BrahimHemdani

No, only trading income i.e. season tickets, match day sales etc show in turnover. Cash injected would show as a liability because the Club owes it to him.

That might well be true as there is very little ongoing income once you get season ticket money and don't have any European games, hence the matches with Liverpool and Hamburg to bring in a few sovs. Once we see what the cash in hand and at bank is at the half year it will be easier to judge.

Need to do a bit of work on the figures but the broad answer is almost certainly much worse than as at 30 June 2011 because income will be way down with the loss of European money and expenses will be up with the new contracts for McGregor, Davis and Whittaker and I think I am right in saying a bigger playing staff overall. I would hazard a very quick guess at a £10M trading loss for the year with a knock on effect to net debt. We will know better when we see the half year figures which are due next month!

I should be able to establish what penalties are available tomorrow sorry today!

I recall his non-appearnace in Kaunas was shrouded in mystery and I was always very sceptical about that "injury", and he didn't seem all that badly hurt when he climbed the stairs to the back seat of the stand at Falkirk with Novo on the Saturday.

Because it's a potential liability that arose prior to that year end.

That's a very good question. I don't know the legal answer but I suspect that if it is the former it would say something like within 5 years from the date of first being disqualified... the wording as it stands seems more likely to mean the latter because he was disqualified as a director i.e. he could not have been a director in 2007, so 2011 would be within 5 years of that. If you think about it and he bought Rangers in 2004, then it can't be right that he would be a fit and proper person whilst still disqualified as a director. If you compare that wording with a standard insurance wording where you have to delare if you have been disqualified from driving within the past 5 years and you were disqualified from 2000 to 2007 and you were trying to get insurance in 2011 and failed to disclose, then I am in no doubt that your insurance would be invalid. If I am correct then it is unlikely that he could have been "fit and proper" when he bought Rangers. So the question would be, what penalties would be available and against whom, the Club or him or both?

Cuellar was going before the Kaunas game which is why he didn't play in that match. We may have used the sale proceeds to pay for those purchases but I don't think they were directly linked as you suggest.

Our expenses rose more than our income; our trading profit is down £2.8M; our operating profit is down £3.8M; the Gain on disposal of player registrations £4.2M was mostly eaten up by the Taxation of Discount Option Scheme £3.2M; Profit before interest and taxation was down £3.4M; Profit on ordinary activities was down £4.1M; none of that is good news. However, I think the most important thing to note is that Amounts falling due within one year have gone up from £27.8M and now stand at £49.1M; whereas Amounts falling due after more than one year have gone down from £37.9M to £20.3M. I suspect that this reflects the fact that we no longer haver the BOS Term Loan that we were paying off at £1M/year and now owe that money to Mr Whyte or his company. Whether that is good or bad news might depend on your view of banks and your view of Mr Whyte. He is of course committed to writing that debt off if we win the big tax case, if not he becomes a creditor in the administration. My personal opinion is that I would rather know I have to pay of a million a year but others may not agree. I do not think that not having the backing of a bank is good because we may need loans or working capital in future and at the moment it is not clear where that would come from. I am a little unclear about the figures for Cash at bank and in hand from the way have been copied on here but it does appear that we do not need an overdraft at the moment, should be able to pay our debts as they fall due (so why all the court cases?) and hopefully the cash in hand £8.8M or £14.8M? is not in a biscuit tin.

Whoever wrote this statement is somewhat confused. The leading case governing the offence of breach of the peace is Smith v Donnelly 2001 SCCR 800. It was held in that case that â??what is required to constitute the crime is conduct severe enough to cause alarm to ordinary people and threaten serious disturbance to the community.â? In other words a breach of the peace occurs if an ordinary person is placed in a state of fear and alarm. In order to prove a Breach of the Peace it is necessary to prove that someone was alarmed, annoyed or disturbed by the incident. Under the OBB as proposed it will be necessary to prove: offensive behaviour; the behaviour occurs in relation to a regulated football match; the behaviour is or would be likely to incite poublic disorder. So I think it is clear that the offence of OFFENSIVE BEHAVIOUR AT FOOTBALL will be much more difficult to prove than Breach of the Peace which can occur in a wide variety of circumstances.

It is not a stupid statement at all, and therein lies the issue. The police will not go into a large crowd inside or outside a football stadium on the grounds that that is more likely to cause disorder than the potential disorder caused by the alleged offense. So we have the ridiculous situation of Motherwell fans apparently ejected from Pittodrie for standing up and/or having a disagreement with stewads about not sitting down whereas no action is ever taken against old firm fans for standing at the likes of Pittodrie or Tynecastle or Hampden.

It most definitely will be under the OBB, provided that it is travelling to or at a match and is likely to lead to crowd disorder.

Whatever the perception is Zappa, I can assure you that the OBB is not just targeted at Rangers and Celtic fans, it is equally targetted at Hearts and Hibs and fans of any club who indulge in offensive behaviour, whether the match is televised or not is irrelevant. I agree that one man's legitimate banter is another man's offensive behaviour but as I said on another thread at least insofar as the bill is concerned for a conviction to be secured the offence has to be in respect of a regulated football match (basically any match involving a "senior" football team) (including travelling to and from such a match), the behaviour has to be offensive AND likely to incite public disorder. Offensive behaviour is defined inter alia as behaviour that expresses hatred of a group of persons or an individual based on their membership of a religious group, social or cultural group with perceived religious affiliation; or other behaviour that a "reasonable person" would be likely to consider offensive. In my view it is the last test that the procurator will find most difficult to prove.

The phrase "schoolboy defending" comes to mind.

"It's against the f*cking law for a black man to put any of his parts into a white man" - Tom Sharpe Indecent Exposure

What you need to remember here is that the Clubs are the SPL and the Clubs write the Rules. So perfect defense is that we have done everything to stop these people singing these songs but we can't stop them and neither can the police.

Under SPL Rules H5.5, H7.6 and H7.7, Celtic (and Hearts in the Lennon case) will not be charged never mind found guilty of any breach of Rules provided that they can show that "so far as reasonably practicable ......they have policies and procedures in place to prevent incidents of unacceptable conduct and that any incidents of unacceptable conduct are effectively dealt with" and, of course that is not down to them on a match day it is down to the Police.

They would still have to convince the procurator fiscal that there was a case to answer.

The higher the profile of the player, the more likely it would be in my opinion that he would be subject to severe disciplinary action. An experienced professional should know better than a youngster.

It won't be their decision, mate; they would have to bring any incident to the attention of the police and it would be up to the individual policeman to decide if an arrest was justified.

What makes it even worse is that ultimately it's going to be down to the polis in the first instance to decide what constitutes offensive behaviour in the eyes of this mythical reasonable person and if that's not a recipe for inconsistency I don't know what is.

Intersting thoughts, sir. Undoubtedly there is an education job to be done that might take a generation; I think you may well see Government pushing that very hard in the near future, segregated schools notwithstanding. On your second point, the answer, at least in terms of the OBB is that for a conviction to be secured the offence has to be in respect of a regulated football match the behaviour has to be offensive AND likely to incite public disorder. Offensive behaviour is defined inter alia as behaviour that expresses hatred of a group of persons or an individual based on their membership of a religious group, social or cultural group with perceived religious affiliation or other behaviour that a reasonable person would be likely to consider offensive. Government Ministers argue that a reasonable person is well defined in the law but if I was a lawyer (which I am not) defending someone charged with such an offense I might think about starting by arguing that the old definition of the man on the Clapham omnibus hardly applies in Scotland! So whilst the man on the Clapham omnibus might regard your comment about the Prime Minister as offensive that might not be true in this part of the world!

I am glad we have found a measure of agreement GA but I am saddened that you still think that the Club should stand up for someone who has been so stupid and thoughtless (if proven). I think anyone who (allegedly) walks up to a policeman and shouts FTP or the like is going to get arrested, don't you? I agree that all churches should be held to a high standard and I have no problem whatsoever with you or anyone else pointing to the misdeeds of any church but I still don't see the connection far less justifcation for Grant Adam to behave that way (if he did).

I am very uncomfortable because he doesn't appear to have a long term strategy, he gives every impression of making it up as he goes along and the way he dealt with former directors was a disgrace. I don't read a lot into his dealings with the press or the fan's groups at this stage; I think it's largely posturing. But most of all, it's his motivation and source of funds that worries me. The fact that Ellis is still in the background, seems to imply that there might be some property deals down the line and I know for a fact that Ellis has absolutely no interest in Rangers Football Club. Also so long as he maintains the almost paranoid secrecy about the source of funds for Wavetower the more I will be concerned about his exit strategy.