ThatsWhyWeirChamps

Thanks for the reply TWWC!

 

I have to say I'm completely astounded that Paul Goodwin and Supporters Direct Scotland guided and assisted the RST in setting up BuyRangers if it's a scheme with flaws or limitations.

 

I just don't understand why SD would do that then turn around shortly afterwards and propose a better model. Have Supporters Direct or Paul Goodwin been incompetent? Have they deliberately advised the Trust to set up a scheme which was doomed to fail due to it's inherent limitations?

 

Baffling stuff! Absolutely baffling!

Buy Rangers is a good scheme, and has a place going forward.

What's being perpetrated elsewhere is that SD are somehow abandoning the Trust and Buy Rangers and setting up something opposition - far from it.

Rangers fans should look at it as more strings to their bow. Fan ownership is the goal, and the successful vehicle elsewhere is being presented to a group of fans to see what their thoughts are on it.

Having had a quick check on FF and RM, I think it might have a chance.

 

MD is against and 1st Jan is against.

 

Halfway there already.

You'll note that he's a lone dissenting voice.

The RST, confirmed by a board member on Twitter earlier, has no objections to the meeting.

The article is misleading though "buying the Clib" and "influential fans" aren't useful phrases, but I suppose that's to be expected from sports journos!

Andy Newport ‏@Andythemod9 1m

 

- On @PressAssocSport wire: Number of Rangers fans have taken first steps towards launching a bid to buy the club on behalf of Ibrox support

 

- Supporters Direct Scotland called in to offer advice on setting up a scheme similar to one being used by Hearts fans to rescue Jambos

 

- SDS has offered its help to get the bid off the ground and plan to discuss the plans with influential supporters in the coming weeks

Buying the Club seems like a very poor choice of words to me for what is essentially an exploratory meeting.

I think that is a bit more realistic and I have mentioned it before as the level at which you can force the company to call an EGM and circulate a proposal for consideration at such a meeting. But evenb that is 10x what the number of shares held in the scheme, albeit the price would be less now, the more shares that are bought the higher it will go (barring any major disaster)

That's generally the case, yes. But upwards of 100,000 shares are being traded on a weekly basis and the share price is not budging at the moment.

Reality is that this is far outwith the fans' control anyway, what we can do is rally round and get working on the best solution for the Club.

So what are the differences between the Community Interest Company (CIC) model that Supporters Direct are proposing now and what they helped the RST set up not so long ago with the BuyRangers scheme which is also a community based model?

 

I'm finding it difficult to comprehend why they would heavily guide and assist the RST in setting up BuyRangers only to turn round shortly afterwards and propose a new model. So, what's the story?

There were limitations to Buy Rangers. It couldn't accept more than £20k, for example. It can borrow higher than that, but it can't accept more money than that.

The CIC model doesn't have those restrictions. It's basically like a combinations between all the good bits of a charity and a normal ltd company.

So, in our case, a CIC would have to be run "for the benfit of the Rangers community", which means that everything it does should be about the benefits of Rangers.

CICs can borrow, take in donations, can get similar tax status on certain issues to charities etc.

There's lots of different routs you could go down too, it can be as small or as large as you make it. If you have 10,000 paying members, you can start to have subsidiary CICs which invest in activities and facilities to bring benefits to the members of the community and generate further revenue which would eventually go straight to the Club.

As an example, it might be decided that the CIC, after buying enough of a holding, buys Edmiston House and turns it into a members club or some other sort of facility, a gym, a restaurant anything.

As for why we should pursue fan ownership in the first place?

Accountability is the main thing. Having a credible and qualified board which was able to focus fully on what is best for Rangers and not on what is best for the share price is the main benefit.

It doesn't make us more likely to win the league or beat Celtic, it just brings a level of security which, if we'd had at any point in the last few years, would have avoided much of our problems.

You can start to get answers and hold people to account with as little as 5% too, so it's a building exercise. It might take a year, it might take 10 years - but it's a worthwhile exercise.

Take Hearts; after they payoff the CVA, at current rates they'll have a £150k/month surpius to pump straight into the Club. That would fund one of the top youth systems in the country.

It would be totally against the Rules of SD for a Trust to take a political stance or voice an opinion about the board or similar issues.

 

In my time we were pushed very hard to voice an opinion about the OBA but had to refuse to do so.

When I was saying political it was a deliberate small 'p'. But as for a stance on the board, you must have missed the RST twitter for a brief period AGM! "#SpivsOut"

It was only a brief period mind, but I'm not so sure that SD take such a hardline approach to that issue.

These groups do work together which is all the more reason to rationalise them. For all the good work guys like John Macmillan and Drew Roberton do, I'm not convinced the Association needs to be a stand alone organisation any more. Also, I think your raison d'être for the Trust is inaccurate given their primary aim of the last 10+ years (arguments about how successful they've been aside).

 

IMO, there should be one officially recognised group which is part of the club but also self-funding and prepared to stand against it where required. That gives us a single vehicle for ticketing, RSCs, politics, singing sections and the like; one which we can all get our teeth into via some sort of democratic membership scheme.

 

Then we have the completely independent RST which is left to concentrate on ownership - either via BuyRangers and/or through a CIC concept.

 

Anything else is in danger of spoiling the broth. That may be unfair or unrealistic but that's arguably where we are right now.

In an ideal world you're right. But the Association are never going to just write off a 40 year history.

For me, the ends justifies the means.

I look at how Dunfermline did it. I look at how Hearts did it, and I geuinely don't believe there are any major differences in their fan bases. The only difference is scale.

The blueprint is there. Perhaps after we control enough of the Club we can start to enact things like you're suggesting, but reality is that a club-led group at the moment will simply be a supporters tax. Only ownership can guarantee accountability.

The percentage needed is wholly different to what it was under Murray too. The shareholding makeup means you'd have a controlling stake with as much as 20%. A target of 25%+1, would be perfect for fans at present and would be wholly-achievable.

That sounds fair enough but I think the concern about having too many groups is a valid one.

 

Assembly, Association, Trust, RCIC, SoS etc etc all have their pros and cons but only serve to cause confusion and division (not deliberately) of course. We need to rationalise these groups if we're to ever have a workable model for improved fan representation/influence.

 

Much better, IMHO, to have two groups maximum; one 'official' and one independent. But I certainly accept your point about having something that focuses solely on ownership rather than being side-tracked by other matters.

I think there are historical issues there. In reality, it looks like there are more groups than there are.

Can anyone just decide to join the Assembly? The Association?

The ony truly open and democratic group we currently have is the Trust. Those 3 main groups continually work with each other these days too.

I don't think the division is among groups. The problem isn't too many groups, in my opinion, it's too many with the same or lack of focus.

The Association should be pushing and talking about the issues like police harrassment of supporters buses and all other issues related to RSCs - as is their mandate.

The Trust should be representing fans on the political issues, like the board, like Jack Irvine etc.

And the Assembly should have been the umbrella which allowed fans who are not part of those groups to let the Club know what is bothering them.

There are common issues which will matter to all groups; ownership of Ibrox or things like that, but aside from that the groups shouldn't really be in each others way.

The model that Supporters Direct are proposing (and presenting at The Louden on the 14th) is not about the obliteration of the RST, it's not about starting up in opposition to the RST. The RST has, and will continue to have a role. It will represent its members, of which I am one, like it can.

SD have had success with Foundation of Hearts and Pars United, both of which became vehicles to deliver greater fan ownership as opposed to fans groups debating the benefits of guys like Jack Irvine (as an example).

Their Trusts continue to represent them on all issues, but the vehicle was a single-issue entity which only focussed on fan ownership. That, for me, is massively important to uniting the fans. You can continue to be anti or pro board if that's your choice but you'd all be able to agree that fan ownership is a cause worth uniting over.