JohnMc

The story the BBC ran about the board being willing to increase Warburton's salary and transfer budget was written by Richard Wilson and Alasdair Lamont - http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/34980312 I wouldn't class either as people who'd purposely try to damage Rangers or Warburton despite their employers. Indeed I'd go as far as to say if they are claiming board sources there might be some veracity to it.

We need to be careful we don't become paranoid here. What Warburton achieved with Brentford didn't go unnoticed in the English Championship and if anyone thinks Fulham haven't considered Warburton for the vacant post then they're deluding themselves. Fulham have been 'rejected' in one form or another by three other managers now. So rather than approach Rangers and be rebuffed again they've leaked it to the press that they're interested in him. That puts pressure on Rangers and also allows them to see how Warburton reacts to this indirect approach. Until last night Warburton was at best ambiguous in his answers to the Fulham questions. 'I'm at Rangers and I've a job to do here' 'it's disrespectful to discuss this' that type of answer simply fuels the speculation. Had he came out and said 'I'm not interested, I'll not be leaving Rangers for Fulham, end of' the story would have ended there, but he didn't until last night. The truth is of course Warburton was interested in Fulham, would any of you not be interested if another company made it known they'd like to employ you and probably pay you a lot more than you're earning just now? So I'm going to speculate that Warburton has weighed up what he currently has and perhaps what out board have intimated he might expect in the future, added that to what he might achieve with Rangers, measured it against Fulham, and decided he's better off where he is. For now. But for the life of me I can't see what the media have done wrong here and we should be careful not to let our distrust of them cloud our view on the reality of professional football.

The once great Valencia are now the play thing on 'super agent' Jorge Mendes, who along with the owner have turned Valencia into a club for bringing players to the attention of larger wealthier clubs, players who just happen to be represented by Jorge Mendes. The list of players Valencia have sold in the last few years is really eye-opening. It's a disgrace but it's a salutary tale, they got themselves into so much debt that they became easy prey. Sound familiar. If you want to see how powerful Mendes is look into the Bebe transfer to Man Utd, a transfer of £7.4 million. He was playing third division Portugese football just five weeks before Man U bought him. Ferguson had never seen him play. Needless to say he played like a third division player. The transfer stinks and some people made a lot of money. So yeah, Gary Neville going to manage a club for the very first time in a country he never played in and he can't speak Spanish. Nothing to see here, move along...

Well done to the board, hopefully an example other football clubs and large sports retailers will follow...

Thanks, I don't know him. He'd a lovely run on that clip.

Who is number 11 for us?

Can the law courts tell an independent body such at the SFA what to do? Surely the only recourse to law would be if they hadn't followed their own procedures? It's clearly just another salvo in the dirty war King and Ashley are fighting, after all even if he get's it overturned King's place would simply be taken by a person of King's choosing, it won't make much material difference.

I'm so pleased you pointed that out, the line 'those players wouldn't have signed for Rangers if it wasn't for EBTs' is simply supposition yet is getting a regular airing currently as if it's irrefutable fact. Murray was a huge gambler, everything about him suggests he would have found a different way of raising the money.

I'm not sure if Ashley actually is able to influence the club through his shareholding currently but I like this move even if it's just a symbolic 'get-it-up-you'. Well played Mr King.

It's not David Murray or one of his companies though, is it? Charles Green fronts something that loses people money, who'd have though it.

It's not about a dignified silence, it's about speaking clearly, loudly and intelligently about what's important. How can we defend EBTs? The best we can say is they were borderline legal and that's clearly in dispute. Accept we lost that battle but make sure we never have to fight another like it and we'll win the war.

Personally I hope this isn't appealed and that's it now over. There is no 'winning' on this, even if the case had gone against HMRC again we still lost. Our playing squad was shredded, our reputation trashed globally and our club destroyed. We suffered Craig Whyte, Charles Green and Mike Ashley, he's still not gone away and the other two are still capable of inflicting damage on us. We published figures today showing we lost over £7 million last year, we lost even more the year before that. We lost guys, whatever those judges said this morning we bloody lost. Aside from the sheer bloody hurt those EBTs have been responsible for they are an immoral affront to decency, legal or otherwise. Why shouldn't millionaire footballers pay more income tax? Why aren't we cursing the greed culture that clearly permeated at our club at the time and ultimately brought it down and why aren't we doing everything we can to make sure it never infects our club again? Whether they were technically legal or specifically used in accordance with proper guidelines it doesn't matter now, the damage is done and can't be reversed. We can expend a lot of energy discussing this or we can accept that there's nothing we can do about it anyway. Does it give some people an opportunity to go looking for a pound of flesh and others the chance to pontificate about financial doping and so on, hell yeah. So what? It's done and can't be undone. It's time to look forward again, not back. We survived after all, they threw everything they could find at us and we survived. We fought with each other and we survived. We were raped and pillaged from within, often with the tacit and unquestioning support of a lot of the fanbase, but we survived. We've a team again who are at last worthy of our jersey, we've a manager who inspires us and excites us, all of our energies should be going into building a future, a future a rich shareholder would like to further disrupt. We've other more important battles to fight now, this one has past and we lost it, big time. Accept that, learn from it and move forward again. Let them come for our trophies, let them call us cheats, it'll pass and I'm not persuaded their's an appetite for it at any level above internet moron or failing columnist. Let's not lose site of what is actually important today. It's an exciting time to be a bear again, let's focus on that.

The anger towards the Record on this thread is severely misplaced. Apart from the fact the 'story' is in a number of papers it's also clearly been released by Rangers or someone close to them and with their tacit blessing. We're involved in a dirty war currently and this is another salvo aimed at Ashley and Sport's Direct and intended to portray them in a bad light. King alluded to Sport's Direct attempting to outspend Rangers in court to keep their deal in place, here's an example of it. I've no idea the veracity of the story but it's attempting to explain why certain contracts and deals have not changed and certain obstacles remain in our way.

Hah, some good lines in that, applause.

Matt McGlone one time (may still be) Celtic fanzine editor apparently saw it quite differently and was the prosecutions star witness. Zaluska was clearly raising money for refugee orphans when he was the victim of an unprovoked attack by Paton. Jinty McGinty's is becoming a magnet for lunacy.

Calderwood was supposed to be our assistant manager under Advocaat all those years ago.

I greatly enjoyed all of Donegan's books, Four Iron In The Soul is particularly instructive regarding the reality of professional sport and well worth a read and No News At Throat Lake had genuine laugh out loud moments. On top of that I was a huge fan of Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, in my youth, indeed Rattlesnakes probably helped me lose my virginity, at least indirectly. However discovering Donegan on Twitter has been a mainly depressing experience, underlining the notion that you should never meet your heroes, or indeed follow them on Twitter. It's interesting watching many otherwise intelligent football supporters justify using the word 'hun'.

Ah, so he didn't get a signing on fee from Utd or are we not including that in 'earnings' then? He left Rangers for Dundee Utd, fuck him.

Naismith and Davis were made for the style of football we're playing now, they'd be sensational under Warburton.

I wasn't trying to belittle anyone, I was disagreeing with him and explaining why. I'm disagreeing with you too so here's hoping your skin is a little thicker than Bruno's... Telfer left us for personal gain, he compounded that by leaving us for Dundee Utd, a club owned by a Rangers hater and at the forefront of the repeated attacks we've endured in recent years. That stuck in my craw. That we got money for him wasn't Telfer's doing, we could have ended up with next to nothing, he was walking out either way.

Belittle? I disagreed with your feelings of sorrow for Telfer and explained why. It's a message board, people you don't know will disagree with you particularly when you express concern for people who walked out on the club.

He chose to leave Rangers for Dundee United. That's on him, it was his decision, he chose to leave no one made him. Plenty of fans seem unable to forgive Naismith, McGregor and co but somehow wee Charlie gets a bye because big bad Ally wouldn't give him a game. Boo hoo. Forgive me if I don't share your sorrow. He's hardly set the worst side in the SPFL alight, maybe he can blame McNamara for not playing him and then get a move to Celtic.

Put me in the Gordon Waddell camp too. Scottish football requires a revolution and soon before it withers on the vine, improving the overall quality of team in the top league would be a start. Impressive crowd that for Dunfermline, especially considering the opposition won't have brought many.

Prophetic post Germinal, we were bullied last night, St Johnstone's physicality and experience were too much for us.