maineflyer

How do you know that, what's your evidence or basis for conjecture? If you have any evidence, who's money is it? And I don't think I mentioned Ellis specifically.

Sorry N_L, I'm clean out of clairvoyance today, you're going to have to explain what you're talking about... what post, what page, what answers, who's talking?

I can't agree that Murray was ever "great" for Rangers but, insomuch as ambition can be a substitute for judgement and direction, there may have been a few early years when his ambition did serve to maintain the momentum that his predecessor had already established. I could argue that his ambition died when it could no longer cover his fundamental lack of leadership and genuine intent for the club. Surely we are all Rangers fans and that is why none of us could stomach more of the same under the ownership of another businessman who arrives with no platform of emotional ties to the club.

When you think about it though, 260 posts in the absence of facts or any hard information is bound to be at least a bit shaky... or is it flaky? I don't think anyone has been treated particularly harshly here; although some of the other websites have been less tolerant. The real problem is that it deflects attention from the main issue of how Rangers will be run, rather than who will be doing that running.

I see there that Jimmy Bullard has signed a loan deal with celtic - can't say I've seen that elsewhere.

It's the last I'll say on it but you'd attract less criticism across the ether if you stopped harping on about your own credibility or about how others will look. After all, if you're right then you're right and if you're wrong then you're wrong. But why not just leave it alone until it works out one way or another. It's no big deal and I think far fewer people are actually looking to judge you than you think. Stay cool, let it go.

I'm not sure there's much to be smug about, or that it's a particularly helpful contribution to be throwing anything at anyone. There will be far too much else to think about without continuing to score points off each other.

Unfortunately, it's not just about money. It's mainly about leadership and direction; having a clear plan and the will to deliver it. Without an owner focussed on the right outcome, the club will continue to stagnate. If the deal turns out to be fundamentally about property, where do you think the leadership's attention will be focussed? I'm willing to hazard a guess it won't be on the football club and if that does turn out to be the case, we'll wish we'd never heard the name Andrew Ellis. Is this a time to be worried? Damned right it is.

There's something essentially depressing about seeing a thread titled "Broadfoot arrested". I'd prefer just to see "Broadfoot transferred".

It went fairly quiet around here last night too. I went off to watch some TV and returned to see the thread closed and all sorts of shennanigans had been happening. Then watched about fifteen members logged on but everyone apparently too stunned to post anything at all. We even had Grandmaster Suck reading the offending thread for about twenty minutes, so the notoriety of said thread must have spread at least that far. I said somewhere else recently that the lack of news was perhaps the most encouraging sign of real action we'd seen so far. I'd just like to think that if the Ellis deal does go through, we won't have an avalanche of self-congratulation from those who "predicted" it. What I hope we will see is an avalanche of questions to the club and new owner about his specific plans for the club.

Can you believe this in the Daily Express from Stephen Thomson, chairman of Dundee Utd? I think the best response I've see was over on VB, where someone posted........ "We're not here to be liked, just envied" RANGERS chief executive Martin Bain insists he will not stoop to Dundee United chairman Stephen Thompson’s level by being dragged into another public war of words. The duo became involved in a verbal spat last term when United refused to allow Light Blues fans free entry to a rearranged SPL game at Tannadice that had originally been abandoned because of bad weather. And they are on a collision course again after Thompson claimed Rangers were disliked by their SPL rivals. The Arabs supremo has accused the Ibrox side of trying to poach the best young talent from clubs across the country rather than rearing their own stars. And he claims the attitude of Rangers chairman Alastair Johnston and his fellow board members has made the Glasgow club hugely unpopular throughout the game. When contacted, Bain said: “I have no comment to make as I would not lower myself to that level.” Thompson insists that Rangers are trying to buy an entire squad of youth stars by dangling hard cash in front of smaller clubs and their young players. Bain, however, refused to respond to the accusation, although Rangers insiders claim Thompson is wrong. Thompson said: “Rangers have no money in the first team, but at youth level they have a lot of money to spend. They are putting in offers for 16 to 18 kids under 16 and the compensation levels are Ã?£40,000-50,000 a go. That’s the route that they have decided to go down, so they are trying to pick up a crop of everyone else’s development programmes. “And they wonder why other teams in Scotland don’t like them – and I’m talking at chairman and board level.” Bain and Thompson first went head-to-head in December and it’s unlikely that this is the last we will have heard about this particular issue. Back then, United opted to charge Rangers fans half-price for entry to a rescheduled league match after the original game had been abandoned at half-time due to torrential rain. Bain told the Ibrox AGM that United’s stance had made him “disgusted and angry”. Thompson replied: “I think that Martin Bain’s behaviour has been disgraceful.”

You choose the one time I give you a break to pick me up wrong. I'm putting it down to the paranoia of a hunted man.

Stop trying to convert me into a useful citizen, it's bad for the image.

I absolutely agree we CAN do it again next year but I still have doubts about the wisdom of managing through a season knowing it's your last. For some reason it almost never seems to end well. Or am I just being supersticious?

I'm sure I'm not the only one to be disappointed that a thread about the most important issue facing Rangers had to be closed (justifiably) after more than 200 posts because certain peole couldn't keep the emotions or language under control. And I say that as someone who hasn't always kept it within bounds in the past myself. I feel we need to be debating and sharing views/information on this critical subject so I'm going to start this new thread and ask anyone who is in any danger of getting it closed to please show some sense or just stay away. Thanks. EDIT: Just saw frankies post about cleaning up and re-opening the originbal thread - please feel free to delete this thread if appropriate... or use it until the new one is open again.

It's very gracious of you to say so but I just felt the need to express some growing concerns. I hope N_L is right and I hope Ellis is everything we wish for. I just hope this time we all take a far more circumspect approach to our owner and don't embarrass ourselves with the same blind and often craven gullibility of recent years.

Ha ha ha - and look what you started there... even if it was my fault for getting carried away. But you're right, you can only say it how you see it.

I remember, clear as a bell, back around 1994 or thereabouts, saying to someone that the best thing about Rangers was David Murray. As NIAR came and went, I started to question whether we were on a path that was in any way sustainable. It was clear by then that we weren't building any of the foundations necessary to secure the future. In fact, nothing had changed at all since the understandably cavalier days of Souness and all that jazz. By the late 1990's it was obvious if you looked behind the facade that we were heading for trouble. The bungled neglect of the later Smith years, followed by space cadet spending by Advocaat, guaranteed that a crisis couldn't be far ahead. And it wasn't. The more you looked, the more you saw ... the lies, the routine manipulation of the support, the obscene grandstanding. I'm not one of those captains of industry that Murray referred to but I do have some sense of a decent business and how to run one ... and it became progressively clearer to me that Murray was just a common gambler, a self-serving risk-taker. He never was what we needed at Rangers and where we are today was always where he was going to lead us. For my part, I fear his legacy hasn't yet been fully shaped and he may yet take us into even greater jeopardy than we see today - possibly as part of this deal to dispose of us. I worry a great deal about how much damage Murray will have done to this old club before his shadow finally passes. I'm one of those who has never subscribed to the belief that Murray ever seriously intended to sell Rangers or ever actually tried. If he is currently prepared to sell a majority shareholding (and I'm not entirely convinced he is) then I think he will only do so if it is demonstrably seen as another victory for the Murray brand, if it satisfies his ego sufficiently. In that frame of mind, I do genuinely worry that we'll end up in the middle of another Murray plot that isn't in our interests. Either that or we'll end up in the hands of another like him and prolong the pain even longer. That's why I look at Ellis and cannot for the life of me understand how he could possibly be buying Rangers for the good of Rangers. I hope I'm wrong and that there is an intent that is still to surface and which will reassure cynics like me. But the last twenty years or so should surely have taught us all that there is room for a great deal more cynicism amongst the Rangers support. That's why I don't have a hell of a lot of patience for posturing about who knows what inside story about deals that might or might not be done by this Monday or next. There are more important issues here.

I'm still thinking that while all energy seems to be focussed on finding an acquirer for the club, much more scrutiny is required of the man our observers of FF tell us is a shoe-in by Monday. Why would a bloke like Ellis want to sink about �£30m of his hard-borrowed money into a club he has no history or affiliation with? What is the deal here? Ellis buys at least a majority holding in Rangers - then what? How does he make his investment work for him? Is it a property deal, perhaps in cahoots with Murray? Is there some other business venture involved? Perhaps Murray is exchanging shares for access to some other assets that Ellis controls? Whatever the reality, it is increasingly difficult to see Ellis as a paternalistic owner of Rangers. Does he really believe the club can be rebuilt, or have any understanding of what will be involved at something like Rangers? I just have this gnawing doubts about this guy - not the man himself but where Rangers fits into his plans. This seems to me to be several notches up the importance pole from whether he buys the club this week or next ... or, dare I say it, whether some fella from FF is right or wrong.

After the experience of 1998 I can hardly believe Walter is again going to approach another season having announced his departure in advance. Trying to name McCoist as his eventual successor may cut some mustard with the dressing room but I never think it has worked to tell players in advance that you're not going to be their boss next season. I really hope it doesn't work against him but I'm not convinced this is a good idea, despite the strange times we live in.

The more I think about it the more I think you could have hit the nail on the head there.

I never like to leave people in doubt.

Ha ha - which Monday?

I'm not so sure it's comfortably the largest website at all and I seriously doubt it's represents a majority of the online community. I have several identities on the FF membership list, all banned, none active, but all counting. I reckon there are currently thousands of similarly defunct FF accounts and that, while still large, the current active is nowhere near what it is claimed to be.

He's likely to be one of those players whose true worth will be defined only by his absence.