I’ve enjoyed an excellent day so far listening to some brilliant podcasts and reading some interesting articles and forum posts.
Of everything, I cannot recommend the E-Tims podcast enough; it offers outstanding insights into Ange and offers more than a little food for thought about what The Mooch is up to across the city.
Every fan needs to listen to it, so I’m posting the link to it at the bottom of this piece and I hope you guys all check it out.
It’s really worth your time.
One of the things I’ve just read is an Evening Times piece on how Ten Hag at Manchester United has provided, in a way, the blueprint for Ibrox’s recovery.
It’s largely nonsensical, and amounts to how everything would be alright if they could only sign the likes of Casemiro. I’m joking of course, but only a bit. The writer means winners.
There’s an obvious problem with the article and it’s this; there are only two ways to build a squad full of winners. Either you buy the real thing, ready-made, or your team creates that reputation and earns that status for themselves.
Their problems are twofold then. They cannot afford to buy winners, because those players cost a lot of money which they don’t have. The second problem is us. How can you build a team of winners when you can’t win anything because your rivals already have that?
What the League Cup Final victory at the weekend has done is give some of these players a first taste of trophy success, and that’s good in and of itself. But there’s more of course. What it’s also done is it has made the players who were here last season into two-time cup winners soon to be two times champions as well. Not just winners, serial winners.
And that’s a triumph because when this squad came together last season the bulk of them had never won anything before. The Japanese boys who played under Ange maybe but O’Riley, Jota, Carter Vickers, Juranovic … nothing.
I think out of all of them it was Giakoumakis who had the experience not only of playing in a title winning side but scoring a title winning goal.
That’s why last season’s League Cup win was absolutely massive. This team was still chasing theirs in the league race, so that first taste of silverware was a huge psychological lift. These guys have now won two League Cups and a League title with another championship in our hands unless something very, very big goes wrong, which none of us can see.
Some of their players are title winners and added a Scottish Cup last year. They got to a European final. But we forget in a sense that they did those things in a strange way. First, the COVID campaign was one-off bizarre and it wasn’t just that we failed to win the league but that our collapse in that season was of a more general nature, and across the boards.
That was Gerrard in the hot-seat, a guy with a “winner’s mentality” but no actual league title to go with it. He knew he couldn’t repeat the trick.
But Van Bronckhorst was everything they should have wanted in a boss; he had won titles as a player and as a manager and not only did he win a domestic cup final but got them to a European one as well, although I’ve written at length about that.
The hiring of The Mooch is a dramatic backwards step. You’ve seen and heard this guy enough times now to know what he’s all about; he’s a “kick everything that moves and if it doesn’t move kick it until it does” type boss. His ideas are second rate. His attempts at psychology are a joke. He couldn’t even bluff the team selection. We all knew the “injured players” would start … and what a disadvantage it put him at picking them.
They are going to have a real problem going toe-to-toe with us, and since they can’t buy a team of winners and since they face an obvious difficulty in producing one I think the Evening Times piece is ultimately a bust.
The E-Tims League Cup Final podcast can be heard here.
That snidey prick mole face was only bought into the shit hole in an attempt to slow down our trophy count and buy some time.
Brilliant plan for ourselves, when having to do so with a bunch of serial losers and looking like Dad’s Army at the same time.
Was a sign of desperation and only left with panic now the DOBs and good enough for the scum.
Banter years back with a bang
As Roonsa said in another thread ‘we own them’….yes we do, they are our bitches and will be bitch slapped every time we encounter them. They are almost insignificant, just a pest to be swatted out of the way, they really need a helluva lot of favours from ttheir masonic friends now and in the future, and that’s just to ensure 2nd place.
The engine room subsidiary RIP.
Been an awful lot of nonsense and comfort space being created for Beale now the shock is subsiding. In the last couple of days ex players, journos, etc, are coming out stating that he needs several transfer windows over a couple of years, like Ange did, to turn the squad around and produce a team of his own making. However he has inherited the best part of a EL final team to begin with as did GVB (with shed loads of injuries).
Ange to me almost had a blank canvas straight away to deal with having to offload several players; Christie, French Eddie, Ajer, the loss of Broonie and several loanees, shit goalie and right and left backs for example. Then he had to get players in and improve some existing, Taylor, Ralston and a install a new club captain. He then had the January window and Bang in no time really we win the league and a league cup that very same season with swashbuckling energy and style.
Good luck doing that in one season. Ange in no time at all has shown what an absolute gem and talent he is. HH
Scottish Photographers who cover sport do great job. The fan videos were remarkable as well..
I laughed at at the dubbed video posted on a twitter account, of Mickey Beale giving his players a post match gee up. Imagine Choc Freddo and Kent with the American Sport Psychologist. Prophet from a far land syndrome. I would watch a doco on that.
Understand the point that you want to make but maybe should do a bit more research .. Jota for instance is a Portuguese Champion 18/19 season and a Portuguese Super Cup Winner 2020 (Equivalent of the EPL Charity Shield).. as well as the Under 17 and Under 19 titles he won with the Portuguese youth teams.
Funny to think though that our japanese translator has more winners medals than their recently appointed Hall of Fame captain
Found it.
https://twitter.com/Zeshankenzo/status/1630147277464453120
I was in the pub yesterday and all the zombies were turning on each other it was glorious I did not even have to wind them up unbaleivable long may it continue