Tannochsidebear

So he has admitted betting against his own team on 3 occasions. If any of them were while he was with our club, he should be sacked immediately for gross misconduct. This is far, far worse than Sandaza did. The 3 game suspension will see him now sit out as the new boys come in, and will make it difficult for him to get back into the team, on the basis that we don't have the balls to sack him as above. It is a shame for him personally just as he has found some consistent form over the last few games for probably the first time in his Rangers career, and while we all know he is being made a scapegoat here and that hundreds of other players all over the country are equally guilty of betting on football, his stupidity in using an account in his own name, and then betting on games involving his employer, means that I have much less sympathy for him than I would otherwise. Let us see McCoist now give that list of players to the SFA and ask them to go to the bookies and ask for the records of all of them, just to be consistent.

Dont know what was wrong with my old password, it was only 1925 days old!!

One of Chris's better articles of late for sure, but like Zappa says he doesn't really ask the most important question of all. That being who is making these decisions for the club. A decision like that should have the approval (in fact it should be the idea) of the CEO and should also have the approval of the FD, and passed by a full board meeting. It is a big outlay and an important decision, so shouldnt be able to be made by any one person acting alone. What tendering process was used? If no tendering process, then what other firms were considered? That it is seemingly being suggested that this decision was made by people not on the board at all is very disturbing indeed.

The Daily Rhebel has been a constant source of bad-mouthing our club for many years now. Absolutely nobody at Rangers should have anything to do with them. Keith Jackson may be the one journalist with Rangers leanings at that paper, but he does not influence the general sway of anti-Rangers stuff that gets put out there. It goes totally against the general feelings of most Bears for exclusive interviews to be given to this outlet. I dont believe it is a good sign of how the McColl group look at us as fans if this is their paper of choice for releasing their propaganda. It shows they are out ot touch on this issue with the average Bear. If Paul Murray wasn't involved in the McColl group I would be 100% behind them BTW, but that is now 2 mistakes in my book that McColl has made. One in backing a failed former Director whose dirty tricks campaign during the first half of 2012 was disgusting and totally not Rangers class, and two in going to the one newspaper that Rangers fans cannot trust for impartial news about our club. 2 major mistakes nad he is not even anywhere near power yet. Doesnt bode well for any future where his group will have control.

I see McColl is so in touch with the feelings of the support at large that he runs straight to the one newspaper that just about all Rangers fans who care about these things would avoid. He wants the punters to back him, but makes such an avoidable own goal like that. It wouldn't surprise me to see him do his next interview with McLaughlin from BBC Scotland or Speirs. Whoever he is getting his media advice from is doing their job very badly indeed. For credibility, he should have went to Wilson at the Herald, or the one or two others that can be trusted (cant think of any off the top of my head though!) As for the actual business at hand, the money savings are of course just a stalling tactic. But for those to compare this to the bonuses paid out for winning Div 3 is hardly relevant. As corrupt and wrong as that was, it is hardly comparable to this, and also just because they have bled cash for the last 9 months doesn't mean they should continue to throw cash down the swanee at every opportunity. Dont get me wrong, I would want a clear out of Stockbridge and any others of the Green camp that so royally fucked up the care of the IPO money (25% spent on the costs of the IPO compared to an average of 10% for similar floats is just the first of many wrongs with how that investment was handled) and would welcome Blin to the board, and would be delighted with someone of his pedigree as Chairman. But Paul Murray is not welcome, his dirty campaign during administration and doing all his business through the press turned me right off him and he doesnt deserve a place on the board IMO. I also have a problem with McColl having plenty to say but not putting his money where his mouth is. Much like Paul Murray in fact. People who have worked for him at Weirs dont have anything good to say about him and his style of business either, which all adds up to a position where I dont really trust him to be leading this. I am somewhat satisfied that he has too many other business interests to get involed anyway, and this is all about "corporate governance".

£10 in the account. A poor wee slip of the keyboard again I suppose.

I have been expecting Leggo's blogs to be completely anti-Green&Co since the EGM resolution was announced, and it will continue to be right up to any EGM takes place. It is the continual attempt to discredit Green and will soon start to big up the McColl group. It's all part of the game being played out at our expense, and has been for the last 2 and a half years. Dont take this as a backing of Green, as it's not, but I find it tiresome and predictable the way the bloggers are playing to the galleries. It's a PR war all right, and as with all wars, the first casualty is truth.

Green will know he was about to be sacked tonight and jumped first. Leaking it to that scumbag at the BBC, even though he is 3000 miles away with his beloved hoops, is just another GIRUY to the fans. Saying he is selling up is hardly new news, as this has been his stated intention for months now and would have already sold if he wasnt tied in until December.

I agree entirely with your quote above. I dont think we can really have any problem with that. That is the nature of floating the Company in the first place. To attract investors who dont care about the football club and its results on any given Saturday, but care about boardroom stability, careful management and profitable finances.

The problem here is that there isn't a horse worth backing in their present format. Green & Co have had their time, saved the club, fought the SFA, and got us through the Share Issue with a fair deal of success. Post IPO it has been all downhill, fast, and they are now pretty much finished as credible owners/operators of the club. However, many of the investors that they brought in either before or during the IPO, may still believe in them, have good history with them, or do not believe the alternative is credible. Turning to the alternative, we have a minority shareholder in McColl who says he wants change but doesnt have any spare cash to put in the pot. He wants to bring back the failed Director Paul Murray, who sat around while LBG tried to rip us apart with cost-savings and said nothing, and introduce Blin to the board. Apart from that, nothing. No intimation to the fans about his plans, no offer to buy the club from the current shareholders. Just shouting a lot and doing nothing. Much like The Blue Knights actually during our administration period. And look how that turned out for them. Stockbridge and Mather have also been doing the rounds to the "institutional investors", no doubt telling them to back the status quo and that everything is in order and not to believe the scaremongers. The unknown quantity here in all this is King. Now free to invest, with a proven track record of pumping his money in instead of empty words, he has slaughtered the current board and made armageddon type statements. These must be taken into context. I understand he wants to buy the shares from Green&Co at a price much lower than either the current value, or what Green will accept. Therefore making a statement about Admin2 which could have an adverse affect on the share price, is more to do with political manoevering than a real belief that the club will fail again. King has the resources to buy the club, or enough of a shareholding to control the club, and still invest in it. However will he want to do this as a minority shareholder (i.e.under the 30% compulsory limit), or will he want to take the club off public listing and into private ownership? Again, we don't know, and it is hard to back all these different visions and plans without knowing their plans. Unfortunately I dont see the events of this week, or a potential EGM in 6 weeks as giving us any long-term stability. If CG wins, there will be more mud-slinging from the McColl consortium. If McColl wins there will be more mudslinging from the Green camp. Whoever wins the votes doesnt mean that the other shareholders are going to go away. It doesn't mean our finances take an entirely different shape. All it means is we replace one lot of self-centred egotists with another. Or not.

That read like a oh-so-very desparate attempt by the Rhebel to say to its still many Rangers supporting readers to please not believe the club and to continue to support the ailing, flailing and surely soon to be bankrupt rag of a newspaper. To liken this clear message to the Rangers support from the club to the Whyte era of two and a half years ago is very desparate stuff indeed. Is that really the best the Rhebel could come up with after all weekend to work on it?

Why would someone who bought proper Rangers shares in the IPO (as opposed to a share in the RST), proxy their vote to the RST when it is unknown which way the RST is going to vote on the resolutions. I understand it is a bit chicken and egg in that the RST can't say how they are going to vote until they count their proxy votes, but similarly how can someone wanting to vote a certain way be sure that the RST is going to be able to vote the way they want them to? For RST members and shareholders, I understand that they all signed up to this and that all makes good sense, but I must say I am a bit puzzled as to why the RST would be trying to obtain non-members proxy votes and will count them in with their own members votes before announcing which way they are going to vote. It doesn't seem to be very well thought out to me on that basis. For example if Charles Green (an honorary member of the RST if I remember right) decided to give the RST his percentage of Rangers shares to proxy and wanted to vote against the resolutions, then his votes would overwhelm the ordinary members votes as he is the largest shareholder. Therefore the RST block vote would have to vote towards CG's intentions, which might be against what the majority of RST members wish to vote for. It is dangerous ground to play on and I believe the RST would have been better served just to ask it's own shareholders which way to vote, announce it publicly, and then ask for proxy votes from non-members.

A couple of points re the last couple of pages in this thread if I may. The membership scheme should in no way to be related to an ownership issue. I don't even want the membership board to be on the football club or plc board, just have access to the meetings to discuss the relevant points that are important to the members. This is not, and should never be, about blazer chasing or Directors box seats or running the club. It is about influencing the club in a direction the fans want it to go. It is about getting the club to stand up for the fans, and make the fans the most important part of the club. I feel that for far too long we have been seen as customers, consumers, or just plain old trouble-makers. Most importantly it is about getting the fans, wherever in the world they may be, to feel like an important part of the club, that they have a voice that will be not just endured but encouraged. I hope a membership board would be getting contacted by the club on most issues for their thoughts, which would then lead to members being canvassed and these views being taken back to the board. With the membership belonging to the club, administered by the club, but run by and for the fans, it is very different from what we have ever had before, or would ever get to without it. Fan ownership is commendable but impossible. We are too big a club to go down that road, and the appetite is not there amongst the fans for this at this time. My hope would be that with a successful membership scheme would come, in a generation or so, the possibility of a fans buyout of the club. The feeling being that once we have had a taste of influence and making things happen, we would want to move it further and run the club. However if it always remained a membership scheme with tens of thousands of members worldwide pumping in a huge sum of money to the club every year, not just in share issues every decade or so, that we could have a major positive influence in our club for not a lot of money individually.

The problem with the scheme outlined in the OP is that it is not financially viable to the club. Giving a 10% discount in the club shop, ticketing discounts or restaurant/tours discounts would cost far more than £10pa per member. A member buying a top for himself and one other would just about cost the club a tenner, never mind any ticket discounts, prizes etc to be arranged. So the cost of membership as against benefits available has to stack up financially otherwise it will cost the club money instead of putting money in. I have looked at this a few times over the years as I love the idea of a membership, but I definately would not want it to be free or included in a ST. For it to work it has to be voluntary and cost a fair price for what you are getting out of it. That way you get the members who want to be members, and you will then get accountable leaders. A two year term of office for all office bearers, with no return to office within a decade should stop it from becoming a closed shop or run by the same people for years. Half the office bearers being re-elected each year means that a fresh election is held every year for half the board, with the other half being replaced the next year. This gives some stability and a good changeover period. It also means that volunteers know that they are not going to have it take over their lives, just a 2 year period of dedicated service. We badly need fresh approaches and fresh talent in our supporters groups, so I think this would see fresh ideas coming in every year. A fully functional web-site and forum for members only would be an ideal place for members to ask for help from their office bearers, or to bring them to task. It has to be priced at a minimum of £5 per month for it to achieve the things it wants to, like good member benefits, and putting a good amount of money into the club. The money could be ringfenced for either youth development, fans facilities (including web-based for non-attending supporters), creation/upkeep of our museum, or a combination of things. Quarterly meetings at Ibrox with the membership, with a weblink on the members-only website, and with a full Q&A would also enhance the accountability and ensure any issues were quickly taken up by the board. It would need to be given proper credibility from the club, and have access to football board meetings, plc board meetings, and a good working relationship with the CEO. I have always thought this was possible, but have always suspected that the current groups would not be interested as it is akin to Turkeys and Christmas. It would quickly become the recognised voice of the fans, run by the fans for the fans, with the largest membership and the loudest voice of all the fans groups. The RST would remain as a small shareholders vehicle, and the Association would no doubt still tackle the thorny issue of away ticketing for its members RSC's, but effectively the Assembly would be replaced by the Membership scheme vehicle.

There can be no doubt that all the off-field nonsense that has been happening to our club for the past 2 years has a major effect on the perormances of the manager and players. As 2011 turned into 2012 we were sitting as favourites to win the SPL in Ally's first season as manager. Indeed it was the sectarian bigot in charge of our rivals that was in danger of losing his job, and only a miraculous comeback at Rugby park temporarily saved his job. Then we started getting all our money problems starting to be aired in public, and all denied by Whyte until the day he walked into a courtroom in Edinburgh and placed the club into administration "for a couple of weeks". Our results went into freefall and a 10 point penalty was the final straw for the title race, with the saving of the club being far more important as results as players were asked to take pay-cuts to avoid widespread redundancies. Move forward to last summer and after all the nonsense about where we would be playing and even if we would get a licence to play, things started to calm down as Green and his board wewnt all out to promote the club and the upcoming IPO. There is no coincidence that this period of stability also saw our best run of results and performances as we went into a long winning run. A couple of months after the IPO and the boardroom wranglings start up again, with seemingly unworkable relations between Malcolm Murray, the Chairman, and Green and his team. This rumbled on towards the end of the season, and results and performances started to tail off as well. With Green having left the club and his patsy Mather in charge operationally and Walter as Chairman, things settled down again, we started being positive again with new signings, some decent pre-season displays and a lot of positive energy around the club again. Which brings us to the events of the last few days. Firstly we have the announcement that Green was to get a wage again from the club as a consultant, then the bombshell from Paul Murray and his backers which seemingly include Dave King that they want all Green's men out and their men in. On the way up to Forfar yesterday the talk again was not of players and formations, but boardroom nonsense and most Bears you spoke to were totally fed up of it all. It was absolutely no surprise to me therefore that the performance and result yesterday was so poor, as it was only following the pattern of events that the last 2 years has shown us. Of course, it is not as cut and dried as simply that. There were some good performances during bad times and vice versa, and on chances created yesterday we should have won the game at a canter, before any ciriticism of the referee, Callum Murray who again seemed to manage to not see 2 Rangers penalties, calling one as a foul a yard outside the box despite the fact Temps landed on the penalty spot, and totally ignoring the other in the second half, and before any ciriticism of the manager, who after pushing McCulloch up to make amends for his howler as we chased an equaliser then retreated into a negative mode for the extra time period and gave away all the initiative we had worked hard to gain. In any game we dissect it this way and that and can always do better in hindsight. Unfortunately the course of events we are now going to have to go through for the next 6 weeks until the boardroom war is resolved is not going to make watching the team very pretty if our recent history is anything to go by. You and I as Bears will have to suffer while those who clearly feel Rangers are a commodity to wrangle over first and a football club second continue their ugly war where all we can hope for is a clear winner, and for the loser to leave and never darken our door again. If only it were even that simple.

If my memory serves me well it was in the summer tournament we had at Ibrox for a couple of years. Cantona got sent off and Giggs was kept in the pocket of a young kid, which I think might have been Pressley!!

Don't know but we are unlikely to sell many more after today!!

Absolutely not. When we lost at home to a lower league side for the first time in our history under PLG, that was truly embarrassing. Today, with the players available and difficult conditions was a testimony to how we needed to improve from last year, and hopefully the signings made this summer will make a difference. 12 players out today and many others out of position or not yet match fit. Yes the tactics were awful, the desire and fight was missing, and his tinkering with the formation was unfathomable, but the most embarrassing result in our history, not a chance.

Please tell me a professional writer at The Herald didn't write "allowed" instead of "aloud". Are there no standards left in Scottish journalism?

The two shops are next door to each other, just as you go up to go through passsport control and the security search area. The poster is in the middle, between the two shops.

Now I know you are just fishing GS!! Whatever next, Ally Maxwell was up there with The Goalie? Anyway, off to catch my bus to Livvy. Must say I have enjoyed this thread thoroughly. No hint of finances, media, bheasts. The way messageboards used to be when I first remember using them.

Thats pretty spot on CB. A chore sums up a lot of last season. There were games I was going to at Ibrox without knowing (or caring) who we were playing. The away buses were all about catching up with mates and there so very little talk of the game either before or after it, whereas before it was discussed in depth who we thought would be playing, formation, tactics, individual players, opponents etc. Towards the end of last season it was more 6 games left, 5 games left etc. I wasn't critical of McCoist for that given what he had imposed on him last summer, but expectations are rightly higher this term, once we get past the first month or two.

Hutton was slightly better going forward than Stevens but his real quality was that he could cut in rather than just try to hit the bye line, and he got a good few goals per season. Ultimately Stevens was a much better defender and that is more important in that role. Jardine before my time (for Rangers, I do remember him playing for Hearts) I'm afraid.

Embarrassment would be going out to a non-top tier club at home. IMO!!

Goram Stevens Butcher Gough Numan McCall Gazza Souness R.DeBoer McCoist Laudrup The goalie is easy. Numan was in the top 2 left backs in the world when we signed him, and it was easy to see why. Stevens was mr consistency and just gets my vote ahead of Hutton was wasn't as good defensively. Butcher and Gough were easy picks, although we have had a lot of great players like Berg, F.DeBoer, Weir who wouldn't let you down either. After that I had Laudrup, McCoist, Gazza and Ronald De Boer as instant picks. Although rdb wasn't with us long and his best years were behind him, what an outstanding player he was. He had everything and could read the game better than everyone. Gazza on his day was sublime. McCoist was simply the best finisher I have ever seen. Laudrup is the best Rangers player I have ever seen, bar none. The final 2 spots in midfield were more difficult. Albertz, B.Ferguson, Wilkins were all great players in their time but I went for Stuart McCall as he as a al favourite of mine and would do all the are work to let my quality players do their stuff. That's why I went for only 3 in midfield as with McCall done the work of two players! My final pick went to Souness. Again past his best by the time he came to us, but still a remarkable player. Not just an enforcer, he had great vision and always seemed to have time on the ball. I have probably forgotten a few gems in the 27 years I have been watching the team every week, but I would certainly be confident of beating anyone with that team running out at Ibrox.