calscot

All Kudos to Michael Mols but you have to use perspective on the wages he's earned. He was probably on well over 20k a week with Rangers for four years - that £4M and for a season he did nothing - fair enough he was injured. Taking a 70% wage cut after earning four times what most people earn in a life time in four short year means he was probably on at least 6 grand a week or £300k for his final year. Hardly slumming it... And I'm being conservative with his wage. Cool that he did it but lets not have any hearts bleeding.

I thought morality had nothing to do with it? If SDM and Whyte did things in a legal and legitimate business fashion then surely according to your previous arguments they are in the clear? Weren't they "entitled" to do what they did? Is it or isn't it "just business"? Make up your mind. I've also got to ask that if Whyte did so much damage, why is it that a year ago he was the only show in town and now we have a about six interested parties and four bids? I'm no fan of Whyte but there is no escaping the facts.

I've got to say my support of Rangers goes well beyond any ownership, company status or financial jiggery pokery. I'm not going to stop supporting Rangers just because of a couple of business guys who couldn't run the company in a proper manner. A blip doesn't change the history and it doesn't change the spirit of the club. What is the entity anyway? None of the original players, manager or supporters are even alive today. So what actually makes up Rangers? The company only started about 30 years after the club, so what history are we talking about - so all this 1872 stuff is a load guff? You know every seven years, all our cells in our body have been replaced by new ones - yet we see our selves as the same person. Who says a football club has to have the same company behind it? Depends if you're more into finance than football...

Watched a bit of it and it seemed Milan were playing Wattanacio except they were only keeping 9 men behind the ball... Park the Bus? Anti-football. Nah, that only seems to apply to Rangers. Got to admit though, it's boring for neutrals so switched over.

Wow! That's what you got from that? Talk about woosh. As I've said before I keep crediting you with a sophistication that you fail to live up to. I usually presume people will understand analogy and metaphor but it seems even their concepts are alien to you. No wonder I can't get even on the same ballpark as you as you are just far too literal...

You're arguing against yourself here. The amount will be the amount no matter what I say. I'm just giving my opinion on what I personally think is right. No idea what you mean here. Of course I do. It's pretty obvious isn't it? They deserve the money back from Rangers that they advanced to Rangers. That was £18M - why do they deserve more from Rangers than the money the club received? The rest is the business of whoever they advanced the money to. If they were conned by someone who took the money then that shouldn't be Rangers' liability. Again what they are actually paid has nothing to do with what I think they deserve. I'm just discussing it. Like I said if you want to stick to facts and figures this site will be pretty empty and no-one will have anything to say unless they have a fact or figure. Your arguments are a bit strange. It's a bit like someone saying something like, "I think rapists deserve to be chemically castrated," and you reply, "Their punishment will be based on what the law allows." You're pretty much stating the obvious without actually getting the point of the opinion and therefore being unable to actually debate it. Maybe you think that if CW gets 30 million for his shares in a legal business transaction then by definition he must "deserve" it...

Could they not sign him but not play him. Seems to me that they could maybe sign him now but register him as a player next season when he's recovered from injury. I could be completely wrong though, just sounds like it could be an option.

Got to disagree with you there. Morals have everything to do with what I'm talking about, but even in the great scheme of things, business and law are originally based entirely on morals. For instance: you agree to sell something to me and the I can either a) pay you the money for the goods, b) take the goods and promise to pay the money later but don't or c) hit you over the head and take the goods. Now which case is doing business and legal? Which cases are not moral? The problem is that business and the law often lose the plot and diverge from the originally morality they are based on. But my whole point in thread is the morality of the situation. If it was all business, law and no morality, then we should probably just liquidate and shaft as many people as we can - who cares about the "continuity" if morality is nothing? It will probably make us stronger in the end with no debts to pay - and no need to donate money - that's not exactly a business thing to do or a legal requirement. However, I was talking about my own moral attitudes towards how much we should pay people - especially as it seems many will not get what they think they are owed. There are many that I'd feel bad about - like St John's Ambulance for instance. Some other people want us to feel bad about not paying tax as it pays for hospitals and schools etc - but I don't feel bad about a tax that I don't think was fairly applied. Some want us to feel bad about winning trophies on the back of spending money we couldn't afford and then using a CVA or liquidation as a get out. When it comes to business and legality, it's all above board, so who cares? As a fan, I do and would prefer we pay what we owed. However, I'm not going to feel bad if Ticketus lose money that we didn't receive and as they were complicit in an immoral takeover and so if they lose out in some of the money I'm not too bothered. Morality is weaved through the whole thing and if it wasn't there would be little to talk about as we'd be dispassionately waiting and seeing how the business and legality works itself out, with not much to say. We'd also have little to say about Craig Whyte as it sseems that so far, all he's done is pure business and there's a good chance he stayed within the law. If morality has nothing to do with it then you must see him as an OK guy who knows how to make a buck. So to get back to ticketus - they will be paid whatever they get paid. If we look at it in a business sense or a legal sense then we should have no opinion, just observation. However, I will have a moral opinion, which will be that I would prefer if they received £18M as that's what I think they deserve. With HMRC, I'd like them to be paid the PAYE and VAT they are due in full as well as the small tax bill, but not the big tax case or the penalties for the small tax bill. With everyone else, I hope they get the money they are due, including DU. If that happens, I will have no guilt or bad feelings about winning trophies with money we didn't have and didn't pay. I think that is wrong and so I'm not hypocritical when it comes to my own club. The thing is, if you remove the big tax case, which I personally think are unfair, and the immoral profiteering of Ticketus, I believe there should be enough money to pay all the bills - going on the fact that our income can't be too different from previous years where we paid our bills AND reduced debt by millions every year. Couple that with the players wage cuts and the donations and I can't see how we'd have a shortfall - unless CW removed other money from the club - which I would see as totally immoral. I should feel sorry for the players but I don't due to them being overpaid and the way they go about getting their inflated wages. I do however think it's a great gesture but at the same time would be pretty annoyed at them if they didn't - even if they are "entitled" to collect their full wage. I don't disagree with your synopsis on the Ticketus cash. But if they legally only get a fraction of the money back then that's not my problem.

Possibly, but as I layman with limited facts, the only money I can tell that has been paid to Rangers is the £18M paid to Lloyds. For me CW owes any other money that has not come to the club. As he keeps his affairs quiet we don't know whether that is really 50p or £9M. I can't see how we morally owe anyone anything they have not paid to the club. So if they get shafted, for that money, I personally don't care.

Do you really blame him for that? To be honest, in my opinion all you did was let down the reputation of Rangers fans with that tweet. No wonder he was blocking people if he was getting bombarded with stuff like that. That's the kind of stuff that disguises decent tweets like Frankie's. It ends up the wheat doesn't get sorted from the chaff... Not impressed with you at all.

I have no problem with the club paying their money back - £18M plus normal bank interest for a year. We owe that money (I can't see how we owe more) and should pay our debts. I feel we should pay all our debts in full - apart from the big tax case as I'm hoping we played enough by the rules there and personally think morally, that HMRC have ballsed up and if they wanted the money they should have asked for it 10 years ago which would have stopped us continuing with the EBT's. I have no problem with us shafting them in a CVA if they win. I know people think of it as the public purse but tax money only belongs to the public when it is collected properly and fairly. I personally don't think it was done so in this case and so have no moral qualms about denying hospitals money that I don't think they should get in the first place. I don't think we should be so aggressively into tax avoidance but I think that lack of morals was completely the responsibility of SDM and not the club in a new form. It's also due to the incompetence of HMRC. For me, the maximum I would think we could morally owe would be the unpaid tax in the last six years plus normal bank interest and be allowed to pay this over six years. However, I think the rules were poor and the only evidence they have is of the "mind reading" sort ie trying to prove someone's intentions. That is very weak and believe tax should not be charged on mere notions. I made a mistake with the VAT. I thought VAT was 20% not 25% but calculated on the purchase price. So, I thought if you pay £100 for something, £20 is VAT and £80 is the cost price. Therefore to reverse calculate the VAT on the £80 cost, £20 becomes 25%... I've now checked and I've got that wrong - the VAT is on the cost not the purchase price - but that would still make it 20% for my calculations, not 16.7%. You're right in that to calculate how much it is of the purchase price then you'd have to use 16.7% which would make the cost price £83.33 for a £100 product. Multiply by 120% and you get £100. However, I was going on the speculation that the money paid was the cost price and did not include the VAT and so should have used 20%, not 25% or 16.7%, to calculate the VAT due. Apologies for getting that wrong.

So if we owe Ticketus £27M, how much did they actually put in? They will have bought the tickets well below face value. The only money we know for sure that they have paid is the £18M paid to Lloyds. A lot of the amounts mentioned have included VAT which would be a quarter of the value of the tickets and would not need to be paid until the tickets are sold. 27 / 4 is 6.75, added to 18 makes £24.75M which is close to the number that has been bandied about. Who has said this £6.75M in tax will not be paid out of the fans ticket payments? As a layman I'm confused and putting the information together it looks like they have paid us £18M for which they were hoping for a 50% return over three or four years which probably works out at between 20% and 25% APR at four years and over 33% for three years. So they seem to be taking an £8M hit on their £18M capital investment plus the interest. You'd have to wonder why they are willing to do that except that they may get less than that in a CVA. Maybe the £10M owed plus the £10M extra financing is being rated with a high interest rate which enables some claw back of their money over about nine to twelve years. They could possibly make up the £8M shortfall in that time in interest payments. In fact an approximate calculation of interest on 20M over 10 years on a linear scale at say 10% APR would give 50% interest or £10M. With a two year hiatus and gap years of no payment, this interest would increase to a few million more and so be at more than £1M per year. Add £2M a year of repayments and we're out £3M per year. So it seems to me that Ticketus would eventually get their money back plus a bit more in this scenario - which is a lot better than what they would receive in a CVA. That's just a layman's view given the confusing facts. Please feel free to enlighten me if I'm completely wrong.

I get the feeling Ticketus still want a huge return for their money and that's why an agreement hasn't yet been reached. We keep talking about owing them about £24M, but I think they want more like £35M, with at least £4M of the £24M owed in VAT (which is only due as and when the tickets are sold). We're talking Wonga.com type interest. I don't think they just want their money back, they want to protect the exceptional deal they have made in their favour. It sounds like Murray is trying to get them to be more realistic and failing.

I think there is a lot more money at stake for each decision when it comes to golf. Footballers get paid whether they win or lose - in golf if you don't make the cut, you leave with nothing - and you have to pay your own expenses and caddy etc. There is also the case where one stroke can make a difference of hundreds of thousands of pounds in prize money. I think one of the reasons that golf is so honest is that it's such an easy game to cheat at, so the whole game is based on integrity and any sort of cheating is considered an abomination by everyone. In football, if you're honest you're considered naive and stupid by everyone.

I don't think any player would have done so - the modern ethos of the game dictates you don't argue with the ref if he rules in your favour - you keep shtum even if you know he is wrong. This is why there is so much cheating in football as it means players lie to the ref all the time and fake a lot of stuff - like diving. It is expected, condoned and rewarded. That's why we need a change of rules and a campaign to change the ethos. This would also take a lot of pressure of the referee. If he could ask the players for their "real" version of events then he could make a more informed decision. You then hammer those when you can show they lied. This would hopefully get to the stage where players would have to decide whether they should say they were fouled or not as they could be banned if it can later be shown that they weren't touched "enough". It's all a million miles away from snooker where players call their own fouls that are unseen by the ref.

Seems to me that Darren Randolph should have a two game ban for cheating. He must have felt himself hit Aluko's shin but he "simulated" not fouling him and he and his team gained from it. He basically blatantly cheated. The guy is a cheat and needs to be punished - just like Aluko was for accepting the penalty. The crime to me is exactly the same. Aluko fell over and did not ask for a penalty but was given one and as a result of this he was banned. Randolph accepted the non-penalty and non-sending off. In fact Randolph was worse as he also allowed a fellow professional to be wrongly punished with a yellow card and given a false reputation for cheating. To me that should result in him being booted out of the SPFA. How would you like to be set up by someone in the same union to be disciplined for something you didn't do? The goalie obviously has no scruples whatsoever. It wouldn't be accepted in most other sports and in many he'd be severely punished. There is even another difference that Randolph's crime has evidence beyond doubt, whereas with Aluko it was purely subjective. If we're going to clear up cheating in football it needs to be done evenly, consistently and fairly. Football seems to randomly pick and choose when it applies "fair play".

I've been on here for many years and have to say the admins have never abused their position as far as I have seen, and they attempt to be as fair as they can. Craig is about the most fair minded poster on here and if you reach a disagreement with him he is about as amicable as it gets. The fact he's getting the abuse is astonishing and IMHO reflective of the validity of the complaint. I often find the ones complaining about heavy handed admins generally deserve a lot more censuring than they actually get. Maybe some see a banning as a badge of honour and so just keep pushing it and asking for it until it happens. Thing is, bans are pretty rare on here.

What a screamer!

One of the most insightful articles on the SPL I've seen for a while. While I sympathise with the other SPL teams on their cost and rising debt, I can't see how giving them a bit more TV money will help with the attitude they have. Seems to me that they will just raise their outgoings in proportion and be back at square one again. As the TV income is so small I would be in a agreement to give them more but it would have to be tied into some new rules about running costs and amount of debt clubs are allowed to carry - including the OF. However, it could make the OF vulnerable if the TV money substantially increased as it could prevent them from starting to compete on a reasonable level in Europe once again. But at the moment, we're pretty stuffed regarding Europe and instead of complaining about the lack of competition in Scotland, perhaps the OF should lower European aspirations to a more realistic level since we're only getting stale crumbs of cake anyway, and actually help improve the quality of what is basically our bread and butter. I really can't see the OF EVER giving up the 11-1 vote as it just opens them up to being kicked around by the greed and self interests of the rest of the league. It has to be remembered that 11-1 also protects every other member from radical change motivated by self interest from the rest.

PS I also don't see youth as all that cost effective. I have a hunch it would be a more cost effective strategy to have no youth team and instead to cherry pick the best talent in the country from smaller clubs, around the age of 18, and just pay compensation for them.

I don't quite get that. Taking it further it implies that all internationalists should be provided by the Old firm. That means none from the other 40 clubs plus some at English clubs. It doesn't make sense to me. I think it depends whether you think footballers are "made" or "born" or a bit of both. I don't think any club in the world has a method of continually "making" the best players and if you look at the top teams in the world, where their players come from can be pretty random. Rangers have an advantage in that they will have more kids wanting to play for them than most other clubs (and I'll assume equality with Celtic), and that they can head hunt the best youth coaches to ensure top levels of development and thirdly provide some of the best facilities. However, just who ARE the best coaches? Wasn't Kenny McDowall supposed to be one of them? How do we know who the best coaches are? So the main flaws in the production line theory in my opinion, are that we can't guarantee we have the best natural talent around at the club - it all too random, and we can't guarantee the best coaches - it's all to esoteric. All we can do is provide the best facilities and coaches with top credentials and then play a numbers game.

Very disappointed. After seeing what he did with the Sharks he certainly has a track record compared to TBK. He also has the readies to back himself up even if it's just to loan to the club until it's back on its feet. Sooooo... What are Club 9 like?

I personally still don't see Dunfermline as creditor. We were basically withholding THEIR money. They didn't lend it to us, it is just a reciprocal agreement to collect the money for tickets and pass it on so that the away club can distribute the tickets according to their own policy eg giving season ticket holders priority. So it's not a debt and not a running cost, it is basically Rangers on the verge of "stealing" someone else's money that they entrusted us with. To uphold our honour in this case I am glad we are paying them. Sometimes it's just business but sometimes morality comes to the fore and this is a case in point. To me, Rangers whole ethos is steeped in integrity and this is one time we have have make sure that is upheld. I also believe for the same reason we should pay Dundee Utd - but maybe first subtracting the money they charged for the abandoned game. I also wouldn't mind holding back some of the money until the CVA has gone its course and then fully reimburse some of the smaller creditors to make up the full pound of their credit. I would especially want to make sure the likes of St John's ambulance get the full amount they are due. BTW Pompey fans set up a fund raising appeal to pay SJA and exceeded the bill: http://www.justgiving.com/pompeyfans4stjohnsambulance I take my hat off to them.

What about your last one? It certainly wasn't to my taste. Should I go back to the thread and do a hatchet job on it and call for it to be removed? Leggat has his faults but for my taste he's a far better read than most fans' blogs, including yours - and his is the only one I've subscribed to. Sorry if your ego is offended at that but perhaps you need to reign it in a bit and drop the hypocrisy. In my opinion, either we should allow blogs to be posted or remove them ALL.

Eh, aren't your blogs on here too? Do you really think they are that much better than Leggo's?