JohnMc

When Souness left we turned to his assistant and that turned out okay I suppose.

I wish Kenny good luck, he's highly regarded as a coach by almost everyone in football, that's quite different from being a manager though. McCoist has taken some stick by armchair tacticians over his statement that the players out of contract this summer need sorted out. Those who have driven themselves half-mad with their hatred of McCoist the manager seized on this as further evidence of his profligate nature and inability to make hard decisions regarding players he has a soft spot for.

In actual fact it was as sensible a thing as McCoist has publicly uttered for a while. Playing for Rangers is a job to the players, it's what pays the mortgage and the bills and funds the lifestyle. No matter how overpaid we view professional footballers it's a short career and most aim to make as much as possible out of it while they can. We'd all do the same I've no doubt about that.

So here's the thing, having a significant number of your squad not knowing if they're getting a new contract is destabilising. If a player knows that come May they aren't getting paid anymore then certain things begin to happen. Firstly they don't risk playing with any niggles, no one is going to take the chance of a tight hamstring turning into a fully blown torn one for a club that are possibly discarding you in five months. Likewise, those 50/50 tackles, who really wants to take the chance of picking up an injury when trying to secure a contract with a new club, it's not a great career move. Thirdly it creates disharmony in the squad, those who are unsure of their future naturally worry, their wives and partners are rightfully asking for some stability or at least a clear idea if they're going to have to move house again, they themselves are being asked to perform by someone who in all likelihood isn't going to be managing the side next season, perhaps even next month, what's the point in impressing him?

McCoist carried weight around Ibrox, directors were nervous of him, he had currency with the players, the staff, the support and the media, that gave him some clout when it mattered. The players know the the 'new' guy doesn't.

McDowall might well surprise all of us, if he does it will be a footballing miracle frankly, because he's playing with a loaded deck and he's out of chips before he sat at the table.

The latter is disrespectful to anyone who disagrees with the general conception of Ashley, the former is an assumption that is probably very much a reflection of his core interest. It is very much up to debate whether it is Ashley sole interest though. If you believe that, fair enough. Those not following suit straight away are not be default lacking "common sense". Only Ashley knows what Ashley's plans for Rangers FC are. Making money is sure one of his top priorities.

On what grounds do you disagree with the concept? I'm genuinely curious what might make you think Ashley is interested in Rangers for other reasons? His only public utterance in the subject was at the Sports Direct agm, his words there suggested he wasn't involving himself at Rangers for any other reason than to benefit Sports Direct.

There are a number of cultural differences between the UK and Germany, one is in the ownership of football clubs. I can understand why you might look at this situation and assume that the very rich guy might fancy putting something back into the community and would only get involved in a professional football club to help them. I mean no disrespect when I state that in this culture corporate pillaging is not only tolerated is actively celebrated by many influential people in our society. It's naive in the extreme to assume that Ashley plans anything other than the enriching of Sports Direct, all evidence points at that.

What do we mean by success? Everything is relative, right?

Success does not have to mean that we go from the doldrums of the Championship to the CL in one season. Right now I'd surmise that many Rangers' fans who see their team skate the Championship and make an honest attempt at winning the Premiership would consider that to be a success.

Would Ashley consider that a success? If it brought crowds of 30,000 + and who were buying merchandise, I suppose he would.

Those figures quoted above will not continue if the present trends continue. Falling crowds, boycotters, parallel merchandising and negativism everywhere will impact on sales. Will Ashley see that as a success?

We are a very small niche in his overall interests, but he has already shown us that the present situation is unacceptable. He has sent in Llambias to cut away the driftwood. Who's next?

You would have to think that come January he will cut away about six of the dross playing for us, and bring in a few energetic souls. Not stars, but certainly an improvement on the present incumbents. Save on salaries, expend a few million £s here and there, and put a temporary stay on the sp*vs feeding from the trough; is that success?

This is a global brand we are talking about here, do you think Ashley likes to lose?

Yes, John, mediocracy can be sold but it must appear to be a success.

Those of you who are dripping in cynicism when you talk about Rangers' success, I think you want Rangers to be successful so badly you can taste it.

I'm struggling a little to understand what point you're making here. Success for Rangers will surely always be measured against past 'successes', no? A side containing international players making a serious challenge for every domestic trophy, winning more of them than we lose is what most of us see as 'success'. Some will factor Europe in, some will want good youth players but history shows that regular domestic success is what sustains the Rangers support.

However I'm far from convinced Ashley will care about that. He's not here for 50 years, we're a current potential revenue stream, one that'll be discarded quickly if we don't deliver required returns. That might seem cynical to you but for me it's simply realism.

You made an interesting point when you asked "do you think Ashley likes to lose", what's missing from your question is 'at what game?' Ashley isn't here to protect himself from extradition like Abramovich, or for self-aggrandisement like the guys at Man City or because he's a serial 'sports franchise' businessman like the guys at Man U or Liverpool.

He's here to help Sports Direct sell more Lonsdale t-shirts and Dunlop bags, no other reason. It's not cynical to assume that his aspirations and ours might not be aligned, it's common sense frankly.

John - while the club being self-sustainable would be welcome, if your analysis is correct then the buying habits of Rangers fans must - absolutely must - change radically. Rewarding an owner who creates a permanent culture of mediocrity would surely be too far, even for us?

Andy, almost every club has supporters who sustain mediocrity. Outside of Celtic every side in the Scottish top flight began this season knowing they wouldn't win the league, yet they still buy tickets, strips, hats and assorted tat. Look at England, success is now finishing fourth, mediocrity is celebrated not just tolerated.

Making the club unattractive to people like Ashley is difficult, all normal societal rules are suspended when football enters the equation. Loyalty to your 'team' is a cultural meme, propagated by Sky and avaricious betting companies and mass produced lager conglomerates. Everything is hyped, most people don't even realise they're perpetuating mediocrity.

I accept Rangers history of success makes selling mediocrity more difficult, but trust me it can be sold.

I don't think you fully apprecaite the state of play within our support after so much dishonest turmoil.

 

Yes, there will always be a base of unconditional followers but with every passing month, it is getting smaller.

Yip I agree, but these people remain 'fans' they don't go and support another side and that's the lesson business has learned. Even just now, if our side was playing anywhere close to exciting football we'd be getting 30,000. As such they're still susceptible to buying merchandise. This is win-win for Ashley just now. If the side improves, starts playing better and getting results a percentage of the support will return to matches particularly if we start challenging for the title again. If results don't improve the pressure on McCoist will become intolerable and he'll walk. A new manager will bring an increase in interest and crowds, initially at least.

It may turn out you're right, but I honestly don't think I've over-estimated what fans will accept. The figures for the last few years are still riding on our determination to get to back the level we're accustomed to, and halt our biggest rival's 10 in a row charge. If Ashley's (or any other) regime renders those targets unattainable then the support will fall away very quickly IMHO. And, unfortunately, we're witnessing at the moment just how a badly mismanaged club can struggle. I don' think we'd make the top three in premiership right now - and MA's man has already set about cost-cutting.

 

Even if MA were to invest enough money and effort to consistently make us runner-up every year I still think the support would dwindle. Not as rapidly, but year-on-year it would be less. And if he allows the "most domestic titles" record to be threatened there would be full scale revolt. In a way, Ashley's wealth makes it a lot harder for him to run us without ambition, because we all know he has the resources to make us champions if he felt like it. He would become a figure of hate if he allowed us to live in Celtic's shadow.

 

The only scenario I can think of that makes sense is that, as we achieve an acceptable level of success, our debt to Ashley increases to crazy levels. (Newcastle owe him something like £250m IIRC). Fine for a while, but the day he decides he's out and gathers the debt, we'd be utterly ruined.

You're applying normal rules to someone who by all measurements is not 'normal'. I don't mean that as an insult, he's an exceptional person, clearly gifted in many ways, but not 'normal'. A normal person would fear becoming a hate figure and a full-scale revolt, Ashley doesn't. The Rangers support will continue to buy their kids shirts and themselves a top for five-a-sides no matter how we're performing, that's what he's banking on.

What big business has cottoned onto is that loyalty to a football club is entirely different to any other commercial venture. Man Utd sold more shirts than any other club in the world last year despite experiencing their worst season in two decades and having enormously unpopular owners. Rangers in the top flight, finishing top three, will consistently draw 30,000 plus crowds, we might think that poor, but it really isn't in the grand scheme of things. That's easily achievable if the club can stay solvent, we'll have a considerably higher turnover than every other side in the country bar one, on that basis any half competent manager can secure second or third. Ashley shouldn't need to invest any money to achieve that, simply make sure we don't go bust in the short term.

We're a minor gamble for Ashley, I doubt we take up much of his time or thinking, I assume he'll try and recreate the Newcastle model, where we're self-sustainable, breaking even, beyond that he's only interested in leveraging retail from us, there's plenty of evidence that how a team performs, the relationship the club has with it's support and how a club's directors behave has little bearing on that.

There's got to be more to it than that though - MA can't coin it in year on year if we're not successful, because there will be very little cash flowing into the club and very little associated merchandise being purchased. There is only so much money he can make out of us and only for so long if we're not successful.

 

We're not like Newcastle or Leeds or any of the other cautionary tales being bandied about - our circumstances are different, and there's an abvious success-related tipping point. For SD to make money from Rangers, us punters have to be spending money on Rangers. The bare minimum our fans will settle for is challenging for the title every year and winning at least half the time. If he doesn't even attempt to achieve that what percentage of the fans do you think will keep showing up? If he downsizes our operations so the Tims have things that we don't (a training ground, internet TV subscriptions etc.) how many fans will continue to support him with their cash? You're talking 4 figure attendances and no kids wanting to be seen dead in our kit. What's the point in owning that? He'd have been as well buying into Stevenage.

 

Guys like Green, Stockbridge and Ahmad were quite content to misappropriate a couple of years' season ticket sales and the IPO money then scuttle off. The ride is over for them at that point. We're on the last possible year of that happening, so why would MA bother?

 

It makes no sense. if he stays in control and he's not done something positive by ST renewal day though, he's wasted his time, because Rangers will be worth next to fuck all as a business.

You vastly over estimate what our support will accept. If Rangers can get promoted then even badly mismanaged we should finish top three in the SPFL most seasons, challenge for one of the domestic cups to at least quarter final stage and qualify for qualification stages for the Europa league.

At that stage we can be pacified with 'there's always next season' talk, a change of manager every now and then and the promise that change might bring and the likelihood that the Tim's will mess up every now and then and we might sneak a title.

Look at the numbers quoted above, even now, at our lowest ever ebb, the we generate more money than a one city English

Premiership side with a famously resilient support.

Any success we get will be an added bonus, but I can see no I'm imperative for Ashley to require it or even desire it.

Who would buy MP it is of little use to anyone other than as grazing land or a training centre.

It's got planning consent for leisure and recreation and it's a big chunk of land in Milngavie. A leisure centre, David Lloyd type of place, perhaps even a Dobbies Garden Centre kind of business would do well there. Plus don't put it past a developer to purchase it and let it go to ruin, become an eyesore and then put in an application to turn it into a supermarket or flats, it's been done before.

successful like dunlop.

Maybe he means successful like Newcastle.

I don't mind, Hibs looks like the next free one but if someone else wants it I'm easy.

Go on then, if you're desperate I'll jump back in.

I've been asked to make it clear that John was not in bed with me as I snuggled down with my book. Not last night, anyway.

Was I a young Christian Slater to your Sean Connery or is it the other way around?

I was just settling down in my bed with the great murder mystery book, The Name of the Rose, when John pointed to driving footfall in SD's ghastly shops as the raison d'etre behind Ashley's moves. The idea just doesn't quite add up in my head, though, so in best William of Baskerville fashion I've lay half the night trying to work out how to make 2+2=4. But I still can't get it to work out.

 

If Ashley wants to use Rangers merch as a vehicle to generate sales, he has no need to acquire a single percentage more of Rangers than he already has, for as we now know he has tied up some staggeringly beneficial deals already. Short of taking 100% of RR profit I don't see how they could be any better for him, in fact. So why bother going to all the trouble of buying 29.9%? Or slashing costs which could never impinge on overall balance sheets, like secretaries? The serious way to do that is to target the playing staff bill, but that would inevitably impact on merch sales, since the impression given would be negative - you see, 2+2 doesn't come out as 4.

 

And the CL? If SD is making a tidy profit from merch sales while we suck beyond any measure yet known to man, why outlay the expense needed to access the CL? As I said last night, CL participation isn't going to sell more than a handful of tops or scarves above what the present figures are, so why bother? The CL idea makes even less sense than buying another 20% of a club you have absolutely no need to buy.

 

9% for total control, massively advantageous contracts and useful oafs to take the heat = makes sense.

 

29% + £millions to get into the CL = non-sense. As loss leaders go, getting Rangers into the CL is about as extravagant as they come.

 

Eventually all will become clear, no doubt, but for now I cannot understand what Ashley's strategy is.

I told you not to eat that camembert before bed, but you don't listen...

Firstly I've no idea if he wants to buy 29.9% or not, neither does the author of the article. It might appease some supporters and it might improve the share price though so factor that in when trying to figure out who might have briefed it.

Assuming Ashley does though consider the following. He seems to have total control just now, but that can change, at 9% he could, in theory, be marginalised if someone else was able to either buy shares or create a shareblock from existing shareholders. His contracts aren't in perpetuity, they'll come up for review again in the future (I'm assuming) so they could in theory become less profitable for SD if renegotiated.

He can't cut the playing staff wage bill until January when the transfer window opens and that ever so crucial pre-Christmas retail period is past, he isn't going to fire any players but some might get pay-offs to leave and others sold where possible. He doesn't care what fans think or say, he knows we'll buy strips and stuff whatever. But it'll be cut, I've no doubt about that.

Forget about the Champions League, that's a red-herring used to great effect by PR professionals on a regular basis where Rangers are concerned.

Celtic sell a quarter of a million every year, they turnover £60m on a bad year, how are we supposed to realistically compete with that kind of animal?

I'm not sure Celtic do sell that many and i'd be astonshed if they turnover £60m without Champion's League football but it's a moot point anyway. I doubt the powerbrokers at Sports Direct give much thought to competing with Celtic, that's not why they're here.

That's my point, if we sell 100,000 @ £50 = £5M. Will he spend money to get us into Champions League as per original post newspaper report? He would have to spend a lot more than £5M to get us into CL.

We won't get that £5 million, Sports Direct will. I think the press report is a PR briefing, it's the sugaring of a very bitter pill. Some will still swallow it though.

P

 

Aye but. How does he get 100,000 fans to buy strips if he has not invested in the club first, got us into Champions League etc.? The way I see it very few will purchase without seeing improvement on the playing side first. He would have to speculate to accumulate, but will he? Has he at Newsacatle?

We sell close to 100,000 just now and we're the worst we've ever been. With the exception of the big two in Spain, Bayern currently and Man U/City and Chelsea clubs don't sell strips to anyone but their own supporters in any numbers that count.

I hear this repeated time & time again.

 

How?

 

The money needed to qualify for the CL proper is huge.

 

The money needed to escape from a group is colossal.

 

Anything further than that is off the scale.

 

The money needed to bring the stadium into compliance with UEFA is rising every month.

 

Non-CL approved sponsors are not allowed to display logos during CL games.

 

Even if all the above were, in an ideal world, to happen, Rangers would still be a footnote in 99% of countries CL coverage, maybe 30 secs of highlights if lucky.

 

And all this is going to drive the SD brand to unheard of heights? I just don't see it.

It's about controlling retail Andy, you must have seen some of that in your previous life. When supermarkets sell Nescafe at below cost they are doing it because it brings in thousands of customers who then buy other things with significantly higher margins. That's how Sports Direct operate, get all the Rangers branded clothing exclusive to their shops and watch the quarter of a million people emotionally connected to Rangers walk through the door or click onto the website.

Ashley couldn't care less if we win the Champion's League, it's of no consequence and the article is PR bullshit from start to finish. He's learned at Newcastle that supporters will continue to buy merchandise no matter how dire the team are doing, and whilst in the shop they'll pick up a Lonsdale t-shirt and a dozen golf balls too.

He would require to invest heavily in players and management team to get us into Champions League, we are light years away from that at moment. How does the "Rangers Brand" help him sell anything but Rangers merchandise ? We are not a big player in Europe as far as selling strips are we? Any business guys explain this to us lesser mortals?

A look at Ashley's history shows someone who buys poorly performing brands like Slazenger, Dunlop and Lonsdale, cuts all costs from them, repackages them and sells them exclusively in Sports Direct. Rangers currently fall into this market, we're a once widely recognised and successful sports brand currently failing. Even simple arithmetic shows why we're attractive to him, selling only 100,000 strips at £50 a go brings in £5 million, if you already own the retail costs associated then the economies of scale are massive, if you own or control the club you control the remuneration they receive too, you're basically only paying for manufacturing the rest goes onto the bottom line. Funding us for a couple of years isn't much of a gamble for him if he can gain control of us and our brand.

In the past I'd have said on the inside but that hasn't worked. Walter and Ally could easily create havoc for the board by rounding up the troops on Edmiston Drive. Together we could stop the club functioning day to day until the sp1vs go.

You've far more faith in direct action than I do. Look at the state of the club, if we're not mobilised by now we never will be. I've felt for a while that many in our support simply want someone else to do the work.

Dear Ally,

 

Go now and call up your friends Walter and John Greig. From there command a Blue Army to lay siege to Ibrox and chase the bastards back to England/Greenock.

 

Much obliged

Better someone on the outside being ignored or on the inside keeping watch?

The clamour to replace McCoist with anyone is reminiscent of the Murray to Whyte to Green to Ashley scenarios. Will lessons ever be learned by the Rangers support?

Word. It's genuine hysteria.

Personally, I'd have said all this to McCoist either in person or by phone if I was any sort of a mate or had respect for him, instead of doing it this way.

 

I'm not disagreeing with the content, well, apart from the stupid way he's used the word liquidation, and Butcher, who can fuck right off, it's the way he has done it that doesn't sit well with me.

 

Then again I'm biased, it's stomach churning for me to see what is happening to McCoist, a man who will always be a hero to me. I fear for his health, but mental and physical.

This, this and thrice this. Well said, I'm embarrassed reading some of the vitriol aimed at McCoist.

What Ness should have done when he left us was join Dundee Utd and told us it was simply to further his career, that way many in our support would have lauded him and slated the club. Simple.

Yet when they beat us at Ibrox last season their average age was 23 and ours was 28.

Aha, right, so playing for Dundee Utd is the height of his ambition. Fair enough, he's probably better off not being at Rangers then.

Telfer owes us nothing because he was treated like shit by the club.

Seriously? Was it the fantastic facilities at Auchenhowie or the salary he got since he went pro that tipped him over the edge do you think? Here's what I think, the hard-on you've got for some at the club is blinding you to the fact that this boy showed no loyalty, no patience, no willingness to fight for a place and no care for what the fans of Rangers, the people who ultimately have funded his 10 year apprenticeship, think or care.

Witty stuff. Perhaps the fact that we are a shambles of a club, useless at bringing through youth players and he owes us absolutely fuck all.

Well we're as good as Dundee United at bringing through youth players. I'm surprised you don't think players who spend 10 years coming through owe their club anything.