've always rated him.

liked it.

I don't think he did it on purpose. He was afraid the Ajax player would tackle him. It's a natural reaction. You can see he didn't fake an injury or refer to the referee anything in particular, but he went directly to the Ajax player.

Watching ICT-Rangers at the moment. I'm struggling to believe refereeing can be this bad. Brilliant tackle in the box, Rangers get a penalty and the player is sent off. No contact in the box, Rangers get a 2nd penalty.

And as I type Naismith goes through and pokes one wide. Poor player!

It wasn't a red, but it was a penalty. He didn't touch the ball. And sorry, but Goian was clipped from behind.
I find it interesting that you've ignored the 3 blatant handballs from Caley.



Did you make this comment specifically to rile me? Imagine I said the same about Darren Bent. Oh yeah, I did, and you were annoyed as hell.

Sorry Danny, but you're way off on the first penalty. ICT-Rangers - Quite obviously the ball is taken and that's why the ball goes off towards the right. The 2nd penalty there was barely any contact at all. There were tonnes of handballs at either end, I'll give you that.



I believe I mentioned before how bad he was and you agreed with me.

I am going to politely disagree with everything you just said and agree on one thing - the refereeing was poor.



I said he had a poor pre-season and had started the season poorly, following the previous season of being our POTY. He's now getting up to speed and looking much better.

You would have been fairer saying 'poor miss' rather than poor player.

So, all Scotish teams are out of european competitions and we are still in August. Pretty embarrassing.

They're in huge danger of dropping down quite a few places in the co-efficient rankings after this season.

Especially with the teams they went out too in all respect, at least for Rangers/Celtic anyway.

Abysmal. Going backwards. We're miles behind similar sized countries.

It's ridiculous.

This is why Scotland are in big trouble.

This is there 07/08 co-efficient, that will be lost next season, and the total 5 year co-efficients. So basically Scotland are going to lose over half of their points for next season whilst alot of countries below them are only losing 2/3 points on average. They could literally drop 10 places. It won't change their European places, but it looks like they'll never get 2 CL spots back. Unless the league champions get through to the last 16 in the CL or one of the teams does the same in the UEFA Cup, they're pretty much going to earn no points every season.

Scotland - 10.250 - 19.516
Israel - 2.375 - 19.250
Czech - 5.125 - 19.100
Croatia - 3.666 - 18.874
Belarus - 1.833 - 17.708
Romania - 2.600 - 16.657
Poland - 1.666 - 16.166
Sweden - 5.400 - 15.700
Norway - 5.400 - 14.675
Slovakia - 2.166 - 14.624
Serbia - 2.625 - 14.250
Bulgaria - 2.750 - 14.250

Is McCoist under pressure now? I know he's a fan favourite and all but still. Being in the CL qualifiers and ending up not even reaching the 1st round of the EL is not good. Especially to the teams you lost out to (I'm not trying to p you off, but I think you'd agree with me that these are teams you should not be losing to).

Of course they're not, I already described Maribor as the bowels of European football. So what does that make us?

I don't know if Ally's under extra pressure now, because the squad he inherited was bloody poor and he seems to have been given very little money to buy new players. Add to that the players we REALLY wanted have mostly been missed out on, plus the fact the players we HAVE bought are by and large no better than what we already have.

You really do get what you pay for if you buy a £500k 28 year old Spanish winger from a relegated side.

The easiest way of looking at it is that the champions of Scotland lost to the minnows that are Maribor. Sorry Maribor, you're rubbish. And yes, that makes us even worse. The second placed team, Celtic, got horsed by mediocrity from Switzerland. And Hearts lost by an embarrassing amount to their English equivalent Spurs.

Scotland is struggling to perform, and it's bloody depressing.

I'll be amazed if a Scottish team gets back into the CL at all now, given we've lost our automatic place and have to go through qualifiers now.

Eto'o scored his first goal in Russia: http://youtu.be/hYbdjC0JDuU

Ganso's goal vs São Paulo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U45LgHLEG2Y...player_embedded

Rangers in talks to sign some Greek striker who's barely younger than me.

What a completely shite window this has been.

So much for the new owner splashing the cash on a serious reinvestment in the squad.

Rangers reject £6.5m from Leicester for Nikica Jelavic.

He's in poor form but he is one of our prized assets and we'll only let him go for 'silly money'.

Anzhi Makhachkala narrowly missed out on signing Porto forward Hulk for an €87 million fee on transfer deadline day, Goal.com can reveal.

However, just two hours after agreeing on an €87m fee, Porto president Pinto da Costa asked Anzhi to raise their initial bid to €90m [£78.9m], a request that ultimately brought a premature end to the talks.

http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/2885/europe...-day-signing-of

He's good but not that good. Not a smart move there by a Porto president, if true.

Really, did somebody care to check FC Anzhi financial accounts? Where are they getting all this money to spend on purchasing players at over-inflated prices. I mean, they are leaving Manchester City in the dust with this. Hulk's not even worth a third that, really. Good player, not worth a dime more than €30 million.

Boy, I sure do hope this Goal.com story is fabricated. Insanely fabricated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suleyman_Kerimov

Dandy. I hope he's not one of those Russians that made their wealth as black money.

No, he's a Dagestan business wonder

Oh, I figured him all wrong then. My bad! Most of these billionaires, they're really...

Celtic lose to Hearts and now the gap between Rangers and them is 10 points. They have a game in hand but it's not looking good for the green men.

Rangers withdraw all cooperation with the BBC.

Why is that?

Surely if they have any contracts with the BBC that will leave them in financial ruin?

The club believes the BBC is biased against them.

And no, the contract the BBC has is with the SPL I believe, not Rangers.

Fair enough on both counts then.

What was actually said to believe bias? Or is it just the sum of a number of things?

Well there's a documentary coming up which the club believes is a 'muckraking' exercise.

There was also an apology a while ago when the BBC made Ally McCoist look like he was laughing at sectarianism.

Personally it bothers me because it now means Radio Scotland and BBC Scotland won't cover Rangers games on radio or TV - and that isolates thousands of fans.

Only just came accross Seydou Doumbia this week after seeing him in the CL for CSKA. He looks an outstanding player and I've looked him up and his scoring record in both Switzerland and Russia is superb. Will be interesting to see how he does over the next few years as he's still only 23. Another year like this and I imagine he'll move to a big western/central European club.

So Ole Solskjaer of Man United fame took the job at Molde FK this season. It was their centenary year and they'd never won a title in their history. Ole goes and wins it at first attempt. That's pretty amazing.

Yes...read about it. Very impressive.

Montreal to get either Adu, Anelka or
john Rooney in the expansion draft according to local press. I doubt Anelka would come but Adu i can see joining...

I watched Dundee United-Celtic at the weekend instead of the live early FA Cup game. I have to say I don't think the quality was that bad at all. Forest (I think that's his name?) looks a decent player, made some really nice passes and has a very good first touch.

Saw extended highlights of the Rangers game and there was 1 move in the 2nd half that was outstanding. Some very good passing on the edge of the box, good close control and first touch between Jelavic, Lafferty, Edu and someone else I believe.

Other sides are now in for Forest, yeah that's his name. Can't remember the exact move you describe in the second half, after a bright first half we faded horribly in the second.

Best OG ever!

Holy Moly!

forrest caused Udinese's back line some trouble in the EL tie, he was, along with the keeper, their best player.

AZ keeper sent off after fan attacks him

How stupid. Only problem is he didnt kick enough sense into the 'fan'.

Agreed.

Good decision by the AZ coach to abandon the game. I hate it when the referee tries to act like a wiseass.