amms

Surely the vast majority of people who purchase or get involved in football in this country lose money? I personally know of 3 who have got involved with Scottish clubs and lost significant money, one still does, indeed without his continuing funding the club would fold. My biggest concern with this plan is that it is impossible to make money out of Scottish football.

Is this the transfer embargo appeal?

Green doesn't have the money himself, he's admitted this. He's fronting or putting together a collection of other people to fund this. Surely everyone has concerns about that? None of us can see how money can be made out of Scottish football just now or in the immediate future so if the incentive to invest in us is to make a profit then the business plan seems flawed at the outset. I've no idea if Green can pull this off, I know no more about him than I read in the papers but I think lots of questions should be asked of him and D&P, not threats, just questions. I don't know if the Blue Knights could have pulled it off either but they at least didn't seem to be doing it to make money. Anyone buying into Rangers to make money will struggle to do that and that is of enormous concern to me.

Heh! So this bit "Details of the CVA proposal have been finalised today and there has been additional consultation with certain stakeholders." should be taken with a pinch of salt you reckon? Or is it simply misdirection, I assume the stakeholders are HMRC but they could be any of the creditors I suppose. Or when you wrote 'sounds like it' did you not mean that I'm an idiot. I'm confusing myself now.

Am I an idiot to read between the lines that they've already run the 'offer' past HMRC?

So this sounds like progress, is it?

That New York Times article looked like it was written and published in 'real time', does anyone know if that is the case? The mixture of live reporting, Tweets and You Tube coverage in a serious newspaper was actually quite interesting I thought. A pretty good way to factually report a game too. Something for the slowly dying Scottish press to note, or indeed Gersnet! (it's not slowly dying, you know what I mean).

Hopefully, that's assuming we then paid it to HMRC of course. I've never understood how the club was liable for income tax and NI rather than the players who received the money. Did we not make the employers contributions? The only way it ever made sense to me was if the club had taken the income tax and ni off at source but then not paid that on. Otherwise surely the recipients are responsible for their own income tax and ni? If what Dodds' says is true it simply confuses me further. That in itself isn't difficult mind you.

With Motherwell's recent history you'd think they might have some empathy.

Or perhaps the question to ask is why the administrators feel the need to hold an expensive PR company to a contract they could have broken without much comeback when Rangers went into administration. Why they want to brief journalists in any way other than 'on-the'record' is also strange.

I'd be astonished if they made the Murray payments claim without hard evidence, and the Souness one too for that matter. But I agree with you I didn't see anything that made me think this dual contracts allegation has any foundation. If the Murray allegation is false I expect he'll sue or complain to OFCOM at the very least. The smoking gun on this for me was the Duff and Phelps allegation. Again, we'll see if it's true. Whatever we think of BBC Scotland the BBC as an organisation has quite high standards of credibility in terms of what they will 'publish'. Higher than most other news organisations. That's not to say they don't get it wrong sometimes.

Smoking gun on what though? The EBT stuff simply showed who benefitted from them, it was interesting but it didn't prove the EBT was illegal. I don't think even HMRC know if it was improperly governed or not. They did seem to have hard evidence regarding Duff and Phelps. Edit - typo

They've a contract, breaking it could cause problems for them professionally and economically.

Well I watched the programme and if that claim isn't true then I'm sure Murray will sue them. After Whyte and Duff and Phelps of course. They'd need to be pretty sure of themselves before making that allegation don't you think?

As an aside I understand that Mediahouse are unhappy with the work they've been asked to do of late by the people currently running Rangers.

Looking past any criticisms some might have with the production values or presentation skills the programme employed I don't know how we can criticise its content. I certainly didn't know that a Duff & Phelps employee had set up the deal with Ticketus, that alone casts a serious doubt on them surely? The inference I took from that this has been set up since day one. Daly stopped short of saying it but it was certainly what I felt he inferred. His point about Murray's motivation in buying Rangers being ego and status based seemed a bit self obvious until I realised he was using it to make us ask what Whyte's motivation was. Clearly ego and influence aren't Whyte's motivation, so what was? It can surely only be profit. I also didn't know Murray had taken over £6 million from the EBT scheme. I'm not sure though if he took that from Rangers or from another Murray company, I didn't think that was very clear. The actions of Mike McGill clearly need more investigation. Normally it is Donald Muir who gets the blame but McGill was clearly up to his neck in the Whyte subterfuge as well. The Souness £30 grand does look pretty iffy, in the scheme of things though it is buttons. But it probably gives an insight into how transfers still take place in modern football. I agree there still no clear evidence of double contracts. Beyond that I'm not sure Daly can be criticised.

I'm deeply suspicious of Green but if he announced tomorrow Rangers will apply to join the Conference I'd back him 100%. I never thought I'd say that.

So has Ewan Murray, I guess it's true. Ho hum.

Chris McLaughlin from the BBC just tweeted the appeal has been rejected. Is that right or simply wishful thinking from Chris?

Surely the truth in this unfortunately is it won't be up to Rangers. All of our players are potential targets and I'd be astonished if Davis, Naismith, McGregor, Goian and Bocanegra aren't the subject of offers. We still owe money on Boca and Goian and that might go against keeping them. The fact Naismith isn't fit might mean we keep him in the summer transfer window however if he finds the form he had early this season we'll lose him in January, we'd struggle to keep him no matter what shape we were in. We can assume Lafferty is gone and I expect Edu will go too. I've still to figure out the Aluko position but I'd be surprised if he isn't snapped up by someone down south he's been exceptional and a club like Wolves or Bolton could double his salary in the Championship and offer the prospect of promotion to the EPL. My real worry is losing the promising young players for not a lot. We simply might not be in a position to turn down a £600,000 plus add ons for Ness or McCabe. The disappointing thing about how well Jelavic has done is it will have alerted a few about the standard of player available at the club. We've a dark few years ahead I'm afraid. Apologies for the pessimism.

Tell you what with him and Gattuso in the side we'll walk the third division next season... You know when a Spaniard who has played for a dozen clubs gets that done to himself you get some idea of what our club actually means, not just to us, us who are born and brought up with it, for who it is a living, breathing part of us, but to so many that come into contact with it. I'm not a fan of tattoos myself but that one say's something more than the actual words on it.

Yeah, for all the abuse Bain has taken from so many on Rangers messageboards over the years he does seem to have come out of this disaster with some dignity. That alone might signal we are now in the end of days. The report is so lengthy I've not even scratched the surface of it. Has anyone yet?

Unfortunately knowing his agent he might have a point. Hasn't Salter been quite well informed on much of this so far or am I mistaken?

Wasn't the suggestion made that it wouldn't matter, D&P simply don't want their solution?

I thought both Murray and particularly Kennedy were very impressive and sincere. Some serious questions needing asked of D&P.