calscot

Pedantically, there are no English leagues and we have already been a member of the FA and made to the semi-final of the FA cup. It was a British organisation at its concept and we are a British club... Swansea City are in the Premiership and Cardiff City are in the Championship...

Problem is stating some is a shyster without backing it up just looks like mudslinging. What evidence did you show? What did you propose to do about it? What alternative did you propose that would save the club? Given the information of the last year, I can't think of a workable scenario. Something had to be done about the gorilla - it seems like Whyte thought he had found a way, but it didn't work out the way he hoped. However, the corpse of the gorilla has been delivered in any case - at a huge cost to the club. But what was the alternative?

I think the problem is that the hole was just too big to fill. You'd need over £100m just to make sure we were debt free as a starting point. People don't get rich by throwing £100m away. We still require a lot of investment without much chance of a return. We may even need to buy a whole new squad. Rangers right now are like a classic car that you'd really like to own and is on offer at a knock-down price - but it's looking very shabby and doesn't start... That's the biggest problem for fan ownership. If only there was a Rangers fans body promoting fan ownership that they could trust?

So what is the bigger picture? Please explain it as you seem to act like you know something we don't, but then repeatedly refuse to tell us... If it was so obvious, why couldn't you have informed us then, and why can't you inform us now?

You really need to flesh out your answers because I seem to keep having to point out what I think is the obvious. Who says they would? The big tax case was coming along and they wanted their cash and so forced the sale. If there were no buyers they would have had to await the outcome of the tax case. If we lost the tax case we'd have had a possible £75m tax bill which we couldn't pay - don't you think HMRC would put us in administration - and if they think the club deliberately avoided tax would they have accepted a CVA where they receive 5p in the pound at most? I can't see how we could have avoided liquidation in that scenario - and LBG would have received almost nothing. You can see why they forced the sale. The problem with what you are portraying is that it doesn't really make any sense of the last year. It doesn't explain why Lloyds forced the sale, why Whyte got involved, why he didn't pay tax etc, etc, etc. You seem to argue that it's just a random thing that happened done by a bad man...

As a non-football property, Ibrox is pretty worthless - a huge building, with large overheads and low office space in the middle of a wasteland. Who would buy it? It's also of no use to every football club in Scotland due to its location so who would want to buy it? It's rebuild value will probably be about £100m but it's a bit like trying to sell a huge, top of the range, rear projector telly or a five year old phone. Nobody wants it. However, it's definitely worth something to a Rangers newco as it saves them building a new stadium...

McCann turned a huge profit on Celtic and they are in an ok place now - especially compared to us. The problem is we have no choice and if someone makes a buck while putting us back on our feet then it might be the bitter pill we have to swallow.

I don't agree with this one. There were plenty of questions asked and the answers sounded good - so how can you see the future? The fans had little power in any case to do the direct asking or stopping the sale. There was maybe some wishful thinking but when you're drowning you don't hang around looking for shit on the only branch proffered to save you.

If you want one reason for our demise, it was the threat of a £75m tax bill. The rest followed on from there. The reports then suggest that Lloyds wanted to reduce its exposure and forced the sale. They weren't confident of getting their money back if HMRC won the big tax case - which would have put us pretty much the same position we are now but with HMRC as an even bigger creditor and Lloyds second. Whyte was just like a pre-emtive strike which hasn't worked out for the best - except for Lloyds.

Of course it's nonsense to you - it's totally in your MO. You do this every time without ever explaining yourself, defending your pontifications with the slightest reasoning or even acknowledging the bleedin' obvious. It's really tedious - especially from someone who claims to have insider knowledge. Funnily enough, you come across like you have no knowledge of our £18m debt repayable to Lloyds which was the reason behind the Ticketus deal and the fact that the shortfall would have had to be given or borrowed by the owner and the small tax bill too. Whyte did not take over a club in good order where you could just run it as a football club, pay the bills and tax and everything would be just fine... Are you suffering from amnesia or something? You always seem to be on some different, obscure page from everyone else. If it was that easy, we'd have had people queuing up to buy Rangers in front of Whyte - and also Murray wouldn't have had the pressure to sell. In cases like this, money is not created or destroyed, it just changes hands - for every loss there is a gain. Ticketus and HMRC were the biggest losers and if it wasn't them, it would have to be someone else.

I fail to see how anyone could have come in and done a "proper job" at Rangers in the last year without losing something like £30m of their own money. As it is, Ticketus have lost about £16m and HMRC have lost an extra £14m. They've taken the hit instead. Who would do that? The answer is no-one - the proof was in the eating when we were up for sale. Whyte did what he did so that he couldn't lose a penny and in fact probably made a few bob.

Can't see how HMRC were ever interested in cash. If they were, they are about as incompetent as it gets. They lost any chance of getting much at all with their claim for £75m and no compromise. They acted like loan sharks: pick one person, charge ludicrous interest and fees, and when they can't pay the impossible demands, they get kneecapped or more. Then everyone else gets scared shitless and pays them on time from then on.

If it wasn't for the claim for £75m for EBTs, that money would have been paid.

Sorry, to me it's totally HMRC. Murray took risks but he thought the EBT's were legal - and we could still win the case. All HMRC had to do was come for us after the first year - then if we'd have lost we'd have a bill for about £2.5m, paid it and never done it again. Even if we won we'd have probably seen it as too risky. By doing nothing HMRC have racked up the bill to 30 times what it would have been. To me it's either negligence or entrapment. I doubt there are many on here that have paid every penny of tax they are due in their lifetime - would you castigate yourselves as much as Murray if HMRC came after you with an inflated 100 grand bill? How about if the DVLA came after you for £180 for every time you went even a wee bit over the speed limit in the last 10 years if they found they had evidence of them all? Or the council for every time you parked a bit dodgy - like two wheels on a pavement or grass verge? We're all guilty of slight dodgy stuff but how much do we think we should pay for our sins of the past 10 years especially when most of it has been treated as acceptable?

This must be HMRC's plan all along. We're being made an extreme example that will stop clubs from stepping out of line for a long time to come. It's impossible to believe they were EVER interested in maximising the taxpayers' purse. Liquidation means that they will received virtually nothing when doing a deal a year ago could have raised them well over £30m more than they will get. I wouldn't be so angry about it if I could see it as justified but it is entrapment at best and shows that the UK has a very unjust tax system. Proud to be British? I'm pretty ashamed of it right now.

If we struggle to sell the SPL product in Scotland, what chance is there of raking it in elsewhere? You just have to ask people on here, what would you prefer to watch: Hibs vs Hearts (biggest non OF game) or a big English game like Arsenal vs Chelsea? I would bet the latter would get the biggest vote. A huge problem is that a duopoly is pretty tiresome and you end up only interested in the two big clubs which makes the rest of it very dull. Even a third team would make a massive difference and with all due respect to Hibs, I feel saving them was a mistake for Scottish football on the whole. Twenty years of a single Edinburgh team could have created a third force which really fleshes out the result permutations on matchday and increases the attractiveness of the league. It's never going to happen, especially as we can see that all the clubs are far too self interested even to the point of threatening to reduce our league to a monopoly with no interest at all. Instead of blaming Rangers for all the ills of our league and trying to bring us down to their level, perhaps clubs should be looking at what they can do to raise themselves up. The ludicrousness of Dundee having two clubs with stadiums on the same street is an obvious place to start and I can see the point of merging quite a few clubs round the country with more of a franchise model.

You're no more wiser when you disbelieve everything someone says as you are if you believe everything someone says. There will be some truth, some half truths and some lies. The difficulty is to try and filter through and form a workable, flexible and fluid model of what is happening - and we'll all have our own conclusions. The key to me, is the word, "flexible", without that, you've little chance in being right. Too many people get mixed up between knowledge and supposition.

Smacks of trolling...

One of our biggest problems apart from being a small nation in population size is that the football fans we have in Scotland give a strong impression they would rather watch English football than Scottish. This does nothing but devalue our game which is why the EPL TV deal is worth something like 70 times more than ours despite their popualtion only being 10 times which reduces to something like 6 times when you consider per capita attendance of matches. I still remember when a large number of "loyal" Rangers fans had Sky Sports subscriptions but no Setanta. We can never compete with the EPL on an even pegging never mind this perverse lack of support for you own game. We can only compete even a little by doing something completely different - like the Dutch or Australians. They still have a higher population than us but the former punch well above that weight in both domestic and international football and the latter do amazingly well in the Olympics - and are huge in other sports such as rugby. We need parliamentary law and funding to completely change how we nurture all sport in our small country and perhaps become a prouder and far more healthy nation as a result. Sport in Scotland is now seen as a trivial past-time when it is hugely important to health, wealth and prestige of a country. The superpowers spend masses of money on sporting success for a reason.

When did we last have a good owner? Lawrence Malborough became our first majority shareholder / owner in 1985 but as he lived in the US had little to do with the club. Previous to him increasing his shareholding he was nicknamed "the silent partner by the then chairman, John Paton. That was when we went through one of the worst periods for the club having nine years without a championship title. In 1986 he brought in David Holmes to revitalise the club and we all know what happened after that. But just as we had become a very successful club he sold his shareholding to Murray in 1988 so while you could perhaps call him a good owner, it was very short lived. Since then all we've had is Murray and Whyte... Green technically won't be the owner as he won't have the majority shareholding.

My current car is blue, I've just ordered another blue car that arrives tomorrow, I buy Rangers tops for playing sport but I'd draw the line at Rangers tartan. It's a step too far for me. My kilt however, is predominantly blue...

I don't quite get his statement. He starts off very well but then there's that record ripping sound in my head when he says he wants to sue the club for £20m. How is that going to help. He then says he'll reinvest the money - so what it the point? You sue the club for £20m it doesn't have, if you win it's back in administration and then you reinvest the money? Very weird. If he was suing Murray then fair enough but how will suing the club help? Then he opposes the CVA but the problem there is that that spells out liquidation and a very difficult time for the club. I'm of the opinion that the Green offer is total shit but I rather find a shit port that fleeces me of all my money and goods but survive to start again than to flounder in a storm and possibly die. And that's how I see Green at the moment - he's a shit option but there's nothing better around to keep us alive. The "NO GREEN AND WHYTE AT IBROX" is pretty catchy though...

I can think of no better player to name the training ground after than Cooper. The guy is a legend and Rangers through and through. We've had dozen's better? Well Ruud Gullit doesn't think so: http://fourfourtwo.com/interviews/perfectxi/136/article.aspx Perfect XI Football legends tell FourFourTwo about their dream team Ruud Gullit Goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel He had a great presence in goal, which was his advantage. He was a very difficult keeper to beat whenever I played against him. Not only was he good for Manchester United, but he showed in 1992, when Denmark won the European Championships, that he was the best at international level too. Right-back Manfred Kaltz He played for Hamburg in the â??80s and was famous for his Bananenflanken [banana crosses]. His crosses had so much spin on them, they were so difficult to defend, the strikers were scoring for fun. He was also one of the first attacking right-backs. He almost invented the idea of the wing-back, long before Cafu and Roberto Carlos came on the scene. He was very good at set-pieces too. Centre-back Franco Baresi A leader at the back, very strong and quick, with an excellent understanding of the game. As a defender, he could do everything. A lot of the time, he would know what the attacker was going to do before they knew themselves! How do you get past someone like that? Centre-back Marcel Desailly A very strong defender and excellent in the air, which is something you need. He also had the kind of pace and power that would frighten attackers into making a mistake. Not necessarily a leader, but a very experienced defender. He would complement Baresi well. Left-back Paolo Maldini Position for position one of the greatest players ever, and heâ??s still playing which shows what a great athlete he is. But unlike certain other great full-backs, he wasnâ??t world class when just defending or just attacking â?? he could do both better than most and is an excellent centre-back too. Right-midfield Kaka Has excellent pace and talent, and is one of the few players Iâ??ve seen who is quicker with the ball than without it. He also has vision, which can make the players he plays with look good, and his opponents look bad. Heâ??s definitely one of the best in the world at the moment. Centre-midfield Frank Rijkaard A good defensive midfield player with vision and strength. I played with him at club and international level for many years and he was one of the best. He controlled the midfield with his presence, strength and technique. He would help start attacks, but make sure the other team couldnâ??t get at the defence. Provided a great balance to any team he played in. Centre-midfield Diego Maradona Do I really need to give reasons? The best player there has ever been, better than Pele. I watched him closely in Italy every week and he was at a different level to everyone else. Some of the things he did were unbelievable. He could control the ball without looking, which meant if the pass was on, he would take it. Left-midfield Davie Cooper I played against him in the European Cup when he was with Glasgow Rangers and he was a really skilful player. Unbelievably skilful. He didnâ??t have much pace but he was a good dribbler who set up plenty of chances for team-mates as well as scoring some great goals himself. Forward Johan Cruyff He had it all â?? vision, attitude, presence. He was also very flexible, so when opponents tried to kick him he would always anticipate what was about to happen and move just in time. Defenders couldnâ??t touch him. He would be the provider for the main striker but was a prolific goalscorer himself too. Forward Marco van Basten Strong in the air and could create goals for himself. Even though he was tall, he was flexible and could turn and do pretty much everything. Headers, bicycle kicks, volleys, everything. He was also a vicious player. If defenders tried to kick him, he would kick them back. He knew how to look after himself on the pitch. Manager Sir Alex Ferguson Itâ??s got to be Ferguson for his experience and also his achievements, in life and as a coach.

Maybe we should rename the portacabin ticket office after Murray instead?

Step away from the bone!