I first liked Rangers only because I became friends with a Scotsman who was a 'Gers fan. Later, after knowing their history, I got a soft spot for Celtic.

Don't know if its true, but I always heard Rangers and Arsenal, Celtic and Liverpool. I recall stories of the old firm derby and it sounded absolutely insane. I'm hearing this in LA where there are literally hundreds of street gangs and drive byes and violence was in the news pretty much every night on the evening news. He said the fans fought at a certain spot before the game, during the game and met up after the game. If you had something sharp you didn't stab you slashed to leave a scar, preferably on the face so if you were walking around Glasglow you might see your work. Insane.

yes that was my thought when I saw it. Too much blue and too much white. Bit too untraditional for me

it will still sell bucketloads

We’ve offered Jorginho a new contract. Little bit surprised to be honest. Thought we would go in a different direction

Rice is done an interview with The Athletic and an interesting thing came out. I recently said one thing we don’t do, or aren’t good at, particularly are CB pairing was long diagonals….Rice said that Arteta doesn’t like diagonals, or that he only likes them if you gain an advantage from it. He said he played a lovely diagonal to Rice in the Brighton game and Arteta told him, nice pass but Saka has no one near him making the inside ball on and has another Brighton player coming over. So Arsenal gained no advantage from the switch of play.

Have a look at the pass map for the amount of switches of play Rice has attempted in the last 6 seasons.

The details you hear snippets of about the plan and idea Arteta has on how to play football are pretty incredible at times. Arteta can still improve and I reckon he’s learning at a faster rate than Pep or Klopp because he’s so young and inexperienced in comparison to them. I think it’s crazy how little recognition Arteta gets for dragging this club off the floor and in to two title races in his first management job.

I think it’s a smart move. He’s proven he can come in and perform at a high level, he suits a lot of games and is a useful bench option. He doesn’t moan about lack of game time, doesn’t expect to play every game and his experience around the team on and off the pitch is vital.

We need players who fill squad positions 14-20 and can be very very good when needed and can be rotated in and out with the minimum of fuss. Whether that’s buying them in or even better buying in a player for positions 1-11 and raising the ceiling of positions 14-20 - Jorginho fills this role really well.

I think a central midfielder will be a top priority this summer

Hey Rog

Don’t seem to be able to log in on iPad.

Arteta might see him as the new Elneny, and bring another midfielder in anyway.

Unsurprisingly - and probably boring to most - but I was at that game. Arse had a long-standing relationship with Rangers, particularly at Board level, and we used to play them quite regularly pre-season. Their supporters were generally arseholes and many never made the match, preferring to stay in the pub, but they were considered as a temporary annoyance to be tolerated.

They day though, they were utter arseholes. Rat-arsed from the off, they were compLete degenerates. Pissing in bottles, cans & plastic bags and chucking them at the Arse supporters. Breaking bottles (with piss) on the underside of the roof so we got showered with glass AND piss.

As the report noted, this was all new. The normal North Bank chaps were thin on the ground since it was a ‘friendly’, so they had the run of the place.

Big falling out at Board level and we never played the again. I have never forgotten and I still dislike them.

Liverpool were Protestant and Everton Catholic. Not that anyone cares in this day and age

Declan Rice on if criticism of his goalscoring record is fair: “No, not really, because Roy Keane, Souness, Redknapp - people that talk about my goalscoring ability - if you looked at their goals, they didn’t score hundreds in their career.”

“They’re remembered for what they did as midfield players — Roy Keane breaking up play, being a hard-tackling midfielder, won loads of titles for [Man] United. The same with Souness.”

“I don’t know why when it comes to me, it’s all about goals, because it’s never been my game, but since I’ve been scoring, no one has said anything!”

I’ve said this before here but I’ve always despised them. I attended ibrox to watch the Richard Gough testimonial in 96 where we played them and sat in the home end. Ian wright was getting monkey chants from a group of fans that was hardly a minority (it was most) and it always rankled with me. For a kid from down south it was very unusual and disturbing to hear. Couldn’t get over it. To cap it all we lost 3 nil.

A few years later we played them at Highbury (can’t remember the fixture) but their team included guest players like David Unsworth so couldn’t really classed as competitive. There was loads of wrong uns around the Highbury area and some undesirable with a glass eye tried to start on us outside the fish bar of all places.

Since that day I’ve always dreamt that we would end up drawing them in Europe and would utterly annihilate them. I’m desperate for us to draw them but it’s never happened