der Berliner

This behaviour again simply shows him and his lot up for what they are. Next stop, UEFA.

As has been posted on FF ..

I will tell you here and now: we are doomed! Yes, that's it. We are doomed. No matter what. For years and years we have conned the world, the SPL, and the SFA and now they will come back to punish and haunt us big time! And now back to reality.

Who knows? Hence I "speculated" a wee bit.

Regarding Dundee United ... I noted yesterday that former Tangerine whizzkid David Goodwillie has played 5 EPL games thus far, scoring 2 goals. (On a sidenote, Blackburn have three first choice strikers: Yakubu (played 20, scoring 14 goals) and Modeste (played 2, no goals). Grand competition up front down there and he still can't get a game. Well well ... (They do have 13 first team midfielders though.))

Yep, the admins push for a takeover and ... guess what: the authorities deem it cool to leave the club in the balance over their decision. So ... one might speculate (sic!) that they now wait to see what comes of the takeover and once it has been successfully done, they will shed more agony over us with some silly ban or penalty.

Another week then. This is a bit like the 48h transfer stuff ...

Which tells us?

Substantially larger than the 3.6m? What might these be then?

The last thing is the important one. How do you evaluate the e.g. admins' costs, that of a CEO, or a youth coach? That of a club's lawyer and whatnot. Is it fine that a player earns roughly 700 to 1,000 pound per hour of work? Because he does what he does best and is living his dream while doing it? At the age of 24? No matter which admin would have come in, their charge / fee would have been roughly the same. Was there need to have admins though ... another topic altogether and one that Whyte, SDM and Co. need to answer.

By some people's imagination, we should also win the league title (and any other trophy in Scotland) every year. That is not how football works though, no matter what sort of players you have. Being (at) Rangers might improve your chances considerably, but it is not something given. Same with the lads here. These things are always in flux and I'm sure we will have better u15s et al in years to come, and worse u19s too.

Out of interest ... how much does e.g. Steven Davis gets paid "per hour". Training for x hours per week, in for a match day for x hours per match day ... would be interesting to see.

Maybe, maybe not. That is the part we are all left with. We hardly have a clue about the amount of even the lowest bid, nor about the plans of either bidder in general. Some have said what they look forward to do (BK - fan involvement), others how they would probably run the club (Kennedy - single-handedly). About the Singapore and US bids we know next to nothing. This gives the press a reasonable space for speculation and - once again - the negative tone does prevail. So you'd have to ask the question why there's need to even change the dire headline of the DR article into something even more sinister on this board. So just out of interest ... not least for the doom-singers ... who would profit from the club being liquidated and a newco would come into existence? And - if you please - make it a good argument about the profit thing here, given that the club would be barred from any reasonable income source for probably 3 to 5 years, massive investment would have to be put in place by any new owner, i.e. any current bidder. Can anyone imagine Whyte going for the kill and thus literally endanger his life?

Not saying that they always have picked a wrong trail, but do you see the admins releasing any news about the value of the bids to the press?

Well, it is not necessarily negative. You do occasionally wonder what motivates some people / posters on here. As if they only circle about the negative stories on the club and post a comment about it or the story itself first. If you look for a positive/optimistic post or comment of said poster(s), the search will be long and hard. Once you bring up a comment "against" such a style, you are quickly put into the "head-in-sand" or "pro-Whyte" locker. NB: While I am at it, just look at the Whyte wants to liquidate Rangers topic, warped more doomishly from the "original" Craig Whyte tells Duff and Phelps he would rather see Rangers go into liquidation than sell to Paul Murray by ... well, you know who.

The Record understands ... ... another exclusive by Keith Jackson. Who, of course, has an insight into the value of the various bids received by the admins. Yes, I would think so. Neat headline by forlanssister though.

That's impressive.

Can't tell, since I never met any of them.

Nope, they work for those mentioned (and guessed?) 654 pounds per hour. As has been said though, I would be pretty surprised if they had calculated their own costs into the "money required to finish the season" when they hardly had a clue how good or bad the bids for the clubs would be. And while we are at it, how many people from D&P work a) on behalf of the clubs right now and b) do they all get that top-notch money per hour, even if they do nothing but minor work? While I do see a point in making such a remark about their work, right now the press (and not least the Record) look at every negative angle possible and milk them to the core. I wonder when the next article about the possible SPL investigation penalties hits the headlines ...

Maybe so. Yet, that only holds true for this current bunch though. We had years were we produced more than half of Scotlands u19s or u21s though, so who's to say that in 3 or 5 years time the table has turned and half of the u15s or u17s are Rangers players?

Looks like the resident doom-singers' numbers have just doubled.

STV gives us this article today, yet kindly omits who actually lost the game. Hence, all OF fans take the blame, not - as you would expect - the support of the losing team. *saracasm on* Then again, there's a good chance that the support of the winning team does a fair amount of DV too, is there? *sarcasm off*

The discredited journalist's heir at the Times, Phil Gordon, whipped up a pretty strange article about poor Neil Lennon. In response, an article on FF looked at the claims by Gordon (and some press cohorts) ... IMHO, Lennon was kept from the director's box solely because everyone with an ounce of brain would know that TLB would have gone bonkers in the director's box too - something that could easily have lead to an arrest. Given that the ref was clearly giving the wrong decisions time and again, while Rangers dared to play his beloved Hoops off the park. We all can imagine the antics and behaviour of TLB going along with that and we all would not want to envisage him amongst our more distinguished guests, officials, and directors, would we?

On a sidenote, while MP seems to be regarded as our club's academy, to me it was and is more or less our club's training facility.

Well, I'm somewhat split over this. Sure a club of our stature should have youth academies and developing Scottish talent and whatnot, but over decades we have hardly seen many of those youth players being reared into first team material for us. And that is not because of them being not "good enough" or our coaches being insufficient, but because of the managers as well as the demand by the support for constant and instant success. You'd have to be a special talent to make it from youth to first team level or to supplant a SPL veteran that could be bought for reasonable sums in days gone by. Don't get me wrong here. I'm all in favour of a decently run and USED youth system. But if the latter (i.e. the "used" bit) is essentially non-existing, wouldn't it be reasonable to let others (who have the experience) do that and look for talent through e.g. a foster club system et al? Tying certain low-key clubs to us with regards to talent rearing, in exchange for coaching, loanies, fees, compensation, use of training ground, keeping them in existence, and whatnot? On a sidenote, we have also established a women's and girls team in recent seasons and despite other teams having a far longer pedigree here, this is actually something that could be developed further. Women's football sure is on a very low key, even here in Germany, but it steadily grows in momentum and with regards to us becoming more of a family and community club, that is a way that should be explored. (On a sidenote, unless I am mistaken, the ladies and girls actually pay to play for us ... )