Cobardon

Nah, much more likely that the signings being made today of all days are season ticket related. Guess they haven't been shifting as many as they'd hoped.

You know what semiotics are, right? Anyway, not just St Andrews, but three of the four old Scots universities pre-date the reformation. The other (Edinburgh) was said to have been founded by a legacy left by a bishop. But you carry on there. Let's not let history get in the way of your argument. To get back on topic, I was very disappointed to hear the local Tayside police thought that, bar a small few, Rangers fans were exceptionally well behaved yesterday. That camera they were using must not have sound facilities. Still, once the novelty factor wears off almost no one will be hearing those songs for a wee while, so that's something. It'll be interesting to see if any disrepute charges are levelled at Charles Green though. That one can't have gone unnoticed. On the pitch, Rangers were minging though, weren't they? If the idea of playing guys like Bocanegra and Goian was to advertise them, that may have backfired as both looked very much at home at Division 2 level in Scotland. And the young guys making up the numbers were not as good as Brechin either.

And what, I may ask, are we meant to make of this insane broadside by Green? Is it ok to rip the shit out of every other club now that you've got some sort of membership Charles, eh?

Well, it was in direct response to a poster claiming that without this site Rangers would still be in the SPL. But I agree with most of what you are saying. The net has been very important and I have never disputed fan power as the prime motivator in the decision. This particular site - read widely though it is - less so. A small fraction of fans read it. Certainly not the many thousands who withheld their money at clubs across the country. Still, the high level of debate and informed opinion has brought in and kept interested onlookers like me, so you've got to have played a part, if only via word of mouth from those who do come here to those who don't.

-Rangers and their fans' own shameful conduct - before, during and after administration. Arrogance, lack of apologies, not paying debts to those who would be voting on their future, threats of boycotts, that ridiculous presentation at the final meeting etc. -Implied threats from FIFA/UEFA. (And possible banning of Europe/national team). I don't think this would ever have happened, but it couldn't be entirely discounted. -Chance to change things - voting rights, league reconstruction and possibility for some of challenging for 2nd. -Last - and probably least - sporting integrity. As I say, the fan power was crucial to the pressure on chairmen, but it wasn't the only show in town.

Wow. And some above were slagging Celtic for 'taking credit' for Rangers' demise...talk about delusions of grandeur... I'm not saying that the groundswell of opinion - when based on concrete evidence I may add (i.e. statements from Doncaster/Regan and representatives of almost every SPL club) - wasn't crucial in the decision to banish Sevco from the top leagues, but it was hardly the only factor. And this site is hardly the reason that many thousands of season ticket holders chose not to buy their tickets this year before decisions were made. Come on, be realistic here.

The argument that usually gets given - that football already has the world cup - may hold more water were it not for the fact that every sport at the olympics has its own major championships or finals as it is. In terms of picking sporting champions the whole Olympics is basically redundant. (Though your rant may have held more water if you had noticed that two Scottish women were playing for Team GB's football team this week.) As for people slagging the authorities for caving in/negotiating a pish tv deal, perhaps we should wait for what actually gets revealed later today before working on sheer speculation? (Still, that would be rather unusual for this thread, I understand).

As time goes by I tend less and less to believe elaborate conspiracies. I think if the last few years have taught us anything it's that most people who are proclaimed captains of industry, award winning businessmen and even supposedly brilliantly advised governments are making it up as they go along. There are no long term plans in place for most things, and certainly not ventures are risky as fly-by-night football ones. The reason Southampton seem to have paid up to Rangers is probably that they were very badly advised. Much like Ticketus, Whyte, Murray, the SFL/SPL/SFA and Green have been. There were no clever get-out schemes to work huge profits by malfeasance, no cunning stratagems devised to expertly bypass legislation and no geniuses pulling the strings behind the scenes: all there ever were were small befuddled men behind curtains masked by smoke and loudspeakers. Only without the wisdom of the wizard. More like the brainlessness of the scarecrow. This is continuing as Green, backed by Rangers fans, seems too dumb to know that while he continues to attempt to bluff he has his cards held the wrong way round showing nothing but a pair of twos.

It's not as simple as that in this current discussion anyway...we've been talking about the recent past, so calling them Rangers is correct. When D & P sold them to Green they were Rangers. Now, they may or may not be. But what they most definitely are -regardless of name- is shafted.

No argument that's why they stood up to Rangers, but since when has fan power been remotely listened to by our chairmen? That's why no one saw this coming.

You're right. It's easy to look back with hindsight and think that things are heading toward a land sale that will net Green and co a fortune (which, given running costs and lack of enthusiasm for the assets, they probably aren't anyway), but almost no one here in Scotland saw this coming. EVen when Green was buying most assumed that rangers would, at very worst, be playing in SFL1 next year with relatively light sanctions dished up by a scared SFA. His plan was always to buy on the cheap and flog off the biggest name players but still get Rangers back to challenging in next to no time. Then, flog the club back to the punters and walk away with a tidy profit over the piece. It worked across the city for Fergus McCann after all. If almost no pundit, chairman or fan in Scotland could see SFL3 with hard sanctions for Rangers, how could outsiders? Who expected our authorities and those running the game to grow a pair after all these years?

They should have, but the whole bet by Green/Sevco etc. was that they would, at worst, be in the 1st for a season and then pop right back up with minimal casualties. Hence, the fudge to avoid any staff, playing or otherwise, going. And that's clearly a position that has been held up until today. It's finally hitting home to them that this is happening. Green must be wondering how he can make any cash out of this now.

It wasn't the headline I was talking about but this bit: 'While the playing staff has already been reduced drastically, it would seem that there will have to be further cuts. "There will be jobs going - the implications are huge," explained Green.' This is the first time that anyone at the club has spoken about job losses with the implication not just of playing staff going.

Seems no one here yet has caught this latest instalment on the BBC....finally, the massive redundancy programme will start at Rangers. The only chance a 3rd division 'Rangers' have is to fire away. If only they'd done this four months back maybe they could have survived this...now, it's a last desperate gamble.

The other thing people tend to forget when calculating season ticket and ticket income is that a substantial percentage of football crowds are concessions. The widely reported three-years-worth of season tickets that Ticketus bought up was usually mentioned as £24. In the SPL. Hard to see ticket income increasing in Division 3.

We're three weeks off kick off (for lower league teams anyway!) and "Rangers" have 13 players (though Goian, Edu and Bocanegra may return), most of whom are under 21, none of whom have any prospect of pre-season games.The club can't currently buy any players and won't be able to for a wee while yet. SPL? They were having a laugh. I suspect they'd struggle badly at 1st division level too. (That division may not be top quality, but is very tough and physical). But as they're most likely to be going into the 3rd, I wonder how they'll fare there? Talk about a culture shock for those guys! Also, the older guys who have stayed - McCulloch, Broadfoot, Wallace, Bedoya and Alexander - will cost them an absolute fortune, with no clear indication of how they will pay them. Remember, John Brown is still urging a season ticket boycott. Oh, and they'll be more vulnerable to sponsor pullouts and loss of TV deals than any other club. Oh, and we still have the small matter of further footballing sanctions to come for them. I think the blind panic from the likes of Regan is the dawning realisation that there is a very good chance Sevco won't come through this at all.

They'll be paying back the 2nd place finish money then? Ach, I'd accept Zombie Rangers in Division 1. If you'd said to me at the start of the season they'd be starting there with lots of sanctions and half a squad, I'd have settled for that. But I'll believe it when I see it, if you don't mind.

That isn't really an apology though, is it? Saying that they apologise for other people's errors/fraud is a weasel way out. Absolving all existing employees of blame further compounds this.

My word. If only we had someone involved at the highest level who could renegotiate that amount to reflect the new reality of no Rangers. Say, a Chief Executive of the SPL. I mean, if someone offered Doncaster £5k for his car and he wanted £10k, would he then write off the sale completely and claim he'd lost £10k as a result?

Yes, nothing like a good old Stalinist purge to help bring all parties together after a crisis is there?

This is just rubbish. Given that there has never been a remotely realistic prospect of either of the OF going down south an insertion into any given sponsor's deal about 'should Rangers and/or Celtic leave' would have been prescient in the extreme. Until February this year there was no need for such a clause...it would have been like getting a specific insurance policy for your football ground in case of destruction by runaway zoo animals. Which sponsors anyway? You mean to say that a Paisley businessman would be happy to back his local team unless somehow games v the Glasgow teams were not forthcoming? How does that work? Were his sponsorship deals only worth having for three, maybe four games a season then? Wouldn't he just want to reach his target audience of people likely to buy his product? It doesn't make sense on any level. If we're speaking national sponsors, then again, we'd have to assume a ludicrous level of foresight, but even given that are we to believe that such is the worth of 50k punters to your audience that you'd instantly turn your back on the other c.100k if that smaller proportion suddenly became untenable and walk away completely from your target market? What kind of business model is that? My answer would be: none that exists in the real world.

You're absolutely right of course. And no matter which way you slice it our clubs will pretty much all lose revenue at least in the short term. Times will probably be tough and we may all have to get used to austerity for our teams as well as the rest of our dank, miserable little lives. But you know what? You're probably the kind of guy who supports a wee team that scores early against a big one then turns to his mate and says 'bet we get really humped now'. Only your mate isn't listening as he's too busy bouncing up and down and smiling manically. Most people here are your mate in this scenario. And it's nice to be him for a while before reality strikes back.

What rot. (From Roberts, that is, not you Mr Licht.) Directors have a charge to bring success to clubs, but that could as easily involve newco being voted out as in, depending on projected figures. If Dundee United were to finish second next year I'd imagine it would be hard to claim they will have had a less successful season, even if overall income goes down. Football doesn't - and can't - work like normal businesses. As anyone perusing balance sheets at the most successful clubs could spot within seconds, you can lose money while winning.

Absolutely correct and very well put, Sir. The thing is that print journalism is a dying art. The media we have are as slow to embrace the concept of user-led content and real choice as were the music and movie industries, and look how that went for them... Now, we have fan led websites that cater to an individual group of fans far more specifically and thus with less flab and more insight than has ever been possible...except perhaps for the fanzines of the 80s/90s. The web has replaced them. Now, those were no threat to the papers, being rather amateur and very occasional. Now, though, fans can not only access but produce content with immense ease. And they do. Radio and TV are also under threat as user-generated content now comes from inside the clubs, who generally have their own media teams of dedicated fans. But the dinosaurs of the formerly unchallenged MSM have not understood the change. This means that when Traynor and his ilk condescend to speak to punters on their pathetic phone-in shows they feel contempt is the correct attitude. Because it has genuinely not occurred to them that any given fan might actually know as much about the game as the host , and/or their football guests. The BBC and Record et al think they have embraced modern media by allowing people their say. The realisation must come soon that giving people that say isn't enough by itself...they actually need to reflect the opinions of the audience. Or they will die, as places like this become more valuable to fans than the old ways.