calscot

That may be the case but it sure feels better donating with a share... Seems to me that if profits are reinvested then that will buoy up the intrinsic value of the share price... You're not going to make a share value return due to the potential dividends but who cares about that? I don't understand. If you own say a 10,000th of something and it makes a profits then I can't see how your 10,000th is worth less never mind nothing. In fact, if the money is invested well, then couldn't it be worth more? I thought that's how small-business start ups worked... I'm so confused I'll give an easy example. If I buy a house with one other person so a half share each, rent it out and invest the profits to make sure the house is at least maintained and perhaps improved, then you're saying my share in the house would be worth nothing some years down the line? I can't see how the reinvested profits water down or reduce your share. However, there is the point that if you bought £1000 worth of shares at the last issue then they are pretty worthless now. Well done. I'll also donate but it won't be an amount that empties my savings account.

If we were talking about a tenner then I'd agree with you but a grand is a lot of money to people and there is even a big difference to the two scenarios. I would argue that the ironic thing is that the closer the club is to oblivion then less they would be willing to give. This is from the perception of whether the money will do any good or be swallowed up and then the club goes bust anyway. Imagine you donate a grand now and it's all you've got, everyone else donates a tenner and club goes bust... How would you feel? When people invest a huge chunk of their savings they want some kind of tangible return - firstly a strong Rangers and secondly something that acknowledges their investment. The thing about a share issue is you may eventually lose all your money, but that is over a period of time - and you can cash it in before then or give it as a present or put it on your wall or whatever. It also gives you a tangible say in the running of the club. If the fans buy 100,000 x £1000 shares in the club for 25% ownership then they have some power. Donating with no return means that the rich guys can come in, use your money and still own the club outright and mess about with it like the last two owners. There are many other confusing aspects for fans - like the fact the money might just give the creditors a better CVA pay off and not benefit the club at all. But as there was no real payment of money, are you sure you didn't let negative feelings you have for the RST mean that you threw the baby out with the bathwater? Most people didn't care who was doing the poll, they just wanted to let people know there was a lot of fans willing to invest a significant amount in the club if it came to it. That information is highly useful to more than the RST. I'm sure your thousand pound donation will come in very handy and be put to good use. Maybe I'm wrong but I really doubt many of those who pledged a grand for a share issue will donate anywhere near the same amount. Myself included.

To me this sounds like the BKs have hardly any cash to put in and are just moving the debt once again except instead of a bank it's the football equivalent of Wongo.com with huge APR payments. I can't see why we can't get a rich consortium who actually put up the cash and buy the club with their own money and run it debt free. It's not exactly expensive compared to a lot of clubs. I can't understand how we owe Ticketus more than £18M plus interest. That seems to be all the money they lent us. Other debts for this season, outwith HMRC, are by all accounts pretty low and seems to be a maximum of £1.8M now the wage agreement is in place. So it seems to me that if we did a CVA deal with HMRC then buying a debt free Rangers must be below £40M. While that's a lot of money, the likes of David King put £20M in a while back without owning the club or getting a return. When you compare it to Man U, it's small potatoes. Even the maligned SDM put in over £50M of his own money and left with a quid. £40M for a debt free Rangers? Sounds about right. Working capital would be needed as well but a lot of that could be raised in a fan share issue while giving us pro-rata equity and representation on the board. After that we'd just need a constitution that forces the club to be run debt free when possible. The way I see it we'd have to break even on the worst case scenario and use any extra income for bonuses and transfer fees. Contracts need to be restructured to change bonuses to be related to the increase in income that success brings. That way, if we're out of all the cups at the first attempt and finish third we can still pay the wages. In fact I think that should be the model for all clubs. There could also be an introduction of a member system where the money raise is ring-fenced for transfer fees. So 60,000 members at £50 a go would give a £3M war chest every season which although modest, is better than nothing and can be added to. Member benefits could start with ticket and merchandise discounts (ie raise the price by 10% for non-members), free Rangers TV and a vote for the election of the fans' board member. Rangers TV could be used as the hub of dissemination of information to members and give a bit of the feeling of belonging (compared to the gaping silence that goes with being an RST member - in my experience). However, the way the BKs are going seems to point to us limping along like the good old Lloyds days with big debt and inflated interest payments with no real way to work our way out of the mire and into a bright future. It's thumbs down for me at the moment.

I heard the FA have changed the rules to allow the Welsh teams to participate in Europe due to the Cardiff anomaly...

Where did SaveRangers say that? I can't see how the two are connected. Glad you're not my stockbroker: instead of buying shares in companies for my portfolio you'd just be giving my money away to them...

Very unfair. There's a vast difference between a share issue and a donation. I doubt many people will be donating a grand. So the question is will you?

I have a feeling that Smith might have done a better job during the crisis as he's a magician at motivating players as his second spell showed. However, he's pretty irrelevant as he didn't want the job this season. And even if he had stayed on and done a better job, after the 10pt deduction, where would we be in the league? I would guess at second - so where's the improvement? Maybe in the cups? I also think it's a fallacy to say Lennon is rubbish when you look at his 20 game winning streak. 75 pts from 30 games is a reasonable record. He may not be the best but he's certainly passable when you look at OF history since the inception of the SPL. The fact he's not fit for the diplomatic side of being a manager is a different argument.

You can argue all you like about the footballing merits of PLG and AM, but it boils down to the fact that PLG walked away, AM didn't. The best manager in the world is useless long term if he's not committed. If PLG could have done a decent job in more time - he should have taken that time. The guy walked out on us. With regards to the footballing issue, when you look at the part of the season when things were more stable, McCoist produced one of the best starts in the SPL of all time. I don't remember PLG doing much before things went awry off the pitch. At this moment I don't know if AM is a very good manager or not, and under the circumstance I can't see how anyone can make an unclouded judgement. I think the only judgement we can really make is that (a) he's not shite as we're still in second place which with the usual argument of money is exactly where we SHOULD be - and this is despite a 10pt deduction and he can put in a fantastic winning streak when given a half-decent team ; and (b) he's not a total genius who can motive the players to win the league when the club is in total turmoil and close to extinction - oh yeah and with a 10pt deduction. I do find it amusing when people go on about "baffled" by line-ups etc. It's been said about Souness, Smith, Advocaat, Eck, PLG, Smith, Ally and tons more like Alex Ferguson etc - all of whom have massive credentials and walk into huge paying, high profile jobs. It sometimes sounds similar to people being baffled by top scientists. I'd like to see the credentials of some of these critics - that would be a laugh. I'm not saying you can't criticise but implying you understand the game better and could do a better job is a bit over the top. I try not to this and instead try to compare to other managers we could realistically bring in. I can't think of anyone that we could have brought in and wanted to come that would have done a better job this season - and in fact most would have probably walked away by now, especially PLG.

Direct entry to the top two leagues is incredibly difficult for obvious reasons. I can't see the vitriol - just self preservation. We have to bring something to the table for them to be interested and it would be hugely advantageous if they were starting to get into financial trouble. The Championship is supposedly running on huge, unsustainable debts, so there could be a way in there in future. Basically if the Championship start to struggle for money and interest starts to wane in TV deals then they could be in trouble. Bringing someone like Rangers in, boosts interest in the league and also adds a pretty big additional audience to the viewing figures. I think the travelling fans impact would be negligible as 5k fans at 30 quid a ticket once a year is only a relatively small 150k drip in a pretty big ocean of say 40M a year. So we'd be slightly more attractive compared to the likes of Huddersfield. However, we're not talking about direct entry - I think we realise that would be too difficult to pull off. But then translate the boost in interest and related income to League 2 and we might make a big enough impact. Do you prefer Rangers or Fleetwood? While it makes promotion more difficult the increase in interest and income may sway them. Move down to the conference and we get even prettier. It depends how many fans we could retain, but as a new beginning and a big adventure, I personally would find it incredibly interesting (even just as a change from the same old dirge of the SPL) - and would definitely buy the TV subscription and make it to away games that are within easy reach of home. With Scotland fast disappearing off the "football of significance" map, the long term gain in this route could be priceless. We'd just need the support to buy into it and also show a bit of loyalty to the long term welfare of the club.

I was under the impression that the FA and FL were in the same country as Glasgow. I can't see the EU sticking their noses in at all and UEFA would find it pretty difficult to apply any of their rules to the UK without a pretty stiff legal challenge. As for the SFA and SFL and SPL - if we're a new company and club, I can't see how we'd be under any of their jurisdictions. I'm no expert but believe if the FA and FL agreed to accept us as a newco then it would be difficult for anyone to block it and the EU would most probably be on our side due to their whole philosophy on freedom of trade. The fact that we're in the UK and there are precedents of Berwick, Gretna, Swansea, Cardiff and Wrexham (although historical) would give us a hell of a strong case. With the artificial restriction of trade that UEFA are creating and the increasing disparity of income between the top five and the rest of Europe, I can see tests cases coming from elsewhere in the future - and that's without having the UK exceptional circumstance. In fact - hasn't one European team already done this?

Looks like a Dennis the Menace top to me...

Robert Duval could be interested and recast his old leading man again as himself...

Sorry the point was they called him Russian which shows how little they know. They just assumed the Russian manager was Russian. But anyway Advocaat is talking rubbish. Two titles in four seasons was not worth the money and definitely not worth the downsizing afterwards leading to where we are today. On another of his points not many of the players were sold for profits. In fact he mentions Van Bronckhurst, Numan and Kanchelskis. Those cost about 16M combined and we only got back 8M for VB. He also spent a lot more than 36M in his three and half years...

Yeah, I'm not really into just chucking my money into a black hole. That's why I'd put a lot more into a share issue - you still lose your money but at least get some accountability for it.

How much is the expected donation?

Not sure what to believe from Sky. Just read this on their site: Former Rangers manager Dick Advocaat has shrugged off accusations that he is to blame for the club's financial woes. The Russian was in charge for four years, between 1998 and 2002, and won the treble in his first season at the helm.

Will SDM give him his pound back???

Yes but the money is usually almost all spent on players wages and if everyone gets richer then all you end up doing is paying more for pretty much the same players. The only real difference is that you get the cream of players from poorer countries - which could be argued sets back your country's development. With a lot of money sloshing around you do get some spilled onto youth academies and training facilities as well as coaches and so that can have a developmental effect. Of course money is also spent on infrastructure like stadiums. Apart from that, I think the benefit of the money is transient. Take it away and you won't be left with much improvement from before the money arrived. Hopefully that will kick in once we've had some blue knights invest and a fan share issue...

The weird part is they are obviously making a mockery of their own tenure.

I think they can attempt to block the running of a club by someone they deem unfit by threatening sanctions against said club. I can't see how they can punish the club retrospectively, especially if they had done their job properly at the time, the problem wouldn't have existed. At best they can do in my opinion, is stop Whyte from being custodian of the club in future.

I think this is something a lot of people are conveniently ignoring at the moment.

Can you specifically say where I wasn't making sense? Or is making baseless statements de rigueur these days? Must be an age thing...

Sorry don't know what that means. One last attempt then (will I never learn?). I didn't once say Ally should stay on. I just said any criticism should be done with respect and kept real. I don't know whether he should stay on as, as far as I'm concerned, the game is a bogey, and I can make no judgement based on this season. Ally has been given a football equivalent of the Kobayashi Maru but unlike Kirk, he can't change the program to win.

We're not in the same world that's for sure. Note to self, stop trying to rationalise with people from different planets...

I doubt there has been much investment in English football either. All the income goes towards players fees and wages. There is little return on that money that is more than transient. Apart from stadia and training centres I don't see what you can really invest in that will raise the game. Outside of the clubs we could invest in an infrastructure that allows as many people as possible to play and to learn the skills and tactics of the game. So apart from grass roots, our football is mainly poor because other countries earn more money from TV. I can't see how investment would change that.