Hildy
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Everything posted by Hildy
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RangersRab, if clubs like Barcelona and Real Madrid and Bayern Munich can make it work, why can't we? Are you content with the ownership of the club falling into dangerous hands? How many more lessons do we need that Rangers is not best served by rogue ownership? The idea that Rangers can flourish and be safe and secure when it can easily fall prey to devilish ownership is absurd. We either take full and proper responsibility for the club or stand back and complain endlessly as the club falters and fails, and with us in the unenviable role of powerless bystanders. Why do we fear taking responsibility for a club that plays such a big part in our lives? If we want Rangers to be protected, we must own it. No-one will ever care for it the way we do.
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Barca, the support must buy the club. We complain and moan and drone on endlessly about people not fit for purpose being in charge. There is a way to change that. BuyRangers is a constructive way forward. I hope it is publicised more in the New Year and endorsed by trusted Rangers figures. We need an elected president - not a chairman of the board.
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RangerRab, if there has been any criminality, I want to know about it. If there has been some kind of conspiracy to destroy the club, I want the story out in the open. If there has been sinister involvement by people influential at Celtic - past or present - I want them named. We can not, however, keep portraying ourselves as victims when the door of Ibrox is permanently wedged open to whoever wants to own it. What we are doing here is complaining about burglary and vandalism after leaving the front and back door open. Even if there has been criminality, we should at least admit that our own failure to properly take care of a club we care dearly for has been a contributory factor in this sorry tale.
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Barca, the spectacle of watching Rangers right now is ghastly. The football is junk and the competitive element is absent. There is an absence of excitement and an overdose of tedium. Children are begging their parents to stop taking them to Ibrox so dull is the fare on offer, and many people, including children, prefer a hostile atmosphere at the game rather than the sound of texting and sweetie-paper rustling. The delusion is not in being there - it is in pretending that the experience is something that it clearly isn't. A bunch of my mates quite readily admit that they only go because of the social side. This is the matchday highlight. They keep in regular touch because of the football and are reluctant to give it up even though they no longer enjoy it - and their kids are now showing more interest in the EPL and Spanish big two than Rangers. As for events of the last two years, I note that you want to apportion blame everywhere except at your own door. We may indeed have been subjected to criminality inside Ibrox, and if we have, I hope the guilty are identified and prosecuted, but what about the other side of the coin? When things were going well under David Murray, did you claim the credit for us dominating domestically, or did you give 100% of the plaudits to him? Can we refuse to take responsibility when owners are dubious, but proclaim how great we are when we have a custodian who is good? This idea that the support is never responsible for any of the ills that befall the club is akin to the victim culture that is so embedded across the city. 'It wisnae us - a big boy did it and ran away'. Let's not duck the issues. We witnessed a catastrophe at Ibrox. Some of us are big enough to accept that responsibility. As a support we failed dismally to stop the rot. On our watch, Rangers collapsed and nearly expired. I'm not going to walk away from that. If Rangers was burgled, we held the door open for the burglars - and there is still no sign of it being slammed shut.
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That's a decent response, amms, which is welcome because the point of view that I hold isn't popular within the uber-branch of the Rangers support. Football fans develop a pack instinct and outwardly express hatred and dislike for almost everyone they confront, and when they come on to internet message boards, they tend to carry extreme opinions with them for fear of being perceived as a degree or two less than staunch. A quick browse around the Rangers sections of the internet when it first became clear a few years ago that Hearts were heading for trouble was an embarrassing experience. Well over 90% of views expressed hoped that Hearts would go under because, somehow, it served them right. I didn't get it then and I don't get it now. In some respects then, you are right, football fans are mostly the same, but of course rivalry, especially ours with Celtic, is so deep-rooted and longstanding that hatred isn't a strong enough term to describe its lowest manifestations. In the real world, though, we mix, converse, inter-marry, and socialise even though our government - to its eternal shame - continues to fund educational separation. This idea that they are so despicable now that we can't breathe the same air and compete against one another is a form of intolerance. Their extremist wing takes this same view; that we are so evil and immoral that they would rather we disappeared altogether - but these people are narrow-minded, bile-ridden, first degree, hardcore bigots. So consumed are they with anti-Protestant hatred, that they genuinely believe that they are morally superior. Leave them to their intolerance. It's where they live. It surely isn't where we live. The perception that some of us have that our present situation is pure and wonderful is delusion off the scale. Watching paint dry is only marginally worse than watching Rangers toiling against part-time teams and full-time journeymen. Our club needs to fly high. Our support needs it to fly high. We need the satisfaction of competing and winning instead of merely winning. We need a rival to make the prize worth it. When Celtic are with us and we triumph, we feel like world champions. When there is no rival to match us, our world is empty and devoid of a sense of achievement. Maybe this is why we latched on to going through the season winning every game. It gave us an extra interest even though it was no big deal. Rangers fans crowing about a third tier winning run? That's how bad things are. We need a rival, and our rival is Celtic. We cannot run from that. It's time to face up to it. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk
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We have an inability to talk about this without getting bogged down in a 'they need us more than we need them debate'. We look at Celtic and our hatred for them is so deep that some of us don't want to play them again: ever. Where did this bizarre mentality come from? Should we only play clubs that we respect, like or admire? Are Celtic just too nasty to confront on a football pitch now? Are we afraid of them? Is anyone seriously suggesting that the mind-numbing boredom of our situation last season and this is more satisfying than a square-go against Celtic in the top division? If they are, they are saying that risk-free football without tension and uncertainty is better than games where elation is the reward for victory and despair is the price of defeat. Samuel Johnson once said that if a person is tired of London, he is tired of life. With this in mind, I would suggest that if a Rangers supporter is tired of the Old Firm contest, he is tired of hard-edged competitive football. Let's stop the kidding. Let's look forward to locking horns again with Celtic. We don't need to like them, but we should relish squaring up to them.
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Do Celtic fans miss our presence? Yes, they do. The honest ones freely admit it. Do we miss the top level and competing with them? Absolutely.
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At least we're seeing an admission that Celtic's attendance's have dropped. The article does not have the mark of a neutral perspective though - far from it.
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Not Billy Davies. The position should be advertised and a manager should be appointed who has a desire to play a style of football that is a clean break from the monotony of the Smith/McCoist years. Naturally, we want to see winning football, but we also want to see a team that is hungry for the ball and at ease committing players forward. We want to see adventurous, bold and brave football - football that we are happy to pay good money to see. Right now, we are enduring a dark age of uncultured and cowardly football - an insult to the beautiful game. We need to break from the unimaginative ways of the past and drag ourselves into a new football era. We need a football reformation at Ibrox. That means no McCoist, no Smith - and no Billy Davies either.
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Perspective? Our opponents are the weakest a Rangers manager has ever faced, apart from last season, and we didn't set the heather on fire then either. This is the perspective that needs to be applied. We are a giant amongst ants. Our play is pedestrian, laborious, unimaginative, predictable and tedious. Instead of reinventing the playing style, we're back in the old routine of monotony and over-generous use of a chequebook. We are backward and boring. McCoist will always be a playing legend, but he is an out and out liability as a manager. The club needs better, and a change should ideally be made before we return to the top division. Sadly, I doubt that it will. We're going to pay a hefty price for retaining a manager who would not find a job at any other top football club.
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If the requisitioners had triumphed, McCoist would have been secure indefinitely. They lost, and McCoist is still probably safe and secure as long as lower division minnows are bullied and battered. Very few Rangers fans rate McCoist as a manager. They admired him as a player, but confidence in him in this off-field role is low. He is not the answer. Will the club dare to make a change before they are forced into it in a few years - when his shortcomings can no longer be disguised?
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Democratic Process - Hanging by a thread or a rope ?
Hildy replied to D'Artagnan's topic in Rangers Chat
Keep living the nightmare then. There is a better way, and it needn't be a dream. -
Democratic Process - Hanging by a thread or a rope ?
Hildy replied to D'Artagnan's topic in Rangers Chat
I'm perfectly relaxed about the capitalist system. It might be the best way to run a society, but it is no way to organise a football club. The leading German clubs and Barcelona and Real Madrid are fan-owned. We should be examining their structures and learning them from them instead of tugging our forelocks to faceless people in the big house. Rangers will not survive with a procession of random owners taking charge. We've already endured one catastrophe when the club fell into the wrong hands, and it could happen again. You are gambling with the ownership of Rangers. I want it properly secured, and that means fan ownership. You want random dictators. I want a democracy. As for your Stalin comment -
Democratic Process - Hanging by a thread or a rope ?
Hildy replied to D'Artagnan's topic in Rangers Chat
Democracy at Rangers will be when every member of the club has a vote. No matter how rich a person is, every member will have one vote in presidential elections. It might be okay in the world of business to have large companies owned by a relative handful of shareholders, but it's not okay in football. What we have just now is a sketch from Not The Nine O' Clock News where most people want tea and the largest union wants coffee - so coffee is served. We need to become a member-owned club - not a shareholder-owned company. One member - one vote. This kind of democracy delivers results that people can live with because they perceive it to be fair and just - and because rich people can't buy up the vote the way they do at Rangers just now. Rangers should not be a vehicle for people to make profit - it should exist for its members to profit from being part of it. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk -
Democratic Process - Hanging by a thread or a rope ?
Hildy replied to D'Artagnan's topic in Rangers Chat
Look how the Rangers support got behind David Murray. For years he was the undisputed king of Ibrox and his every utterance was received as though it was written on a tablet of stone. If the Rangers support gets someone running the show that it admires, there is no more compliant group in the country. It reveres the rich man at the top table as though he is an infallible deity. Questions about detail are trampled on and discouraged. The man at the top has the greatest wisdom of all. Leave it to him. He knows best. This situation, thankfully, is gradually changing. Dissent has reared its beautiful head. Meek acceptance is no longer the Rangers support's default position. There is now a realisation, come far, far too late, that the top table may not be where true wisdom lies, indeed, there may be very little there at all. Are we now going to back off from justified dissent? Are we going to retreat from being the conscience of the club? Are we going to return to the old ways of bowing down to whichever master is presented to us? Does this self-imposed regime deserve a season ticket commitment from us? What will it do when the money arrives? Fund Jack Irvine? Overpay undeserving salaried staff? Reward incompetence? Let the dissenters dissent. I believe in them - not the board. -
I admire your persistence on this issue, D'Artagnan. I hope it pays off. We all do.
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There will be no moving on - and nor should there be. Thousands of Rangers fans will not buy merchandise or tickets because they basically do not trust the regime running the company. This has to be addressed. We gave the current lot a chance and they wasted millions. We can't keep doing this. Until there is a trusted board, Rangers will not maximise its potential.
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In the final analysis, it doesn't matter that much whether Paul Murray becomes a director or not. What matters is how the support reacts to having a board that isn't sufficiently trusted or respected. Today's AGM showed that there is rather more than quiet murmuring in the ranks - there is a growing animosity towards the Rangers board, and it won't easily go away. Finally, after decades of submissiveness, the Rangers support is beginning to assert itself, and I welcome that. The AGM didn't conclude anything today. There will be further turmoil until the club rests in the hands of a board that can be fully trusted. This issue is not just about Paul Murray - it's about Rangers.
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Anchorman, that's wonderful news. I'm delighted. Tell everyone else not to get their hopes up. I just hope you are right.
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Zappa, an opportunity was missed to own the club, and it's a long and boring story that probably doesn't need to be rehashed now, but the ideal hasn't gone away, and nor should it. If the founders of Rangers had been as cynical as those who don't believe in the fans owning the club, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. There wouldn't be a Rangers. The ideal will become the reality, and then we'll wonder why it took us so long to make it so. Ten years after it happens, no-one will publicly admit to being against it.
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Anchorman, no-one is saying that King is dubious. One person ownership - no matter who that person is - is an obscenity. If I owned Rangers it would be an outrage. One-person ownership of Rangers is beyond the pale.
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Steve, although I want fan ownership to occur tomorrow morning, I'm not sure that it's going to - but the important thing is that it happens one day, preferably sooner rather than later of course, even if no-one on this board is around to see it. Ten years ago, few people had even heard of fan ownership. Now, everyone has heard of it. It will happen, and when it does, 100,000 Rangers fans will say that they were always in favour of it. In the future, members of Rangers will be mystified that anyone could ever have been against the idea.
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Anchorman, I said buy - or invest. We don't expect him to buy but many would like him to. One person owning a major sporting institution like Rangers is as dubious as it can get.
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TinMan, King is a Rangers man alright, but being loaded is a big part of his attraction. If he only had two bob to his name he wouldn't unite anyone.
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Steve, to go from where we are to where we see should be - a fan-owned club - a certain amount of turmoil is inevitable, but when it comes, the answer is not to revert back to the obscenity of the one-man operation of the past - it's to make the case for fan ownership until the penny drops that this, and only this, will afford the club the protection it must have if it is to have a viable future. The argument is winning when so much of the argument against it is petty, vindictive, personal and abusive. Stay the course. We will get there.