maineflyer

I'd love to hear directly from McColl himself. Somehow I don't think he would say half of what's been attributed to him - the other half would probably be what the press didn't want to print.

The truth is that Baxter is a great legend but wasn't really a great Ranger, no matter how many people claim the opposite. On his day and when he could be bothered, he was sublime, as good a player as has ever graced the game, anywhere, any era. However, his stay was too brief and his time at the top of his game was really quite fleeting. What Baxter did do was play in a truly great Rangers team, the best I've seen in my time by a very wide margin, and in that company he could shine like the diamond he was. Greig, Caldow, Henderson and Brand could also have held a place in any team on the planet. Greig stood above them all however and was rightly recognised as the Greatest Ever Ranger some years back. In the modern era, only Richard Gough stands beside Greig in stature. McCoist is probably in there somewhere too but while the likes of Laudrup and Gascoigne were fabulous, a privilege to see, much like Baxter they don't enter the picture if we're talking about great Rangers men. In my opinion, it's about everything from skill to endurance, leadership and character, the whole commitment and contribution over time. Though very different people, Greig had it all and so did Gough. For me, these two stand above the rest.

Even truly great players have to develop into great players. The secret (and the real value) lies in spotting them before they become great and nurturing them for the future. In three or four years time the likes of Billy Mehmet won't want to play against Danny Wilson. Liverpool and the likes are simply smart enough to know this and in that context, �£3m is probably a considerable bargain. It's just an approach to business that Rangers haven't embraced for a very long time, so we're unaccustomed to it.

When Boyd was supposed to have been the subject of interest from Turkey (?) a while back, I remember thinking that he wasn't the sort of guy to stray that far from home. I still think he's unlikely to be the most adventurous type but I do think his scoring achievements have brought into focus for him the earning opportunity he undoubtedly has. The lure of lucre and the familiarity of working for Alex McLeish and playing with Barry Ferguson may provide the perfect temptation for Boyd to leave Rangers this summer. I'll be sorry to see him go but it looks to me that the board is set up for him to move.

D'you mean you would "give it to him" ..... to the extent that he couldn't walk? :devil: I'll hold your jacket.

I don't know about being the worst but this is certainly one part of the job where Walter has achieved least. I don't see how that's even debatable.

And snakes. Monkeys and snakes.

I saw that earlier. VB at its best, at the same time informing and challenging. In amongst the personal posturing and the downright incompetent, it's good to see someone chasing a little clarity.

Why is David Edgar making this announcement - I mean why DE, not why this announcement. Is the RST actually part of the DD process with authority to speak to the media on matters arising ..... or is Edgar guilty of what only a few days ago he (the RST) was accusing the newspapers of doing, leaking? This strange affair is the least business-like process I think I've ever come across, which hints strongly that it's probably not business at all.

Thanks for the benefit of your wisdom but I won't be asking your permission if I feel like commenting on any post. I saw well enough who you asked and took it fully into account. I imagine he'll reply in person if he feels like it. Here's another wee hing .

I think wabash is just stating what he believes, that Boyd will leave in the summer. Unfortunately, I think he's probably right.

Before worrying too much about the arithmetic, we need to answer the question 'why' first. What is this money to be harvested for? Is it to own the club - or to pay off the debt - or to buy players - or what? Even if you did believe it possible, raising �£30m won't in itself cure the problems at Rangers. It won't make Rangers profitable or even take us to breakeven. It won't win trophies and it won't buy better players. It might take us out of the hands of MIH/SDM but what then? What's the payback for all this money? Will we be more secure, more safe, more successful? And if the answer is yes, then the follow-on question is ..... how?

:thup:

Sadly, I only have your word for that. Do you have anything at all to say on the issue of promoting consultation and never delivering it? The questions are stacking up on you, will there be answers?

Is Novo going then?

Post 118. You obviously just don't get this idea of consultation. do you? I'll help, it takes place near the beginning, not near the end. It should have been done long ago. Your leaks have got nothing to do with the lack of consultation but from recent events you could also do with some advice on how to deal with them when they do happen.

Consultation, the word is consultation. Not publicly announcing the latest cocktail of ideas and then discovering that the people you purport to speak for don't agree with you. You are amateurs of the worst kind and you will never be the answer to the needs of Rangers FC. You continually alienate those who could actually contribute and pull the wool over the eyes of those who can't. This latest episode would be enough to embarrass better people into resignation. To see you coming on here throwing personal insults and pompous deflections only serves to emphasise the utter futility of the RST.

When I said there's a problem expecting people to pay this sort of money, I meant expecting enough of them to participate in order to raise �£30m; in other words, basing the entire scheme upon that expectation. I don't believe that sort of figure is reasonable. I've no doubt some people will leap at the chance, I might do it myself if the detail and the people responsible were credible, which is not currently the case. However, the starting point has to be fundamentally believable and this won't about by multiplying two numbers and coming up with the current debt. The rST suggests a scheme involving 20,000 supporters - yet the RST membership isn't even 10% of this so who exactly do they derive their mandate from? What, for example, will this RST scheme do to stop the debt increasing year by year? How will it generate the funds required to deliver the improvement you mention? Who will run the club and who will appoint them? If the RST want support, they need to get beyond this bollocks of announcing half-baked "plans" that no one can possibly buy into. I'd like to see the mechanics of fan ownership debated and presented before talking to possible investors or underwriters. Let's see what we're being invited to buy into. Let's gauge the level of support for such a scheme before we start talking to newspapers. The RST first needs to sell itself in order to create a credible level of respresentation, then it needs to engage in dialogue with those members, and only then should it be talking to third parties. Either that or it should step aside and another supporter organisation should be formed to address this project - because, as things stand, this will never get off the ground.

No problem at all as far as I'm concerned. Expecting them to pay it is another thing.

Personally, I find it slightly insulting to be talking about Rangers fans forking out this kind of money at a time of high unemployment, job insecurity, rising taxation and the rest of today's economic woes. Many of the people who will be expected to fund this wee adventure have families and mortgages that need to come first. Already paying substantial amounts to support the club, what justifies asking the ordinary supporter to pay for this pipe dream?

And you're inference is what exactly? Seriously, instead of silly offloads in my direction, why don't you talk to the articles themselves - or answer Frankie's questions in the earlier posts? Assuming, that is, you have any more idea than Spiers or English what's actually going on.

You have to admire spirit but fans' vision isn't going to work Published Date: 31 March 2010 By Tom English IF YOU'RE a humble fan, it's easy to understand what might appeal about owning a stake in your football club, especially nowadays when you see what is going on at great institutions like Manchester United and Liverpool. The financial woe that lies ahead of both of these terrific clubs is hard to quantify, but the suspicion is that there's a major financial explosion coming down the track for the pair of them. You don't need to be the economic brain of Britain to understand and be shocked at the level of debt they are both operating under. The pair are being run by non-football people and they have become fiscal basket cases. At Rangers, they've been through the wringer on the finance front. Their supporters have lived something of a double life this past year, worrying about the restrictions on the budget that continues to threaten an exodus of their best players, and also their manager, while at the same time rejoicing heartily at their new-found dominance in the domestic league after three seasons under the thumb of their now beleaguered rivals across the city. Since the club is for sale, it is no wonder that some in the grassroots are trying to put together a deal that delivers it from the possible grip of an unknown quantity. The Rangers Supporters Trust has taken it upon itself to forge a plan. A fans buyout is the nirvana they're chasing with all the hope, and frankly, the futility of someone tracking the end of a rainbow in the anticipation of finding a crock of gold. You have to admire their spirit, but this vision of theirs just isn't going to work. People at Ibrox are paying lip service to it, but privately they don't see anything like this happening, not because they don't want it, but because it just doesn't add up. It only makes sense in the hearts and minds of fans who are concerned about the way their club is going. But in the cold analysis, nobody who matters at Rangers really and truly believes there is a future in this. When Jim McColl, the chairman of Clyde Blowers and supposedly Scotland's richest man, dynamited the RST's dream of him leading them into a bright new dawn, David Edgar, the Trust's chairman, responded by saying that the plan was "not predicated on the involvement of any one individual." We should look at the numbers here. The RST seems to be suggesting that it can raise Ã?£30million to clear the Rangers debt. This would be made up of, say, 20,000 fans forking out a Ã?£600 lump sum while committing themselves to Ã?£15 every month for five years. Their season ticket is on top of that again. In theory, that gets Sir David Murray out the door and the club into fans' ownership. Then what? According to their exploratory document ââ?¬â?? the bullet-pointed version of it that appeared in print at any rate ââ?¬â?? it seems that RST has allowed for a one-off payment of Ã?£10m-Ã?£12m to secure player contracts and then Ã?£8m-Ã?£10m a year for operating costs. So that's about Ã?£52m they need in the first year of ownership. Without a McColl or a Dave King or a Graham Duffy ââ?¬â?? remember him? ââ?¬â?? to stump up some significant coin, the burden that will fall on fans is potentially savage. Divided between 20,000 members, it comes to Ã?£2,600 per head. Say they get 40,000 supporters to commit, it's still Ã?£1,300 plus your season ticket in that first year. If there was an investor in the pipeline, at a huge stretch you might see how this might be do-able. If there was somebody willing to take over 49 per cent of the club, leaving the fans with 51 per cent of the control (and the cost) then the numbers wouldn't be so horrific. But there isn't anybody. Duffy didn't want to inject significant money into the club. McColl doesn't want to invest anything bar his expertise, which is vast, but which won't pay the bills. King is mired in the complexities of a legal wrangle with the South African revenue authorities and is in no position at the moment to throw money at his beloved club. The last time Rangers went to their fans looking for money, in a shares issue, it was a dismal flop. The fans rationalised it by saying that the reason they didn't respond in bigger numbers was because of Murray's presence at the head of the club, but that's an iffy argument. Maybe there's an element of truth in it. And maybe there's truth, too, in the theory that enough of them didn't invest simply because they just didn't fancy parting with their hard-earned cash. When we hear about fans buyouts we tend to gravitate towards three examples; Barcelona, Hamburg and Espanyol, the latter pair being the ones that the RST saw fit to examine closely in a public meeting earlier in the season. It invited representatives from both clubs to address a group of Rangers fans. Barca have managed supporter ownership really well, not all that hard given their extraordinary revenue streams they have at their disposal and the fact that they have nearly 180,000 members chipping in annual subscriptions. Even still, they amassed huge debt. Only yesterday did they settle a tax bill of 60m, a figure they say will put a major dent in their spending in coming seasons. Hamburg and Espanyol are better examples for Rangers. They're ticking along fine in Germany and Spain, but the financial burden on the supporters of both of these clubs per season is less than half of what it might be on the average Rangers fan. And there is another difference. Hamburg and Espanyol are unlike Rangers in one key sense. They don't come from a culture where winning is everything, their supporters do not demand trophies. They are content to compete, to hang about on the periphery of the big boys. Hamburg manage it effectively enough. Espanyol find it a struggle these days. They're sitting 14th out of 20 in La Liga. They're well run and their fans are happy that the club is in safe hands, but would Rangers people be sated in the same way? Buying the club will require an eye-watering amount of money, with or without a sugar daddy. Running the club and making it successful on the pitch will require more again. Wanting to control the club you love is an understandable desire, but the finances just don't stack up. They never will. For now, there is but one player in this saga and it is Andrew Ellis. He hasn't gone away. Not yet. Soon we will know if he wishes to take it further. He's got a week to make a bid. Ellis remains the only show in town.

He's had his moments but there have been far too few of them. Thanks and goodbye.

Which supporters do you think would be in the group paying �£600 up front? Which supporters would be excluded? What would be the long-term effect of creating an inner circle from those who can afford this money and those who cannot? Personally, I think the idea of 20,000 fans each paying �£600 up front is pure fantasy from people who have figured out how to use a calculator but haven't yet grasped that their basic plan is as flawed as the rest of their track record. The farce goes on but we all know the RST died long ago. Only the occasional newspaper mention brings its memory to mind!

Is it just me or does this read like the people who wrote it actually believe they represent a significant number of Rangers supporters. As for "consult and involve" ...... well you know what I mean, it's like a visit to Make-Believe Island. Statement issued by the RST Tuesday, 30 March 2010 Rangers fans are by far the biggest financial investors in the club and the Trust has always believed that wider fan ownership and involvement are essential components in delivering a stable, secure future for Rangers. In recent months we have been involved in discussions with a number of parties to that end, but for legal reasons we are unable to comment on the detail of these discussions. The discussions and the parties with whom they have been held necessarily must remain confidential until it is appropriate to put this information in the public domain. However, we are absolutely committed to securing the best possible future for the club and the support. For the avoidance of doubt the Trust has not sought advice from any potential backer nor have we employed the services of any professional adviser. We will continue to pursue these initiatives and seek to consult and involve Trust members and the wider Rangers family at the appropriate time. In the meantime, we ask for fans' continued patience as we seek the most positive outcome.