calscot

Therein lies the problem. Another nail in the coffin for Scottish football - why pay a lot of money to go to a shit game of football in the cold and wet when you can stay at home every week and watch a top EPL game in HD from all angles from the comfort of your armchair? You can even have a few beers... Just thought of something. Is there a rule in the SFL that you have to go for joint media contracts or can you negotiate your own? If the latter then we could be making more money than all the SPL teams if those fans who call themselves loyal would pick up a subscription. Imagine paying £5 a month to see EVERY Rangers game live - albeit in the lower divisions? I'd pay for that - however, I think there are too many Rangers "customers" who would prefer to pay Sky to watch the EPL. Yep, Scottish football is fecked.

I can't see how you can apply your situation to theirs. You can leave any time giving notice - or do your next employers have to pay compensation? Do you have to buy out your contract if you otherwise want to leave? Do your company hold your registration to work anywhere? Football clubs are not normal companies. Plain and simple. However, details like these become highly complex as a result.

I'm thinking that if we're relegated to div 3, we could soon be meeting up with other SPL clubs who go into liquidation in the following years. They don't know what they are voting for - turkeys and Christmas spring to mind.

When it comes to integrity the rest of the league really need to look in the mirror. There are showing none at all and just putting the boot in out of the sheer pleasure of hurting others. Where were Rangers putting the boot in when Celtic were going under, when Motherwell went in administration or Dundee, or when Aberdeen were saved from relegation? Where were Rangers in calling for new sanctions for players not being paid their wages by Hearts and Dunfermline? When did Rangers last cause a referee strike, or stack the end of a season in their favour while ruining the chances of another Scottish club winning a European trophy? No, Rangers were the ones who agreed to postpone a game where they were favourites and when the opposition had an injury crisis - just because the latter had a previous bit part player who left years before, die in a game for someone else. A team that were fine to play when a legend who was still at the club died later in the season. A club that couldn't possibly extend the season as they had an imaginary friendly tournament to play in. There have been plenty of scandals in Scottish football and Rangers have repeatedly taken the brunt of any punishment even when often it is disproportionate to the rest of the league, while never putting the boot in elsewhere. Yet somehow we're the big bad ones who deserve a total kicking by everyone and then thrown out. And for what? Making the mistake in believing a tax avoidance scheme based on foggy legislation was legal? You couldn't make it up. I am sickened by the whole of Scottish football to the extent I think I will find it hard to even follow my own national team. You can be loyal to your country, but when you country treats you like complete shit for no reason, then that loyalty starts to falter. And ironically they are lead from the front by a club who claim to be foreign and who are embarrassed at being Scottish.

Do you really think we'll have a future with a youth league - we already have one and I'm afraid its attendances are nothing like the proper league. What will happen to all the players over 21 - will they be forced to retire or play abroad? Will the future be a place where you start your career at 16 and retire at 21? Sorry, just don't get it.

Maybe we just need to buy an English club then relocate them and change their name. Happened here in MK.

They are strange in thinking that they will have two CL places. That will likely disappear very quickly and would have done years ago if it wasn't for the efforts of one Rangers FC. Unless of course the current teams play totally different in Europe than they have done for the past 20 years.

Funny how Aberdeen benefited from being "too big to relegate" a while back. Where was the fair play there? Total hypocrisy.

Now the old company has been liquidated, can you not buy the company name?

My biggest remorse is that we have country with a tax system that totally depends on whether you "might or might not" give a loan which "might or might not" be paid back. Then let companies use that for 10 years to avoid tax in full view without complaining, and then finally give any company that used that too much a retrospective death penalty. Absolutely ludicrous.

I think liquidators can dispose of the assets without recourse to the creditors unless the latter can easily prove that a greater amount can be raised. They would have to go to court which could take up to two years and a lot of money. It's probably not worth their while. Basically, instead of a fire sale, auction style of everything the club own, the liquidators will find it expedient to sell it lock, stock and barrel for £5.5m. That money will be used to pay the expenses - eg the administrators (~£3m) and the rest split between the creditors using the well established rules of priority. Basically HMRC have gone for a lose, lose, lose, lose situation - all due to their own incompetence.

I can't believe the stuff on here. So Eck had his hands tied and deserved more time despite finishing third? PLG had off-field problems and so deserved more time despite being 17pts behind and out of two cups at the halfway stage? McCoist did better than both despite going through the most horrendous season in Rangers history and if you take away the 10 point deduction and the three post administration defeats which were out of kilter from the rest of the season, his points total would have been a very good challenge for the title in most seasons. That's despite his hands were tied and having the biggest off-field problems ever. Does he deserve more time? Nah, he's shite and deserves to be sacked. That's not even taking into account the fact that he was the one pillar of strength that Rangers fans could rely on thoughout the slow death of the company that ran our club. It's really hard to respect people with that kind of logic. I've argued many times about McCoists results relative to the circumstances and not one person on here has given a decent rebuttal of that - and yet now it seems to be just taken as fact that McCoist was shite.

Don't see how the history can die. The history is 140 years old, the company is 113 years old, how did a company have the history from before it even existed? The company is obviously not the club, it is just a financial vehicle. We're just trading it in for a new vehicle. Celtic have also done so, just not due to liquidation - actually, aren't they a two vehicle family? How does their history work?

You're taking my analogy to an unnecessary detail. It works on every level. Maybe Halfords is a bad example as I actually have a Boardman Team Carbon road bike from there. There's no competitions for potholed roads but if you want to talk off-road, lets compare a top end mountain bike with a dirt cheap £300 bike. Whatever the game, the best equipment helps. You're argument is a bit like arguing that you don't need top sportsmen to win the league as a bunch of top swimmers have no chance of winning at football. My point is that you wouldn't sell yourself short, why sell your football team short - unless you have no real affection for it? So you're saying we should just become another div 3 team? I don't get you. What I'm saying is that fans need to think of the club and realise they need a decent budget to fly up the leagues. Pay peanuts and you'll get monkeys. You seem to be saying that we should just get used to being in the lower leagues. I disagree. You need to find out what budget you have and spend it on the best you can get. That budget mostly depends on the loyalty of our fans - how much they will pay and how many will turn up. I sometimes get the impression that "loyal" is a meaningless word in Rangers circles even though many supporters clubs have it in their name. I'd rather just bulldoze my way up the leagues with a far superior team due to 40k fans paying a decent amount for their tickets. Depends on the loyalty again.

Both comments seem pretty reasonable to me... where's the beef?

The fact is that if we're booted out the SPL then there will be a vacancy in the SFL (unless the SPL decide to go on with 11 clubs in the league). Would the SFL really vote for a Highland league or Borders club over a club like Rangers? Would they have no conscience? It's no wonder our game is in such a state with the loonies that are running it...

That would go against most of the evidence and messages from the board. I could swallow something like a £5m loss which could have been cleared by the sale of Jelavic but £12m? What the hell was Muir doing then? We had massive cuts since 2009 which reduced our squad dramatically as well as the wages. You also have to wonder then, how Celtic can afford a much bigger squad on not that much more income than us and still make a small profit...

The club were getting by but that is ignoring the 4000lb gorilla in the room... Whyte did what he did for a reason - an attempt to slay the gorilla and make a tidy sum for himself in the process.

Don't think you've stated anything obvious or even understandable so far. One line statements are never the way to gain respect for contentious views; so what is it you are trying to achieve?

These myths really get to me. How can a club that reduces its debt from £33m to £18m in three years be making a loss of £12m a year? Surely the debt would have increased to £69m? Maybe you need to think about the basic arithmetic? Due to the way Whyte ran things last year, Rangers made a shortfall. It was not a normal and continuous, operational loss. I would also disagree that Murray bankrolled us and when he paid up with the share issue, it was only a few years worth of debt that he himself created through mismanagement that he was paying off.

Plenty of clubs owe money for players - payments are usually spread. How do you know that the Jelavic debt won't be paid in the next year or two?

I think many people who on the surface, think of themselves as fans, have to actually work out if they are more like customers after all. People have to realise that for the team to compete the way they would like, needs money and patronage - so while people baulk at £400 for div 3 football you have to realise you get what you pay for and the fans have the biggest ownership in this. Do you want a half decent team that sweeps all before them on a march back to the SPL, or to pay for an above average div 3 team and battle your way to the top watching that level of football? And at that level of spend, it may take a long time. If you're a fan rather than a customer you're part of team and your money decides what level of "equipment" the team has. If you started competing at something yourself and seen your level as a lot higher than where you start would you pay for the level of equipment for where you aspire to be, or think, "I'm only in the lower division so I'm only prepared to buy cheap stuff". Say it's cycling, do you buy a bike from Halfords or a proper carbon framed bike from a decent shop with decent components? It depends on your level of ambition I suppose and how much you can afford. Our level of ambition is the SPL and so we need an SPL team to get there and so we need to pay SPL prices. Paying less for lower quality is only sabotaging your own goals and I can't see how that will be satisfying. People have to decide whether they are part of the team, in ownership of the club, or merely spectators looking for value for money.

What is your forfeit if you return?

If we lose our history, does that mean that there will be only one Glasgow club with a sectarian history? How will they get their kicks without exaggerating stuff about our past if it doesn't exist?

Our club and Scottish football will likely be changed forever. Every SPL club will have to downsize its ambitions, we could become just a football backwater like in Ireland or Finland. Europe could become irrelevant as all our teams will struggle to get to any group stages. Attendances are likely to go down, talent coming through will start to dry up and we'll forever be in the shadow of our now far more glamorous neighbours and being incredibly jealous of the top two teams from Wales who stuck around long enough to get an invite to the party. I feel football in Scotland is now stuffed with a bleak and barren future both domestically, European-wise and internationally. Our best hope is to have enough players in England that we start to punch the same weight as a nation as Ireland. It's a very sad day for Scottish football.