calscot

He could be a conman and yet be the conman we need to put the threat of HMRC to the sword. The magnificent seven were pretty much a bunch of scoundrels...

The wage bill is more like £1.75M a month - 50% of outgoings at £3.5M per month.

It is not yet resolved if Craig Whyte stole anything. It seems to me that he needed to put the club into administration to get rid of the big tax case and as a bonus, many other debts could be reduced. The upshot is that with the company facing the big tax bill would point towards the choice of liquidation or selling the club as a debt-free going concern for at least the type of money that liquidation would raise. The thing is that bids could come in from multiple parties and Whyte could end up losing the club and being repaid a fraction of the debt he is owed. So the way I see it he's simply moved that debt back to the club to protect his interests. He may only have invested £1 in the club but then the club will have lost nothing and gained the equivalent of the total debt and whatever the big tax case throws up. To me is seems if he has to walk away due to a preferred bidder, the money he will receive will be whatever the pennies in the pound is paid out for the original £18 debt. Say that would be around £5M. While he'll have effectively conned this out of the club he could have left the club £50M or more better off and so is merely taking a 10% commission to wave a magic wand for a debt we couldn't pay... So he could be doing Rangers a great turn while making a tidy sum for himself...

Seems to me like a Schrödinger's cat thought experiment. We need to wait till the box is opened and the wavefunction is resolved... We definitely need an on the fence option.

There seems to be two reasons for Whyte not to be here. 1. He's avoiding the hassle. If he' a villain then that's not surprising, if he's a saviour then he has to look like a villain to do the job until it is done and he's exonerated - either way he's going to get flack and understandably wants to avoid it. Monaco is a pretty good place to do that. 2. He is now completely hands off - there's nothing for him to do at Rangers as the Administrators are running it: he'd be twiddling his thumbs. He would most likely take that opportunity to attend to other businesses in his portfolio.

There was very little indication that the game would be off,or season tickets wouldn't be valid - pure scaremongering and hand wringing. It's something again that wouldn't make the slightest sense at this juncture. We have to keep trading and fulfilling our obligations for us to stay above water and the administrators are not stupid - if we had impossible cash flow problems that would be different but our main problem seems to be the tax case which is separate from the normal running of the club. The police just want to make sure they are paid in full - probably upfront now as they don't want to be added to the list of creditors who may get nothing or a reduced amount. I would predict this will be happening with most dealings now, with goods and services only being delivered in a cash on delivery or prepaid basis. That will seriously probably affect our cash-flow but with all the Ticketus and Jelavich money as well as not paying tax, we should have a reasonable amount of cash at hand and in the bank. However, I suspect that Whyte may be up to old tricks of putting assets out of reach of creditors, so who knows where all the money is.

I'm not knowledgeable but as Whyte owns 86% of the shares or some-such, I think he is the only person with the power to call either.

I still don't get it - the ONLY large threat to Rangers existence has so far been the big tax bill. Whyte may also be a threat but then his is choosing a pretty challenging fight with such a greedy monster already in the room. It's like taking on Godzilla, so you can loot Tokyo. There are easier scraps for scraps.

For me it doesn't make any sense why Whyte would be doing so many things just to mess up Rangers, the game is afoot and he must have a game plan he is following? Basically it looks to me like we have lost the tax case to huge liabiliteis or HRMC are so desperate to make an example that they will pursue us like Terminator which makes it as makes no difference if we have won it in some way. That seems time to pull out our only trump card - the worse case scenario in order to avoid liquidation. The more this goes on, the more it seems like HRMC WANT to liquidate us to make us a huge example which will shake the foundations of the sport and make all other clubs sit up and take notice and stop playing loose and fast with the tax laws. In that scenario this is our only defence and Whyte's nefarious looking actions could be marshalling the defences for this eventuality. There may be some on here that may see this as wishful thinking or head buried in the sand but to me it is far more realistic than many of what the pessimists are spouting which makes NO rational sense whatsoever. If they are right, I very much doubt they have a clue as to why - more than it being a hunch as there is so much negative stuff going on. People are seeing smoke and assuming it's fire but the rationale behind the cause of that is akin to someone burning down their business right in front of the police and insurance inspectors. It doesn't make sense except if he's a mad man. I cannot believe for a second that there is no method in the perceived madness of Whyte's actions over the last nine months - while his intentions towards Rangers may not turn out to be the most honourable, there seems no advantage for him for us to come out badly in this situation - for which the club should benefit. The point is that even if he is acting purely selfishly, I can't see how he would get away with siphoning tens of millions out of the club while it goes to the wall. Either way, he seems he must have a cunning plan or a cunning stunt, and so I would not presume that he is lacking in great deal of craftiness.

The question I am struggling with here is who is the villain in this piece? Many are painting Whyte as such but any crimes he has committed have not yet been revealed but then surely administration will lift the veil on any wrong doing on his part? So how can it be part of his strategy unless his "crimes" are on the edge of legal and structured in a clever way to protect his and the club's assets and allow him to remain with the upper hand in the conflict? To me HMRC, although with initial justification, have become the villains in the ruthless and almost vengeful way they have been less than even handed in pursuing our club for a what in hindsight seems an almost accidental misdemeanour in full view of our current pursuers at the time, in the mistaken belief that a legitimate loophole was available. They say one should have a "duty" towards one's lord but in return the lord should show "affection" in return, but the balance is well askew in this case. To me it is yet to unfold if Whyte is a profiteering antagonist or the very wily but morally flawed protagonist cum hero in this play. It seems clear that HRMC are the black wraiths sent to cause an impending doom with no respite nor quarter.

I would say it's all very notional as in time the players change, the fans change and the owners change. The ascribed continuity is fairly notional. The interdepartmental team I played for was basically the A team for my department and in twenty odd years we had won the annual 6-a-side competition three times and been runners up four times. However, a few of years ago the guy who ran it lost interest without telling anyone and left everything so late that we lost most of our players to two other and better organised teams, who were basically the B team and a new C team. I tried to pick up the mantle and recruited what players I could and we were just good enough to get to the quarter final - after a six year run where we won it once, were runners up twice and unlucky, losing semi-finalists twice. However, the new C team were ironically now the best team in the department and ended up runners up. The next year I had a broken leg and no-one else wanted to run the "A" team and so it folded. I tried to get the "C" team to take over the name to keep the continuity and history but they weren't interested. They went on to win the comp twice in a row. To me it's a shame as they represent the same department but the "history" is lost and instead of five times winners, they only have two - with the biggest rivals, who have kept their continuity, being 8 times winners. But as the new team have no real connection to teams of past decades they didn't really care about it. So when you look at the history it's pretty notional and it's significance depends on your point of view.

As such, almost all statements are worthless due to following some kind of veiled agenda and trying to give the right sound bites. It is in the nature of statements.

A lot of people were saying that at the beginning of the season due to journalists but everyone who had a gander at the UEFA site or Bert Kassies' site came back with the consistent conclusion that the champs go into the 3rd champs qualifier (an improvement over the 2nd of this season) and the runners up go into the 2nd non-champs qualifier (an improvement over the Europa qualifier).

I'm presuming that pertinent questions which he chooses to answer are minuted and part of the purpose will be some off the record stuff to give the delegates a feeling of reassurance. Otherwise what is the point of ever meeting anyone? These delegates actually only represent a tiny fraction of the fans, and some of them are not held in high regard by many fans they don't represent. I think Whyte could easily choose not to meet with them and explain it away due to them being jumped up militants. He has no more obligation to meet with these people than if anyone on here asked to meet him in the form of representing Gersnet. Would he risk not meeting with a Gersnet delegate? I have no doubt he would. There are certain people whom I am sure will play ball to get a bit of special treatment...

I think the problem is that the reality of proper successful business and finance is an anathema to most of us. It's really not what we want to see, even though it works - a bit like Walter Smith's tactics in Europe four years ago.

I think you're being incredibly unfair there. SDM's way of doing business almost put us to the wall at least three times. You actually seem very naive as of course everyone prefers doing business with people who lavish money on them and quickly pay them exactly what they ask - but that doesn't make them good businessmen - it usually makes them bankrupt (and SDM was close to that). Good businessmen get the best deal and don't unnecessarily lavish money on people when they take over a business which is cash poor. Whyte may be shit at business, but what McKay says is absolutely no evidence of that - he just sounds like an egotistical, prima donna who likes to be treated as special and also to be given everything he's asking for.

I think you're missing the point that the chairman would not meet with the fans group UNLESS it was civilised. If you want anything you can publish and want future dialogue it's in your interests to stay civilised. There are questions he just won't answer and getting shirty with him isn't going to change that and will likely end the meeting.

Actually I think yours adds clarity and that our posts compliment each other - a bit like two coats of paint are a lot better than one as each one covers the bits the other missed...

If there is a chance we can save £240k due to a technicality then I'm sure Whyte will go for it considering what we know of his MO. We ARE a club in desperate trouble and if we can save that kind of cash then it actually makes sense to do so. It all hinges on whether they have done all they need to to qualify for the compensation. They don't seem to have clarified this, so it seems to me that they are the ones chancing it by trying to embarrass Rangers into paying them money they have forfeited by not following protocol. If we can be done on tax technicalities, I don't see why we shouldn't use technicalities when it benefits us. It would be different if we were actually "buying" a player and trying to find a way welsh out of the money but the fact is the guy was a free agent, did not belong to that club, and the only way they can claim compensation is to have documented proof that they made an offer for the player to stay - otherwise how do we know it was sincere? If they haven't done that then that's their incompetence - and is equivalent to one of us trying to claim a lottery win without being able to provide the ticket or say trying to return goods with no proof of purchase.

There are plenty of highly respected managers who move somewhere and do incredibly badly - especially when given very little money to spend on their own choice of players.

Can't imagine Broadfoot could be worse than Bartley... Hemmings should now get his chance (although most probably as a sub); however, you have to wonder if his lack of fitness as well as experience could have the crowd on his back pretty quickly... Let's hope he hits the ground running.

Seems like you may have pilloried McCoist for giving us all the respect for having enough savy to understand what he meant. Maybe you like a more patronising manager... :fish:

I would also be surprised if any businessman doesn't have a skeleton or ten in his closet and so there is the double whammy of possibly being associated as supportive of Whyte if something really damning comes out and also exposure to his own skeletons being exposed to the public - even if they are relatively minor.

Whyte may have been complicit in any bad feeling towards him but there is NO excuse for a corporation which lives off taxpayers money to firstly not be of an exceptionally high standard of reporting and integrity and secondly to use said money and position in society for vindictive muck raking against someone they don't like. When the likes of the BBC are allowed to get petty, they should be disbanded and consigned to history. At least with ITV you can choose not to fund them by not watching them or buying the advertised products. The BBC is becoming an anachronistic dinosaur which is serving no positive purpose to the public and is now the egotistical plaything of malicious employees. It is basically demonstrating the reasons why it should not exist - or at least why there should be a licence opt out. When you have a privileged position, you should be protecting it with the utmost integrity and professionalism. If the BBC continue down this pathetic path then at worst they should be made into an ad-free, subscription channel. I for one would choose not to subscribe.

It seems to me that Whyte is using tactics that probably work when you're doing all your business in relative privacy and also when the folding of one private company out of many is no big deal and sometimes advantageous. Whyte seems like a fish out of water when it comes to a massively public arena like that of football and the two huge fish in the goldfish bowl of Scotland in particular. His tactics are just making him either look stupid or like he thinks we're stupid. He seems a very private person and businessman which means he can't cope with the scrutiny he is getting and will receive at every step of his Rangers journey.