BrahimHemdani

Need to post his bail first.

The people in Bursa were very friendly towards us and I daresay he would be fetted there but as you say the culture is totally different especially as it's in the Asian side of the country. Istanbul I could see but Bursa is really isolated 3/4 hours from there by road and ferry. It is expanding and there are a couple of moldern shopping malls but he would go crazy with Svensson the only westerner in the team and probabaly the only one that speaks English. No shortage of Kebab shops though. He has been a bit of a mercenary throughout his career but this would be a step too far in my opinion. May just be trying to put pressure on Brum to up their offer; but if my choice was between Brum, Bursa or Florence (albeit the latter two reputedly haven't made an offer), I know where I'd be going.

I am sure this is right, if he doesn't play Webster in this one, he never will. If he switches full backs he weakens both positions; though Whittaker is definitely more comfortable on the left than Foster.

He did today when he could have switched. Also he COULD have brought on Jelavic and put Wylde to LB and gone three up, or 3-4-3 but usual conservative Walter; keep 4 defenders at the back against Hamilton's one man up.

Exactly and furthermore if his goals dry up or he comes a cropper in the second half of the season, he won't be going anywhere and he'll get a half price offer from us, so if I was him I'd be hot footing it down the M8 asap.

I think you may be wrong there, I am sure I read Miller is 31 and has only been offered 1 year at same or less money, hence his interest in 2/3 year deal at Birmingham (and more money + signing on fee). I'll stand to be corrected but this is from the Telegraph by Ewing Grahame 6:56PM GMT 07 Jan 2011 The 31 year-old, whose contract expires in May, has rejected several offers to extend his stay at Ibrox. Miller had sought a two-year agreement but that failed to materialise and now he is mulling over the terms offered by his former Scotland manager, Alex McLeish.

We do seem to have a policy that once you are over 30, you only get a one year deal and whilst this might be justified in the case of some forwards, it is more difficult to understand with defenders where Weir has shown that experience can be every bit as good a substitute for loss of pace at least in the SPL. Papac has been a very sound defender for the past several seasons and has never been given a chance to perform in his best position at CB. It seems very short sighted on the part of the club to offer just a one year deal, as he could easily be our left back for another 2/3 seasons and could also slot in at CB. We seem to be taking advantage of his family situation and it doesn't make sense to me from a footballing point of view unless we are sure that we have a ready made replacement which isn't apparent right now.

The way things are going maybe Weir'll be here in 2020/21.

Overall just in terms of gate money fans contribute 4-5 times as much to the Clubs as TV.

Absolutely no doubt that the SPL wrote the 10/10 part of his report; no way did they independently come up with exactly the same plan. He spoke to who he wanted to speak to and essentially took SD as representing the fan's view (sorry rbr).

There is a bit of a difference between playing your football on Copacabana Beach or Saltcoats but overprotection is a fair point nonetheless. However, whilst Uruguay do disproportionally well in the World Cup, given their small population, they have failed to qualify for 3 of the last 5 and there some aspects of their foootball that I would not want to see us copying!

It would be nice to think so and Thompson was pushing the fans views in his interview with Spence last week (as were the DJ and others on Clyde), although I did have a concern that he was just using the survey for his own ends.

Interesting to see where this thread has gone! If you could ally this Dutch pyramid model, with coaching in the schools, to the German model of fan involvement at all levels in the clubs, then that might some kind of footballing utopia. Now why didn't McLeish think of that?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/scot_prem/9351767.stm This all seems extremely odd. How could there have been plans for a vote on 17 January if there was a requirement for a resolution with 14 days notice following the last meeting on 4 January? Did someone forget that there was such a requirement? Did Steven Thompson just point this out to them? Or was there never going to be a vote on the 17th? Why didn't members of the steering group propose the necessary resolution with the required notice following the meeting on the 4th? Perhaps because they knew it was doomed to fail? In any event are Dundee Utd and others using this as a means to rest better terms on the TV money from the OF?

If he is on about �£15k a week then essentailly we are being offered more or less a year's salary to buy out the 6 months that are left on his contract and Rangers will probably also say that they "save" that 6 months salary which is another �£300-�£400k so they will say it's equivalent to a million pound deal. I wouldn't blame Miller, he's served us well twice, any more than you would blame anyone else in any other walk of life that wants to earn more money. This will be his last big pay day and the point about a one year deal is valid, because then he would be 32 and much less likely to get a 2/3 year deal elsewhere and anything could happen between now and then. Yes he should have been offered a better deal a year ago but then who was to know he would step up to score the goals he has this season. He's been exceptional this season but I have a feeling that this is as good as it gets from him and if he stays till the end of the season for whatever reason and scores enough goals to get us into the CL then I would thank him and wish him all the best.

Or self interest, financial and otherwise.

I can assure you that I really appreciated all the support I received from your good self and many others on this site during what was a very difficult, quite literally sickening time for me. You may well be correct about that but at the time I thought the best course was to try to form a consensus from within and I did have support from some quarters that you might find surprising. In my judgement the proper place to speak out was at the AGM but as you know I was denied that opportunity.................. What I find particularly shameful is that, with one exception, those who were of the same mind in Aug - Oct, remain on the Board to this day. I believe I was accused of self interest in certain quarters, in my case at least, nothing could be further from the truth.

Yes indeed, sorry about that.

I think I got where you stand on that one! Oh and by the way, I forgot to remind you about Bayern Munich 0 Raith Rovers 1

I think that you'll find that the biggest obstacles to the sale of Rangers are the unresolved claim by HMRC and various issues about the possible development of the land in the SW corner.

I agree with you on that as well, maybe it's the number of xboxes/ipods or wahtever per child that we should be looking at.

I am sorry you feel that way. When you are a member of a board, even the board of RST, there is a doctrine of collective responsibility, so it is very difficult to speak out in public against the collective view of the board and/or the office bearers and remain a member of the board. When I was elected in Sept 09, I thought that I could reform some of the practices and the first thing that I did was re-write the rules of Gersave and you would need to ask others why they were never implemented. When I accepted office as Secretary in Feb10 I specifically asked for the support of the entire Board and whilst they paid lip service to that it is abundantly clear that there were those who saw me as a threat to their way of conducting affairs. Nonetheless, I ensured that there were proper agendas and minutes for all Exec and Board meetings and against substantial opposition I successfully introduced an open and fair election process based on SD best practice. The reasons for my resignatiion as Secretary have been very well rehearsed: financial irregularities and mismanagement revealed by the audit of RST Accounts for the Year ended 5 April 2010 and the fact that it had become impossible for me to perform the role of Secretary due to lack of support by the Chair and others who had actively undermined my position. There is no point in going over old ground in that respect but again as I said at the time of my resignation from the Board in October "As you know it was my intention to resign from the Board at the same time as resigning as Secretary on 12 August 2010 but several Board members persuaded me to remain on the Board as they sought to remove yourself (Mr Smith) and Mr Mark Dingwall. At the same time I wanted to ensure that my financial management proposals were implemented in full." The moves to remove Messrs Smith and Dingwall failed so I had no choice but to resign form the Board. In effect you try to do as much as you can from within but ultimately there comes a point when you have to decide if you accept that the changes you have made are enough or else you have to resign. One other point if I may. The main reason why I joined the Trust and remain a member is that I believe in the principle of fan ownership or at least greater fan involvement in our and indeed all football clubs. There is no question that this is coming, in England at least a Select Committee has been established that will begin hearing evidence later this month. In Scotland, McLeish adopted many of the SD proposals in his report and I am sure we will see gradual implementation in the months and years ahead. What I didn't like about RST, and hoped to change (I didn't know anything about the governance issues until I joined the board and as you know I still didn't know half of what was going on) was the way they expressed themselves in public. Essentially that was controlled by SS, MD and David Edgar as the spokesperson. I tried on numerous occasions and in many different ways to have RST establish a policy on public pronouncements and had many a discussion with Mr Edgar about the way he expressed himslef in certain situations. I have a great deal of respect for his historic knowledge and ability to deal with the media but I often felt that his one liners (most notably comparing comparing SDM with Fred Goodwin of RBS) were shall we say less than helpful to our cause. I believe that one of the reasons why David stepped down was that he knew he had been compromised by much of what he had said in the press about the King/Park consortium bid in late 2009 and that RST's media persona needed a new face. Now that we can see that that new face is the same old Mr Smith sprouting the same old nonsense, we can clearly see that RST has changed not one bit. Do I regret that I wasted a year of my life on it, well I believe I did some good but ultimately I failed, so yes I have deep regrets, particularly as I still think it could do so much good. However, I remain a director of SD and am doing my best to use the experience I have gained to benefit the trust movement in general and represent fans views in particular, which is one reason why I find the diverse views on Gersnet so valuable. Regardless of your opinion about what I did or did not do as a member of the board of RST, I hope you will accept that I was honest and sincere and did my best. I am very sorry that my best was not good enough to bring about all the changes that I felt necessary.

(If we finish second in the SPL) first we have to qualify for the Europa League! As things stand at present we would have two qualifying rounds to get through and although we would be seeded who's to say we would beat teams from the likes of Croatia, Slovakia, Georgia, Poland etc. I bow to your knowledge of the financial arrangements in the EL but my point is the same regardless of CL (which may involve three qualifiers but more likely 2 and an "easier" route than in the past against the champions of so called lesser countries such as those mentioned above plus Serbia, Czech Rep etc) namely that from the bank's point of view firstly we have a differential in money between the CL and the EL and secondly there is no certainty that we will get past the qualifiers. Football is a very high risk business and when money was freely available it was a different story the odd �£30m here or there was no big deal, now it is a very big deal indeed. One season without CL/EL group stage football could easily see us back at that level of debt in no time at all, my guess is that is what Lloyds are looking at.

I agree with a great deal of your comments MF but that comment is (a) inaccurate and (b) completely out of order. I am sure that on reflection you can find a better way to make your point.

Very droll rbr