Thinker

Maybe this provides a bit of perspective following the Caley result. We all want the team to be better than they are, but European qualification - even second place - is not out of our reach. We may be shit (by our standards), but a good (by their standards) Aberdeen team is in the same overall ball park of shit. If that makes sense.

Aye. The plane went over a few times just around kick-off.

Yesterday's was a bad result and a poor performance (by all accounts - I didn't get to see it). The current team has thrown out a few stinkers this season. The performance in the next couple of games is now of critical importance - if they respond, bounce back and pull out two good wins against the two main challengers for second then we'll be in decent shape. If the confidence drops, and we slip down the table then we'll be on course for a failed season and some kind of change will have to be made. The situation as it stands is not ideal but we're not in the realms of disaster yet either. The season hangs in the balance.

I think if a do-over was organised we'd get a lot higher turnout. It's also possible that Ally, rather than deliberately derailing the resolution, just didn't bother his arse and would vote in favour if there was a second vote.

Now it makes sense. Thanks FS.

Yes, but, if they maintain their shareholding level, the club gets their money to spend. Doesn't it? That's still a lose for them. Am I right in saying there's no way the obstructive block could increase their shareholding via an issue underwritten by a board-friendly party? And am I right in saying that, as it stands they don't have enough influence to control how the money's spent?

There's obviously something about this that I'm not getting. Yes, clearly it would be good to dramatically dilute the percentage held by uncooperative shareholders (I voted in favour of resolution 11 BTW), but by holding a "normal" share issue, wouldn't MASH, the Easdales etc. have to pony up money (that is to say, put money in the clubs coffers) just to maintain their percentage at the current, non-controlling level? If said share issue were to be underwritten by a friendly face, the chances are the non-compliant shareholder percentage would be reduced to under 25% anyway. Where's the problem with this?

We'd also be in second place.

Do judges routinely use past cases to boost their media profile (and, you might assume, supplement their income)? Is this something that's happened before? Surely that would predispose them to give the verdict that grabs the most headlines.

Same as the Provan piece. A more accurate headline would be: "Rangers-hater annoyed that Rangers are in second place."

Titter ye not!

There are ways you could get an American style conference system to work - and to me it seems like a better idea than a Superleague because you could still have national conferences (and therefore preserve the idea of national champions) for each participating association. All you do is create short top-flights, and add games against teams from other nations to make up the fixture list. As long as everyone in the same conference has the same set of fixtures it's a fair contest. At the end of the season you could have an inter-conference knock-out competition (akin to the superbowl) for CL spots.

Similar pattern to the last two home games - decent start (with a goal ruled out for offside), then we lost momentum and seemed short of ideas. A couple of scares at the back, then in the second half gradually increased the pressure. All Rangers by the end of the game but couldn't make the breakthrough this time. We were easily the best team but at the same time can't say we were totally robbed. There's an obvious counter to our standard game plan and unless we mix it up a bit the likelihood of us dropping points is too high IMO.

Happier with that than 10 years in a declining SPFL Premiership.

So... Rangers fans blamed (without any real evidence) for some graffiti which, in the grand scheme of things, is pretty tame - and certainly falls short of what I'd consider "vile". Great story.

I'd agree with that. Basically, the nutters have become more extreme, and the press are happy to feed clickbait to online obsessives.

Trainingy McTrainingface

I think the problem is that, whatever percentage of Scots are Rangers fans (I'd guess 30-odd%?) it's a minority; and the non-football fans + non-Rangers football fans constitute a majority. A heck of a lot of that group do hold us in strong contempt, so appealing to anti-Rangers sentiment is a vote winner and, conversely, expressing pro-Rangers sentiment is a sure-fire vote loser. We've ended up with elected representatives who wish our club no good at all. Am I being paranoid?

By the time I got to the concourse at the top of the steps (and I didn't especially dawdle) the damage had already been done - the pitch had been invaded, the players accosted, the scuffle had been incited, and the fans appeared to be getting separated. So by the time the roads outside were packed with fans it was already too late. All that remained to be done was to get the Hibs fans back in their seats. And as has been mentioned above, if the plan was to speed down the road to Hampden 5 minutes after a major event had just ended, it was about as ill-conceived as possible. Also, this doesn't sound like a police statement to me: Would the police really make a stupid, exaggerated blanket accusation like that?

Ultimately, Hibs, like every other club, have to bear responsibility for the actions of whoever they sell tickets to. That's how the system works and they're due a punishment.

I was unsure of Barton when his signing was first hinted at. My line of thinking was that his temperament would be tested to the limit by the atmosphere we perpetually have to put with. But after this weekend I'm starting to think, maybe Rangers is a club Barton will feel an affinity for. We're constantly demonized, vilified; every controversy that we're involved with is assumed to be, or revised to be, our fault; any misfortune which befalls us is painted as "natural justice", even though any other club would receive sympathy. Maybe Joey's better equipped to deal with being a Rangers player than anybody right now, just because of all the shit he's had to deal with in his career so far.

Predictably, us and them are loosely linked.. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/36335384

Maybe, rather than everyone at the same time it could be everyone gets a turn. For example, you could have a term of office, and no club can have representation in consecutive terms, is guaranteed a representative once every three of four terms. Something like that would surely work?

Yeah, it's definitely true that this year the Premiership team has an advantage. Relegation will go right down to the wire in some seasons though. Play-offs generally seem unfair to me no matter how you organise them. Look at the English Championship: Brighton took it right to the last game to finish a baw-hair off second spot and have since been knocked out of the play-offs by Sheffield Wednesday, a team they've proven themselves to be better than over the previous 46 games, and that had coasted into 6th. These games are more about excitement than fairness. I guess a straight second bottom vs. second top at Hampden would be the fairest way. Incidentally, I noticed that the Welsh Premier have a similar kind play-off for their 3rd place UEFA cup spot (3rd to 6th place in a knockout). Something like could add some more excitement (or unfairness, depending on how you look at it) to our Premiership.

The play-offs aren't as rigged as they first appear. Remember, the Premiership has a 38 game season, but the Championship only has a 36 game season. So if 4th or 3rd get to the last round they've only played 2 league games more than the relegation candidate; and if 2nd make it both sides in the final will have played the same number of league games. It's really the tight scheduling that's the problem.