Mountain Bear

After what we've been through, we should just shrug off a conviction for being dishonest and defrauding the Revenue eh? I don't think so. They may be reformed men now for all I know, but I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, especially if they've got even the vaguest association with Green, Whyte, Zeus etc. Fan ownership has never seemed so attractive.

I'm quietly excited about this signing if it happens: 1. I know a few 2nd Div supporters and they all rate him. 2. Scoring 40 goals in the Division we're moving to gives me confidence that it's a sensible signing. 3. He's young, Scottish and his dad played for the club, so he'll know what's expected of him. 4. It follows the only sensible model for the club. Sign young talent, develop them and move them on at a profit. Fingers crossed on this one for me.

Thanks for keeping us informed Steve. Helped make a dull train journey feel like a rollercoaster!

100%. Sandaza's comments didn't give anyone any additional ammunition to use against the Club. FWIW, I'm not saying Green should be sacked for what he said, but he justified a zero tolerance approach with Sandaza and if you live by the sword...

Indeed. Green felt justified sacking Sandaza for something far less damaging to the Club.

The title is in the bag. The players know they're playing for their futures at the club. They'll have a wide pitch and a good surface to work with. If we don't get a good energetic performance out of this team today, I doubt we ever will. 0:2 Gers.

Spot on Frankie. I try to judge Green on what he does rather than what he says, but more clarity and less patter would certainly help.

If this was Whyte's great plan to retain control of the Club all along, he is even more incompetent than I thought.

So, virtually without exception, posters on Gersnet believe our scouting and youth development is a shambles and needs a radical overhaul. And what do we do when the message comes through that this is going to happen? We moan about it. There are existing employees involved in all these areas. Doesn't a new management team have a duty to identify for themselves in detail what the real issues are? I have been through numerous organisational restructures in my career and the more effective ones have involved a lot of planning, mostly behind the scenes, but are then implemented swiftly and decisively. Frankly, I don't care how far advanced the plans are at this stage, it's been identified as a priority to be addressed and that's a start. I hope they take as long as required to actually get it right, rather than try and put a quick fix in place to appease the fans. The structures will certainly be important, but ultimately this will be about recruiting the right people and giving them the right resources for the job. If that takes 1, 2, or even 3 years before it pays dividends, then so be it, as long as it's done well.

Lord Nimmo Smith specifically stated that the £250k fine was nothing to do with Newco, so I don't see how we could be made to pick up the costs. Perhaps they're claiming that these costs are part of the footballing debts of Oldco which Green agreed to pick up, but I doubt very much that he'd have signed up to a unquantified contingent liability. I certainly hope not anyway.

It's the SPL that will be getting SFA...

Sounds like the SPL are getting a bit desperate. Armageddon anyone?

It strengthens Celtic's financial stranglehold over the competition, whoever that may be for the next few years and breaks with the principle that those with the deepest pockets should carry the greatest burden. If they didn't plan it that way, it certainly seems very convenient for them. Remember the current plan keeps us in the bottom league for another year making it more difficult for us to increase season ticket prices, when the Club's financial plans will have assumed just that for next year. A deliberate move to hinder our recovery, or a nice bonus for CFC? Either way, they benefit and we lose out.

On the pitch it's not been a total failure, but it has been a massive disappointment. It would have been one of the great sporting disasters of all time if we hadn't won Div 3 with the resources at our disposal, so I guess we've achieved the absolute minimum expected of us.

Wilco. I'm all for a healthy dose of skepticism, but you can have too much of a good thing...

C'mon, you're being deliberately obtuse and you know it. DB's point was that just because a player has no resale value it doesn't make him a bad signing. The Sandaza signing can't be described as anything close to a success, but he was pretty decent for the Arabs and was the best player in a very good St Johnstone team which played a passing game through midfield, so it was perfectly reasonable to think he was a player who could have helped us progress through the leagues. A salary ratchet based on league progression is a perfectly sensible mechanism in our circumstances. I deliberately didn't listen to the recording, but even assuming he said his salary increased BY 120% after 4 years (as opposed being 120% of the original figure, which barely covers inflation over the period), then if the base salary is "a lot less" than £7k as mentioned earlier, then there is nothing wrong with the structure of the deal, just that the player hasn't delivered.

Agree with some of Gibbons' points (rare for me), but he's picked some odd examples to use. Maybe Green's threat to resign if MM wasn't removed was genuine, maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was leaked deliberately, maybe it wasn't. Either way, it was never part of an official CG statement and I for one struggle to believe that situation was a deliberated diversion (from what?), given the potential it had to unsettle investors. On moving to England. Yes, Gibbons is correct, even winning a court case wouldn't force the Premiership to admit Rangers, but it does allow Green to find a lower league which would, thus enabling the Club to progress up the structure. In an article suggesting CG ignores the inconvenient truths, Gibbons either hasn't thought his own argument through, or he's done exactly what he criticises Green for. Poor IMO.

The concept that you wouldn't support your own national side is something I can't get my head around. I may not go to the games any more, but I'll always want them to do well.

Er, based on some of the tweets on there, I'm pretty sure it's an unofficial site run by a Bear. Unless the SFL have started re-tweeting pictures of ugly Celtic fans that is...

Amusingly, when he claimed he'd been hacked, he tweeted that he was now getting "hate male". You couldn't make it up!

Presumably he has been hacked on a weekly basis for some time now, based on the history of anti Rangers tweets which have been pasted on RM.

Fair play to the Shire, that's a strong statement from the Chairman. If proven, the player should never play for their club again. God forbid that any Rangers player would say something equally crass and offensive, but if they did, that's what I'd expect our club to do.

Done. Hope it goes well.

I don't think the record keeping would have been that great in those days DB. Remember we're talking about cash turnstiles and a biscuit tin for the money!