BrahimHemdani

I think that Mr Smith would be better placed sticking to the affairs of RST than commenting on the business practices of Lloyds Bank. We may not agree with them and they get themselves in trouble with their own greed but generally they are not vindictive. They make risk assessments and clearly their current assessment of the risk posed by Rangers (chances of winning the SPL and qualifying for next season's CL) is quite high and hence they want to reduce or even eradicate the overdraft facility. We may not like what that means for our club but to acuse them of being vindictive is just plain stupid. This type of empty threat by RST, which is the exact same as made in late 2009, simply demonstrates the truth of what I said when I resigned as Secretary last August "that without a complete change of leadership and direction, the Trust is bound to fail because (it has) no credibility with the Club or the Rangers fans at large."

If you look at per capita income, this bears out your theory. Croatia is about half Spain and Italy and about a third of Germany, France or the UK. So even basic salaries are bound to be a lot less, never mind the grossly inflated wages on offer in the the likes of Spain and England.

I forecast at the start of the season that we would not have an overdraft at 30 June 2011. It does seem obvious that Lloyds want to reduce or completely wipe out the overdraft facility and that we may well be due to their aversion to the football business model in general terms as much as Rangers business plan. However, if you look ahead and say that we are maybe 50/50 or 40/60? to be in the CL next season then you can see their reasoning more clearly because if you look back to 2008/09 without Champions League football that was when we made a whacking loss and ended �£30+ million in debt. We can't move to another bank unless we can pay off the term loan in full and who's to say that any other bank would be more generous with their money in the present economic climate, never mind the climate in Scottish football, falling attendances etc, falling standards of play etc etc.

No argument with you on that, when was the last time we tried anything other than a shot or chip at a free kick? Mega full time wages for part time work.

Dinamo Zagreb are the most successful club. "Dinamo's biggest rivals are Hajduk Split, and the matches between the two teams are referred to as "Eternal derby". Former major rivalries used to include Serbian clubs Red Star Belgrade and Partizan. Despite playing in the same division as Dinamo, and being from same city, NK Zagreb are not considered major rivals by the fans." (WIKIPEDIA) I find it hard to belive that the Croatian Clubs get more money from TV than Scottish Clubs. Dinamo have 2 Argentinians and 3 Brazilians on their playing staff but although they beat Villarreal at home they failed to qualify for the knockout stages of the Europa League and apparently have not played in Europe after Christmas for 40 years. Hadjuk Split managed only one win in the Europa League at home against Anderlecht and finished bottom of their group. Both Dinamo and Hadjuk are way down the coefficent rankings. Hadjuk once reached the quarter finals of the CL in 1995 losing 3-0 to Ajax. As a country Croatia were 27th in the UEFA coefficients last season compared to Scotland's 16th. Not sure what conclusions to draw from that except that a 16 team league in a small country doesn't necessarilly guarantee success in Europe!

I have obtained this further response from Red Circle Communications, hopefully this answers all your concerns. The only thing I would add is that the fact that the majority (68%) were not members of a Trust provides a large, robust sample of 3,268 non Trust members. This allowed us to effectively factor out Trust members and simply look at the views of 'ordinary' fans. When we ran a statistical analysis of Trust members and non-Trust members there was no significant difference in response other than the statistic highlighted in the presentation - Trust members were not suprisingly more likely to support greater fan representation in football clubs. I think the main point to make is the sample of around 5,000 provides the ability to explore all of the key sub-groups (trust/non trust, age, SPL/SFL) on a stand alone basis. And the size of these sub samples (thousands rather than hundreds - and in most cases significantly larger than a sample used by polling companys to determine voting intention across the whole of the UK) means we can be confident that the results of any sub-analysis is robust. This is further reinforced by the fact that on the key measures - opposition to a 10 team SPL and not feeling consulted - there is a similar pattern amongst all sub groups with very little deviation so we can be extremely confident on these key measures. On the attendance issue as I said in order to keep the survey short to encourage response we did not measure whether people attended or how often they attended. And we also sought views from non-senior supporters. That throws up definition of what constitutes a fan but I'd argue that anyone who takes time to complete the survey has some level of interest in Scottish football and can be reasonably defined as a fan. And actually the size and robustness of the sub samples means that as in the weighting issue this becomes much less relevant than in surveys with much smaller samples. I think overall it's also worth noting that the findings are reinforced by the balance of opinion from other sources whether anecdotal or other polling e.g. Scotsman Poll running at the moment actually shows a very similar distribution of support for leagues of 10,12,14,16 and 18

We are currently starring at 26th this season and although we have moved up one place to 15th in the full 5-year rankings (largely held up by our run to the UEFA Cup Final in 2008), we have the joint lowest (with Slovakia) coefficient of any country in the top 25 and Switzerland are closing on us with Basel and Young Boys still in the Europa League.

1. Not necessarilly. The survey was promoted in the national media as well as online forums and club websites and respondents were asked to invite others to participate. 2. On the face of it a fair point. All I can add is that I am advised that the large sample size "would be regarded as robust, and with a relatively low margin of error". At least one can be fairly sure that the sample are football fans/supporters whereas if you went out into the street and asked the same question you might have greater difficulty in establishing who was a genuine fan (whatever your definition). Oh and by the way, the SPL have acknowledged the survey results are valid and echoed the results of their own survey in January 2009, which not surprisingly they have never puiblished!

That's a fact, Rangers have racked up more points [9] than the rest of the Scottish Clubs put together [6] which is why we're 11 places behind Israel and 2 behind Cyprus this season.

I did the research on google and find that of the 16 team leagues all bar 3 countries [Norway, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovinia] have a larger pop. than Scotland [5,168,500] whilst all the countries with 10 team leagues have a lower pop. than Scotland except Switzerland. 16 team leagues Russian 142,008,838 Ukrainian 45,396,470 Polish 38,625,478 Portuguese 11,317,192 Greek 11,306,813 Belgian 10,274,595 Czech 10,256,760 Hungarian 10,075,034 Swedish 9,076,744 Serbian 7,780,000 Bulgarian 7,621,337 Israeli 7,441,700 Norwegian 4,743,193 Croatian 4,490,751 Bosnian-Herzegovinian 3,964,388 10 team leagues Swiss 7,301,994 Georgian 4,960,951 Irish (ROI) 4,234,925 Lithuania 3,601,138 Latvia 2,366,515 Slovenia 2,048,847 Estonian 1,415,681 Malta 397,499 Faroese (Faroe Islands) 46,011 So although there are exceptions this does tend to indicate some kind of correlation between pop. and size of league but I think you would also need to look at pop. density and income per head to draw safer conclusions e.g Russia has easily the highest pop. but one of the lowest densities because it is so vast; whereas Monaco has one of the lowest pop. but the HIGHEST density as it only covers 2 square km.

You may well be right but I doubt we'd have been allowed to spend ANY money had we not qualified for the CL.

Not necessarilly, depends on the business plan that has been agreed and the the overdraft limit that was up for renewal at the end of the year, if memory serves me. The business plan may call for a gradual reduction in the debt (overdraft) but that aside so long as we keep up the �£1 million a year instalments on the term loan that is all that is required. There does appear to have been some leeway built in (perhaps in anticipation of CL revenue) as was seen with the Jelavic deal this past summer.

[quote name=' I am not an expert at statistical methodology so I would stand to be corrected and I don't know if it would be statistically accurate to adjust the figures based on average attendances but I will find out! QUOTE] I have obtained the following response from Red Circle Communications who carried out the survey on behalf of Supporters Direct. There are always arguments for and against weighting data based on various criteria. We took the decision not to weight the data and just present the raw numbers based on that fact that SPL supporters constituted the majority of the responses (59%) and' date=' more importantly, that there were good sized sample of both SPL and SFL fans (2,874 and 1,819 respectively). We sought to reflect the breakdowns between SPL and SFL opinion throughout the results for transparency and to enable conclusions to be drawn about SFL and SPL opinion and any differences between them (which do exist on issues like regionalisation and B teams in lower leagues). There is an inherent difficulty in weighting against the total population of fans or attendance levels. The former brings difficulties of definition and the latter is unadvisable as nowhere in the survey did we ask fans exactly which team they supported or whether fans actually attended matches. Therefore weighting the data by attendance (based on attendance by division rather than team) could just as easily skew the data further rather than eliminate any existing skew. In terms of representativeness and validity then I am confident that the findings accurately reflect fans opinions. The online method of data collection is regularly used to survey opinion (indeed the SPL used the exact same method in their own work) and we ran a series of checks on the data to ensure its validity. Also last year I conducted a fan survey for Raith Rovers using self completion questionnaire at a match and an online option. In the analysis there was no significant difference in findings between responses received online and those received via the self completion route. In particular, I am very confident that this survey reflects fan opinion on the core questions which are being reported in the media of supporting/opposing a 10 team top league and whether fans feel consulted or not. Weighting the data in favour of SPL fans would not make a material difference on these issues as opinion on these two key measures was not impacted by the level at which their team played. Therefore any perceived over-representation of SFL fans views in the overall figure quoted becomes pretty much irrelevant. This was reinforced when analysing the additional comments where SPL fans ââ?¬â?? including many Rangers and Celtic fans - were as likely to use the additional comments section to express their opposition to a top league of 10 as supporters of SFL clubs.[/color'] RCC were assisted in the analysis by an academic who specialises in this field. One of the points he has made is that a football fan is a football fan no matter what club he supports ââ?¬â?? we were trying to present a collective Scottish fans view of the proposals. He rejects the assertion that SPL fans have a greater right to comment on matters concerning the SPL because their clubs are in the SPL wrong for a number of reasons a. The sample including 59% of SPL club fans could be said to be representative (there are all kinds of problems with defining what a fan is, so lets not go there). If the SFL respondents are likewise representative then we might expect that the largest number of them support the teams most likely to be promoted to the SPL. So there is an interest there ââ?¬â?? for the majority there is a realistic prospect of getting to the SPL, maybe not this season but soon. b. The issue of 10 team leagues is not only a matter only for the SPL ââ?¬â?? it applies just as much to the SFL ââ?¬â?? its not just that St Johnstone donââ?¬â?¢t want to play St Mirren four times, but that Annan donââ?¬â?¢t want to play East Stirling four times. I cant see any reason why the sense of boredom that has been identified from the comments left by respondents wont come from SFL just as much as SPL (just for the record, it would be possible to link specific comments to specific respondents and who they support, but it would be quite complex as well) c. Reverting to my previous argument, if we consider the respondents as ââ?¬Å?fansââ?¬Â who support clubs who happen to be at particular levels at this time (e.g. 10 years ago, I would have registered as SFL, now its Junior, but thatââ?¬â?¢s football for you), then I really donââ?¬â?¢t see any argument for treating them differently. I have obtained these comments to answer some of the issues raised but personally I am not qualified to comment further.

AND the fans put in as much money through the gate in one season than the TV deal nets in five.

RBR, we don't agree on this, but over the past 5 years the average attendance at an SPL game is down 11%, the current model is broken and needs to be fixed; that much we can surely agree with the Clubs. Personally I'd rather see and visit the likes of Dunfermlline, Falkirk, Partick Thistle, Dundee or Livingston (when they get back on their feet) once a season than see and visit Hamilton, St Mirren, St Johnstone, twice. JMHO

Fair questions Bluedell. Support for a 16 or 18 team league was only marginally lower amongst SPL supporters than SFL supporters: 16 Team - 48% (SPL) v 54% (SFL) 18 Team - 25% (SPL)v 29% (SFL) Overall 73% of SPL supporters would prefer a 16 or 18 team league with only around one in ten wanting a 10 team league (11%) You are correct that based on average attendances, 20% of fans support SFL teams whereas 38% of those who took part in the survey fall into that category, so it is arguable that it is unrepresentative from that point of view but given that that there is not much difference in the views expressed I'd say that that is not terribly significant. If you weight the results based on the proportion of respondents that support SPL compared with SFL Clubs then I think the overall support for 16/18 comes down from 77% to about 74% or 75%. I am not an expert at statistical methodology so I would stand to be corrected and I don't know if it would be statistically accurate to adjust the figures based on average attendances but I will find out! The Press Release necessarilly had to focus on the main conclusions, the full detail was given to all the journalists, clubs and administrators.

I would rather debate the piss poor performance of our team (as I have done elsewhere on this site) but unless you have any actual evidence to the contrary, I am prepared to take their appearance at face value and I would like to think that we would do the same if the situation had been or was to be reversed.

As per other reply, fans were not asked this question but 59% supported a team in the SPL.

Respondents were not asked what team they supported.

There are indeed so many reasons to be critical of their antics in the first half of the season and I would add Lennon rushing on to the park at full time as if they'd won the League or the Cup Final (no way would you see WS doing that at Parkhead). But the fact remains that for the most part on this occasion Celtic fans and their management played their part appropriately in the remembrance. I find it difficult to ascribe any adverse motives or criticise them for being there, the fact is that they were there and paid their respects and that is all that really matters in my opinion. If they had not been there, then it would have been another matter entirely, just as their embarrassingly feeble excuses for clapping on Remembrance Sunday.

The final results of the SD Scotland survey have now been published. The survey was completed between 17 - 22 December by 4,931 supporters from clubs across the whole spectrum of Scottish football ââ?¬â?? from the SPL and SFL through to Junior and non-league clubs - and was analysed by Red Circle Communications. Around one third of respondants left comments which is remarkably high for this type of survey. 68% of respondents were not Trust members. The main findings were: A clear preference for a larger top league. 77% prefer a 16 (50%) or 18 (27%) team league. 88% oppose a reduction from 12 to 10 teams. These results hold true for fans of both SPL and SFL clubs. A clear feeling that fans have not been consulted: 93% do not feel consulted. 87% want fans represented at the SFA level. 80% want fans to have more say at their club. Some elements of the SPL proposal have support: 77% support play-offs between top two divisions. 66% support a winter break ââ?¬â?? although there are reservations over when. 71% support an earlier start to the season. Other elements show mixed results and differences between fans of SPL and SFL clubs: Summer season ââ?¬â?? 48% support, 35% oppose Regionalisation ââ?¬â?? 48% opposition from SFL supporters (those most likely to be affected) ââ?¬â?? but overall 49% support the proposal 'B' Teams entering league structure ââ?¬â?? strong opposition (79%) from SFL supporters but general support (59%) from SPL fans. The full results have been sent to the clubs and football administrators ahead of the SPL meeting tomorrow.

In the SPL there is no doubt that WS stabilised a sinking ship that had been scuttled by PLG and deserves great credit in my opinion for going on to win the title twice with no money to spend. That he has done so with little or no tactical awareness makes the achievement all the more baffling or perhaps it is just an indictment on the lack of quality elsewhere. Jerome Rothen, all left foot and brought apparently to fill the gap in left midfield but played almost exclusively on the right; Weiss all right foot played almost exclusively on the left and unlike Novo not a threat to score from that position; Whittaker in left midfield where he is like a fish out of water, to accommodate the highly mediocre Foster at right back when it was found he could not play on the left; and so many more, we each have our own examples. You cannot take anything away from our run to the UEFA Cup Final, even if it was on the back of a "don't lose a goal at home" policy, that was the name of the game in two leg matches with the first leg at home. But since then we have been a disgrace: playing Dailly in central midfield and leaving Hemdani and Darcheville on the bench on that miserable night in Kaunas; the desperate home CL performances of 2009; failing to attack in the second half at home this season against Man Utd when Valencia were cantering in Bursa; failing to attack in Valencia, a game we HAD to win if we were to have any chance of qualifying; failing to attack in Bursa when it was clear in the first half that they were extremely nervous and there for the taking and meakly falling back and settling for a draw more or less gifting them their only point in the group. And what price it will be 5 at the back again in both legs against Sporting. It is one thing playing 5 at the back against Man U at Old Trafford or even Ibrox but once you go behind or the opposition draw level, what do you do then, answer keep playing the same way and end up drawing or losing as in 4 of the 6 games this season. Of course it was exactly the same in the 10 in a row season, nothing changes it seems.

On the whole the silence was well observed. The few Celtic fans who seemed to have heavy colds did not infect many others and the lone clapper was quickly silenced before the disease spread. I think sending out Billy McNeil (with John Greig) did the trick with the Celtic fans many of whom also no doubt remembered the pictures of Jock Stein on the pitch in the midst of the tragedy. Reid, Lawwell and Lennon were noticeable at the service today. Just shows that it is not impossible to bridge the great divide on occasions such as this.

My informants tell me he's had at least 4 companies gone bust or go into administration. Cannot see it happening.

I looked up the average attendances in the SPL and they total 158,868 for this season to date. I couldn't find SFL figures but guessing that the average in SFL1 is around 3,000 and the others 500 - 1000; I would estimate the total number of fans (who attend matches) is of the order of 200,000 - 250,000. I have seen the figure of 250,000 quoted elsewhere. If that is a fair guess then the survey sample is about 2.0% - 2.5%, which would normally be regarded as a more than reasonable sample. I know there are all sorts of caveats about how the survey was polled. Just to be clear, SD are not putting forward a view, they only put out the survey to try to guage if fans support the SPL/McLeish proposals. The results will be broken down to show what percentage of respondents support clubs in the SPL, SFL and Juniors. Up to Sunday night this was the breakdown of 3040 respondents: 60% SPL supporters 36% SFL supporters 4% Other supporters (Junior/Non-League)