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

Dayum

Well done Hibs...

Well deserved. Rangers are a shambles.

RoryMac

Do you think the board will look for a permanent replacement for McCoist now as waiting till the end of the season looks a big risk with Hibs just 4 points behind and are there any rumours about who is in the running?

It'd be a massive shock for Rangers not to get promoted but its looking more likely each week

Jelle1880

They've apparently told McDowall he will 'need to carry on', so no chance of getting anyone else in.

RoryMac

Jelle1880 wrote: »

They've apparently told McDowall he will 'need to carry on', so no chance of getting anyone else in.

That is a bit worrying for Rangers fans I'd imagine?

If ever a team needed a bit of a boost from a new manager....

Jelle1880

A new manager wouldn't help much either I guess, most of the team genuinely are incapable of the most basic of routines when it comes to playing football.

Scott Allan, a player who was deemed not good enough by the club ripped us a new one today.

McDowall also clearly does not want to be in charge.

blueser

Broxi_Bear_Eire wrote: »

A shambles from the board down not much else to say on the matter

Crazy that a club of that stature (with the fanatical support they enjoy) ended up digging that big a hole for themselves to fall into. Those in any position of power within the club at that time should be ashamed of themselves. I doubt they are though.

Broxi_Bear_Eire

blueser wrote: »

Crazy that a club of that stature (with the fanatical support they enjoy) ended up digging that big a hole for themselves to fall into. Those in any position of power within the club at that time should be ashamed of themselves. I doubt they are though.

The problem has been ongoing our board is still full of spivs. Hopefully going by different things that are coming out action will be forthcoming and nog before time

Jelle1880

Macleod on his way to Brentford it seems.

http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/30631805

1m for our best player, that'll bring the crowds back.
No doubt they'll find a way to steal that money as well.

Eirebear

Jelle1880 wrote: »

Macleod on his way to Brentford it seems.

http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/30631805

1m for our best player, that'll bring the crowds back.
No doubt they'll find a way to steal that money as well.

This is close to the final straw for me.
I've not been to Ibrox for a season and a half, and I miss the place, but i can't give my money to this lot as they treat us with utter contempt day in day out.

Intifada

Surely the club remaining in existence should be prioritised over keeping a player?

Jelle1880

Like 1m is going make that difference ?

Intifada

Jelle1880 wrote: »

Like 1m is going make that difference ?

Well it will obviously go some way toward helping. Not as if any club is going to offer you big money when they know the begging plate is being passed around.

£1m isn't that bad. I think we sold Ledley for around that

Eirebear

Intifada wrote: »

Surely the club remaining in existence should be prioritised over keeping a player?

Yeah, because I suddenly have massive faith in the reliability and trustworthiness of the current regime!

MacLeod was the one high point of the last few years, the only glimmer of hope and a player who should have had a team built around him over the last couple of seasons.
We've sold him to the first bidder, without question it would seem.

Jelle1880

Intifada wrote: »

Well it will obviously go some way toward helping. Not as if any club is going to offer you big money when they know the begging plate is being passed around.

£1m isn't that bad. I think we sold Ledley for around that

What I meant is: I doubt the club will ever see that money, they'll find a way to make it 'disappear'.

bobbysands81

Jelle1880 wrote: »

What I meant is: I doubt the club will ever see that money, they'll find a way to make it 'disappear'.

Do you realise how much money your club owes??? It won't fall into a hole, it'll be used to service the debt you racked up in trying to win the fourth and third tier of Scottish football.

Eirebear

bobbysands81 wrote: »

Do you realise how much money your club owes??? It won't fall into a hole, it'll be used to service the debt you racked up in trying to win the fourth and third tier of Scottish football.

Yeah, I don't believe that either.
More chance of another pseudo board member getting his pay off than anything else.

Jelle1880

bobbysands81 wrote: »

Do you realise how much money your club owes??? It won't fall into a hole, it'll be used to service the debt you racked up in trying to win the fourth and third tier of Scottish football.

You mean like how they used all the other money they took out of the club to settle debts ?

Never gonna happen, they don't give a f*ck about helping the club back on it's feet.
They're in it for personal gain, nothing else.

They'll probably put some money in here and there, but that's just to keep the entire thing going so they can take more out of it.

At least it now seems that the Laxey shares (16%, largest single shareholder) have been bought by George Letham, Douglas Park and George Taylor.

Good news at last, hopefully the first step to more shares being bought by the good guys.

Rumours that Artemis' shares are next, which are 9% but I believe that would mean the buyers would be forced to buy out the rest as well (since it puts them over or at least close to 30%).

Eirebear

Jelle1880 wrote: »

You mean like how they used all the other money they took out of the club to settle debts ?

Never gonna happen, they don't give a f*ck about helping the club back on it's feet.
They're in it for personal gain, nothing else.

It's funny isn't it? For years Bobby's been scolding us for being trusting of successive spivs and scoundrels, whether we were or not.
Now he's expecting us to take the sale of our only high point of the past 4 years at face value.

Couldn't make it up.

Soups123

Eirebear wrote: »

It's funny isn't it? For years Bobby's been scolding us for being trusting of successive spivs and scoundrels, whether we were or not.
Now he's expecting us to take the sale of our only high point of the past 4 years at face value.

Couldn't make it up.

Thats because you need to get your heads out of the sand and when you do get it out of the sand you should be putting it back in

Eirebear

Soups123 wrote: »

Thats because you need to get your heads out of the sand and when you do get it out of the sand you should be putting it back in

...you calling us ugly? :eek:

Coillte_Bhoy

No offence lads but enjoyed this, just saw it for the first time. The bould Craigy in the Director's Box at CP. :pac:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmPDM9dmtsM

Jelle1880

Coillte_Bhoy wrote: »

No offence lads but enjoyed this, just saw it for the first time. The bould Craigy in the Director's Box at CP. :pac:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmPDM9dmtsM

I thought you actually meant him, was wondering how you could make that out from all the way over there :pac:

Coillte_Bhoy

Jelle1880 wrote: »

I thought you actually meant him, was wondering how you could make that out from all the way over there :pac:

I thought the same when i saw the thread title on a celtic board.

bobbysands81

Eirebear wrote: »

It's funny isn't it? For years Bobby's been scolding us for being trusting of successive spivs and scoundrels, whether we were or not.
Now he's expecting us to take the sale of our only high point of the past 4 years at face value.

Couldn't make it up.

You're missing the point.

The future of the second iteration of your club is at stake here and you're complaining about the sale of one player, it's like the penny still has some distance to travel before it drops.

Ironically Mike Ashley is probably the only joker so far who is actually capable of turning your fortunes around... whether that's his motivation is completely unknown of course.

Eirebear

bobbysands81 wrote: »

You're missing the point.

The future of the second iteration of your club is at stake here and you're complaining about the sale of one player, it's like the penny still has some distance to travel before it drops.

Ironically Mike Ashley is probably the only joker so far who is actually capable of turning your fortunes around... whether that's his motivation is completely unknown of course.

Right ye are Bob, Ashley's the one to save us and I just don't realise it. We're all just flapping our gums due to the sale of a player, nothing to do with circumstances that got us here.
****in' 'ell.

Happy New Year!

Dempsey

TBH, Im not sure what the club should do but I know that asking for a share issue to be covered by the regulars is not it.

20% stake for fans is realistic, they wont give it. Ask the questions why?

Coillte_Bhoy

Good artcile that pulls up Doncaster on his ludicrous claims

http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-neerday-game/

We’re technically on holiday today, folks, so for the first time in a very long time we’re going to write something about football and if you don’t like it that’s just your tough luck. Nobody’s making you click the “Read more” button.

Two fairly remarkable things happened in Scottish football today. The first was that Aberdeen went top of the Premiership for the first time in about 20 years, but the second was of a bit more relevance to this site’s political and media-monitoring brief.

donkeycaster

That’s because, for the very first time that we’re aware of since Rangers went bust in 2012, the chief executive of the Scottish league’s governing body, Neil Doncaster, explicitly and directly stated that the club currently 15 points adrift of Hearts in the game’s second tier was the same one that died two and a half years ago.

And that matters more than you think it does.


This site exists because we were sick of professional journalists not doing their jobs properly and not asking the questions people were entitled to expect them to ask. And in all the millions of words that have been written about the ongoing Nightmare On Edmiston Drive in the last 30 months, it’s astonishing that not a single interviewer or reporter has ever pressed the SPFL’s top man to answer that once and for all.

Doncaster’s long-overdue response couldn’t provide a clearer illustration of why there’s a Wings Over Scotland, because it’s a flat-out falsehood that’s simply allowed to pass unchallenged, despite not only being untrue but actually nonsensical. We live in a media environment where those in power and authority are too often allowed to assert that black is white and have it not only go unquestioned, but have it casually repeated as fact without so much as the suggestion that it may be contested.

And the really weird thing is that Doncaster appears to have spontaneously and voluntarily answered the question WITHOUT actually being asked it.

“How concerned should the league be about what’s currently on-going at Rangers?

“It’s very difficult for a league to get too concerned with the individual affairs of any one member club.

“We have a rule book, which is agreed by all member clubs. Any club within the league has to play by those rules and our job as a league is to apply them, so that’s what we do.

In terms of the question about old club, new club, that was settled very much by the Lord Nimmo Smith commission that was put together by the SPL to look at EBT payments at that time.

The decision, very clearly from the commission, was that the club is the same, the club continues, albeit it is owned by a new company, but the club is the same.”

Wait, what? Nobody asked you if it was the same club. But to his partial credit, the BBC’s Chris McLaughlin picked up the sudden outburst and double-checked it.

“So the official take from the SPFL is that Rangers Football Club continues, it’s the same club?

“Yes, it’s the same club, absolutely.”

People have extreme views on this, so what’s the difference between a club and a company?

“The member club is the entity that participates in our league and we have 42 member clubs.

“Those clubs may be owned by a company, sometimes it’s a Private Limited Company, sometimes it’s a PLC, but ultimately, the company is a legal entity in its own right, which owns a member club that participates in the league.”

So, once and for all, the league is putting this to bed, it’s the same club?

“It was put to bed by the Lord Nimmo Smith commission some while ago – it’s the same club.”

At this point, though, with the ball rolling across the six-yard line and the goalie nowhere in sight, McLaughlin doesn’t take the shot. Any hack worth their salt would have been in for the kill and asked Doncaster the two blindingly obvious questions that arise from that assertion – if the demise of the company didn’t affect the club, why did a club that finished second in the SPL find itself playing in SFL3 the next season, and why were its players allowed to walk away from their contracts*?

The SPL had penalties for clubs going into administration, which were fully applied in the case of Rangers: a 10-point deduction, which didn’t affect its league position. The team wasn’t relegated and no subsequent football penalty was imposed on it which would explain it dropping three divisions. That it did so, then, is an extraordinary event for which the league’s CEO has offered no rationale.

There’s no getting around the fact. If the club exists separately of the company, and was bought as an ongoing concern separate from the liquidation of the company, then its football activities continue uninterrupted and it plays in the SPL. Its players remain under contract.

The reason that didn’t happen with Rangers is that the club DOESN’T have a separate legal existence. Charles Green bought the physical and intellectual assets of the liquidated company – its buildings and trademarks – but he didn’t buy it as a going concern. He didn’t own the players’ contracts and he had to apply to be admitted to the SFL as a new club, with no voting rights, having been denied entry to the SPL.

“Green’s Sevco consortium had been forced to apply for entry to the SFL after Scottish Premier League clubs voted against the new Rangers being admitted to the top flight.”

Neil Doncaster said today that “The member club is the entity that participates in our league”. The fact that Charles Green’s “Sevco” club had to apply (unsuccessfully) to be allowed to join the SPL – a matter on which the old Rangers had a vote – leaves no wiggle room at all.

“Rangers will not play in the Scottish Premier League this season.

SPL chairmen met at Hampden to vote on the new club’s application to replace the old Rangers in the top flight.

BBC Scotland has learned that 10 of the 12 clubs were in opposition, with Kilmarnock abstaining and Rangers voting in favour.”

You don’t have to apply to join an organisation that you’re already a member of, and if Old Rangers existed at the same time as New Rangers and got to vote on their application, then they plainly can’t be the same “member club”. It’s a nonsense so colossal in its scale it defies even the concept of debate, like trying to argue with someone in a rowing boat on a lake who’s insisting that he isn’t surrounded by water and could walk back to shore any time he liked.

The empirical facts simply couldn’t be clearer. Old Rangers and New Rangers – the football clubs, not the companies – CANNOT be the same, because both existed at once and one voted on the fate of the other. You don’t give the accused in a murder trial a vote in the jury. And so far as courts of law are concerned, the incontrovertible established fact is that the clubs were different, because Old Rangers players were allowed to leave and join other clubs without breach of contract or transfer fees.

So why, as Neil Doncaster claims, would a learned judge like Lord Nimmo Smith find otherwise, in contravention of all logic and reason? And the answer, of course, is that he did no such thing.

nimmosmith

The findings of the Nimmo Smith commission can oddly no longer be found on the SPFL website. But they exist on archive.org and can be read in full. As early as page 3 in his report, Nimmo Smith summarises the history thus:

“Rangers Football Club was founded in 1872 as an association football club. It was incorporated in 1899 as The Rangers Football Club Limited. In 2000 the company’s name was changed to The Rangers Football Club Plc, and on 31 July 2012 to RFC 2012 Plc. We shall refer to this company as ‘Oldco’.

[...]

Oldco is now in liquidation; a winding up order was made by the Court of Session on 31 October 2012, and Malcolm Cohen 4 and James Stephen, both of the accountancy organisation BDO, were appointed joint interim liquidators.

On 14 June 2012 a newly incorporated company, Sevco Scotland Limited, purchased substantially all the business and assets of Oldco, including Rangers FC, by entering into an asset sale and purchase agreement with the joint administrators. The name of Sevco Scotland Limited was subsequently changed to The Rangers Football Club Limited. We shall refer to this company as Newco.

Newco was not admitted to membership of the SPL. Instead it became the operator of Rangers FC within the Third Division of the Scottish Football League. It also became an associate member of the SFA. These events were reflected in an agreement among the SFA, the SPL, the SFL, Oldco and Newco, which was concluded on 27 July 2012.”

That’s clear enough. A football club was founded in 1872, then it became a limited company in 1899 (note “became”, not “was purchased by”), it changed its name a couple of times and it went into liquidation in 2012. Its assets were purchased by a new company and a new club formed, which applied unsuccessfully for membership of the SPL and subsequently joined the SFL.

Note that Doncaster and Nimmo Smith’s accounts are already at odds here. Doncaster claims that the club is separate from the company, Nimmo Smith says the club IS the company. The club name (“Rangers FC”) is in essence simply a trading name for the company (“The Rangers Football Club Limited”). On page 32 Lord Nimmo Smith makes it absolutely explicit:

“We see no room or need for separate findings of breaches by Rangers FC, which was not a separate legal entity and was then part (although clearly in football and financial terms the key part) of the undertaking of Oldco.”

(All emphases in these quotes are ours.)

That’s the exact opposite of what Neil Doncaster claims the Nimmo Smith report said. Nimmo Smith found and stated directly that the club and company were NOT separate. Chris McLaughlin has followed events at Ibrox very closely for several years and knows this perfectly well, yet he not only allows Doncaster to tell an absolute lie unchallenged, but fails to ask the simplest and most obvious of follow-up questions.

Any reader who listened to James Naughtie interviewing Alistair Darling during the referendum campaign, or watched Gordon Brown given free reign to say whatever he wanted on the BBC at seemingly limitless length, or any of a hundred other examples, shouldn’t need the parallels pointed out to them.

Neil Doncaster and his SFA counterpart Stewart Regan infamously warned of “Armageddon” if New Rangers weren’t given privileged admission into SFL1 in 2012. In the event, they weren’t, yet Armageddon has failed to materialise. The Premiership is now almost debt-free, the lower leagues have enjoyed a huge cash boost as New Rangers have passed through the divisions, crowds are up and the top tier now has just five points separating the top five teams at the halfway point of the season.

We were told a similar apocalypse would result from Scottish independence. The electorate was told lies equally breathtaking in their scale by the No campaign, and those lies went similarly unchallenged.

When we talk about football – and we’re regularly berated for doing so on Twitter – we try (if we’re in a patient mood) to explain the connection between the two things, how reality is routinely twisted, no matter how absurdly, to protect the establishment and vested interests. Whether the subject is football or politics, the rules are the same.

(The SPFL and SFA are terrified that if they admit New Rangers are a new club their fans will be lost to the game. Ironically, pandering to the delusion that they’re not has left the new club in such a mess that those fans are walking away anyway, not unlike the way that winning the referendum has destroyed Scottish Labour.)

If the events of today don’t help people to see it, we don’t know what will.

.

—————————————————————————————————————-

* Nimmo Smith’s commission, in a document it issued eight days after its report to explain some of its reasoning, made some interesting comments in this regard.

“It will be recalled that in Article 2 ‘Club’ is defined in terms of ‘the undertaking of an association football club’, and in Rule I1 it is defined in terms of an association football club which is, for the time being, eligible to participate in the League, and includes the owner and operator of such Club.

Taking these definitions together, the SPL and its members have provided, by contract, that a Club is an undertaking which is capable of being owned and operated.

While it no doubt depends on individual circumstances what exactly is comprised in the undertaking of any particular Club, it would at the least comprise its name, the contracts with its players, its manager and other staff, and its ground, even though these may change from time to time.”

Emphasis ours again. In other words, Lord Nimmo Smith’s MINIMUM definition of a “club” includes the player contracts, which Charles Green did NOT get when he purchased Rangers’ assets.

Therefore, in Lord Nimmo Smith’s view, Green was NOT purchasing a “club”, but merely some of the raw materials with which to construct one of his own.

The document goes on to add:

“In common speech a Club is treated as a recognisable entity which is capable of being owned and operated, and which continues in existence despite its transfer to another owner and operator.

In legal terms, it appears to us to be no different from any other undertaking which is capable of being carried on, bought and sold.

This is not to say that a Club has legal personality, separate from and additional to the legal personality of its owner and operator. We are satisfied that it does not.“

Which seems pretty unequivocal evidence that Neil Doncaster’s claims are false. The Commission stated unambiguously that the “club” has no separate legal status to the “company” – the polar opposite of what Doncaster told Chris McLaughlin it said.

Any company can change owners, and the business – in this case a football club – naturally continues in those circumstances. But if the company dies the club cannot survive, because it has no independent existence. If you buy a dead man’s clothes you don’t become him. Lord Nimmo Smith could scarcely have been clearer on that.

Eirebear

Coillte_Bhoy wrote: »

Good artcile that pulls up Doncaster on his ludicrous claims

http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-neerday-game/

Tbh, I really, really don't care whether Doncaster, Lawwell, You, the Pope or Mickey Mouse sees us as the same or not anymore.
Its unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

What has worried me over the last couple of days is that both WOS and Bella Caledonia have seen fit to attack Rangers for one reason or another.
Scotland is rapidly regressing back to talking politics via the medium of football and creating the ludicrous Green =Good, Blue =Bad parochial narrative which goes against the forward thinking, progressive and all inclusive debate that last year spawned.
Its a real shame.

Coillte_Bhoy

Eirebear wrote: »

Tbh, I really, really don't care whether Doncaster, Lawwell, You, the Pope or Mickey Mouse sees us as the same or not anymore.
Its unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

Fair enough, if i was in your shoes id probably feel the same.

Eirebear wrote: »

What has worried me over the last couple of days is that both WOS and Bella Caledonia have seen fit to attack Rangers for one reason or another.
Scotland is rapidly regressing back to talking politics via the medium of football and creating the ludicrous Green =Good, Blue =Bad parochial narrative which goes against the forward thinking, progressive and all inclusive debate that last year spawned.
Its a real shame.

The WOS article attacking Rangers? Ah come on now, it's doing no such thing, it's having a go at the football authorities if anything.

A Dub in Glasgo

It is attacking the SPFL for it's lies and it is attacking the BBC for lack of journalistic integrity / competence. It is not attacking any version of Rangers