GirondistNYC

He started with us in Emerald City, but switched to Man United around the time he moved to Gen Pop in season 3. Claimed it was all about John O'Shea and Roy Keane, the b*****d. Last seen in a Barcelona shirt out on the street discussing the glories of Tiki-Taka. Nice old school HBO reference.

Nice sweeping generalization there, and one that happens to be completely inaccurate. The Rangers fans I've met in North America have, without exception, a somewhat different perspective on things than the "real" fans. Living in countries with 99 flavors of Protestantism, some of which are far more demanding than the Church of Scotland, tends to do that. They also have a general attitude about the thing that makes me fairly confident I'm not going to get my head kicked in if I meet up with them and get into a football discussion (socioeconomics concedely plays a role here). They do (or did) sing things like TBB at their clubs but I got the sense they did so for largely the same reason (and in the same quasi detached spirit) that the English expat hangouts around my old neighborhood served Mobray pork pies, eel pies and fish, mushy chips and peas - expats tend to embrace somewhat archic ultra traditional stereotypes that thy wouldn't necessarily go for back home with the same regularity. I obviously would tend to think Celtic supporters in the US are even farther from the stereotype because I happen to be one, but really, you're wrong here. I seriously offered to take a Rangers supporter I knew to watch an OF game in Chicago when they didn't have a RSC there and have taken a Hearts supporting friend to watch cup games at a CSC here with no problems. A group of Killie fans watched the league cup final in one of the Manhattan CSCs and I heard they had a good time. Mutual interest in Scottish football in a sea of indifference can smooth over a lot of issues. That being said, idiots exist. If you have horror stories about us, I'd genuinely be interested in hearing them - Although I'd prefer if you PM'ed me it probably would be better from a thread perspective.

Sorry you didn't understand the reference. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket_test. Does that help?

I had no idea Norman Tebbitt was on P&B, let alone a Killie supporter. Ranting about the tricolor is just the cricket test, but less justifiable because it's perfectly possible to embrace the Tricolour at Parkhead and cheer for the Scottish national team draped in a saltire the next weekend. As someone who never thought the worst excesses of Rangers justified the Provo stuff I do think it's a stark necessity to get rid of the remnants of it that are left immediately. if a song requires a five paragraph discourse on the differences between the IRB, the Michael Collns era IRA and the various post civil war incarnations of same, plus careful attention to whether any "add-ons" were in fact sung, in order to justify it probably shouldn't be sung in the first place. But I honestly think all that stuff is going to go into steep and rapid decline now and everyone will be the better for it. We have other songs.

Well, IF SevCo stumbles up the ladder and establishes themselves in anything remotely like their old position, I'm guessing that anyone who sticks around or joins them in the 3rd will be a hero for life for the Orcs. That can be quite a nice little earner, as various ex-players promoted to bumbling blazers, paid to write dross for the tabloids or charging for RFF appearances during this saga have proven. Looks like an extraordinarily risky gambit on his part if he does it though. Not sure they'll be in any position to tuck away "legends" in cushy jobs in the years to come even if everything breaks well for them.

Don't think so. Putting aside the fact that as the article points out registrations are down to FIFA and national FAs, you can make a facially valid case that backing financial fair play rules with transfer restrictions is a systemic restraint of trade -- in effect it directly limits the ability of big spending clubs THROUGHOUT EUROPE to participate in the market under certain circumstances, and thus could be expected to drive down demand for players and indirectly wages pretty sharpish. To a certain extent, that's the point of FFP rules. The fact that putting some brakes on the insanity of the transfer market would be on the whole good for the game doesn't change the fact that if you look at it purely from the perspective of the players and with your economist hat on its anti-competitive and legally challengable. In SevCo's case, you're talking about a ban being applied to a single club in a middle tier country applied for specific reasons related to conduct that was itself anti-competitive. That isn't systemically anti-competitive and any infinitesimal ripple effect it has on the broader European market for players can easily be justified since the goal of the ban is Deterrance of bad conduct, not changing the economics of football clubs. Only result I can see is it reduces from slim to none the chance of UEFA intervening to specifically demand the punishment if it were to be walked back for whatever reason. Haven't posted for awhile as still taking in the enormity of what has happened. If you had told me it would end like this in February I would have never believed you. Having a discrete celebratory whiskey tonight.

Out of greenies, but I quite like that image.

But that includes a) unrelated discussions of business matters including various NewCos and b) loads of fitba fans mocking them (Bears oddly seem to shun NewCo and SevCo as terms). A better indicator of the "global brand" is #WATP - and that shows its not a global brand at all. http://trendsmap.com/topic/%23watp. I do expect the aging cadres of Canuck loyal and the former RBS guys in NY and Florida to show up eventually though.

The Marco Negri Interview is indeed a fake. Circulated and then debunked in short order on Celtic forums periodically.

It was a NewCo, and their problems were financial, not match fixing. Under Cechhi Gori, a chairman who makes David Murray look prudent, they got into a financial black hole, sold their best players, were relegated on the pitch and entered administration. They were refused a place in Serie B due to their insolvency and the club died. A new club was formed with a different name and new ownership and did well in C2. Significantly, there was then a massive clusterfuck involving other teams fielding inelegible players in Serie B with relegated teams challenging results. The "solution" was to expand Serie B so that the aggrieved team avoided relegation and an extra space was opened so Fiorentina could skip C1 and go directly to SerieB. Once Fiorentina was promoted again Serie B was shrunk back to its original size. Fiorentina also purchased the dead clubs intangible assets and now claims the honors of the old team. Given that sort of precedent for jury rigging league structures I think relying on UEFA and FIFA to step in is probably a long shot, although I would argue the Rangers case is somewhat different since there really aren't other clubs involved and the financial driver for the anti-competitive stich-up is much more blatant. Also, people seem to have broadly felt some sympathy for Fiorentina whereas I don't think that's entirely true here.

From the FT - Lotus F1 team figures set up £500 mil fund to invest in "second tier" football clubs. Link below. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/040ef7dc-c764-11e1-9992-00144feab49a.html#axzz1zurSe2Ka Interesting in that there is rather clearly big money chasing football outwith the EPL juggernaut. Could obviously be bad from my perspective if they or those like them drop in behind DeadCo, but the implications..... ... Somebody has been thinking about forming a fund of this magnitude to invest in football at the same time the parade of chancers have been looking at, and backing away from, Ibrox after failing to raise pretty minimal (in the greater scheme of things) cash. Those numbers must be worse than we thought. [Apologies, guys, FT is behind a quasi registration wall and their site is brutal to copy and paste fom on the IPad after many, many post theater drinks. Story may be worth checking out if you can avoid registration]

It appears that some of the reports of Celtic being the abstaining vote may have originated in a "joke" fake BBC tweet posted on KDS with hidden text revealing the "joke" that was subsuquently circulated as fact rapidly. This of course does not mean anything per se, just that the pitchfork and torches can be put down until further confirmation.

Hot dogs, Hamburgers and microbrewed IPAs with my extended family in the Godless wilds of New Jersey will taste much better now. Hell, even Coors water beer will taste like ambrosia if it turns out the vote really was 11-1. And I get to watch celebratory fireworks!

Wouldn't be surprised if the loudly proclaimed (if not much honored) boycotts by the bears didn't help. However, if everyone else boycotted departing sponsors the medium term result would be the business community deciding that Scottih football was so factionalized that they were likely to generate bad publicity to offset any good and to conclude they're better off sponsoring Rugby or a team in England (this is why OF shirt sponsorships tend to cover both). A show of loyalty to sponsors that stayed would be better at improving things. question remains - how much was the report "spun" by the SPL and how likely is the "worst case" in reality? There may be new sponsors who might quite like an SPL with one half of the OF missing to mitigate some of the losses, for example.

This bit to me explains a great deal. If the SPL just got around to sending out firm details on sponsor reactions last week to clubs, I can see where new facts on the ground might be concentrating minds and causing some backsliding and second thoughts. If the response from sponsors was much worse than anticipated the flip from loud no votes to pushing division 1 makes a lot more sense, and it's hard to blame (at least from a purely financial perspective) clubs in a precarious position from having second thoughts. Two questions: 1) how much would this be minimized if the prize money was split more progressively (something most Celtic fans seem accepting of) and 2) why the HELL did the SPL not extract answers from sponsors on this question earlier?

I find it very hard to fathom how any of the declared noes could back out and get them back to the SPL. Nor can I see how Celtic could vote yes. Rationally, each club should have been burning the midnight oil to figure out the repercussions of Rangers being in various divisions since MARCH (and the TV and sponsor contracts would have been the first thing they looked at). If any club (and that includes Celtic) thought they couldn't live without reduced income streams the logical thing to do would have been to start preparing the ground with the supporters early on. Killie, St. Mirren and Motherwell did a little bit of that but not a lot. Everyone else was noncommittal or vague. By the time the chairmen started announcing no votes they damn well had enough time to figure out the math of any possible scenario and talk to everyone involved. If they weren't going to like the supporter response they bloody well should have been moving heaven and earth to explain the facts, not taking the plaudits for a no vote if there was any chance in hell they'd change there mind. Given that the SFL teams seem to have been blindsided by the Gers to the first plan and the response was easy to predict I can't imagine that they were announcing no votes in the expectation the First Division was a cert. I simply can't believe the chairmen of SPL football clubs would risk permanently alienating their core audience by making public statements one way and voting the other just to get faster season ticket renewals. And that logic applies with full force to Celtic because their early statements coupled with silence has been taken By the overwhelming majority of fans as a diplomatic tactic to cover a no vote. Celtic fans will goes berserk if Rangers are back in the SPL and will not look kindly on even a no vote if other clubs claim they voted yes only because Celtic refused to accept more equitable prize money sharing, for example. The only scenarios where the the bulk of the clubs actions make sense if the rumors of backdooing Rangers into the SPL are true is 1) Sky, sponsors etc. have radically changed their tune in the last week, 2) nobody foresaw problems with the SFL teams, which seems unlikely, 3) Green has pictures of Doncaster in bed with a dead lady or a live guy or 4) SPL chairmen suffer from severe bipolar disorder and just exited their manic stage.

1) Reaction from SFL clubs to being leaned on in the meeting was apparently poor 2) the SFA was quoted as taking a stance against Rangers going into the SPL 3) the SFA walked back the statement 4) ominous rumors that tomorrows SPL vote will be moved and that they may, somehow, be let back in 5) Traynor is a silly, stupid, morally bankrupt person 6) St. Mirren had a meeting which may not have been entirely helpful 7) Greece invaded the Federal Republic of Macedonia

Nah, we've moved on to a highly elaborate 70s era "dap" (think "Shaft" and "Hamburger Hill") concluding in a parody of the handgrip of two high ranking Masons. High-Fives were deemed inadequate once Brown showed up.

I broadly agree with some of the substantive points you've made about Sky today. I also think you are coming across as a pointlessly disruptive arrogant muppet. Settle the f**k down.

I'm pretty sure that this isn't from the US. It looks like Chivas USA but its not - different jersey, crest and sponsor. I think based on google it's a Colombian team. Still have no idea what is going on though.

Well, yeah, but that average is skewed massively by the OF games, and show Rangers v. otherr teams being slightly more popular than Celtic versus same. I was aware of this, but seeing it laid out like that is pretty damning. That doesn't mean, however, that a more competitive Rangers free league still wouldn't have some value, and given the trend for ever yet more money for rights across Europe and the need to fill space on ever more channels. Genuine question: having experienced the full force of the Sky hype machine living in England, can the lower figures for diddy versus diddy games be partially explained by ESPN's marketing / penetration strength relative to Sky and a lot of those games being on ESPN?

On the TV / Sponsorship clauses, one thing to point out is that once a clause gets into a contract, it can be very hard indeed for the party that agreed to get that clause removed. A long time ago I worked on a stadium financing transaction for an ice hockey deal and our side fought hard to put in lots of provisions covering a player strike, which at the time was a distant possibility. There was, in fact, a strike but years after and under different circumstances then what we were concerned about. I'd be willing to bet that the original language stayed in and I wouldn't be surprised at all if it stayed in with only minor modifications after the strike even if new parties and new contracts were involved. "You guys agreed to this before, and you say it won't happen anyway, let's keep it in" is a pretty good negotiating tactic and is much easier than negotiating a point de novo. The point is however silly the occasional deluded threats to go to England/Blue Sq. or the Atlantic league seem now in light of a) the wall of money flooded into English football in the last decade, b) UEFA clarifying they don't like transnational leagues, c) Rangers fans trashing Manchester, c) improvements in the Dutch and Portugese leagues and d) the steep decline of the OF on the pitch relative to other leagues they didn't seem quite as pie in the sky in the past. Nobody seems to know when theses clauses emerged, but it's quite possible they are legacy language from a time where relegation of Rangers or Celtic on the pitch was incomprehensible but their departure to parts elsewhere over the life of a contract was a dim but no less real possibility. Given the viewership numbers for the OF if I was a broadcaster I'd be loathe to remove such a provision once the precedent had been agreed. If that's the case, it's hard to fault the Scottish football authorities. Of course, if that's the case the language of the clauses is crucial because if they were designed to capture the OF leaving voluntarily they might not capture this scenario perfectly. To speculate wildly, I wouldn't be shocked to find there was some savings clause language that made it clear the contract shouldn't be read as obligating the SPL to change their normal rules and which might be read creatively by either side.

The whole SPL TV idea seems insanely risky to me. The nice thing about big evil broadcasters is a) they give you the certainty of a multiyear deal so clubs have a broad idea of what they can spend and b) they provide the infrastructure, hiring the pundits and providing the cameras. SPL TV would mean the same Scottish football authorities we have been lambasting for incompetence for months would have to develop a keen business acumen in an entirely new field overnight. And if the hotshot team of experienced TV executives and marketing guys they hired (at great expense) got it wrong the clubs would take an immediate hit. Sky and it's ilk can in a sense subsidize football because they expect that people who subscribe "just for football" will end up watching other stuff one they're in the door, increasing viewership and thus ad revenue. But if you are a stand alone channel that doesn't apply - if it turns out the average Aberdeen supporter would rather watch the home games live and prefers watching Man City play Liverpool to Celtic v. St. Johnstone then your ad revenue will go down to reflect this in short order. Meanwhile, you are stuck with the fixed costs of multiple TV crews and whichever members of the succulent lamb brigade you've paid to sit on the couches. Do you want to sign your captain to a multi-year contract? Better hope that viewing figures don't crater next season, because that will lead to immediate declines in advertising and subscription revenues that will hit your clubs bottom line directly.

The new Installment in the excellent "Laundry" series of Cthulhu meets spy fiction crossed with British office comedy by Edinburgh native Charlie Stross comes out tomorrow (at least in the US). I find it very hard to believe this is a coincidence. The stars are right. If Rangers don't start next season in the first the Elder Gods will wake up from their aeons of dreaming and eat our souls. Sandy Jardine is the mask of Nylathotep. Case Nightmare Green is upon us.

Does this not seem to be a rather odd thing for a Celtic fan to say? [Would insert Rangers media style GIF of dog moving eyes if one a) could or b) could be bothered] Please, oh fellow Tim Brother, please explain when we had titles stripped from us?