Ric

I think that says more about the people who post on here, than any underlying pervasiveness of the general public. If anything, I've actually been pleasantly surprised at the attitude of non-Rangers fans that I've spoken to (IRL that is).

This is the Daily Express, so I'll not post the link, however they have an interview with Graeme Souness.. To me, he's playing the victim card before a ball is even kicked. I don't think I've met anyone that has "hated" Rangers getting to the final, or are desperate for them to lose. In fact the two Celtic fans in the tenement I live in both say "good luck to them, they've earned it". Will there be a few diehards? Sure, but is it the over ridding sentiment that Souness is suggesting? No, not at all. In fact, the only thing that is universal is the wish for their fans not to shit the bed and embarrass the country like they did in Manchester. Something that has been echoed by Rangers themselves, albeit in more diplomatic language.

.. no, no.. it's fine, and you are not far off. I was just having a subtle dig at St Johnstone, that's all. hmm.. now there's an interesting idea!

Not really, I was replying to Swello's point that, if you look at it, St Mirren look like they have under achieved. I don't think many St Mirren fans would disagree with that. Of course, your analogy would only work if we had somehow managed to be in the lowest tier in the leagues..

Sure, as I said, the last decade or two doesn't make good reading for St Mirren fans. Not trying to claim otherwise. Edit: which leans into the question of "do teams roughly stay in the same place over time?" Will the big 2 (3, 4.. etc) will always be the top 2 (3, 4.. etc).

I think you've taken my comment the wrong way, I wasn't accusing you of manipulating the statistics. I put cherry picking into quotes to reflect that it wasn't a direct accusation. Simply pointing out a 20 year period is not the whole story.

Sure, although it should be noted this is "cherry picking" a 20 year period where we have underperformed in relation to club size and catchment. In the same 20 year period previously you could argue we overachieved with numerous top 5 finishes and a Cup win. That's not saying you are wrong, when you look at the stats they do not make great reading, but it's hardly the full picture.

Aberdeen fans? Living in the past? No... say it's not true!

I spent a lot of time and effort to go through all the claims, all the references I could and all you can reward me with is "you are dumb". I think that simply underlines you have failed. I doubt I will spend that amount of time on anything you consider relevant.

You might want to re-read that, as it makes no sense. The thread isn't dedicated to the split, but the league placings based on the split? Look, people can complain all they want but all I said was it's a farce and nothing more. If people genuinely want to discuss this without mentioning the actual context, then they really should avoid throwing salt and I won't reply to them.

I've taken my time over this, and I've had to be very careful as BR is one of my favourite films and people don't like learning bad things about stuff they like, but being objective I went over it several times. I have to say, specifically, the author fails to really make a case. They do their best by trying to pull in theories from others, but the article style means he makes no visual distinction between what he is using as a citation and his own opinion. This may be fine if I had access to his sources, but I don't. There are many instances where he flip-flops between supposition and opinion, then using that unsupported claim as the basis of further claims. I could list maybe 6 or 7 pretty major inconsistencies in the article, but rather than writing endless paragraphs I'll give you a single example: In the book, animals are special because they are almost all extinct, and those which aren't are easier to replicate than breed. This is core to both the film and the book, in the film this manifests itself with the snake Zora uses in her dance routine, and the owl at Tyrell's place. In the book, not the film, and bear in mind he is referring to the film in his article, there is a scene where an animal is killed. Everyone is shocked, because animals are so rare. So far, so good, no issue there. I mean the lack of animals, bad, but nothing specifically racial about it. However he then tries to claim that the killing of the animal shows that Deckard cared more about animals than he does replicants and therefore because replicants, in the author's opinion, is synonymous with being black, the fact he shows less concern for a replicant demonstrates the inherent racism. This is an extremely flawed premise for a number of reasons, not least because it's a somewhat spurious jump from one thing to another, but also that he has missed the whole point of his reaction to Replicants. He's not racist towards them, and actively doesn't join in with the perceived legacy racism demonstrated by Bryant, as we've discussed the point is he is ambivalent, that his journey changes that drastically. The author makes no mention of later developments of the film yet this is where his character arc specifically leads to a reversal. You see the problem here, and this is just one of many very similar situations the author finds himself in, is he is using source material that is not the material he is critiquing, yet uses that as the basis of his argument. That's the classic "a table has four legs, a dog has four legs, a dog is a table" failure of logic. I could expand on this, as I say there are several places in the article where he makes leaps and expects you to go with them, yet any objective reader would have to question the logic of that leap. He uses citations and rolls them into his opinion which devalues both. It's like the article was written as an academic piece then dropped and published when it didn't meet that standard. In summary? The film was in the 80s, which is hardly known for its nuanced portrayal of "non-white" characters and cultures. Are there questions to be asked regarding the lack of black actors? Sure, it's something I'd like to see Scott address. I mean we could make the argument that it just went on casting and that's just the way probabilities work, highly unlikely but possible, however even then someone should have said, "hey guys...it might just be me, but isn't there a large demographic not being represented here?". However, is Blade Runner explicitly about race? I'm sorry I just don't buy that. There are just not enough stereotypes, tropes or intentional micro aggressions to even come close to making that claim, and the article itself, while layout out a fairly decent premise, fails almost completely to justify it. Is race part of a dystopian future? Sure, of course it is, that's why it's dystopian and not utopian, but you can't label everything racist because it reflects modern society's fear of the future if that fear includes racism. It's like saying, Ghostbusters is racist because they treat the ghosts badly. We started this off by suggesting white people walking past Asians is somehow the epitome of anti-Asian sentiment on the West Coast of America. That's certainly not something proffered by that article, and without wishing to be confrontational you have provided no basis for that claim other than "it was perhaps of the time". Now we are moving onto whether this was a replication of specifically being negative towards African/Caribbean heritage, and while there may be more circumstantial evidence to support this, the article itself comes across as confirmation bias.

How dare you, and especially after @MrWorldwideJr had specifically told nobody to discuss the merits of the split. They will be very annoyed with you.

You mean don't discuss the split in a thread that is dedicated to.. *checks notes* ..the split?

The split is a farce, an artificially introduced "money spinner" that goes against the idea of a meritocratic league.

Gogic is 5 times the player Power is, that said he's much younger and we never saw Power in 'his prime'. Whether we get to keep Gogic or not it irrelevant, we don't need Power. That's not to say Power has been unsuccessful, he's done exactly the job Goodwin wanted him to, and now Goodwin's gone there isn't really a specific role for him. What's more if we need someone to rampage about the midfield disrupting and cajoling while, at the same time, mistiming tackles and constantly being on a yellow card then we've already got Erhahon in the squad.