Hildy

Steve, we saw D'Artagnan's begging letter to Dave King recently. The Rangers support drones on about 'dignity' more than any other group of people in society and then puts the hat round in expectation of some kind of handout. This isn't dignified - it's the very opposite.

We should be putting the message out that we have moved on from this. We should be above the petty squabbling that some indulge in so readily.

We should be constructive in our efforts instead of vindictive.

Dave King always seems to be lurking, and it's not healthy as a sizeable element in the support is hoping that he'll buy or invest in Rangers and make the club's problems go away - at least for a while.

It's sad day when the extent of our ability to solve problems is to wish for a saviour - to believe that one man can sort out the mess that has engulfed us. I'd rather King found another project to pass his time. It's up to us to find a proper and lasting solution - not the quick and rather dubious fix of handouts from a rich man's wallet.

Not until we inform our members.

That's the right answer.

Make sure to keep the show on the road whatever happens. The RST offers the best hope of a better future.

People come and people go but the RST must keep building and progressing.

This.......

 

 

 

 

 

The Rangers board will be bolstered with the news that a major plank of the Requisitioner campaign – the Rangers Supporters Trust – has serious problems of its own to deal with.

 

With allegations of hacked emails and possible FCA involvement, along with several Trust members resigning in protest at what is going on, my understanding is that the very future of the RST could be at stake.

 

There are some good people and bluenoses in the RST but it is becoming increasingly obvious that these folks have been badly let down by certain leaders, particularly in the very public backing of the Requisitioner bid.

 

I know that some RST members who back the board are horrified that this leadership has brought the RST to a place where its members are deemed rebels and, should the board carry the day at the AGM, it is a foregone conclusion that the fan group will be given pariah status by the club. RST members joined the organisation to help bring about change, not to become an outlaw band.

 

How ironic that an organisation which has been so critical of the Rangers board in terms of accountability and transparency now finds itself mired in controversy over similar issues.

This RST member is perfectly relaxed about being part of a group that is detested by a rogue regime at Rangers.

I touched on this recently.

Those Celtic fans who have taken to flying banners with political messages on them - they are not doing anything that a mature society should object to. They hold a particular point of view and want to flaunt it, as they have done for decades.

Driving them underground is an exercise in madness. Keep them in the light. Let everyone see what they stand for. Let them be judged for their views.

Oppressing and criminalising them is a foolish tactic because it will fuel their anger and aid the growth of their more extremist wing.

Yes, they would stand back and see Rangers fans targeted, and applaud authority for doing it, but that's because there is a lopsided moral standard in their midst which should hardly come as a surprise to us.

Alex Salmond's shallow administration is needlessly provoking a deeply sinister element here, and it was bounced into it by people who basically wanted a law to single out and arrest Rangers fans.

If the Scottish government has any sense at all, it will walk away from criminalising football fans and abandon its bad law.

If the law interferes with a heavy hand, it will create the circumstances for a poisonous weed to take root and grow.

Football can accommodate the political aspect of the Old Firm. It might be distasteful at its worst but it has never become an intolerable situation for our society.

By disallowing it at the football, the possibility exists that it could express itself by other means. This is a risk that we do not need to run - that we should not run.

Our Edinburgh parliament has made an ass of itself. Oppressive laws are a greater obscenity than songs and chants with political

content.

It is a source of sadness that some Rangers fans seem to delight in sticking the knife into other Rangers fans. One might think that we already had enough enemies without also turning on our own.

There is no more dysfunctional support than us. We are petty, vindictive, unforgiving and mostly clueless as to how to deal with our many problems.

Hearts are in real trouble and their future is uncertain, but they have created the Foundation of Hearts in an effort to own and take care of their club. As far as I am aware, there are few dissenters. They know what their priority is.

Contrast that with us. The RST's BuyRangers project is our best hope for a productive future and yet the hatred that exists in our ranks, quite frankly, is disgusting, disturbing and damaging.

We seem to be incapable of rising above anger and personal animosity to tackle the future in a coherent manner.

The support can be this club's salvation, but until it learns to conduct itself more appropriately, it will surely get the club it deserves.

Fan ownership is the answer - it was always the answer. We are where we are because the club is not protected. It is available on the open market. It's no use complaining that the wrong people are in charge when we consistently do little or nothing to make sure the club is in safe and secure hands.

Of course we will disagree on things - and so we should - but when every member of the club has a vote on who the club's president will be, we will finally be in a position to shape our own destiny.

Right now, we are lost at sea and easy prey for pirates. It doesn't need to be like this.

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Allam is neither SDM nor Dave King, so what? Hadrian was no Trajan who in turn was no Stalin etc. pp. .

Allam, or someone just like him, could land at our door. The risk is ever-present. We've already had Craig Whyte. If we haven't learned our lesson from all that has happened, and is happening elsewhere, we will continue to have an uncertain future - and maybe a very bleak one.

Sidenote, a majority shareholder a.k.a. "owner" like SDM/King does not equal a "dictator". There are as many shades to a single owner as there would be to "democracy" or "oligarchy" at the top. As far as we know, King is not only an accomplished businessman (like Murray was), but also a level-headed Bluenose.

 

This is all neat and fine, BTW, but as long as King does not make a move (bar some well-publicised dashes to Scotland), all very hypothetical.

Is this what Hull City fans want - or is it what one man wants?

Hull City have formally applied to the Football Association to change the club's name to Hull Tigers from next season.

Owner Assem Allam wants to rebrand the Premier League club to appeal to a wider international audience.

Allam announced in August that the business that runs the club had already been changed to Hull City Tigers.

Unhappy Hull supporters have set up the "City Till We Die" protest group to oppose the plans.

Any application to alter a club's name must be approved by an FA council and no change can come into effect until the next season.

The FA said the council would use "absolute discretion" in deciding whether to approve the plan.

Egypt-born Allam, who moved to Hull in 1968, took charge of the club in December 2010 and last season oversaw promotion to the top flight for only the second time in the club's 109-year history.

Allam, 74, is credited with rescuing Hull from administration but has been at odds with supporters over his plans to change the club's name.

He said in a newspaper interview that his opponents could "die as soon as they want", with manager Steve Bruce later claiming the owner had been misinterpreted.

Allam met with Hull supporters to discuss the issue and offered to refund the cost of season tickets to unhappy fans.

Allam said in August he believed a Tigers brand would be more marketable, adding that he considered the word City to be "lousy" and "common".

Hull have been known as "the Tigers" for most of their history, with the nickname thought to have been coined by a Hull Daily Mail reporter in 1905 in reference to the club's black and amber kit.

Hull City are 12th in the Premier League and face Stoke City at the KC Stadium on Saturday.

This is extremely good news.

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D'Artagnan, how can we stop a dictator doing the wrong things? We couldn't even ask supplementary questions latterly in the Murray years. All-powerful owners don't like to be taken to task for their shortcomings.

A fan-owned club wouldn't be run by the fans. It would be run by the best professionals available and they'd be accountable to the support. We would e!ect a president using a one member, one vote system and tiny factions wouldn't matter so much because tens of thousands of fans would vote in presidential elections.

We worship businessmen at Rangers as though they are infallible gods. It's an old working-class failing - doffing caps to our 'betters'. When will we learn to sweep away shysters who pay themselves too much and who mostly care for the club far less than we do? What is the matter with us that we need to beg for rich men to cast an eye in our direction? Whatever dignity we have left should be used to make Rangers Football Club a fan-owned democratic entity - a club that can rest forever in the hands of those who care for it more than random strangers ever will.

No more pleading to be saved; no more begging: no more forelock-tugging: no more being looked down on: no more master and servant: no more being an obedient football proletariat and no more tolerance of shoddy professionalism, incompetence, dishonesty, dictatorship and being shafted every which way.

We need an Ibrox Spring to remove the deadwood and begin the Blue Revolution. It's time to have faith and belief in ourselves. This ownership farce has gone on too long - and we are paying a hefty price for tolerating it.

Use your quill as you usually do, D'Artagnan - productively. Begging letters just aren't your style.

He only just signed a new 5 year deal last September that takes his contract up to 2017, so it would be highly unusual for him to be signing another contract with us at the moment unless he was agreeing to financial reductions in the contract.

In that case, there's reason for concern.

I haven't seen any speculation that Wallace is likely to leave in January. This looks like an invention. Maybe they'll tell us that he's signed a contract extension on the eve of the AGM.

Would anyone be surprised?

D'Artagan, despite everything that has happened, a sizeable number of Rangers fans think we're heroes even though we've been through administration, liquidation and been dumped at the bottom of the Scottish senior game. All this occurred on our watch. One way or another, we couldn't stop the rot. It is therefore inevitable that there will be a less than unified reaction to our situation as the ownership of the club is unclear and board members come and go as often as the seasons change.

Sadly, however, a number of Rangers fans cannot handle self-criticism. They will not accept that we are sometimes less than perfect. They think that any fan criticism of the club is unRangers-like. They believe that any criticism of Rangers fans by Rangers fans is unacceptable.

They could not be more wrong. We have to put our own house in order instead of wishing for a good fairy, and that means looking inward and trying to address our difficulties. Unfortunately, self-criticism attracts all sorts of accusations on the internet and anyone suggesting that we, the Rangers support, is dysfunctional, is likely to be shouted down and roundly abused - and yet we do have problems that need addressing.

The coming of Dave King, if it happens, will only gloss over the situation, and maybe only for a short while. In the meantime, a far more civilised approach is needed from our own supporters. Disagreeing with each other is normal and natural, but when it becomes overly abusive, it becomes intolerable and counter-productive.

It might actually be better in the long run if tomorrow's papers were filled with the news that Dave King had chosen to invest his millions in some other project. If that's what it takes to rouse us into constructive action, I certainly won't grumble.

This club of ours will not heal until we allow it to heal, and if we are too afraid to admit, and then cure, our own ills, they will surely return in the future. The last thing we need is another all-powerful dictator.

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Even if he did bring the support closer together - unite is too strong a term - it would only be delaying the inevitable. What happens in ten or twenty years when King, assuming he has overall control, decides to sell up? Could we be sure that it he would sell to the right person? He doesn't have much time for fan ownership. Would his family inherit the club? Would they want it? Could they run it successfully?

The answer is not Dave King and it never was. Any sole owner of a national sporting institution is an obscenity. The sooner we get to grips with this and stop sending begging letters - with all due respect to D'Artagnan - the sooner we'll come to terms with revolutionising the club along democratic lines.

We are not a united support, which is fine, but we are not as disunited as is often suggested. There is a mood for beneficial change and if fan ownership happened tomorrow, it would quickly take root and grow.

This is what we should be working towards - not a return to the days when one man's opinion was the only opinion that mattered.

I like the place. It has a magnificent charm about it. It's looking its age but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. A re-vamp might do the trick.

I do, however, like the idea that they aren't locked into the idea of never moving. If they feel they have to, they'll do it.

I would much rather visit a stadium like this than the soulless Emirates and new Wembley. If Barca does start with a clean sheet of paper, I hope they show more imagination than we have seen with recent stadium designs in the UK.

Barcelona's board of directors will make a decision in January on whether to expand the Camp Nou or submit plans to move to a new stadium.

The Spanish champions have commissioned a report over the viability of both projects with the objective to increase the capacity of their home ground to 105,000.

Although progress was made at a meeting on Monday, the Barça directors will not announce their preferred option until early in 2014.

A board spokesman Toni Freixa explained on the club's official website it had two choices: "The construction of a new stadium on the land on Diagonal, property which belongs to the University of Barcelona, or a profound remodelling project that would constitute a new stadium keeping the current structure of the Camp Nou.

"Both would have a capacity of 105,000 spectators, the stadium would be covered, there will be a construction of a new Palau with a capacity of 12,000 spectators, an adjacent court with a capacity of 2,000 spectators, 6,000 new parking spots and access to the Ciutat Esportiva of the Miniestadi.

"We've made advances, we have all the information and we're in a position to make a decision."

Despite the sizeable financial outlay that would be involved, Freixa insisted any project would not harm the club, adding: "It needs to be viable from a technical perspective, urbanist and economic. We would never submit a project that would endanger the sustainability of the club."

The Camp Nou is already the largest ground in Europe with a capacity of 99,354.

http://gu.com/p/3y493/tw

Berliner, 'we' are the fans of the club.

You know perfectly well what I mean when I talk of fan ownership.

Fan ownership is a lot more than a nice idea. It's a means of running the club more democratically, and it keeps the club in the hands of the only people who can be trusted to actually care for it.

You might put all your faith in the strangers who roll in and out of Ibrox.

I don't. My faith is in us - the Rangers support.

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Who is reluctant? Who is to blame for what? Whom do you refer to with "we"?

 

As far as I am concerned, we (club and support) did hardly a thing wrong. At the time, SDM financed some the triumphs we achieved partly with a perfectly legal EBT. That HMRC deemed it wrong is not our fault. You look at Spanish teams and see how they essentially legalised true financial doping. The person who shamed our club was Whyte for not paying tax and PAYE, which brought about the admin event. If a witch has to be burned for our fall, it has to be him. (Though those who let it happen should receive a decent whipping too.)

 

The club and the support took it all on the chin afterwards. We, club and support, started from the bottom and paid for the sins of people out of our reach.

In our extreme naïveté, we trusted SDM to pass on the club to good and sound ownership. There were warnings that we shouldn't, but most paid no attention.

We paid a hefty price for that and lessons still haven't been learned.

This expectation that a wealthy Rangers-minded business type will always be there to take the reins at the club is madness.

If we want the club to be run in a proper, trustworthy and accountable manner, we have to take full responsibility for it, and that means ownership.

Unfortunately, we have failed miserably to do this - so far.

Berliner, this observation is accurate:

"You see, I am quite open to objective discussion, but the above hardly ever comes from people that I know, people who support Rangers FC. No insult intended, just saying."

It is, however, perfectly true, and maybe that's why we don't say it. When Murray captained the ship, we bathed in the glory and claimed it for ourselves.

When he handed it to Whyte, we said that our troubles were nothing to do with us, and that we were the victims.

We can't have it both ways. We have shirked responsibility for the club for so long that we are reluctant to accept any blame when trouble comes calling.

Well, the only place there was a 'complete absence of friends and sympathisers' was in the top flight that you are so desperate to get back to. All of those jackals would have been quite happy to see us die

Meanwhile, the clubs in the lower divisions, the small, decent clubs with no agendas to peddle - your"non-entities and no-marks" - turned out to be true friends who offered their hand that we could get back up on to our kness at least.

 

As to whether our difficulties were self-inflicted, that's something that will come out in time, but personally speaking, I believe we have been the victim of a conspiracy.

We may indeed have been the victim of a conspiracy or some kind of criminality, but our ownership in recent times has let the club down - badly. The details may or may not come out in the fullness of time, but Rangers' failure has been our failure and we can't run away from that. If we're going to claim success for ourselves when times are good, we can hardly duck responsibility when things turn sour.

Our new-found 'true friends' were quick to shut the shop on the long-standing SFL when Celtic and friends came calling, and their CEO soon found himself ousted. As the saying goes, with friends like these . . .

We have been marooned and marginalised, and if we are honest, we miss the intensity of competing with Celtic - and they miss us too.

We can either admit it and look forward to facing them again, or remain in the huff until the next Old Firm game shakes us up and rekindles our enthusiasm for meaningful and competitive sport.

I don't see it as a toy train, I see it as an important local line that takes you from somewhere provincial to say Glasgow to get the Inter city to London from. Without the local line or an alternative you can't get to where you want to go. It might be a bit run down, slow and not be as pleasant and experience as the "big" train, but it's no toy.

 

Who wants to go on a badly maintained roller coaster where the owner has designs on you being dead? It's not about the stomach, it's about the brain.

 

You can miss swimming in the sea but when the biggest beach is dangerously polluted and almost killed you, and you're still recovering from the illness, it's normal to have no desire to go back it. If they clean it up, then that could be different but it will take you a while to trust it. Really, you want to find an alternative large beach or beaches, despite all the memories.

 

Swap beach for dangerous and out-dated roller-coaster or whatever.

We suffered a near-death experience, but while there was a complete absence of friends and sympathisers, many of our club's difficulties were self-inflicted. I think we forget that sometimes, perhaps conveniently.

Sport provides a situation where we can engage with those we may not like or respect and defeat them. What we're seeing in the Rangers support now is an element that would rather steer clear of them altogether.

On the contrary, we should be counting the days until we are back in the top division and able to topple Celtic. That won't be easy given the mess that we are currently in, but it's still the place that we have to be - need to be - and want to be.

This idea that we don't miss locking horns with them is bizarre and unhealthy. We don't have to like Celtic, but we certainly need to engage and compete with them - and when we do, we'll be more alive then than we'll ever have been during this miserable and tedious journey.

There are so many analogies which would explain it to people.

 

But the question is, no matter how much you enjoyed sparring with someone you hated in the past because they were the only one to really challenge you, even if you miss the bouts, do you really want to see someone again after they try to kill you and indeed keep telling everyone you are dead?

 

People miss many things in the past, their school days, their first car that was rusting to bits and kept breaking down but which helped them have some great times when they were young, an old girlfriend they had an intense and stormy relationship with and broke up with very acrimoniously, but do they in all reality, want to bring any of them back? The answer is usually no.

 

I think many of us would have forgone ever playing Celtic ever again to have been given the chance to work our way up the English leagues and eventually replace them with Man U, Chelsea and Arsenal as the main rivals.

 

Celtic have killed any romance of the rivalry and it's now just deathly poisonous, who really wants that? The only problem is that they are the only equivalent team to us in Scotland. Let's pray for a European league sometime soon. We didn't miss them at all during their own meltdown while we were beating Leeds etc.

Celtic isn't an old girlfriend - it's an ancient enemy. We're not looking to embrace them - we're looking to defeat them.

A European league is highly desirable, but so is a competitive sporting environment until an Atlantic League actually occurs.

We can't rectify this situation quickly, but we can surely be honest enough to admit that we miss participating in a football environment that gives us excitement, anticipation, jubilation, despondency, tension, hostility, elation and satisfaction.

We are currently on a toy train. We'd rather be on a roller coaster - apart of course from those who fear its giddy heights.

Get some Irn Bru inside you before you take the wheel for the trip up the road.

That - and some good music - will hopefully keep you alert and awake.

You sure you're ready for this place Hildy? I mean, what happens when somebody dismantles your arguemnt without swearing? How will you avoid dealing with the substantive points then?

 

Oh, and by the way, we don't need to know that you're sending messages via Tapatalk or the hardware you're using to send them.

Just to please you, I've disabled the signature. You have to allow me time to get used to the technical aspect of the forum.

As for dismantling arguments, swearing and inappropriate language rarely succeeds in doing that.

The English language is beautiful. Use it and enjoy it - and give yourself the credibility that a new poster like me expects from an old hand like you.

You'll not see bad language from my pen. I respectfully suggest that you follow my example.