calscot

The BTC has cost the tax payer over £30m. You could build a hospital for that... I can't see how Rangers could cheat with the STC as we offered to pay. It's HMRC's actions which meant instead of payment, we gave £30m of players to world football for free. We've paid our debt in that sense whether our detractors like it or not.

I don't think the SPL realise how messed up their league is. It used to be you were guaranteed 3 OF home games - now your're guaranteed one and two if you're lucky. So depending on the fixtures you could be a Celtic home game short of your neighbour. Apart from the money where half the bottom six clubs will play Celtic at home twice and once away while another will play them once at home and twice away which will affect results. The bottom six clubs who get Celtic twice at home will get Dundee once at home and vice versa. Then there's the fixtures anomalies which they try to reduce by guessing the order of the league at the end of the season. However, Dundee have replaced Rangers, what does that do to this seeding? Rangers were guaranteed being in the top six while Dundee are certain to be in the bottom. Look for lots of situations where one team plays another three times at home and once away or a team having 20 or 21 home games in a season. The system relied on two big clubs and so it's now seriously broken. I wonder how long it will take the "hard done by" clubs to notice and start the squabbling?

Well they've already charged us for their costs of the court case on the illegal punishment - which we won...

I can't imagine the quality will be increased - it's all about bandwidth. They won't get more subscribers until they make it better value for money - which is incredibly poor compared to what Setanta offered. Setanta - £100 a year to watch 48 live Scottish games in TV quality plus a load of other live games from around the World, plus highlights, plus Rangers TV with the full game the next day plus a load more. RangersTV - £60 to watch Rangers TV with the full game after midnight, in low quality internet streaming. We need income but I can't see why you should shaft the fans to get it...

They now look like they've royally shafted Scottish football for false reasons. Basically Rangers were made vulnerable by HMRC and mugged by Whyte - we are the victims and yet we've received extreme punishment after extreme punishment. You have to wonder how the SFL clubs now see the leader of the SFA. That vote of no-confidence must be a shoe-in now. The SPL now looks more corrupt than ever and there must be some clubs who are embarrassed at how they acted and how they were duped by Doncaster and Lawwell. The Celtic fans' boycott threats now just look like a form of cheating. Basically Celtic itself will have cheated their way to this season's title and any they win in about the next ten years not to mention those of the past. Can't win the league normally? Go the Celtic way - postpone games with your rivals for tenuous reasons and then force them to play 8 games in 22 days at the end of the season, or put enormous pressure the referees so they are scared to give decisions against you, or when that doesn't work, take over the league board and force the one club who keeps beating you out of the league for several seasons and really hurt their income. Celtic, cheats then, cheats now, cheats forever. Sorry, I digressed - Regan and Doncaster already looked like they had ruined the top of Scottish football by either nefariousness or sheer incompetence, their jobs now look untenable.

Who wants to play in the SPL now? Not many Rangers fans, that's for sure.

The oldco is still insolvent as it didn't pay it's taxes and I think Ticketus may now be the biggest creditor though I can't remember their status. I personally can't see how Ticketus can really be a creditor as they can take all the money they want from future oldco season ticket sales... However, I think the oldco would still owe millions. See the BBC are saying that Sevco "formed a new club". They just can't help themselves.

There is going to be two ways that reporters could go - they may step up their propaganda against us in order to prove they were right to damn us so much, or they may soften their approach to writing about us as they realise their position was originally far too aggressive.

Which brings us back to the original problem. If Murray had not sold to Whyte and stuck it out, HMRC had promised to appeal and appeal again. That would have made the club impossible to run. They basically shafted us. Whyte may have stabbed us, robbed us and left us for dead but it's HMRC that put us defenseless in a dark alley in the roughest part of the ghetto. What they did should be illegal. It doesn't really change anything due to their agenda to make an example of us.

These proposals are starting to look like one of the four horsemen - War? We already have Famine from Rangers not being in the SPL and it will increase with the loss of the TV deal. We're just waiting on Death to take Hearts and then the SFL or SPL will have Conquest. What Apocalypse, eh?

I think there are slightly different circumstances for you Craig. For a start I doubt you can receive British TV in a way that would allow you to watch a game on pay per view, so you're only realistic medium is the internet. And also as you say, the demand is far less for your type of subscription. Here Rangers TV is competing with the likes of terrestrial TV and Sky and also the memory of Setanta. Those make the streaming look like poor quality and poor value for money - even if done as well as you have experienced it. When Setanta started we were getting two or three live matches a month for £8.50 plus a host of other games and stuff in a reasonable picture on a large telly. When you compare £6 for one game streamed to your laptop, then it doesn't look like a good deal. I have Rangers TV to watch the game after midnight. I'd say the picture is good for a stream, but abysmal compared to an average TV channel. Sometimes I can't really follow the ball when we score even with a couple of replays and rewinding to see it again is incredibly painful and I can't slow it down or go frame by frame like on telly. Even in a good live stream you don't have all the pause, rewind and timeslip of Sky+, Freeview+ and Freesat+. It's like swapping a bog standard but passable Ford Mondeo for a Tuktuk and paying more for it. Yes it gets you there but not in comfort or luxury.

I might be reading it wrong but according to Wikipedia it was 2009. They were division champions in 2012, 2011, 2009, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1996. American League champions in 2009, 2003, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1996. Apart from that, they suck... How about those Romans?

Sounds like they want to keep control - although they'll water down their votes to pretty much 13 smaller clubs (including Dundee) - unless they have more votes in the top division... However, they have been shown as incapable of running the top of the Scottish game and only do anything for pure self interest and personal vendettas rather than the good of the game. The SFL is the only show in town with credibility for integrity but the top 11 will never kowtow to them. We need a clean out that the SFA and then have them force the leagues to change. They can choose which clubs play in Europe and indeed who has a licence to play in Scotland under the UEFA and FIFA umbrella. So they have a pretty big stick. Trouble is that the SFA top brass are currently lackeys of Lawwell.

We needed about £10m, that's all that CG's consortium have put in.

I've copied the html text, cut our the relevant bit, displayed it in a browser and then copied and pasted to here...

Which could mean they made a profit and should pay tax on it - sounds like tax EVASION to me.

Omnia dicta fortiora si dicta Latina...

To be honest that sounds fair enough. If no profit is being made then no tax is due. A hell of a lot of tax gets paid on the PAYE of the players. If wages are 66% of turnover, HMRC must be getting about 30% of the money. Then add in VAT and other taxes and you're talking they get 50% of the money. Should they really take more? I think it's a good example to show how hypocritical they are but in the end, for me it shows that HMRC are the immoral ones, not Rangers and the SPL. I think HMRC needs to make the rules work better, let eveyone know clearly what they are and be on the ball when someone makes a mistake and retrieve the money within a year. They also need to remove any wishy washy tax avoidance scenarios.

I've always prefered a 4-4-2 but have been proven wrong on this on many an occasion and openly adopted a formation that is doing the job. I think you can see why we were trying what could be considered a more attacking formation against 3rd division opposition but like most things this esoteric, you have to try stuff and see if works and change it if it doesn't. There is no set formula for winning - otherwise everyone would be doing it. (Actually something like that happened in baseball and just means the richest team is now even more likely to win).

I know it's too early to think we're now sorted (although it was also too early for some to say we were going to struggle to win the league) but is everyone encouraged by the latest four wins in a row including two away games? Our overall record is not brilliant but then we have had a rocky start which has been affected by many factors; however, even if the results repeat themselves over the season it looks like we would win the league by 16 points - a pretty fair margin. However, I do think it was a stumbling start and we'll lose far less points per game till the end of the season and are about to be fully in our stride. I'll put my neck on the line and predict we won't lose more than 10 points for the rest of the season, putting us on at least 89 points and winning by over 20 points. I can see people at the end of such a season still bemoaning the start but when a runner hasn't had time to train and has had stressful financial problems then stumbles out of the blocks but wins the race by a wide margin, I don't think you'd dwell on his bad start - in fact you'd make that story into a Holywood movie... I personally feel the team is starting to gel and playing more the way Ally wants them to. I'm not saying Ally is a fantastic manager and can do no wrong (which some challenged people seem to be incapable of understanding) but I thing he keeps proving he's not a bad or "clueless" one either. At worst he's mediocre, but I think he needs a long, clear run with no off-field crap to deal with, to show where he really stands. That doesn't mean he can't be sacked if he loses five games in a row or finishes second this season.

Anecdotally I remember the defence being vastly improved as well as our results (and the statistics prove that one) so goals against may not always be the best metric as it's better to win 2-1 every week than to alternately lose 1-0 then win 1-0. There is also the statistic that Eck had the second best defensive record of any Rangers manager after Souness. But I do remember going from being a bomb scare every week to being relaxed and confident of winning. And Weir was a fantastic signing for Rangers.

pS Just looked at the Premiership table - 23 points between top and bottom, must be really uncompetitive league...

Can someone explain how we tell the difference between "competitive" and a sea of mediocrity? Add in a top team who know they are going to win at a canter as they have no real competition and so don't make the effort and you've got the SPL. Competitive or just crap?

It's the current player contracts the other 11 have to worry about in the next two years. They have to start paying players less but are committed to those contracts.

The thing is that with the SPL something we want to avoid and having to play in the lower leagues in order to get back to the top, why not just start in the Conference if they'll have us... It's a long road to the Premier League and even getting to the Championship is not easy (just ask MK Dons) but I think we will have the resources, the support and the sheer bloody mindedness to do it within a decade. We may miss some years of European football but we'd be playing teams we haven't played before instead which with the way things are going would be more enjoyable than a future of entering Europe from a moribund Scottish game that will mean we will struggle against less than glamorous opposition and get out played and beaten by the glamorous ones. I'd rather finish 6th in the Premiership and take their £75m in TV money to build a team capable of winning it than be in the CL qualifiers with a total turnover of half that and pray you get to the league stage to prop up the table and bank £15m. Two games against Man U, Man City, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool would compensate if we didn't qualify for Europe. Even games against Newcastle, Sunderland, Everton, Aston Villa, West Ham and Spurs would be a box office hit.