[mincecfc]

I think you'll both agree with me that both teams look like they'll drop more points in the weeks and months to come. In fact, I think this years winner will have the lowest points total probably since the 3pts for a win rule came in to being.

I would remind you that McLeish also failed to qualify for the CL this season and has now presided over the exit from the UEFA Cup. These competitions were important as far as income is concerned and I believe that is a big concern of Murray's. I think if Eck doesn't win the league this season, the shoogly peg his jaicket is on will hit the deck. I agree with you that O'Neill is not infallible, but in the eyes of the fans and the board, sainthood is not enough for the man. I don't think the Rangers fans hold McLeish in anything resembling such high esteem. When Rangers went 7 pts behind Celtic and out of the CL, there were loud calls for his head then.

 

[The Exiled Heretic]

Yes :eekani: I'd agree that there is still alot of points to be dropped before the league is over. I still maintain Rangers alot closer to Celtic this season even taking the points out of the equation. There is no doubt though that credit must also be given to the other clubs in the SPL that have taken points off the two of them so far this season and the ones who have run them very close while getting no points for their efforts.

The Champions League exit was hard to take but I could accept it. It was a two-legged affair and we lost out to the better side. We didn't play badly in either leg but the damage was done in the first leg when we gave away two cheap goals, although CSKA gave away a cheap goal to Rangers too. They were a better side though and class one the day.

The UEFA Cup exit was alot worse not because it live in the shadow of it's bigger brother but because of the last two performances, particularly in the last game. These performances are not acceptable. Last night was an absoloute shambles and although the majority of that blame must be directed at the manager there are a good number of players that should not escaope the flack for the pathetic shift they put in.

I think if McLeish finishes the season empty handed then it could be the end for him. Alot will depend though on how tight the league is on the final day. If it goes to the wire then I think he'll survive but then again Murray may have other ideas on that. If he has a trophy in the cabinet then that may be enough to keep his job too. At this time though we can only speculate but for the moment he is safe.

 

[mincecfc]

Agreeing with two of you lot in one day! FFS what's the world coming to?

 

[King_Henrik]

Great draw, an even earlier chance to avenge the injustices of Ibrox in the last match than originally anticipated.

Don't really understand why chivo seems to be so confident given how poor Rangers are - as underlined by their failure to qualify from the weakest group in UEFA's 2nd competition - but keep up the superior front and we'll see who's gloating after the match.

PS - i've never called the UEFA Cup a 'diddy cup'.

Cheers.

 

[The Exiled Heretic]

OK, you never called it the Diddy Cup but it was a cup of diddy teams, third-tier level European football, etc. Basically a diddy cup only when Celtic were not getting to the final of it.

I'd like to know how you've come to the conclusion that our group was the weakest group, could you please enlighten us with your footballing knowledge. If it was the weakest group then why were the top 3 from Middlesborough's group already qualified two weeks ago and not one of them had more points than Rangers at that point? Maybe you can tell us why Rangers had more points than anyone other team than finished in 4th place and the some or more points as Parma, Partizan and Steaua who all went into today's draw? Please expand further.

Maybe you can also expand on "the injustices of Ibrox in the last match". We were winning 2-0 if you remember before Thompson put himself in a situation he didn't have. He saw red, O'Neill as usual launched an appeal and the SFA review panel upheld it like we all knew they would because he deserved it. We've discussed that incident ro death so maybe you'd like to discuss the other red card that I didn't hear too many Celtic fans want to talk about. How stupid, naive and thick is Chris Sutton to not only handle a ball once while on a yellow card but 3 times in the space of a couple of minutes? That killed off any chance Celtic had of getting back in the game. That was the biggest injustice to Celtic fans that day but nobody will criticise him because they'd rather it was someone else that cost the the defeat.

"Don't really understand why chivo seems to be so confident given how poor Rangers are." That was one game. Nobody was slagging Rangers off before that game but they had every right to slag them off after it. That one performance was extremely poor. You could add the Alkmaar one to that but that game was more to do with Alkmaar being too good for Rangers, definitely not anything like the Auxerre game.

So apart from those two performances why are Rangers so poor and why am I so confident? It could be than apart from those two games we haven't been beaten since we lost to Maritimo. Could be that CSKA, Hearts and now Auxerre are the only teams to score more than one goal against us. It could also be that we have beaten Celtic in the last two outings. I have alot to be confident about but that doesn't mean I think we are better than Celtic or that we will automatically win. It mean I think we have as good a chance as Celtic of winning that game and that was not something I could have or would have said last season. In summary my confidence is not based entirely on how better Rangers are this season but also how poorer Celtic are this season.

 

[The Exiled Heretic]

I am more interested in winning the League title, it's the one that get's Champions League access, although we may have to play a qualifier again (not sure - do you know?).

Only the top 10 countries in the Co-efficient table get an automatic place in the Champions league group stages. In the 2003/04 table Scotland were 9th so that is why Celtic got straight in this year.

If we maintain that position then the winners of the title will go straight in but that will depend on the countries around about us. The co-efficients work on the previous 5 years data and this year was not a good one for us. If we drop to between 11th and 21st then we will still get 2 place but the SPL winners will play in the 3rd qualifying round and the SPL runner-up will have to play the 2nd and 3rd qualifying round.

We were battling with Turkey and Belguim. The good new is that Belguim can't shift us. All 3 of their remaining sides were knocked out of the UEFA Cup(Standard Leiege, Club Brugge and Beveren) so they are still behind us. They did get more points than us this season but still not enough over all- only 0.250 behind us.

Turkey lost one team (Besiktas) from the UEFA Cup but Fenerbahçe have dropped into the UEFA Cup. They need a run of points to overtake us as they are currently nearly 2 points behind. The Czech Republic, Ukraine and the rest of the teams below us are too far away to overtake us.

Although I can't give figures I'm 95% sure that we will have an automatic spot in next year's champion's league and will finish 9th in the co-efficient table. If we don't do better next year (or better than Turkey and Belgium anyway) we'll lose that automatic spot.

The pain is that even if Rangers and Celtic do well the average for Scotland will be dragged down by the other sides if they do as badly as this year. Celtic got 7 points this season 93 of thoe before they kicked a ball) and Rangers got 6.5 points. The co-efficient this year is 4.750 however. Hearts done well managing 5 points but the score was dragged down by Dunfemline who managed only 0.5 points. Luckily the Inter-toto does not count or Hibs would have dragged out average down to 3.9.

 

[Angle_eyes]

Took the liberty of changing the title of the thread so that I don't have to open a new one...

Well it's only 4 days away, which is about the time when the hype really begins. I'm not exactly looking forward to the match because we're not playing well but, then again, neither are they. Still we've not managed a win at the Potato Bowl for some time. Don't know about any of you, but i'll take a draw right now to get them back to Ibrox.

The good news is that wee Nacho's available again. It's amazing how he's now considered so important after only being here for a few months. Djordjic is supposedly in contention to make his debut, but i'd be very surprised if he wasn't on the bench. If he does play it'll be a gamble, although McLeish has made a few of them in his time. It's looking highly unlikely that we'll have a new defender in place for Sunday, so it'll most likely be a Khizanishvili - Andrews defensive partnership, which is definately worrying against Sutton and Hartson.

In midfield McLeish doesn't seem to want to drop Malcolm, so it may come down to a choice between Rae and Mladenovic. If so, Rae will get the nod. It doesn't look as if the Buffel saga will end any time soon, which will probably mean the familiar pairing of Prso and Novo up front.

On Celtic, I find it quite funny that they're supposed to be announcing that Hartson has signed a new deal before the game. I guess Martin feels the players and supporters need an extra boost going into the game.

 

[Paul Le Gone-BohsCelt]

Hope we get through this one as the cup final is on the 28th May and Celtic play Ireland on the 29th, could be a good weekend in store (Fingers crossed)

I'm after been offered a ticket for the game aswell today but not sure if i can make it over, its not that often though i get to see celtic and rangers play, last time i saw an old firm game was last year and we won 1-0 in a cup game at CP and went on to win the cup, a game that i was also at albeit in the dunfermline end :googly:

I'll predict a hard fought 2-1 win for us

 

[Angle_eyes]

Oh aye! And if you beat us, you'll be through to the final? You're taking nothing for granted though... Celtic are the favourites for this match, but Lennon will be a big miss for them. I now think Djordjic will start the match, not sure about Buffel though. Djordjic would be les of a gamble because you wouldn't think he would be involved as much out on the left as, say, Buffel would be in the middle. Hate to say it, but 5/4 Celtic is far too big. In reality, they should be about 5/6 shots. Hope i'm wrong.

 

[Angle_eyes]

On another note, I see the political bandwagon on the Old Firm has gathered pace. The pressure is now on both sets of players and supporters from the SFA and the Scottish Parliament. Something does have to be done about the sectarian side of things, but I have a really hard time taking anything Jack McConnel says, seriously. I honestly don't know how that guy became the country's top politician. As for David Taylor...

 

[Purger]

Celtic will destroy the Huns,Aiden McGeady to score 50 hat-tricks.

 

[Angle_eyes]

LOL

Quality posts Purger, quality posts.

Anyone else care to post their predictions before the match?

 

[Paul Le Gone-BohsCelt]

I predict that i wont remember a thing at about 3 O Clock on sunday afternoon

 

[The Judge]

On another note, I see the political bandwagon on the Old Firm has gathered pace. The pressure is now on both sets of players and supporters from the SFA and the Scottish Parliament. Something does have to be done about the sectarian side of things, but I have a really hard time taking anything Jack McConnel says, seriously. I honestly don't know how that guy became the country's top politician. As for David Taylor...

The position of first minister for Scotland seems to be a bit of a poisoned chalice but the proof is in the pudding, with the attempts to ban smoking in public places and to clamp down on sectarian behaviour he has my 100% backing.

 

[shiner2k]

it would be lovely to beat celtic again this season . i would love it so much, but it is really getting tiring to see these two go head to head almost all the time. we have atleats played some few games this season.although i do not wtach these games i try to follow them on the bbc so i get to miss the goals and the thrills cos we only get to see the epl in nigeria . well i wish my boys the best in this tie and hope we can get to win the game in a landslide manner.with the new boy buffel scoring the goals.

 

[Dule]

Let's see the Serbs cause some damage. I'm sure they'd love to f*** over Celtic!!

 

[VBI]

I'm really looking forward to this game.

There are a lot of things to consider. Firstly, the fact that Celtic have started to put the results together again, but their actual performances have shifted wildly from the excellent Hearts performance to the....Less than excellent performance against Livingston.

Also the fact that Hartson, given the boost of a contract in the traditional, drag simple things out for 4 years Celtic style ( ), will be looking forward to playing against a defence without Boumsong. I expect Rangers to adjust to not having him around eventually, but for this game, and without Moore as backup, it will be interesting to see. I'm not sure selling Boumsong was a good decision, at least not in this transfer window. If he wanted to go, I'm sure Rangers could have gotten similar money for him in the summer. It might damage Rangers' chances of trophy success. Then again, it might not, but he IS a helluva player and a helluva loss to a team.

It will also be interesting to see how Celtic, recent kings of this fixture, react to having lost the 2 last in quick succession. Rangers, despite the Boumsong problems, won't have any mental block going into this game like they may have had before, and won't be afraid of Celtic, particularly with Lennon not playing. .

I'm sure it will be tight and delicilously physical ( ), but given all the circumstances, I think Celtic might just squeak an extremely tight win.

 

[shiner2k]

it was shame that we lost to bad defending on our part .i really praised the lads considering the fact that they just lost the best of defenders to newcastle i hope we build on this if we are to play them in the league for the second leg.

 

[Wally]

where have the Rangers fans all gone? p

Heard Buffel missed a sitter when he came on shame, seems like I guessed, that he'll need some time to be sharp since he hasn't played a lot lately.

 

[Angle_eyes]

shiner2k's a Rangers fan. I didn't really see the point of posting match details, because it's only really me that's been contributing regularly. Without the Celtic FM and mincecfc (whose on holiday) there's not a lot to be said. We were sh!te, they were marginally better.

Khizanishvili's not good enough, Andrews needs an experienced defender next to him to keep him right. Rae played like an OAP, Namouchi's pish, and Novo didn't play particularly well. Buffel missed a great chance in the last minute, but i'm not going to blame him. Djordjic did OK considering it was his debut. That's about it really.