bigy

That's one of my biggest disappointments this season. I'd have loved to have seen us go with a team along the lines of:

Alexander

Cole Hegarty Perry Wallace

McKay McLeod Hutton Aird

Little McCulloch

We have lots of boys coming through, and had we given them the chance we'd have all got right behind them. Not that we haven't, but it was a great opportunity to develop more players.

By signing 7/8 experienced players we've taken that chance away from some, and I don't think the signings are all that much better. I also think that if we'd went with a 'youth' team that the support would be much more sympathetic to away draws as we'd understand the development process we are in.

What a surprise, but the fact they're now having to admi this could suggest change is in the air.

Majority of SPL clubs 'do not expect to make money this season'

 

The majority of SPL clubs do not expect to make any money this season, according to a report by a finance firm.

 

Accounting and business advice company PKF said a "widening gap" could emerge between the wages paid to players in Scotland compared to their English counterparts.

 

The company's annual football survey, Leagues Apart, showed that two thirds of Scottish Premier League clubs do not expect to make a profit before player trading and depreciation during the 2012/13 season.

 

Only 17% of respondents said their financial situation is "healthy" - the lowest proportion of any of the leagues questioned. PKF said it is "worrying" that two thirds of SPL clubs who responded say they are dependent on their principal shareholder to cover cover annual revenue shortfalls or operating losses.

 

Six SPL teams participated in the survey (there are 12 teams in the top flight in Scotland), as well as clubs in the English Premier League, Football League Championship, and Football Leagues One and Two, with a total of 62 finance directors questioned.

 

A third of SPL sides reported that they will pay first team players the same amount as last year, while two thirds said they will pay less. However, transfer budgets will remain the same, according to the survey. PKF said the survey shows that, with the exception of a few of the top sides, it is becoming increasingly difficult to run a football club without losing money.

 

Charles Barnett, head of the football industry group at the firm, said: "There is clear evidence that clubs are absorbing some of the financial lessons of the last decade and are reducing wages to turnover to ensure they operate within a manageable ratio.

 

"However, it is also equally clear that players and their agents may not have absorbed this lesson and are continuing to demand wages which are untenable for the majority of Scottish clubs. The result is likely to be a widening gap between the wages players are paid in Scotland compared to their English counterparts.

 

"This will have worrying ramifications for the future development of Scottish football as it is unlikely SPL teams will attract top players in the same way as clubs in England which will, in turn, widen the gap between wages in Scotland and England."

 

Rangers crisis

 

SPL clubs stated that income fell across the board in the 2011/12 season, as 83% said merchandising and match day catering revenues were down, just under 67% reported a drop in sponsorship and corporate entertaining packages and half said there had been a fall in match ticket sales.

 

The biggest concern for the coming season is a fall in TV income followed by falling attendances at games due to the poor state of the economy, according to the survey. A third of SPL clubs believe the state of the economy will cause all revenue streams to be down in 2012/13, with the exception of corporate entertainment, where only 17% believe this revenue will be reduced.

 

Newco Rangers FC were forced to start life in the Third Division this season, after administrators were called in to deal with the club's financial crisis.

 

Mr Barnett said: "The story remains the same for Scottish football with falling revenue streams last season and a similar situation predicted for the coming year. Indeed it is likely that the financial concerns of many SPL teams will be heightened with the loss of Rangers from the league.

 

"It is likely that some clubs will now be predicting an even greater fall in revenue for the coming season and further worries about whether they can manage the financial gap between expenditure and income which the departure of Rangers has undoubtedly precipitated.

 

"The problem is that many SPL clubs were facing a difficult year anyway but the changed circumstances of the league mean those difficulties may have become exacerbated."

 

He added: "Nobody can deny that these are worrying times for Scottish football. But there may be something more positive which arises out of the current situation.

 

"For example, this season Rangers is substantially increasing revenues among the teams of the Third Division which will provide those clubs with welcome additional finance."

 

http://news.stv.tv/scotland/195391-majority-of-spl-clubs-do-not-expect-to-make-money-this-season/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Awful! Can you see Shaw, Woodburn, Davis and Shearer in that?

They'd probably need more than one top to be fair!! I'm not overly keen either, but it I for charity!!

What do we all think? £40 is a bit steep when it'll hardly ever be worn, but then it is for charity.

http://www.sportsdirect.com/umbro-rangers-pink-shirt-2012-2013-377320

Just added by BBC.

Rangers: Craig Whyte defends his Ibrox reign to BBC Scotland

By Chris McLaughlin

 

Senior Football Reporter, BBC Scotland "I was driving the train when it crashed, but I didn't set it on its course." The words of venture capitalist Craig Whyte after I asked him who was to blame for the Rangers debacle.

 

The words of a man keen to speak out and explain his part in Scottish football's longest-running and most ruinous saga.

 

A man who has become a figure of hate and even of ridicule since his ill-fated takeover of the Ibrox club last year.

 

Whyte feels he has become the Rangers bogeyman, an easy target, but has the criticism been justified?

 

He failed to pay VAT and PAYE and ultimately led the club into administration.

 

He granted me an interview and promised to be open and honest with no subject off the table.

 

We met in central London just yards from where he first hatched his controversial plan to take over one of the biggest club's in British football.

 

He is no fan of the media spotlight and self-conscious about how he comes across on television.

 

He told me he had nothing to lose. I was sceptical.

 

He kept his promise and was surprisingly frank, hitting back as I probed on subjects like the season ticket deal with Ticketus, former owner Sir David Murray, PAYE, administrator Duff and Phelps and the role of the Scottish Premier League.

 

Who knew what and when did it all go wrong?

 

There was an apology for the fans - a denial of lies and questions about morality.

 

There were surprising revelations about how present chief executive Charles Green ended up in charge at Ibrox and discussions about just exactly how much he himself made from the deal.

 

Bought for a pound and sold for a pound? Whyte was pressed, but what did he say?

 

Bogeyman or the man to blame? Make your own mind up.

 

More to follow from BBC Scotland's exclusive interview with Craig Whyte.

If its 21 of 42 it's not exactly a minority. Not before time!!!

Well all of it is for the club by the sounds of it.

But how much is retained by the current shareholders/owners? If you bought the whole £20m in shares you wouldn't own 100% of the company. Those £20m shares are only for a proportion of the company, and those who have already invested will retain the rest.

What we don't know is how much has been retained by the current investors, and how much did they have to pay to get that amount of stake in the club.

Money can go in the bank, I doubt we're going to get a detailed sheet of where ever single penny goes.

Sorry, I meant I don't think he's said what % of the club the £20m is for, hence he's not stated what they value the club at.

I don't think he's said what the £20m is for!! It's certainly not clear at the very least.

Green (off the record) has said he will be challenging the transfer embargo because it was signed under duress (ie he was blackmailed), but he needs to wait till the right time to challenge it. He's also said he's looking for investment to do up the surrounding area.

I thought he said that it was being considered to reject promotion to the SPL?

He told the RST AGM that while he was CEO Rangers would never play in the SPL. He also said that reconstruction would be forced through in the near future so I doubt he expects it to be an issue.

It'd be interesting to see how much the investors had put in to the club and how much they want out.

It cost under £6m to buy the club, and if you had the legal and other costs associated we could round this up to £10m. Other than this how much money has actually been pumped in by these investors?

i for one wont concern myself with the spl ubtil the rangers are playing in it .

Green is on record as saying we'll never play in it again while he's CEO.

Okay, he might not be here that long, but i don't think Rangers will ever accept an invite to the SPL. The league will need to be reformed.

To be honest i can't see the 20 million all being raised. I think there is a massive difference between backing the club with season ticket purchases and then also asking to invest in the club with no real guarantee of return.

 

Will the share price rise significantly on getting back to the SPL? Just looking at Celtics share price it didn't move a great deal when they qualified for the CL and they only have a market cap of 34m. Maybe that is hampered by the amount of large shareholders they have restricting share movements i don't know, not an expert. But i really can't see a massive return for the current shareholders through share price movement alone.

He's hoping that banks/financial institutions really get behind it. That's where he's hoping to make most money.

What happens if we only raise, say £5million, then from the flotation?

That's what puzzles me. He keeps saying that nobody can own over 10%, but if over 10% of the shares are left unsold who do these go to?

I think he's right to an extent. A debt free Rangers, a club which owns all its assets, which will be in Europe again soon, and which has huge development opportunities around the ground is a hugely attractive prospect. When he talks about the plans for redeveloping the area it sounds great, and we now have huge potential to grow.

What I still don't understand is why restrict it to Rangers fans? He knows how suspicious we are, he knows that finances are tight for everyone right now, so why not open it up? Or, if it's about money, why not endorse a fans ownership model which could potentially raise that kind of money and which would entice a lot of us?

A lot of what he's doing doesn't seem to make sense to me just now. But in saying that, he does come across as open and decent. I have no problems with him at all, i'm just sceptical when I don't know the full facts.

If the RST get 40k new members those 40k will decide who runs it and what the objectives are. It's not a dictatorship where new members get forced in and told what to do and think.

It's one of the few fans groups that allows all members to vote and elect the representatives,, so it's a bit unfair to suggest they'd be taking your voice when depending on how much you choose to contribute the opposite is true.

Fan ownership doesn't mean fans running the club on a day to day basis, it would be up to shareholders to vote on a model. That could mean, for example, a management/supervisory board being voted in to appoint and supervise something along the lines of the current structure.

So you could still have a Charles Green running the club, but rather than being accountable to anonymous investors he'd report to a democratically elected board representing the fans.

I know there has been a lot of in-fighting between various groups, but to m mind this is representative of only a minority of our support. The RST is one of the biggest groups and only has a few thousand members. If you had 50,000 or 100,000 or 200,00o fans electing a board it would be representative of more mainstream views, and the extreme elements would be frozen out or on the peripheries.

Other thing Green said that may interest some is that our wage bill is now £6m a year compared to. £30m last year. Used an example that if we added 10 players in £1m a year our bill would still be roughly half what it was.

Our biggest problem is the support is so fragmented. We need to be more together but because of politics, past goings on, inflated egos and petty bickering we get nowhere.

As a support we need a say in the running of the club, even if we're not fully supporter owned, and that say has to be democratically elected by the support.

One thing that was mentioned at the meeting was the fact that individual shareholders got screwed with what happened, but if individual shareholders had their share through an umbrella body we could have held Whyte more to account.

Greens doing a great job just now on the PR front by standing up for us and making the right noises, but people were similarly convinced by Whyte. I don't believe Green has anything but good intentions for the club, but we do need a coordinated approach to hold him to account.

He's not selling the shares to a broker he's employing the broker to sell the shares on his behalf in return for a not inconsiderable fee. I sincerely doubt than many if any financial institutions will partake, the risk reward ratio is slanted heavily towards risk. We simply do not know at present if we're debt free or not but the present investors certainly want their money back (and more). On paper we are anything but a good investment, it won't be restricted Green will sell to anyone who wants to buy thing is nobody without an emotional attachment club will buy as I previously said the constituency of potential investors is very, very narrow.

He said at the RST meeting shares would only be available to season ticket holders (past and present) or members of supporters groups.

I've no idea how workable that is or why he'd do this, but that is what he said. To be honest it makes me more suspicious.

The fact that there's no financial institution willing to underwrite the issue says a lot, season ticket holders and supporters groups are unlikely to ask for independent financial advice from a suitable source. The fans are the only constituency for the shares and Green knows it.

I'm not an expert, but the way I understood it is he's selling £25m worth of shares to a broker, who sells them on to the fans and financial institutions. It just makes no sense that you'd restrict it to fans. We are a debt free club, we have huge potential, we'll be in Europe soon enough, and on paper we are a good investment - so why restrict it?

I think we're being too accepting of Green. It's great that he's standing up for us and saying the right things, but on the financial side there are still questions.

He says nobody can own more than 10%, and £25m in shares will be made available to fans and financial institutions, but if that remains largely unsold will someone not end up with over 10%?

We still don't know the names of many investors, and if he's in it for money why restrict the sale to season ticket olders and those connected to supporter groups?

Lewis MacLeod is an 18 year old boy who has been one of our best players this year. The young boys will lack consistency, but they are the only ones showing drive and passion. They have been let down by more experienced team mates and a lack of trust by the manager.

are super or the players or both destroying green from the inside.

Hutton in midfield with MacLeod, MacKay up front with Shiels. Faster pace of play.

On the football pitch we need to start concentrating on football, and decisions need to be made based on the best way forward for the club.

As an ambassador and figure head Ally has been fantastic, but as a manager he's been terrible. He threw away a massive lead last season before the problems, our away form last year and this is horrific, our cup performances disgraceful, and the ttitude of the players away from home unacceptable.

He persists with big lumps up front, never changes tactics, always sacrifices the young guns who have been our best players this season, and persists with senior players who are not contributing.

If it was a on off it'd be one of those things, but this season Brechin took us to extra time, Queen of the South put us out the Ramsdens, we struggled to beat a Highland league team, have drawn with Peterhead, Berwick and Annan and been beat by Stirling. All of this and there re no signs of improvement!!

Anyone tolerating this is on drugs, a tim or completely deluded.