Rangers FC On Field Gossip & Rumour Thread 2017 Mod Note in OP(Updated 14/08)

bobbysands81

The funniest thing in football!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dAKU0IDHj0

Well, maybe the second funniest thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dJpf3zOXd4

Hagar the Nice.

56 players on the books yet couldn't fill the bench v East Fife.?

From Tom English today.

Charles Green may have #exited Ibrox but the club still reverberates to the sound of his old cronies feeding at the trough. Yesterday we learned the identity of the person who sold 2.2 million shares in Rangers International Football Club plc – Richard Hughes of Zeus Capital, one of Green’s chums right from the start and a former commercial director of the club.

You know that old stock exchange warning about how a share price rises and falls? Well, that doesn’t really apply to the likes of Hughes or anybody else who bought into the club at 1p a share. When you’re in the door at 1p then there’s really no way you can lose. The Rangers share price has tanked with a devastating speed leaving those who bought at the top end in a hole to the tune of God knows how much, but the only relevance of a share price collapse to Hughes is that his profit is not as large as he thought it might be. He sold up and walked away with a return of more than half a million pounds. Another one who has done very nicely out of Rangers, thanks to Green and chums.

The steaming mess that is Rangers’ financial plight has now been dumped on to the desk of Graham Wallace, the Rangers chief executive. As an outsider, Wallace must be incredulous at the freewheeling ways of his predecessors, not just the way they sanctioned a first-team wage bill of £7.8m while in the Third Division (contributing to a financial picture so bleak that it made the eyes water) but also the apparent inability of some to accept that things needed to change profoundly.

One of these characters was Walter Smith, a man who brought huge glory to Ibrox when he was manager but whose attitude to the finances, during and after his stint as chairman, belonged to the distant past when Rangers thought they had money, when in actual fact all they had was credit and mountains of debt, most of which they torched. At the risk of dredging up events of the past (the recent past, albeit), it’s worth recalling what Smith said in the wake of the Rangers accounts being published last autumn. Commenting on an operating loss of £14.3m including payments to Green of more than £930,000 with £825,000 going to Ally McCoist and more than £400,000 going to finance director Brian Stockbridge on top of that first team wage bill of £7.8m, Smith almost shrugged.

He said: “People come out and say ‘Ah, it’s not necessary for them to have those players in that division’. But it’s not just the division that matters at Rangers, it’s the fact that you have 45,000 people coming to watch something on a football pitch…they are still losing money. But when you make a decision to be involved at Rangers, there is no common sense to it. The financial bit of Rangers Football Club and common sense don’t often go #together.”

Why not? What makes Rangers so different that financial common sense has no place at Ibrox? Smith’s analysis was plucked from the David Murray era; freakonomics born of hubris. No common sense? He’s right, there hasn’t been. That’s not to say there shouldn’t be or that there can’t be. There must be. It’s just as well that Wallace has arrived and seems determined to cut costs. Somebody had to shake the club out of its economic time warp and bring certain people to their senses.

It is estimated that Rangers are losing about £1m a month and that come April they will have just £1m in the bank. Around that point they will be going to the supporters looking for season ticket money for 2014-15, a support that they are continuing to refuse to engage with despite their lofty talk at the agm last month of some new spirit of openness. There hasn’t been any contact, unless you count a letter from a lawyer acting on behalf of some board members to a fans’ group. The upshot of the communiqué was that the Sons of Struth supporters’ lobby felt they had no option but to shut down their Facebook page.

Somebody should be talking to the fans. Wallace, you can forgive, because he has so many other things to be doing, most notably speaking with McCoist about cost-cutting. The questions are obvious but the solutions are less straightforward. According to their website, Rangers have 56 full professionals or professional youth players on their books. According to Celtic’s website, they have now got 50, including their newest recruit Stefan Johansen. Wallace will, no doubt, be asking about this. “Why are there so many players here? How many are worth what we’re paying them? How many can we lose?”

Why are there so many? That’s one for McCoist. In the summer he signed Steve Simonsen as his reserve goalkeeper. Simonsen is a fine goalie and proved as much at Dundee last season, but Rangers didn’t need him then and they don’t need him now. They have Cammy Bell and they also have Scott Gallacher, a 24-year-old who has been at the club since 2006 and who has played only a handful of games. For the less than arduous task of #sitting on the Rangers bench and, very, very #occasionally, covering for Bell in matches, why not go with Gallacher and save yourself the expense of #Simonsen? We don’t know how much Simonsen is being paid – more than Gallacher for sure – but whatever it is, it’s money for old rope given that his sum total of minutes played since joining Rangers stands at zero.

It’s easy to envisage Wallace going through the Rangers squad and continually asking a simple question. Steve Simonsen – why? Emilson Cribari – why? Dean Shiels – why? David Templeton – why? Richard Foster – why? Steven Smith – why? Ian Black, on those wages, why? All of these, and others, are on more money than they could expect to get elsewhere and won’t be in any great hurry to leave. So, for now, Rangers are stuck with them because they can’t afford to make them redundant. This is the legacy of the club’s scattergun accumulation of players they didn’t particularly need to meet the challenge they were faced with. Namely, the Third Division last season and League 1 this season.

Wallace is having to deal with the consequences of such financial waste. He is surrounded by “money men” at the club – Stockbridge, Ken Olverman, Andrew Dickson and the accountancy firm Active Corporate – but he has gone outside Ibrox for a financial advisor in the shape of Philip Nash. On one level that looks like more waste. On another, given the state of the club, you can understand why he’s looking for fresh thinking on the fiscal front. The incumbents have not exactly #covered themselves in glory.

For years, Rangers celebrated men – Murray et al – who spent vast amounts of money and improved the team. The guy they should be celebrating now is the one who calls a halt to the financial waste and makes the club face its reality, even if his actions run the risk of putting him in conflict with his manager.

There will be bleating, but only by those who are mired in the past. Those who truly conform to that much-abused description of “having the best interests of the club at heart” would say bring on the cost-cutting to stave off disaster.

In trying to move on from the damage of the past, Wallace knows what the club needs to do. But it promises to be a tough and lonely journey for him.

Hagar the Nice.

Trouble ahead.

Daily Record Sport @Record_Sport
Follow
Record Sport understands Rangers players have refused to accept a 15% paycut. More to follow.
5:24 PM - 16 Jan 2014


From BBC Sport,Scotland.
Rangers players have rejected the Ibrox club's proposal of an across the board 15% wage cut.
Manager Ally McCoist had been told that he would have to make cuts to his playing budget.
McCoist has been in discussions with Graham Wallace as the chief executive undertakes a comprehensive review of the Ibrox finances.
The players' wage bill at the League One side currently stands between £6m and £7m per annum.
Last week, McCoist signed off on a pay cut of around 50%, which he agreed to in October.
And consultant Philip Nash has been brought to Ibrox to help oversee the financial overhaul.

Dempsey

http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/latest/rangers-investor-sells-2-million-shares-1-3271020

A RANGERS shareholder is believed to have made a profit of around £500,000 after selling over 2 million shares in the club.

Richard Hughes, the co-founder of Zeus Capital - the firm at the centre of Charles Green’s takeover in 2012 - had paid 1p for each of the shares, but is thought to have sold his stake when prices reached 24p per share on Tuesday.

Mr Hughes was embroiled in an alleged tax scandal in November 2012 when it was revealed that HMRC was probing tax schemes set up through the Zeus Partners company. The firm, which has no connection to Zeus Capital, was alleged to have set up, and marketed, a £134 million film investment scheme that was suspected by the taxman of being part of an illegal effort to generate millions of pounds in tax relief. The firm said at the time that it ‘categorically denies any wrongdoing’.

The sale came on the same day as Damille Investments II Limited bought £2 million worth of shares in Rangers, handing them a 3 per cent stake in the Ibrox club.

Mr Hughes is reported to have performed an important role in securing the purchase of the club’s assets for £5.5 million by the Sevco consortium in February 2012, but former Sheffield United chief executive Mr Green quit the same role at Ibrox amid allegations of his involvement with former Rangers owner Craig Whyte and following alleged racist comments made about former Ibrox director Imran Ahmad.

Despite being brought back to the club in a paid consultancy role, he left for a second time in August last year, and began selling his shares in Rangers International Football Club (RIFC).

The club’s stock market value has fallen by over half in the last four months, as the Ibrox boardroom power struggle rages on.

When Guernsey-based Damille bought into the Rangers, the share price was down 56 per cent from the 55p achieved in September amid shareholder dissatisfaction with the club’s administration. The value of RIFC had gone down from £35.8 million to £15.6 million - the lowest in its first 12 months. The share price closed at 28.5p following the deal yesterday.

Tidy profit for doing sweet fcuk all!

LiamoSail

On the BBC site now that the players have rejected a 15% wage cut.

Hagar the Nice.

Dempsey wrote: »

http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/latest/rangers-investor-sells-2-million-shares-1-3271020

A RANGERS shareholder is believed to have made a profit of around £500,000 after selling over 2 million shares in the club.



Tidy profit for doing sweet fcuk all!

And they wonder why they are skint.

Broxi_Bear_Eire

Hagar the Nice. wrote: »

And they wonder why they are skint.

Who wonders certainly not most of the fans its clear it has been a carve up all along

The_Kew_Tour

ouch!

Broxi_Bear_Eire

The_Kew_Tour wrote: »

ouch!

That goes nowhere near it :P:pac:

Dempsey

Broxi_Bear_Eire wrote: »

Who wonders certainly not most of the fans its clear it has been a carve up all along

Thats certainly has not been the case. Rangers fans were wrapped around Charles Green's little finger for a long while with all the grandstanding he did. You only have to do a search on here to see that was undeniably the case and warnings were often downplayed & ignored.

http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/spfl-lower-divisions/tom-english-graham-wallace-must-shake-up-rangers-1-3270114

Charles Green may have ­exited Ibrox but the club still reverberates to the sound of his old cronies feeding at the trough. Yesterday we learned the identity of the person who sold 2.2 million shares in Rangers International Football Club plc – Richard Hughes of Zeus Capital, one of Green’s chums right from the start and a former commercial director of the club.

You know that old stock exchange warning about how a share price rises and falls? Well, that doesn’t really apply to the likes of Hughes or anybody else who bought into the club at 1p a share. When you’re in the door at 1p then there’s really no way you can lose. The Rangers share price has tanked with a devastating speed leaving those who bought at the top end in a hole to the tune of God knows how much, but the only relevance of a share price collapse to Hughes is that his profit is not as large as he thought it might be. He sold up and walked away with a return of more than half a million pounds. Another one who has done very nicely out of Rangers, thanks to Green and chums.

Phil MacGiollaBhain ‏@Pmacgiollabhain 9m

"Rangers are in now Administration in everything but name." This was said to me by a senior person in a SPFL championship club today.

Opinions of Phil MacGiollaBhain are irrelevant in this quote. If people on the inside track of Scottish Football are beginning to think in private that then its getting serious again. Ye could be calling Duff & Phelps on Valentines Day again!

Dont worry though, Stuart Regan is on speed dial to help ensure that ye have a football club of some description to call Rangers :pac:

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/sfa-chief-stewart-regan-tells-3023534

SFA supremo Stewart Regan tells Rangers chief Graham Wallace: Scottish football needs you to fix Ibrox club

SFA chief executive Regan said: “Graham is trying to put Rangers in a stronger place and it would be good for Scottish football if he could.

“We’ve spoken about the challenges he faces and Graham has a lot of work ahead of him.”

Hagar the Nice.

Gary Ralston on Sooperscoreboard,'It might bring good news,Dave King may now come in.'

weldoninhio

Hagar the Nice. wrote: »

Gary Ralston on Sooperscoreboard,'It might bring good news,Dave King may now come in.'

Or the Blue Knights, Or McColl, Or Bill Ng.

Dempsey

weldoninhio wrote: »

Or the Blue Knights, Or McColl, Or Bill Ng.

Dont forget the Dallas Cowboys!

weldoninhio

Dempsey wrote: »

Dont forget the Dallas Cowboys!

Wasn't there also talk of Apple buying the naming rights to the stadium?? iBrox hahaha

Lennonist

weldoninhio wrote: »

Wasn't there also talk of Apple buying the naming rights to the stadium?? iBrox hahaha

iBrox 2 soon to be iBrox 3 with The The The Rangers as the tenants:pac:

Coillte_Bhoy

Hagar the Nice. wrote: »

. But when you make a decision to be involved at Rangers, there is no common sense to it. The financial bit of Rangers Football Club and common sense don’t often go #together.”

I rest my case

Jelle1880

Players shouldn't be the one asked to accept a wage cut anyway, even though we're in League One a wage bill like this is sustainable, given the IPO money and season ticket money is spent wisely.

Sadly that is not the case, so because the idiots in charge are spending it left, right and center the players are now being asked to take a wage cut ?

Hagar the Nice.

Rangers players refuse to accept 15% wage cut following crisis meeting at Murray Park

16 Jan 2014 18:03
SHOCKED players booted out chief executive Graham Wallace's demands to accept the pay cut after the squad was gathered at the club's training ground by boss Ally McCoist.


RANGERS chief executive Graham Wallace's shock demands for Ibrox stars to accept a 15% wage cut was booted out by stunned players after a dressing room crisis meeting today at Murray Park.

It's understood the Gers squad was called together by boss Ally McCoist before he bowed out and left the talking to skipper Lee McCulloch.

Wallace has decided drastic action is needed to prevent the runaway League One leaders lurching towards administration before the end of the campaign, despite a £22 million cash injection just 13 month ago under a share issue promoted by departed chief executive Chrles Green.

Earlier this week McCoist met with Wallace and was warned he faced budget cuts after the new Ibrox chief had undertaken a root and branch survey of the club's financial predicament.

And with the Ibrox wage bill estimated at £6 million plus, Wallace has demanded drastic action to slash costs.

At the Murray Park gathering it's believed McCulloch mapped out the board's shock demands for a 15% across the board wage cut - only for the demands to be rejected.

A well-placed source said: "The players were shocked when Jig outlined what was being asked for. They were asked for a simple yes or no to the demands - and the response was no. Many of the younger players couldn't afford to take a hit like that.

"They had been warned something was in the pipeline but no one expected a gun going to their heads."

A Dub in Glasgo

I can't believe McCoist ducked out of telling the players, bit of a teflon is McCoist

PauloMN

Lennonist wrote: »

iBrox 2 soon to be iBrox 3 with The The The Rangers as the tenants:pac:

iBrox mini perhaps?

Jelle1880

A Dub in Glasgo wrote: »

I can't believe McCoist ducked out of telling the players, bit of a teflon is McCoist

It was a meeting between Wallace, McCoist and McCulloch, not the other players.

bobmalooka

weldoninhio wrote: »

Wasn't there also talk of Apple buying the naming rights to the stadium?? iBrox hahaha

That was my favourite part of the whole sorry affair right at the height of Charles green being the darling of the rangers support.

Celtic fans say watch this guy and all he has to do is tell ye he'll look into getting orange jerseys and the biggest company in the world want in, and then if became an easy choice.

And I have to laugh at the ones saying it was obvious it was a carve up, did you not defend him stoutly? And even discuss giving him your hard earned cash for shares?

bobmalooka

Jelle1880 wrote: »

It was a meeting between Wallace, McCoist and McCulloch, not the other players.

Exactly, who communicated the pay cut to the players?

A Dub in Glasgo

This is McCoist leaving McCulloch to do the dirty work

stolen from the HB

weldoninhio

Jelle1880 wrote: »

Players shouldn't be the one asked to accept a wage cut anyway, even though we're in League One a wage bill like this is sustainable, given the IPO money and season ticket money is spent wisely.

Sadly that is not the case, so because the idiots in charge are spending it left, right and center the players are now being asked to take a wage cut ?

Thats all gone buddy.

Jelle1880

weldoninhio wrote: »

Thats all gone buddy.

Yeah, everybody knows that.

Hagar the Nice.

Jelle1880 wrote: »

Yeah, everybody knows that.

It really is gone BTW.

Hagar the Nice.

A Dub in Glasgo wrote: »

This is McCoist leaving McCulloch to do the dirty work

stolen from the HB

When he comes to Celtic Pk with his new club,assuming they're still alive of course,we'll need to watch him in case he sneaks off to the new Fish Bar or Pie Stall that's opening in the JS stand v Motherwell.

weldoninhio

Hagar the Nice. wrote: »

When he comes to Celtic Pk with his new club,assuming they're still alive of course,we'll need to watch him in case he sneaks off to the new Fish Bar or Pie Stall that's opening in the JS stand v Motherwell.

Don't you mean new, new club.

Dempsey

Graham Wallace's 1st port of call should have been the board of directors and demanded them to take cuts first. You start where the biggest problem is. You'll find out very quickly who is in it for the money or for the club.