calscot

Yes, but my point is to give something to the fans for their money - a stake in the club. It also means that being a loyal "member" for ten years and investing £500 you could probably sell your shares for say £150 instead of having nothing. Or just stop and still have your £500 of shares (however many they are) and use them for voting or just sentimental value. It also means you have more say than someone who has just joined on a whim.

I don't really understand a membership scheme as it seems to be fleecing the fans to buoy up the shares of rich, major shareholders. Instead of a membership, I would say it should be a share issue of (say) £50 worth of shares for each fan, every year. That way, if (say) 80k take this up every year, that will give the fans something like an increase of 1% of equity in the club each year - which they would deserve. If there is a large up-front share issue where fans uptake say 30% of the shares then that would put us in a strong position which increases every year and eventually, say in 30 years, having over 50%.

There you go with the facile "entitled" argument. Say you injure yourself at your best friends house, and you are entitled to sue him - would you? Bain required NO compensation IF he was worth his money AND he was a friend of the club. I can't believe I have to repeat this argument to a money person. The RIGHT thing to do would have been to find another commensurable job. Decent CEO's usually have absolutely no problem doing this and in fact often do so voluntarily just to move their career on. If he quit Rangers and started a new job the next day on equal pay, why would he need any compensation? By "right thing" I mean the best win-win situation for him and Rangers. We are all entitled not to do the "right thing" but that is neither here nor there. That is another facile argument. I don't even know the man, I dislike his actions as I think they are not honourable as explained. Maybe I do, but I believe you are still obviously wrong - otherwise there would have been no imperative to sell the club bar avoiding the tax issue. To me he is an enemy of the club because he was a custodian and not only did not do right by it, after he left he attacked it and wounded it. He may have been "entitled to" but in my opinion a friend would not have done that. Whyte is also a businessman as is SDM as are Lloyds as are many people who have and continue to cause harm to the club. They may not be thugs but that does not mean they are friends. The antonym of friend is usually enemy. Maybe that can be interpretted as dramatic but it does not make it less valid. There are all sorts of businessmen, being one does not make you a gentleman nor someone of virtue. If he was a competent businessman, he'd have no reason to sue Rangers due to having a new job. Suing Rangers wasn't business, it was personal and not the right thing to do. He had at about a year to find a new job. It's not a statement of fact, it's a statement of my opinion. I think your reply has been ridiculous in its emptiness for someone so knowledgeable. Again it is a matter of opinion. May I should have just worded it - do you want someone of Bain's level of competence. Given his obvious track record in the job in question, I would guess most would say no. Would he get a vote of confidence? I would doubt it - that would question his competence - the antonym of competent is incompetent. I can't see how being a puppet or a yes man makes him more competent. It would suggest to me that he was possibly being paid more that his level of competence warranted and so was happy to take the large salary and do as he was told. It also doesn't say much about his level of integrity. I'm really struggling with your arguments now. I am doing the opposite of complimenting Muir and Lloyds so perhaps you are misreading my post. It seems to have escaped your notice that Muir, Lloyds and the board have being getting compliments, at least backhandedly, for halving the debt in a few years. To me while the debt needed to be reduced, I thought the time-scale was damaging. The tax cases aside, I think it would have been better for the club to pay it back at a lesser rate over a longer period. The way it was done can be open to criticism as it was not transparent what they were doing and they misled the fans on many occasions. I feel it was also done overly aggressively - which I see as wrong. None of us really have enough information to judge anything - and yet we do. Even the administrators are scratching their heads at a lot of stuff. Maybe Whyte IS our saviour - the possibility doesn't make us warm to him now. Maybe King is buttering HMRC up or throwing them a bone, doesn't mean that others have to follow his example on here. I have no idea of the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth on whether HMRC deserve to be complimented. However, it may just be the Rashimon effect, but from where I have been sitting, it looks like they have been totally unfair to Rangers in their handling of the case especially when compared with how other companies have been handled. If nothing else their publicity seeking behaviour and leaks have been despicable. The point is that both Bain and AJ, through their actions and poor initial standing, ruined their reputation as reliable witnesses. AJ only seemed to be spouting personal sour grapes - and frankly still does. If everything is true then he could have done this a lot better - AND RESIGNED and kiss and told immediately. Hysteria is your interpretation but you were quick to pounce on my post. I just asked for people to stop giving what I see as false credit and false credence to actions and motives of people which if given a different perspective, look bad. I then argued that perspective. If explaining a perspective is hysteria then the whole purpose of this board is hysterical to me...

It seems to me that in hindsight the best thing for SDM to have done would have been to pay off Lloyds £18M, invest 5M and sell the club for £23,000,001... However, he probably didn't have the funds to do so.

I'm sorry, but there is not "one thing" that put us in administration, there is a hell of a lot of cause and effect. Without the EBT's under Bain's watch, Whyte wouldn't have even be on the radar. The club are in administration as it looks like they are not able pay their liabilities and on-going costs - ring-fenced money reduces the club's ability to do this.

In hindsight - maybe it was and we should have taken it...

Ring fencing made administration more likely so hardly an argument. It also leads directly to us losing players. Bain had a beef against Whyte not Rangers but he chose to kick Rangers in the nads. Not only that but he had a major responsibility for getting us into the mess we were in while paying himself massive wages and bonuses. He can take no credit for the reduction of the debt he help create as surely that was the responsibility of Muir and the Bank. Plus I give no credit to the reduction of debt as it contravened an original arrangement that was already in place to pay it off in more reasonable terms (£1M per year) which would have allowed us a better budget in order to compete on the pitch. This could even almost be considered a bait and switch manoeuvre, and be akin to thanking your bank for halving your mortgage in a few years by forcing you to quadruple your payments. If Bain is as good at his job as he claims, why would he come back when he should already be ensconced in a similar job elsewhere. In fact there is the nub: if he was good at his job, was worth the money, demonstrated a high integrity, AND not an enemy of Rangers, he would have taken up one of what should have been multiple offers elsewhere and resigned forthwith from Rangers. There would have been no financial penalty for him and his reputation would have remained intact, where he could have been free to slate Whyte with impunity, warn the fans (and have them listen) and get some sort of revenge. He did none of this and as such, with the whole picture is one that shows little morality and not that many levels above the depths of Whyte in my eyes. Even at the basic level, if he was that good, he wouldn't have been totally ineffective while we headed to the abyss. Do we really want such an incompetent CEO back? I don't know why people are throwing around complements like confetti to those who have actually harmed our club - especially Bain, Johnston, Muir and Lloyds. It's unbelievable that we even have King complimenting HMRC... The only ones to come out of the whole mess untainted are John Greig and Walter Smith. Maybe John McCelland to a lesser extent. Please let's stop treating people like Bain like they are justified in the harm they have caused. It's like someone punching you in the face and you rationalising that they deserved to do it or were entitled to do it or it was in some way understandable and condonable.

Not sure, if in the end, SDM actually made a profit...

Except for making Whyte millions...

For Ticketus? Or Whyte? But also we have a loss to make up with no credit to bridge it and also the missing millions make it worse... Which means a CVA for all our usual creditors...

Deep down I agree with your arguments but under the circumstances both immediate and the long term effect of TV money and poor competition in Scotland means that we should maybe consider other options. Right now I'm deeply unimpressed and in fact depressed with the lack of solidarity from the SPL and SFA which in contrast seem to be queuing up to put the boot in. I'm fearful of what will become of our club in the next few years if our battered and injured body is left to scrabble out some kind of existence in our natural home from which we've been badly rejected, until we emerge strong again. But then there is also the slow demise of Scottish football due to the TV money mentioned so we'd still be a European minnow. It just seems like a natural medium and long term option to join the FA - if perhaps a bit of a fantasy. Right now it seems far more interesting to have the adventure of climbing up the leagues, hopefully to eventually join the elite and perhaps compete well there, than to watch Celtic collect title after title while we struggle to compete and get back to our previous eminence. Even with the restoration of a duopoly, it's got to be said that the prospect of watching a two horse race until the end of time is going to become tedious and with all the water under the bridge, the animosity adds a very bitter flavour to it. Celtic have become excruciatingly twisted in the whole thing and they don't realise that even they will get bored of a one horse league as we were when we were spending loads of money on what should have been twelve in a row. But at the time we were kept interested by having the perception of a real chance of doing something on the European stage and perhaps a delusion of winning the CL. Celtic will probably dominate but without us to challenge properly and also to buoy up our coefficient, our already almost bankrupt stock in Europe will fall and fall again. The whole thing just sends up images to me of a futuristic dystopia or post-apocalyptic wasteland. I'm starting to think that I'd rather be watching us in the mid-table of the Championship than what has become our stale staple of bread and butter SPL fayre. I used to scoff at the English asking when the OF would join the English league saying we didn't need them and they didn't need us. Only the latter seems to be true these days... I have a feeling it wouldn't take much persuasion to join the Blue Square Premier league and go from there.

I'll probably subscribe to Rangers TV but does that allow me to rant about what a load of bollocks it is? It's a complete rip off for something that is just not fit for purpose - for my tastes anyway. Watching anything on a computer or phone is pretty excruciating to start with, but it's bearable when it's free or pennies. When it's £4 a month when you don't get any live games compared to Setanta's TV delivered package which started at £10 a month for 40 odd live games, European stuff, fights and more, it looks a bit ridiculous for a low quality picture (compared to TV) for watching the game at midnight. But the thing that gets me is that when a full game is shown so long after the live event, who really wants to sit through two hours of it at midnight? What you need is a 30 minute extended highlights package with a 20 minute in depth analysis - which you can ignore if you want. I've a lot more to say on it but will bite my tongue. However, like I say, I'll subscribe - but see it as more of a donation than a purchase of a service.

Sounds like if we get an injury we'll be tannoying for a fan to come on... best take your kit with you...

I'm pretty sure our wage bill was down to something like £18M a year - a wee bit under 50% of turnover. That's 1.5M per month. Chopping 1M a month off means cutting two thirds off. That's not to say we couldn't normally afford the wages but with a poor European and domestic cup run, we looked to be £5M short this year - which if the world was a bit more normal and honest, you'd have expected Whyte to put in as a loan - or Murray if he was still the owner. But then Murray didn't have the money and Lloyds weren't extending our credit which was why he was forced to sell. Anyway the problem now seems to be that Whyte has syphoned off quite a bit of the club's money and deferred payments (eg PAYE and VAT) to keep the club running without using credit and so it looks like the bills in the 5M shortfall will all now be coming due at in something like the next five months and with no income or credit that means we need to find 1M a month just to be solvent. The next big slice of income is from season ticket sales but with about 50% or more of them mortgaged off, we are going to see something like a £7M shortfall year on year for at least three years. Add that on to annual the £5M shortfall we already (especially with no European football and less prize money) have and you have another £1M per month to lose - at least. So basically it seems we have to cut our expenses by £1M per month for a long time to come. There are many expenses that just can't be lowered easily - maintenance costs, utility bills, security and police, logistics, and all other running costs. As over half our money is spent on this stuff you'd have to imagine we can lower it somewhat but it is less practicable to do than to cut the extortionate player wage bill. But like I said above, cutting £1M from our squad wages basically divides it by three and will give us a squad closer to that of Hearts than Celtic. If Craig Whyte is allowed to complete the scenario that is being portrayed, the club will not be able to compete for the title or CL for a long time to come and at least three to five years - a thirty point deduction in addition could even put us in danger of relegation. It seems to be that after some unknown entity puts something like £20M on the table to buy a club that is debt free including HMRC but still owes Ticketus, then another £24M needs to be found just to bring us back up on an even keel and a further £20M needed to build a squad over three years. Unless we shaft Ticketus with the CVA, we will need something over £60M of investment from whatever knights have the money. And even if Ticketus are removed from the equation, we'll still need £40M plus an increase in annual income of £5M to compete with Celtic. At least when the Bunnet came in, it was a bull market in Scottish football, now it's (with a very ironic pun) a bear market, so it's difficult to see how we can attract proper investment and prosper in the short to medium term. It seems like we need a deus ex machina to solve our problems.

That's one of the huge additional problems we have at the moment - there is a surfeit of ex-board members with axes to grind against either Murray or Whyte and they have no problem in their conscience for massively damaging Rangers as a club, just to get their petty digs in. The honourable thing for Bain and Johnston would have been to find new jobs/places on boards and then resign (and if they are as good as they think they are that would be very easy for them). After that they could attack Murray and Whyte without bringing the club into it. I think the fact they sued the club shows that they were not deserving of the money of their wage in the first place - it just seems like they wanted a pay-day - ie a year's money from Rangers AND whatever new job they should be able to find. The damage they have caused is phenomenal at a time when we are asking players to take wage cuts to stop us going under due to their mismanagement. Sorry if I'm rambling but I can't believe how malignant those two have been to the club and then try to portray themselves as the good guys. Hugh Adam is just going down the same route and is just another pox on our house - all in a pathetic attempt to get even at someone who is no longer even at Rangers. Some of them should be looking to the likes of John Greig to see how to act like a true Rangers man.

The "hatred" of Rangers is probably less personal than you think - we're wrapped up in the Old Firm thing where not only do you have two huge clubs usurping all the trophies every year and leaving but crumbs for the rest, they are constantly locked in a perpetual bigot-fest of hatred towards each other which must be excruciating for others to witness. It must be like having a large and expensive dinner party which is hosted and mostly paid for by a continuously squabbling, arrogant couple who often get way out of hand and even violent and have no regard for others in the room - but multiplied by 50,000 or so. The difference for us over Celtic is that we've been the victims of an intense propaganda campaign that makes us look the main villains of the piece. Everything has been twisted to make us look far worse as what we do is easier to understand and easier to exaggerate. And to be honest we've been the fools that have played along to their tune with no guile nor cunning and fallen, flat faced into every trap they set and not only that we've set many ourselves. We've been painted as the bigots by them and by the press, and like lemmings we've lived up to our nefarious billing. They have obfuscated their crimes into something that is a fug of esoteric mumbo jumbo that no-one understands and therefore cares. They are painted as passionate people with Irish traditions and roots, and who have a political bent that has some unsavoury elements but is done with honourable motives justified by the crimes on the Irish of the past.

Nobody wants to take a cut but if it's a choice of taking a cut or getting nothing as your club goes out of business then the choice is a different one. Many will just be filling their time till the end of the season before looking for a new club.

I think that's also one of our biggest problems, we haven't endeared ourselves to anyone. If we had based the pathos of our club and support on the high standards and integrity of Struth, instead of the proddie, sash bash, we might have a lot more support from other clubs right now.

Pedantic point but there are three Welsh clubs in the FA, PL and FL (I think you've forgotten Wrexham) which strictly speaking could be argued is not an English set-up. It's the Football League, the Premier League and the Football Association - no mention of England as the FA originally had Welsh and Scottish Clubs - including Rangers. As such there is plenty of argument to give to UEFA to REJOIN a different association in what is still the same country. Scottish independence could bugger that up though...

They don't have a set of rivals hell-bent on a jihad...

I'm under the impression that the whole argument with HMRC is whether it's a contract or not... We're arguing that it's not a contract and not a right.

A club should not be relying on the sale of away tickets to pay their staff on a monthly basis. Imagine that most Rangers fans lose interest in the now defunct competition and decide away games are now a waste of money and so do something else instead - does that mean all the teams we play will be struggling to pay their wages? To me that sounds like mismanagement and so their position, while exacerbated by Rangers, it was not really caused by them.

I can't imagine them taking much of a cut and if they do, it will be until the end of the season only - and then possibly a free transfer if they want it. Jelavic must be pleased to be well out of it after increasing his wage...

I think the problem is that our crowds have dropped too - although by about half as much from five years ago. The disappointing thing is that their average is less than our capacity so it's not the size of the ground that matters at the moment (although they are slightly skewed by the OF games which will work out about 1K a game average).

I think they would be better off than us in a few ways but not by much. By my calculations they make about £2M more a year in gate receipts due to larger attendances. They had a small run in Europe which probably brought them a few million more than our damp squib. They will be paying about half a million less in interest. That's already about 5.5M. When you consider our players' wage bill of something like £18M a year, that could give them a significant amount to spend on their squad. Ironically is seems that without the tax cases and Whyte's running/ruining of the club, we were looking at an annual loss in that region. So I feel to compete with them we need to clear our debts - especially the tax case and manage with a smaller squad. For the long term, we need to downsize to break even in the scenario that we have no Europe, no cup runs and not winning the league - and factor in the lower attendances that would result. Then any surplus from Europe, cup runs, wining the league etc could basically become our transfer kitty for the following season once capital spends have been subtracted. However, without some fiscal prudence agreement with Celtic, it would allow them to be more successful by throwing our parsimony in our face and speculating to accumulate. That is the biggest problem in the EPL for clubs who try to live within their means - they can't compete with those who don't and then suffer financially as a result while the luckier of the spend-thrifts reap the dividends and keep themselves afloat - eg Stoke, Sunderland. The unlucky ones sink like a stone and are not seen for a while - eg Middlesburgh, Portsmouth, Southampton. For me, I'd like to see an (unrealistic,) ideal future where all clubs are owned by the fans and are not allowed to compete unless they are pretty much run debt free (and without external money) with ticket prices capped and ring fenced for wages with gate money being the maximum that can be spent on players' wages. It would never take off...