Football Focus

[Narnia]

But doesn't it actually make you wonder if the loan system is being abused or that the rules aren't fair? If they have used 5 loan players it's almost half a team. I seem to vaguely remember some Div 1 team getting promoted in the last few years who had loads of loan players they couldn't them keep when they were promoted and went back down.

Another possible way of looking at this is that the managers are taking revenge on those who dismiss one of their kind too easily.

[SeanMacGabhann]

It'll be interesting to see who employs ferguson jr next

"now are we employing you and you alone or do we have to deal with dad when the shareholders get pissy?"

[ratty]

So, tomorrow we enter the transfer window, and, if most itk people are to be believed, the last month that my beloved Pompey are to be in existence. Quote direct from the "owner" - "We only need enough money to see us through to the end of January". Back in Admin by February and liquidated shortly after! Sad!

Hope all other teams avoid this shitstorm in the future.

HNY to football lovers everywhere!

[Annasfield]

Doesn't Mr Ferguson not speak to the BBC because of some programme about his lad?

Great how someone not being liked makes them a great manager, but in another breath a manager is a cunt for not putting their arm around a player. No double standards there.

[Narnia]

I believe that was to do with his brother Anna. Don't understand your other comment though.

[????]

Genuine 'must win' game for the Irons today :-S

[citizenED]

Looks like you got your wish Quids - if that was a must-win then I guess your lot are safe now.

[kpc]

Total capitulation in the second half at St Andrews. Should have been level at half-time either through Johnson's chance or a stonewall penalty for handball, but the tone was already set by then. Unnecessary bookings for two defenders in the first half, with the first goal coming from a pointless foul. Carr gave the ball away cheaply for the second goal and Johnson tapped in for the third when he could easily have cleared. Except for Foster, Carr and Jerome, nobody played well. Big games coming up - we could effectively go out of both cups and lose to bitter local rivals in an eight day period. Thank god for brilliant bar staff and Crabbies Ginger Ale with large whiskies.

[????]

citizenED Wrote:

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> Looks like you got your wish Quids - if that was a

> must-win then I guess your lot are safe now.

It's so tight we moved up 5 places and got out of the bottom 3 for the first time but played a game more than all and 2 more than some. Still think we'll go but 8/12 points over Xmas has helped.

[kpc]

Just looked at the table, doesn't make good reading. 19th.

[Mick Mac]

Ibrox Disaster 1971 - 66 people died on the steep steps down from the terracing at Ibrox. Today both clubs will come together to pay their respects. Rangers and Celtic will be led out by their captains from 1971.

The match has never been shown since, as a mark of respect.

The old Ibrox was a huge open stadium. The iron handrails at Ibrox?s Stairway 13 ran parallel, affording no release to those trapped inside should they need it, but to crush forward onto those below.

Strangely, the world reacted differently to the loss of life differently back then. Two Rangers fans were killed on the same stairway leaving a match against Celtic in 1961 but this didn?t generate the ?never again? reaction you might expect. The loss of life 40 years ago tomorrow did. Rangers tore down the old stadium and thousands of fans invested millions of pounds in Rangers Pools to create a modern, safe, stadium.

Today Ibrox looks like no other stadium simply because when they designed it there was no other stadium, all-seated on three sides, with a traditional stand and enclosure on the fourth. The trend for sweeping lines other modern stadiums have, with seats arcing around the pitch, was yet to be established. While Rangers took swift action to protect their fans from a repetition it took decades for a memorial to the victims to be established, the Disaster was spoken of in hushed tones.

Unfortunately the lessons of Ibrox were not learned by the authorities, or other clubs, until further disasters afflicted the game. The Hillsborough tragedy in 1989 saw it take the place of Ibrox as the deadliest stadium disaster in British history.

In among the madness of the Old Firm ? and there are lashings of that ? the odd glimmer of light appears. Endearing moments from the Glasgow duo should arrive tomorrow lunchtime albeit, and typically, with a deeply unfortunate backdrop. Rangers host Celtic on the 40th anniversary of the Ibrox disaster, an occasion that led to 66 people losing their lives and a further 145 being injured amid horrific crushing at the end of a New Year derby.

John Greig and Billy McNeill, respective captains of Rangers and Celtic from that era, will lead the classes of 2011 on to the pitch. Members of both 1971 teams will follow them on to the field before a minute's silence.

"Obviously it is a significant day in Rangers' history considering what has happened," says the club captain, David Weir. "And the players have been made well aware of what happened even although, apart from me, nobody was born at the time. Nobody was really aware of it [before coming to the club] but we have been well schooled in what happened, the significance of it and we won't forget that."

The detail of what occurred on 2 January 1971 has not become any more palatable with the passing of time. The widely held and mythical theory is that two goals in the closing moments of the match, firstly for Celtic before Colin Stein snatched an equaliser, contributed to the large-scale tragedy on stairwell 13 at the Rangers end of the ground. Yet that notion was dismissed by a fatal accident inquiry, which found the deaths were caused by people falling on top of others who had collapsed on the stairs. The supporters had been moving in the same direction in trying to exit the ground rather than returning to hail the Rangers goal. Of those who lost their lives, 60 died through asphyxiation with another six suffering from suffocation. Dressing rooms were used to house the dead and injured.

At the time the Celtic manager, Jock Stein, remained at Ibrox to help with rescue efforts. Stein had passed on only basic information to his players, sitting on their coach, in advising the driver to take them back to Parkhead.

"I remember sitting in the team bus and seeing someone coming out of the front door, carrying one of his shoes and limping and I wondered what had happened," recalls the former Celtic player Tommy Callaghan. "By the time we got to Celtic Park there was more information coming through. By the time I drove home the television news had even more and I just couldn't believe what had happened.

"Both clubs got together in the aftermath but there was no question that such a thing wouldn't happen. It was a horrendous time. Sixty-six dead. People had their loved ones setting off to a football game and then never coming back."

Callaghan's words have resonated in the past week, with Celtic joining Rangers in publicly stating the wider importance of tomorrow's match. Only the desecrating of the minute's silence, which is neither expected nor welcome, from visiting fans could ruin that fine work.

The television highlights from the 1971 game have never been broadcast, as a mark of respect to those killed and injured. A third of those who died were aged 16 or under, the youngest only eight. Five schoolmates from the Fife village of Markinch lost their lives.

Walter Smith, the current Rangers manager, spoke expansively for the first time in recent days about his own proximity to the disaster. Smith, then a Dundee United player, was left out of the squad for their own New Year fixture and travelled to Ibrox with his brother Ian to watch the Old Firm game.

Smith was then part of the United team which faced Rangers a fortnight later, in what was the Ibrox men's first post-disaster game. That, the 62‑year‑old vividly recalls, was played in "a very subdued atmosphere".

If any positive outcome could ever arrive from these events four decades ago, it was the recommendation of strict safety guidelines which were implemented across Scotland's main football stadia. Ibrox, for obvious reasons, led the way on that front under the insistence and close scrutiny of the then manager, Willie Waddell.

"I don't think there is anything that can be done to replace a family member," Smith says. "I mean, what do you do to replace that? If there is a legacy for anyone, then that [the rebuilt stadium] is it. It's just unfortunate that it takes something like that for people to move and react. I guess you could say it is, as much as anything, a monument to them but it's of no consolation that it's the case."

Football is often clumsy or over the top when trauma arrives. Nonetheless the sight of Smith and his assistant Ally McCoist as pallbearers at the funeral of the Celtic legend Tommy Burns in 2008 was a heartening antidote to the bigotry, hatred and conspiracy-fuelled nonsense that surrounds football in Glasgow. This lunchtime Rangers and Celtic will come together once again.

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

thanks for that Mick Mac. I watched a programme about it the other day, absolutely harrowing. The desparate grief of a mother who packed her young son off that day, still resonates.

In other news: bollocks. Celtic are two up.

[Mick Mac]

Peckhamgatecrasher Wrote:

>

> In other news: bollocks. Celtic are two up.

For me it was a very very unexpected win for Celtic. Wins at Ibrox are few and far between.

But we had key performances from Thomas Rogne in defence who kept Kenny Miller quiet and in midfield Kayal dominated Steven Davis which was surprising. These foundations allowed celts to dominate possession and for once we took one of our key chances and the penalty was icing on the cake.

Game on. Show me the whisk(e)y...:)

[Narnia]

I was glad to see the Celtic fans observed the minutes silence.

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

I never expected anything else.

[Emerson Crane]

kpc Wrote:

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> Total capitulation in the second half at St

> Andrews. Should have been level at half-time

> either through Johnson's chance or a stonewall

> penalty for handball, but the tone was already set

> by then. Unnecessary bookings for two defenders in

> the first half, with the first goal coming from a

> pointless foul. Carr gave the ball away cheaply

> for the second goal and Johnson tapped in for the

> third when he could easily have cleared. Except

> for Foster, Carr and Jerome, nobody played well.

> Big games coming up - we could effectively go out

> of both cups and lose to bitter local rivals in an

> eight day period. Thank god for brilliant bar

> staff and Crabbies Ginger Ale with large whiskies.

Bowyer reverted to type by hacking at all and sundry and how the tackle on Fabregas was deemed to be a yello is beyond me. Birmingham should have had a penalty but then I think they shoul have only had 10 men on the pitch. Talking of which, yet another demonstration of idiosyncratic refereeing reared its head in the Baggies game against the mancs. How can it be that anyone who watched this game, other than the ref who had a stinker, agreed that Neville should have walked. In fainess he missed a stonewall penalty for the mancs, but by then they should have been down to 10. Anybody else think that had it been a Baggies defender felling a manc, he would have remained on the pitch. No, I thought not.

[Jah Lush]

Talking of poor referees and I can't remember his name (**** Taylor?) and I'd not heard of him before but the guy who refereed the Spurs v Newcastle match was an absolute joke. How the feck Alan Smith, Joey Barton and Cheik Tiote remained on the pitch is still puzzling me now a week after the match.

[kpc]

EC - can't disagree about Bowyer and he's rightly received a three game ban. Would point out that before his challenge on Sagna, Song had felled Bowyer with an off-the-ball kick which went unpunished - not that I see this as any form of justification. The whole game was fractious which, unfortunately, continued the tone from the game at the Emirates back in October. The referee, Peter Walton, has admitted that he missed the 'key' moments in the game - I assume that the FA will 'rest' him for a while.

[Emerson Crane]

There is an undercurrent in the games against Birmingham since the Eduardo incident. Both sides seem entrenched and have taken on a seige mentality when they play each other. Not good.

[Emerson Crane]

Jah Lush Wrote:

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> Talking of poor referees and I can't remember his

> name (**** Taylor?) and I'd not heard of him

> before but the guy who refereed the Spurs v

> Newcastle match was an absolute joke. How the feck

> Alan Smith, Joey Barton and Cheik Tiote remained

> on the pitch is still puzzling me now a week after

> the match.

I've got to say that the quality of refereeing seems to have dropped this season. When challenged they say that they make mistakes just as footballers do, but nobody picks them up on it (for example a striker missing a sitter). I venture to suggest that a poor decision by a ref usually has a much, if not more, impact on the outcome of a game a striker missing a sitter.

[SeanMacGabhann]

Au contraire - nobody in the game is under more scrutiny than referrees. No-one gets more criticism

And they earn a hell of a lot less in a year than a striker does in a year

[Emerson Crane]

SeanMacGabhann Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> >

> Au contraire - nobody in the game is under more

> scrutiny than referrees. No-one gets more

> criticism

>

> And they earn a hell of a lot less in a year than

> a striker does in a year

No, I meant no one has a pop at the strikers/footballer who make errors, as much as the refs. Could have worded that better!

[SeanMacGabhann]

Ah I see what you meant now

Not sure Jose Antonio Reyes would agree with you - he used to get filthy looks from Henry back in the day ;-)

[kpc]

Approx ?70k pa plus match expenses and bonus.

Despite now being professional referees, I don't think that the overall standard of officiating has improved and that there are still large inconsistencies in decisions. Would like to see referees being more open and being interviewed after games but, given the current climate of reporting, I can understand why they wouldn't want this.

[Emerson Crane]

If they were a little more open they would take some of the heat out of the situation, the fact that they choose to say nothing comes across as arrogant and stand offish.