The Real PapaBear

do they floss him or check his mouth for piles? The fella talks out of his arse so much you could forgive them for being confused. According to Oor Peter, the crowds have plummeted at the meccanodome because of the economic situation (and/or b) they have CL football and/or c) there's roadworks on the M8 and/or d) the telly is getting better, so it is and/or e) people cannae find their car keys and/or every f)uckin' reason except the real one. ) Is this a different economic situation facing every other club in Scotland whose attendances are all improving this year, Pete? ITC, St Johnstone, St Mirren, Hibs, Aberdeen and DUtd all showing about 10% increase, Hearts and Motherwell staying where they were last year. Only Celtic are showing a fall - and we can see on the TV how big a fall it is, without being told lies, Petey. They call themselves TGFITW (nobody else does, mind you, just them) - and yet, it's to Ibrox that the French, German and American film crews are turning up and it's the Rangers fans who are raising admiration from football fans all over the world for their loyalty and character. TGFITW? hmm, that jacket has a nice fit - and it only comes in Blue.

pretty good on the face of it except: 1) the "champions league style" (i.e what they used to do in the 1970s for a while) would have made more sense for the more valuable Scottish Cup and 2) what is the point of renaming the 1st Div to the Championship? Do they think that by copying England we'll be fooled into thinking the football will be any better?

and Walter was proved to have been 100% accurate.

it will. I was like a feral cat with charles green - feed me all you like, but I'm not getting within arms reach. With walter on board, I'm now on my back waiting for a tummy tickle. I trust Ally 100% in terms of his heart being in the right place, but wasn't sure if he was savvy enough to see through Green, if charlei was indeed pulling a fast one. Now with Walter on board, I can sleep easily and finally get committed. I'm in.

A drastic solution, but I think we'd all be willing to give it a try

Because instead of two giants and 10 dwarves, you'd have less discrepancy between the sizes of the clubs and therefore more competition. You only have to look back to the 80s when Aberdeen and Dundee Utd were winning leagues and reaching European finals. They were never as big or as rich as the OF but the were able to have squads that could compete when they had good managers. The way things are now, no manager on earth could lead any other team to the SPL title. I really don't know what to say to that.

Sounds good to me. I can see the argument that says people come to Ibrox to watch Rangers, so why should the other team get half the money; but I also see the argument that says, without two teams, you don't have a game, therefore both should get equal money. The 25% idea would probably satisfy both.

The problem with the gate money split at the moment is that the gap between the big two (once we're back) and the rest will always get bigger and bigger, with the result that the smaller clubs will be unable to develop in a way that makes the Scottish league stronger. Give Motherwell two big paydays a season and it will transform their operation. All the other clubs realise that they have to develop talent in order to sell on; sharing the OF gates 50/50 will give them that bit more money to do just that. The Of will always be hugely bigger than the rest (18 paydays for us compared to 2 for every other team) The alternative is to adopt a Revenue Share like they do in Baseball. In the 15 years since they introduce revenue sharing, the top two teams by market share/fan base (Yankees and Red Sox) have won it 5 times. There have been 7 other winners, including small market teams like the cardinals and new teams like the diamondbacks and marlins. In Baseball, you never know who will end up winning the divisions or leagues and it's much healthier as a result.

Oh, I'm not surprised, Gov - I just wish we would behave with more dignity that we have been treated with. True dat.

The biggest improvement that could be made is to split all gate money 50/50 for every game. Two leagues at the top and a southern and northern league below, with the one up one down automatically and playoffs. Summer football is a no-brainer. 1 The crowds would increase. 2 the quality of the football would improve 3 sponsorship and UK wide interest would increase as we would be playing when the EPL was on holiday.

It's not me who's missing the point Gov. If you read my post again, you'll see i say nothing about the punishments they should or should not receive. I'm talking about the reaction of too many Rangers fans to the plight Hearts fans find themselves in - which has been vindictive, small minded and, quite frankly, stupid. Your analogy also falls down as, to the best of my knowledge, no Hearts fans or officials have slapped anyone in the face. What some stupid, small-minded and vindictive Hearts fans have done is laugh at our situation - but just because they have some cretins in their support who behave like twats doesn't mean that we have to behave in the same way towards them. We either rise above them or reduce ourselves to their level - and if we do that, then we can't complain about anything they say or do.

Here we go again: "they were (your adjective here) to us, so we should wish the worst for them". This is such a depressing attitude on all sorts of levels. Firstly, we probably all know some Hearts fans. In my case my late grandfather and my cousin and my step-daughter's boyfriend. Top blokes one and all and I wouldn't wish them to go what we went through. Second, just because someone behaves like a twat to you does *not* mean that you have to react in the same manner back to them. It's called behaving with dignity and maturity. Thirdly, if Hearts went bust we'd lose the most enjoyable fixture in the league, to my mind. Our games against them have all the spirit and mental-ness, indeed more, than games against Celtic - how many times do games end with 22 players on the park? Fourthly, if we want to have the strongest most competitive league we can and if we want to produce the best players we can, then we need Hearts. Finally, if Hearts get taken under by yet another mis-managing con artist, it really does reduce scottish fitba to 3rd world levels. Far from Rangers taking any pleasure in their predicament, Charles Green should offer to pay the tax bill for them, at an appropriate level of interest of course. This would have the effect of showing the world that we may be in Div3, but we are still Scotland's biggest club; it would forever give us crowing rights over the Jambos and it would sicken the 'sellik-minded' that one 'Hun' club came to the rescue of another.

LOL! Very good, indeed. Of course if you were putting together a playlist of Songs for Spiers, you could have chose this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkyebo2gAw0

I think we can take their boak-inducing hypocricy for read, Davie...but it doesn't matter a damn what the weasels at the SFA or SPL do or don't do, or how many ways they try to have it - *we* should do the right thing. The one 'debt' I would withhold is the one to Dundee Utd until such time as Charles Green is proved to be wrong about it.

...let's not be unkind to Mr Spiers. I'm sure it must have been just awful to be subjected to threats and intimidation whenever he wrote about Rangers. Well, when I say 'subjected to' I mean 'hear about'. Second hand. From other people telling him about the threats. These threats must have been so serious that they couldn't be made to Mr Spiers directly and had to be relayed via colleagues. These are the worst kind of threats, the ones that you don't receive yourself and hear about from your editor. You lie awake worrying about why nobody is phoning you up in the middle of the night. You toss and turn, fretting that they aren't vandalising your house or car. You pace up and down endlessly trying to work out why they aren't throwing rocks through your child's bedroom window. Albertz and Novo had it easy, compared to Mr Spiers if you ask me. They didn't have to suffer the sinister silent threat; the unspoken threat; the unwritten threat; the invisible kind of threat that Mr Spiers did. That's the worst kind; you never know exactly when nothing's going to happen. It might be today; it might be tomorrow; it might be two weeks from now - but one thing is sure; at some point nothing is going to happen and it's gonna be bad. During all the years when he was in and out of Ibrox every second week without anybody saying 'boo' to him, the tension must have been unbearable. After all, he knew they were there, these threats (people had told him they were) so they must have been all the more sinister to be completely dismissed. To people who don't know about these things, it may have looked like he was just being ignored for being a twat every time he set foot in Ibrox - but actually, it turns out he was being threatened silently, invisibly, inaudibly. So, let's show Mr Spiers the respect his threat warnings deserve, shall we?

because we are Rangers. Because it's the right thing to do. It doesn't matter a damn who owes us money, the fact is we owe money to different football clubs, small businesses and HMRC - and we should pay back every penny of what we owe, no matter how long it takes - because we are Rangers. Because it's the right thing to do. The company, the legal entity which ran the club may have been dissolved and been dissolved because it was run by crooks and con artists, but the club was not dissolved. Unless you believe that the Club *was* Murray and Whyte, unless you believe that Rangers was the company which was liquidated and therefore believe that Rangers, as we knew it, no longer exists, then you have to accept that the club has a moral obligation - never mind what the legal obligations may or may not be - we have a moral obligation to pay back those to whom we owe money - because we are Rangers. Because it's the right thing to do.

here's a radical idea: why don't we stick with the manager we've got? I'm old enough to remember the chants of "Ally, Ally GTF" back in the 80s - but guess what, McCoist not only came good, but came good enough to be one of the greatest ever Rangers. Ally is a smart guy, with undisputed love for the club and there is no-one on earth I would trust more to be in charge, except mibbe Walter. Remember that McCoist is still learning his trade and he has yet to have a 'normal' season as manager. Give him time and let him learn his trade through divs 3 to 1; he'll come good - again.