The Rambling Ger

  When Dick Advocaat took over as Rangers manager in 1998 he made it very clear that one of the players he had chosen to usher in this new era in the club's history was a young midfielder from Feyenoord by the name of Giovanni Van Bronckhorst. He was so keen to have Van Bronckhorst help lead his Rangers Revolution that he was willing to part ways with Peter Van Vossen as part of the deal. A player that Advocaat had previously hinted at being a major part of his team when he arrived.  It turned out to be a brilliant decision, as Advocaat and Van Bronckhorst went on to win a domestic treble with Rangers that first year, followed by a domestic double the 2nd year. While things rapidly went downhill after that it was 2 wonderful years that saw some of the best football Rangers fans have ever seen, as well as some memorable European nights. Van Bronckhorst went on to have an outstanding career once he left Rangers, winning honours in England, Spain, and the Netherlands, as well as ...

I started my last article with "There's never a dull moment being a Rangers fan, even in international breaks we manage to find some sort of drama". Boy was I right.  Thursday brought the news we were all dreading for most of this week. Steven Gerrard was officially announced as the new Aston Villa manager. It was a quick ride, from being linked on Monday, which I dismissed as nothing but "lazy journalism", to being installed as the bookies favourite Tuesday, betting suspended Wednesday, and then appointed Thursday.  I still didn't believe it as the bookies were shortening the odds. "It's just because people are backing it due to the newspaper reports" I told myself. I was so sure there was nothing in it. I hadn't expected it at all. I was sure he was happy at Rangers. I was sure he was settled at Rangers. Why was I so sure? Because he bloody well told us he was, that's why! Emma Dodds asked him not 2 weeks ago after we beat Brondby 2-0...

  There's never a dull moment being a Rangers fan, even in international breaks we manage to find some sort of drama, but the week the financials are released is always the least enjoyable one for me. The money As the club published yet another year of increasing losses you couldn't be blamed if you decided to stay off social media for a few days. It always brings out the most ardent of Sevcoholics. You know the type, receive a regular payment into the bank of around £75 every two weeks, usually spend it all on white lightning and are amazingly experts in both sports law and chartered accountants. That being said, the readings are grim. An operating loss of £23.5m, up from £15.9m last year, does not sit comfortably with me, not after everything we went through in 2012.  Another disappointment is the merchandise intake, £4.2m. We were probably all expecting that to come in a lot higher after record kit sales each year and a new Castore shirt out every second weekend. However wh...

  There's absolutely no doubt at all that an on-fire Alfredo Morelos is the best striker in Scotland, and can win you games almost single-handed. The problem is, as we found out to our detriment on Saturday, that a misfiring Alfredo Morelos is as well as being a man down. Very few players can claim to have graced our shores and been as polarising as the man we affectionately know as Buff, among many other names. He's hated by opposition fans who scrutinise his every movement looking for a single strand of hair that's out of place so they can take to Twitter and claim he's a menace to our children because he's teaching them not to bother combing their hair.  He's vilified by the MSM because he has the audacity to spend his free time trying to help the underprivileged children from his home village when he should be out running up huge tick bills and betting on the Gigi's. He's mocked by our rivals for taking the leap from U21 football to play for his nati...

 I'll apologise in advance but this isn't my usual style of article. This isn't a piece I've taken a day or two to think over. This isn't analysing the team or tonight's performance, that'll come. This is purely a reactive piece because I'm annoyed. I'm annoyed at the loss, I'm annoyed at the way we didn't leave a man on the post, I'm annoyed this looks like more than a slow start, but most of all I'm annoyed at the complete disregard UEFA give to its players and victims of racism. Sparta Prague were found guilty of their fans racially abusing Monaco's  Aurelien Tchouameni and ordered to play behind closed doors as a result. Now if UEFA really cared about racism they would have kicked them out of the tournament. There is no place for racism in football. Yet UEFA felt a behind closed doors game was the correct punishment. Fair enough. But then, inexplicably, UEFA decide that this is too much punishment and decide that it would be a...

 The NFL fans among you will probably recognise the phrase "Just win baby!" as a famous quote from former Oakland/LA/Oakland again/Las Vegas Raiders owner Al Davis. Well after last week's loss to Lyon, deserved, and then a completely lackluster flag day ceremony that was matched on the field in a 1-1 draw at home with Motherwell, that was the phrase running through my head this week. We've not had the best of starts to the season, disappointment against  Malmö, defeat to Dundee unite and then a draw with Motherwell has me in the mode of I just want to see wins pile up now. Our rivals have lost 3 league games in the opening 6 and after blowing  the opportunity to go 6 points clear on Sunday we had to be looking at the table and wondering why we're only 4 points clear of them. It's time to start a good run of wins and kick the team on. This is a team we know can perform, last year they looked untouchable, and it would be strange if they've regressed this muc...

 Thursday sure brought about a lot of talk for Rangers, or, more accurately, talk about Rangers. It saw what should have been a straight forward European night get twisted into another "lets pile on Rangers" event. Some deserved, some undeserved, but at Rangers you expect nothing less. To paraphrase the great Ric Flair "The players want to be with Rangers, the teams want to be Rangers". Bad Press Thursday morning saw reports that members of the Rangers support had spray painted a piece of Rangers themed art on the Lyon team bus. This was met with the usual histrionics in the land of social media. Now don't get me wrong, it was a silly thing to do and it gave Rangers' detractors another stick to beat the club with, but in the grand scheme of things who really cares? It's a bit of paint on a bus. It's noise the club could have done without, especially right now, and it gave the faux offended something to complain about for another day but nobody got hu...