This so called acid test.....

Quijibo

Quijibo

Well-Known Member
It looks to me like there’s an agenda, by the likes of Gordon Parks today, being set that the game away to celtc is some sort of acid test to measure Gerrards reign as our manager. Walter Smith went to parkhead and lost, Murty went twice and drew... it’s painfully obvious which of those two was a manager, yet those results in a vacuum suggest otherwise.

Losing at their sty doesn’t prove anything as it’s the majority outcome proven over a huge sample size, winning would underline our resurgence, however 90 mins of league football does not define the ability of a manger or a squad.

Qualification to the Europa League with a new squad, from the earliest point of entry would be a more sensible measurement of the team and managements performance to date. It shows the inward nature of our press that they want to boil the last month and a half’s performance down to 90 mins in September.
 
While the trip to the piggery in 2 weeks is far from the be all and end all it would give a sign as to how our players can cope under that type of pressure.

Even if we are to lose, and let’s be honest after a trip to Russia just 3 days before it is a distinct possibility, the manner of the defeat can be telling. If it’s a close defeat where we are clearly in there fighting tooth and nail then it’s far easier to take than another 5 goal mauling when the players arses just collapse.

It will be Xmas before we can make a true judgement on our progress in my opinion.
 
No credit for the job the gaffer has done so far by the usual suspects



But if we had struggled they would have been all over it


Basically got journos who cant do their job properly because of an agenda


Scum the lot of them
 
I agree with this 100%. Yes we need to win against them this season and make sure they don't take the majority of points in the four games. However, we need to be more consistent, especially at Ibrox against the lesser teams. We have a new squad and still in the process of gelling, so of course we are not going to get it all our way. The signs of progression are definitely there though and you are deluded if you think otherwise.
 
It's a big,big match for us, especially after a long trip to Russia. The result will not define our season but set up a pointer. The bheasts will see our improvement and we can assess how we cope with their front 4 plus Brown and Ntcham.
My concern is our goalscoring ability. Beat them and their fans will go tonto.
 
Tbh I’m pretty relaxed about it ....or I will be if we get away from Fir Park with 3 points.

September old firm defeats have left us 7-8 adrift in the last two seasons. If we beat Motherwell then, whatever happens the week after, we’re not going to be miles behind.

I have confidence we can be consistent over the season, and that one game won’t define it, especially as we have the aberration of a trip to Russia just before.

That said, the media will have a field day if they dish out another doing. Would be nice to avoid that. Although I haven’t seen anything from either side that suggests they’d be capable of mauling us this time.
 
The tiny wee inward-looking bubble that is Scottish football. :rolleyes:

Gerrard has made an incredible start as Rangers manager, turned around an ailing team, transformed the defence, gone unbeaten in eight games, and got his men playing with a bit of style and confidence. Great start. And very early days.

The real tests will be how his team copes with adversity when it comes - how they come back from falling behind, how they react after losing a game - not what result they get in their first game away to their toughest opponents.

But there will always be people who only care about the Rangers-Celtic head-to-head.
 
They’re setting it up so that, IF, we get beat at the tattiedome, they can say we haven’t progressed as much as we think.

We all know one game is no indication of where we are. The transformation from last season is obvious, unless you’re a Tim journo.
 
Not sure what you mean OP, the narrative is that will be a massive test of Gerrard.

Dont see anything wrong with this at all to be honest, it will be.
 
We’re a work in progress. I’m not expecting us to go there and win. Clearly there are sneering mouth breathers like Parks who think we’ll go there, get beaten and normal service will resume.

The key for me is consistency. And although it’s early doors I do believe we have a management team in place who’ll ensure we don’t ship easy goals and points like we’ve squandered in previous seasons.
 
Barrymoped said:
While the trip to the piggery in 2 weeks is far from the be all and end all it would give a sign as to how our players can cope under that type of pressure.

Even if we are to lose, and let’s be honest after a trip to Russia just 3 days before it is a distinct possibility, the manner of the defeat can be telling. If it’s a close defeat where we are clearly in there fighting tooth and nail then it’s far easier to take than another 5 goal mauling when the players arses just collapse.

It will be Xmas before we can make a true judgement on our progress in my opinion.
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Completely agree with this, the match in September can show that we are continuing our improvement however Advocaat conceded 5 there before winning the treble in his first season so a loss merely keeps to the majority outcome when we play them a parkhead. EL qualification being guaranteed on the Thursday prior to the piggery is the far more defining match for us.
 
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Quijibo said:
Completely agree with this, the match in September can show that we are continuing our improvement however Advocaat conceded 5 there before winning the double in his first season. EL qualification being guaranteed on the Thursday prior to the piggery is the far more defining match for us.
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Treble....
 
YOGI_GER said:
Not sure what you mean OP, the narrative is that will be a massive test of Gerrard.

Dont see anything wrong with this at all to be honest, it will be.
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Maybe we read the narrative differently? Parks article reads to me as a pipe down you’ve still to play a decent team and sites celtc as that team. Whereas I view it as 8 games in Europe and away to Aberdeen as being a much more salient measure than a 90 minutes that, historically, we don’t tend to win.
 
Quijibo said:
Completely agree with this, the match in September can show that we are continuing our improvement however Advocaat conceded 5 there before winning the double in his first season so a loss merely keeps to the majority outcome when we play them a parkhead. EL qualification being guaranteed on the Thursday prior to the piggery is the far more defining match for us.
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It took us until our final league game against them, for Advocaat to register his first win in that fixture. And we went on to do the Treble that season (98/99).

It would be fkn fantastic to give them a burst nose early on, but our biggest problem has been shipping points to the rest of the pack. If we can sort that, we’ll be snapping right at their heels and putting them under a pressure they haven’t been under for years.
 
Scottish sport journalists have to be among the world's most useless. Not one had a sniff of Celtic's problems until after they happened, and not one predicted their demise in CL qualification against AEK. They are no better than a Celtic supporters club.
The only people who knew Celtic had problems were bears in forums like this one. The only people who stated categorically AEK would progress over Celtic were bears in forums like FF.
The only people who have been right about SG's management potential with Rangers have been bears. It's early days but you can only go with available evidence. In that regard it's bears 100%, and Scotland's useless football journalists 0%. An embarrassing state of affairs for them.
If you want any kind of realistic assessment when it comes to football matters have the discussion with fellow bears. When it comes to football in Scotland nobody else has a clue.
 
Dave Angell said:
It took us until our final league game against them, for Advocaat to register his first win in that fixture. And we went on to do the Treble that season (98/99).

It would be fkn fantastic to give them a burst nose early on, but our biggest problem has been shipping points to the rest of the pack. If we can sort that, we’ll be snapping right at their heels and putting them under a pressure they haven’t been under for years.
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This isn't a normal season. Celtic have serious issues with their manager, the board and squad togetherness. It's the opposite for us. I think we will upset them early, and I think they will drop more points to other teams than we do. Unless they do something to restore some unity. But I think the chances of them pulling that off this season are zero. Disharmony is an irrepressible force running through them from top to bottom for the foreseeable future.
 
Setting themselves up for when we pass this test. Where will they go next? Meltdown in my opinion. They will really turn on Brenda on the call from liewell. He will be in full deflect from himself and the board and Brenda will be hung out to dry.
 
If we come out of that game with a point, and still ahead of them in the league, I will be delighted. I'm sure all of us will be.
 
vamcm said:
Setting themselves up for when we pass this test. Where will they go next? Meltdown in my opinion. They will really turn on Brenda on the call from liewell. He will be in full deflect from himself and the board and Brenda will be hung out to dry.
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Seems to me there's three possible outcomes of the game at Parkhead.

1. Celtic win. As most pundits seem to expect. The Gerrard-dissing goes into overdrive. Celtic don't get much advantage, but their fans with typewriters continue to misread what's happening. They just don't see it coming.
2. A draw. Most likely, IMO. This has 0-0 written all over it. Good enough for Rangers, and they can go on deluding themselves.
3. Rangers win. I think that's what you call a "Timplosion".
 
The league is very rarely decided by the derby games. We’ve won titles in the past where we haven’t had a single victory against them during the season.

The manager’s focus this season is on home form. We mustn’t let the media make judgments on our progress based on an one-off game.
 
Today is more at an "acid test" for me

A well organised team that's hard to break down on an horrendous surface we struggled on previously

One thing I'm sure of, Kris Boyd won't be outpacing either of our centre backs today
 
Mhedia up here as usual trying to heap pressure on us before we visit the PaedoDome

A lot of football to be played before we play them

Let’s focus on today first and see how the players cope with the plastic pitch and a well organised Killie team
 
YOGI_GER said:
Not sure what you mean OP, the narrative is that will be a massive test of Gerrard.

Dont see anything wrong with this at all to be honest, it will be.
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Key point from OP is that Murty got TWO DRAWS at the piggery does that make him a great manager ,
so single result means nothing in the long run
 
We just have to beat Celtic and shut the entire Scottish media up, they cannot write anything negative about Rangers anymore if we quite simply beat them and progress to the group stages of the Europa League. If both of them happen, I think it could be a MAJOR turning point in shutting some journalists up. Rangers are back, you have no power here media.
 
Agree op, many of them seem to think a single victory over us ends all our progress and writes us off from doing anything.

Their ignorance will destroy them in the next season or two
 
I agree to an extent but I think the piggery acid test is actually not about the result.

If we go there and get beat but;

1) don’t get humped 5-0
2) don’t get over run in the midfield
3) don’t concede every time they go forward
4) pose a threat to them
5) don’t walk on the pitch beat

then I think the acid test is some what passed.

As you have said, even in our years of dominance it was never a game you could get close to hanging your hat on a Rangers win.
 
Barrymoped said:
While the trip to the piggery in 2 weeks is far from the be all and end all it would give a sign as to how our players can cope under that type of pressure.

Even if we are to lose, and let’s be honest after a trip to Russia just 3 days before it is a distinct possibility, the manner of the defeat can be telling. If it’s a close defeat where we are clearly in there fighting tooth and nail then it’s far easier to take than another 5 goal mauling when the players arses just collapse.

It will be Xmas before we can make a true judgement on our progress in my opinion.
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I agree with this, even if we lose to the yahoos it does not mean a jot.

We are still a new team gelling together and falling behind the yahoos by 2 points ( providing we beat motherhell)means absolutely nothing.
 
I see the game at Parkhead as a bit like a free punch. Assuming we and they win next weekend then the worst that happens is we lose at Parkhead and walk away 2 points behind having been to Pittodrie, Fir Park and Parkhead. That is far from the end of the world and we can all see the massive improvement Gerrard has made. Lose at Parkhead and I am still bullish on us winning this league.

But if we do happen to win at Parkhead then we will be in a fantastic place and the reaction from the other side of the city will be something to behold......
 
Quijibo said:
It looks to me like there’s an agenda, by the likes of Gordon Parks today, being set that the game away to celtc is some sort of acid test to measure Gerrards reign as our manager. Walter Smith went to parkhead and lost, Murty went twice and drew... it’s painfully obvious which of those two was a manager, yet those results in a vacuum suggest otherwise.

Losing at their sty doesn’t prove anything as it’s the majority outcome proven over a huge sample size, winning would underline our resurgence, however 90 mins of league football does not define the ability of a manger or a squad.

Qualification to the Europa League with a new squad, from the earliest point of entry would be a more sensible measurement of the team and managements performance to date. It shows the inward nature of our press that they want to boil the last month and a half’s performance down to 90 mins in September.
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It’s the prime “performance not result” that matters.

If we go look scared and get trounced 5-0 then fair enough long way to go and brought back to Earth with a bang. If we get a narrow 1-0 or 2-0 defeat while looking threatening and have spells we dominate and dictate the game with something like Gordon having 4/5 great saves then we know what we’ve seen so far is the real deal and we knuckle down until the next “acid test”.
 
It is the acid test.

To stand any chance of overturning them, winning 55, stopping 8IAR, we firstly need to beat them over ninety minutes in a head-to-head.

However, losing won't mean we're kidding ourselves on.

There's clear, tangible proof that Rangers under Gerrard are a very much different proposition than they've been at any time since Walter left, and even if we don't win at Parkhead in a fortnight's time, I think there's an inevitability now that beating them at some point this season is a very real prospect, and that looks like it could scare the life out of just about everyone in Scottish football.
 
Maribor was the real acid test, they had quality in every position and we dealt with them. The games against the Tims will take care of themselves.
 
Gerard will stand or fall on our performance over the season. That's the acid test. Where we finish compared to last season. F*ck them. This is nothing but stirring to cause unrest against our new manager if we lose. He's building a team, there's a long season ahead. Dont buy into it.
 
Quijibo said:
It looks to me like there’s an agenda, by the likes of Gordon Parks today, being set that the game away to celtc is some sort of acid test to measure Gerrards reign as our manager. Walter Smith went to parkhead and lost, Murty went twice and drew... it’s painfully obvious which of those two was a manager, yet those results in a vacuum suggest otherwise.

Losing at their sty doesn’t prove anything as it’s the majority outcome proven over a huge sample size, winning would underline our resurgence, however 90 mins of league football does not define the ability of a manger or a squad.

Qualification to the Europa League with a new squad, from the earliest point of entry would be a more sensible measurement of the team and managements performance to date. It shows the inward nature of our press that they want to boil the last month and a half’s performance down to 90 mins in September.
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Good post
 
academical said:
The tiny wee inward-looking bubble that is Scottish football. :rolleyes:

Gerrard has made an incredible start as Rangers manager, turned around an ailing team, transformed the defence, gone unbeaten in eight games, and got his men playing with a bit of style and confidence. Great start. And very early days.

The real tests will be how his team copes with adversity when it comes - how they come back from falling behind, how they react after losing a game - not what result they get in their first game away to their toughest opponents.

But there will always be people who only care about the Rangers-Celtic head-to-head.
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There is a a massive psychological attachment to this fixture now though, mate.

Celtic have been so far in the ascendency that losing could have a seismic effect.

The most relevant example would be the opening fixture at the San Giro in O'Neill's first season.

Rangers appeared untouchable at the time, were spending money like it was going out of fashion, had won a treble and a double including a title by a then record points margin and pundits were queuing up to proclaim that the Yahoos were ten years behind their great rivals.

Now, admittedly O'Neill spent a sum considerably in advance of what Gerrard has had this season rebuilding his squad, but it's a reasonable comparison I feel - incipient stirrings of dressing room unrest at Parkhead now? Ditto at Ibrox in 2000.

Victory for Celtic back then probably did most to propel them to the title that season.

It gave them the confidence that Rangers were beatable and instilled them with enormous self belief in the process.

It's unlikely to be by as emphatic a margin, but a Rangers victory in a fortnight's time could have a similar effect.
 
IrvineLoyal said:
No credit for the job the gaffer has done so far by the usual suspects



But if we had struggled they would have been all over it


Basically got journos who cant do their job properly because of an agenda


Scum the lot of them
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What a scalp that'll be,in previous encounters we've made them look good. If we can get 3 points there,which we're well capable of,the silence from these idiots will be deafening and crank up the pressure on them.
 
"Steven Gerrard and Rangers" AREN'T getting ahead of anything, they've stated several times that they know exactly where Rangers are... a progressing developing and improving squad.
Now, the fans may be getting a wee bit excited, of course they are, that's allowed.
The club, the fans and everything connected to Rangers have been target practice for everyone outside of Rangers. We are allowed a bit of optimism, we are allowed a wee gloat.
Feckin' media give it out....take some of it back without crying about it will you.
 
mentally challengeds beat us at the theatre of screams and they go 2 points above us with 35 games to play (provided we both win next weekend).

Losing to them's never fun but in the overall scheme of things it would mean feck all for the season.

If we were to go there and win or even get a draw though, lol, the timplosion cranks up another notch.
 
the only ones who will see this as an acid test and cast doubts on us ,should we lose at the piggery ,are those with an agenda and the more hysterical immature wee boys in our support ,most of us will know that we are heading towards a good place ,with a good young manager and coaching staff and a team that are hungry and hard working their fear will spur our team to better times
 
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