calscot

I think that would have to be without any mass organisation of it - which would probably be illegal.

I take it that this part: subject to such exclusions or other arrangements as the Directors may deem necessary or expedient to deal with...any other matter whatsoever Is relevant to prevent certain shareholders from participating?

I don't expect that from them due to who they are - but I would expect anyone fair-minded and with integrity, to at least abstain. With those with the good of Scottish football at heart, I would expect them to vote to keep us, perhaps with a punishment. I think that's what most of our boards would have done, and most of the fans. We've never kicked them when they were down - they almost went bust once and we did nothing against them or even slightly wished them gone. We have also helped other clubs in financial trouble in our history. Although, I still don't really understand what we need punished for that didn't already happen naturally - we have already lost far, far more money than we ever saved. The irony for them is that they are guilty of the same thing, albeit on a small scale, and many of their shareholders and employees are now suffering from the clamp down on tax avoidance. They have absolutely no moral high ground - they did it out of hatred and self interest.

I think if it gets to 8 then our fans will start to feel like we need to do something...

Money-wise, when we're established in the SP and qualifying for Europe, we'll be in the same ballpark, but there are several places where they have the advantage. The most obvious is merchandising. Then there is the CL money that they have been gaining without competition for the last 5 years. With us in the league they end up with about 5k more at their matches. Because of their advantages in this area, they have a good chance of staying ahead if they keep winning the league - CL money is far more than EL and then they have rigged the prize money so that first is much more than second. All this will be a bit of a golden circle for them, and one we have to break somehow - either by being incredibly savvy, lucky or bridging the financial gap by providing external funds from shareholders. Of course they might also have some kind of melt down. They were in a similar position during our NIAR, but they managed to pull it back to pretty much even again, so we have to look to see how we can do that ourselves. Even then, while I don't think they are generally right in the head when it comes to their club and related stuff, I think they still have an advantage over us. One thing that they are good at is sticking together for the cause and having a lot of their ilk putting themselves in positions of power and the media - and that's another disadvantage we have. Even though their main shareholder is about as despotic and self serving as Murray, he is still one of them. Sometimes it's difficult to compete when you are sane, rational, fair-minded and have other, normal priorities in your life, when up against crazed, irrational zealots who never tire of attacking you, no matter how preposterous their ammunition is. The irony is that you would think the club is the hero of the piece against an insidious, nefarious force, but their propaganda has been so relentless that the rest have been brainwashed into the club being strangely seen as the evil villain. Sometimes it looks like we have a mountain to climb. Where's those bags of Tudor when you need them...

He sounds very savvy and mature.

I think the English have actually learned from serial disappointment and lowered their expectations; they don't tend to get excited about their chances of winning the trophy any more. I think they also realise that the hype is counterproductive.

Not only did they vote with an obvious conflict of interest, they circumvented the democratic process by blackmailing the other clubs. They literally cheated. I think this is something we should never forget nor forgive. It is something I believe we would never have done.

I'd have thought that they would have to be less stupid...

The rules dictate that a club must provide contracted players with training facilities. I agree the wording suggests that it won't be with the first team.

So this article isn't quite accurate: "Meanwhile, Sky Sports has won the rights to all the live qualifying matches involving Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland at home and away and will show highlights of England's games." https://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/may/14/itv-rights-england-qualifiying-matches

I think I might be wrong there. I think ITV have it exclusively due to being an England home game.

All this is, is that England have a TV deal with ITV and Scotland have a deal with Sky, which means games between the two nations will be shown on both. STV are doing nothing special.

I think the kids thing IS a numbers game... It seems totally unpredictable.

Not exactly been following it so this is a pretty informative thread.

It looks like West German league showed a lot more friendliness the East German clubs than than English/Welsh leagues have shown to Scottish clubs.

I always though they signed an S Form at minimum 14, so if he's 13 he can't sign anything concrete to protect the kids from exploitation.

Happened to Dodoo recently when he came on as a sub - but near the halfway line on the left wing. Was wondering where the shouts were, even from the crowd. Maybe it's so noisy the players can't hear, and maybe need to shout louder.

Really enjoyed the Russian Rangers highlights, that was how we expected to play this season, at least against those outside the top three. I did notice some good use of the long ball with a couple of them bringing very good attacks - one from the back up to Garner to knock down, and the Windass one diagonally out wide to O'Halloran. The great thing was the accuracy of the pass and the skill in receiving. There were others that didn't quite pay off but it certainly gives us another dimension and consequently a bit more space to play our main style. We seem to have tweaked out tactics and it worked, at least for this game. I really liked the role that O'Halloran played and it gave us a great attacking option. Miller seemed to be pretty good at the free role he had, linking with midfield, while allowing Garner to take on the main striking role. Defensively we looked reasonably solid but it's hard to say too much about that when the highlights show us mostly attacking right from the first minute. It's also hard to say how much Kilmarnock contributed to our good performance as they seemed to be one of those in between teams that actually have the guts to try to play up the park rather than just sitting back and parking the bus, while not being quite good enough to go toe to toe with us. I think these are the kind of teams that will be more enjoyable to watch us against, but they'll probably learn the lesson and be more conservative next time. It's a relief to finally get to second place although I'm not going to react too much to that - there's a lot of capitulation by our current (but hopefully temporary) rivals - and only in the Scottish league would all three teams competing for second or third, drop points two matches in a row. As I said before, the goal of just securing second in this league for a club like Rangers with our resources, is a very low bar, and the meme when McCoist was around was that anyone's granny could do it. The gap to Celtic definitely adds a sour note, and it's not too exciting to be just at the front of a very distance chasing pack. The best news is that Warburton seems to have transformed the team for one game, I just hope it's the start of something that will continue to improve for the rest of the season.

Never seen him as much of a Rangers man. He never celebrated his goals which was strange at the time, and then pretty much did nothing for the second half of the season (seemingly in some sort of huff) and then left. There's maybe a story there but it's never been properly told. He could have been a legend...

The problem people give there is that we didn't sack previous offenders. However, it is an entirely new board and management, who have criticised the previous running of the club, so I can't see a case for inconsistency there. They could also have changed the club rules and/or contract wording since the previous offences. However, as I said above, his rap sheet is pretty long and so it's not the same.

Seems to me that to give a week's suspension for the training ground bust up means there was obviously a verbal warning which he didn't heed and then a first written one, giving him the punishment. The fact he's had his suspension extended another three weeks after his radio appearance and twitterings suggest a second written warning, and then another for the second extension which could be for the betting. So, if that's all they need, I would expect them to be well covered - and if it's add to a lack of contrition then I think he's made his bed. His crime sheet is pretty long for such a short time at the club. However, they probably don't want a court battle and might be interested in negotiating a more mutual exit by January - if anyone wants him.

I think you're argument goes both ways - if our previous teams consistently won by a goal, then if we don't then we are nowhere near as good rather than a smidgen off. The problem is that it's not a one off - we just don't look like winning many games as we don't score enough, no matter how much possession we have. It's a problem that needs to be addressed - as does leaking bad goals, which to me is a lesser problem, but the combination of the two is a huge one. Walter Smith came into pick up the pieces after the last disaster of a manager with an intransigent football philosophy - he immediately sorted the defence and got the team scoring more goals. We wen't from scoring 1.5 goals a game to 2 and from letting in 1 goal a game to 0.5 (discounting the last two game that didn't matter). That made a difference of a goal a game which made us unbeaten in those 14 games, with 10 wins, and made us the best team in the league for that part of the season, despite having less of a budget than Celtic. The worrying thing is that I'm seeing a bit of a parallel with Le Guen here in the failure to acknowledge that big changes are needed, and some pragmatism put into the team. Trying to play pretty football is all very well and good, but as I've been saying for years, and once again being vindicated, it takes a lot more than that to consistently win games. In Scotland you should be winning games and maybe trying to add some style when you can, rather than playing with style and maybe trying to win some games when you can. What is effective is more important than what is entertaining - at the moment we're starting to do neither.

I find that depressing. You're kind of saying our system means we can only win by having far higher factor than the current 3 to 10 times as expensive players as our opposition. I want a system that generally and definitively beats opposition even if we have the same budget, and also against some teams with more money than us. We can't compete with Celtic, nor do well in Europe without that.

That didn't ring true in my memory and a quick check on Wikipedia confirms it - they brought in 13 new players and 16 left. Net spend was -£1.5 excluding the undisclosed fees. They also brought in one loan, and loaned out six. That was from a team that had a better season that we did in the Championship. The problem is we're doing worse after spending a lot more money, and at the moment there is no reason to think that 2nd or 3rd is more than a toss up in probability, despite dramatically outspending our rivals for those spots. Before 2012 we were consistently about 20-30 points better than the best SPL also rans over a season, now we're in 5th after more than a quarter of the season. I can't see the similarity. The point I've made in this thread is that the stark facts of the situation also apply to Hearts, but they have had a lot less money to spend. We need better progress but we seem stuck up a cul de sac, trying to find our way back to the main road... For me, the target was a good 2nd place - say 10 points behind Celtic and at least 10 points ahead of the rest. I also said I'd take third with some mitigation (and maybe a cup) and evidence of some tangible progress. Progress is not being made at the moment - and for all the "background" stuff that has been reorganised, I don't see any tangible benefit as yet - in fact we're about the worst we've ever been in our history in blooding youngsters from the Academy. Andy Roxburgh used to boast about this background stuff all the time: how he rejigged everything from grassroots up to make Scotland more of a success in the future - so just when is that going to pay off?