Part time football commentator in Scotland and currently blog on 4 different websites, one of which is based in the USA. I am a Scottish football advocate with the belief that improvement begins with youth football and as I see a lot of under 19 SPL matches, I have a better insight than most on that subject.
RANGERS REACH WORLD RECORD 53RD LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP
With three matches remaining in the Scottish Premier League, Glasgow Rangers reached an unbelievable 53rd League title yesterday when they defeated Edinburgh side Hibernian 1 - 0 at Easter Road.
Under fire Ulsterman, Kyle Lafferty, was the unlikely hero with a superbly struck goal that gave the Ibrox side the 3 points they required to retain the title and beat fierce rivals Celtic to the league trophy for the second year running.
Rangers manager Walter Smith, who has now masterminded a whopping 9 league titles over two managerial spells at Ibrox, is unbelievably unsure of his future at the Glasgow giants as the club has been up for sale by current owner David Murray for some time now.
Murray seems unwilling to offer Smith a new contract in case it jeapordises any new deal for prospective purchasers,so it looks like it could be a worrying time for Rangers supporters as they fear the loss of their management team in the summer which also includes former Rangers superstar and hero, Ally McCoist.
The league was won with an aging squad of players and with no new signings within the last 3 transfer windows, due mainly to the financial constraints placed upon the club by the bank thanks to a whopping estimated £60 million debt, Walter Smith has done a fabulous job with a mainly Scottish born set of players which includes 40 year old ex Everton player, David Weir.
The silverware that was collected today, well technically it wasn't collected today, that will be at their next home game which is now 3 games away, but the silverware that was won today is added to the CIS League cup trophy that Rangers won earlier last month but the treble isn't possible this season thanks to the Scottish Cup semi final defeat against Dundee United but the manager, the players or the fans will not be complaining.
This 53rd league championship title also guarantees Rangers a lucrative automatic European Champions league spot next season unless French side Lyon win this years competition. That outcome would drop Scotlands coefficient to a level that would require Rangers to have to play 2 legs of the 3rd qualifying round in order to progress to the league section proper.
Kudos however, must go to Rangers for this achievement and no matter who says what about Scottish football, you still have to beat your opponents to win anything and Rangers have now done this is style for a 53rd time.
FACEBOOK - MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE?
Social media giants Facebook, look like conquering the universe, well the world wide web anyway. They seem to be positioning themselves to rule the information superhighway with new and innovative ways of keeping tabs, sorry keep hold of their users and the friends of their users.
The new tools or apps are being designed to allow users to bring their friends with them wherever they go when online.
Take the new 'Like' button for example, it allows people to click the thumbs up 'like' button on any subject they see and from then on in, they will be forever linked to that person or subject. They will receive any posts linked to that user from that moment, with Facebook assuming that if you 'like' that person you will 'like' anything they post, you will 'like' anyone they are linked to and so on. The list of posts could be endless and obviously as these posts and the amount of people that 'like' them spirals uncontrollably skyward in numbers, so does Facebooks recognition and advertising costs and there lies the social network dilemma.
As they increase in size, they are forever looking for new and intriguing ways to keep your interest but with each new application they add, it seems they want more and more personal information about us making it more and more transparent.
Type your own name into any major search engine these days and see how many hits you get. The day of hiding away and being personal with your details is gone.
The government talked about ID cards for the citizens of the UK but they don't need to spend millions of pounds setting this up, they just need to sit some civil servants down and link themselves to Facebook and Twitter and they will soon see their 'friends' roll in. People they don't even know will want to be their friends just because a friend of a friend of a friend has mutual friends of theirs.
Facebooks long term plan is to make every page on the internet accessible from their site which will possibly make them even more powerful than Google. Not only do people on Facebook keep in touch with new and old friends and share family, work and social information, they are now using it to learn new things, new information, things that you used to Google or Wiki you now get on Facebook.
Facebook have positioned themselves to take over the universe and it looks like noone can stop them!
