calscot

I like Nacho a lot but don't see the point in supporting my country with non-countrymen in my team. Just what would I actually be supporting? I support my club and my country for different reasons - start playing foreigners for Scotland and the very reason I support my country would be severely diluted. I just don't see the point. For me, whether he's eligible or not is moot.

Tim and Hun are totally different. Tim is a very mild term which they use to describe themselves and I can't imagine any of them are offended by it. The Rangers equivalents in my opinion are Billy and Bear - what we call ourselves and what we don't mind being called. Billy is probably the most equivalent but has been dropped recently probably due to its anachronistic nature along with the banning of TBB. Hun is not a term many Rangers fans use and although is not extremely offensive in itself, to me it is a far more offensive word than the word Fenian (another word they use to describe themselves and more about support of the IRA than religion). Hun is a derogatory term used to describe protestants as shown by the fact Hearts are given the same abuse and the severity of the word is backed up by the venom in which those that use the term spit it out: they rarely say "hun", it's more like "HUNNN!!!!!" in the same way you hear very extreme racial and sectarian terms of abuse from the likes of neo-nazis or KKK etc. There is not much of a step away from that to using it to dehumanise people and by doing so incite violence against them - a tactic used by oppressors throughout history, eg in Rwanda with the term "cockroaches". I think deep down most of us are grown up and sophisticated enough not to be that offended by the term even though I've explained it's offensiveness. We're a bit of a sticks and stones lot when we feel it's all harmless banter: we rarely get very upset by the likes of Jeremy Clarkson or Frankie Boyle either; we get the joke. However, we have to take a stand these days as our banter is being outlawed while we are being marginalised by a massive increase in discrimination and victimisation that has long since crossed the boundaries of banter, and are starting to show serious repercussions for our club and supporters. We have to fight for equality before we are truly the oppressed. I say we should show zero tolerance towards the hypocritical use of such abuse terms towards us until we have a level playing field, and before it's too late. You may not be offended by the word, Hun but with the huge rise in insidious and hypocritical crap that comes with it, you SHOULD be. It is threatening your equal and democratic standing in society.

I can't see how anyone can really give CW the pelters for his investment in the club until we see his actions after the tax case has been resolved. It seems obvious to me that his hands are tied until he knows our true financial situation. You don't start spending tons on your house when you have a potential massive bill to dispute. You hold fire. Slagging him off now just sounds like Murray is clueless about our current situation - and the guy was recently on the board! What a total dilbus. His allusion to his late "bid" for the club is also laughable - he had about three years to put together something feasible and instead spend 5 minutes planning a so-call "bid" on the back of a 10p mixture poke. Amateurish at best. Whyte may be as bad as people claim but he's the ONLY one who put up a quarter of a million quid to perform due diligence and set out a plausible business plan. I say again, Whyte may be a load crap but we're light years away from knowing that for sure. The tax case is the sword of Damocles hanging over his head - and he wasn't even the one responsible for it being there. If we win the case, Whyte will have to start putting his money where his mouth was...

PS Wholeheartedly agree with the rest of your post...

Couldn't he do a deal with Rangers for the club to pay the fee and him to take a reduced wage minus the fee? Wouldn't that be more tax efficient? Or am I too into tax avoidance?

I really hope we don't sell Jelavic even for £10M - I think he's worth more to us this season and we'll struggle in our attacking play with the double whammy of losing him and Naismith.

I made the 8k up as it sounds a bit under average for Rangers players. I have no idea either but my post was supposition. A scenario if you will. If it's not tax deductible surely he should be organising the payment so that it works out that way? Surely training fees are tax deductible and he is due a tax rebate for his time at Aberdeen as his net wage is reduced? You are probably right but that doesn't mean it makes sense - it SHOULD be tax deductible just by common sense.

When you think about it he has to be on something like 8 grand a week, in 26 weeks he should earn over 200 grand. If the 150k he paid is tax deductible then that's a gross wage of 50 grand for six months. While not great for a Rangers player, his family certainly won't starve. Having said that, it's a pretty amazing gesture.

Perhaps you should look at their website: http://thedesertbears.org/ There's some email addresses on there...

SPL TV may sound silly but they'd get my money, whereas, Sky won't...

Looks like he's not impressed that much to be given an instant offer, but neither has he completely put Ally off - his trial has been extended by a week... http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/11095/7315277/? http://www.rangers.co.uk/articles/20111118/sone-shines-on-a-rainy-day_2254024_2520207?

I'd be cringing if our supporters' representatives put out statements like that. They really are showing themselves up for who they really are, and with a fair bit of schadenfreude, I really hope they get their just deserts.

I noticed that too; a bit silly.

That statistic probably comes from the fact that more notionally Catholic victims will claim that the crime is sectarian in nature. I think that Celtic fans in particular are likely to claim sectarianism if they believe are victims while wearing a Celtic shirt. The fact they see that shirt as a daily uniform also means they are very likely to be wearing one. Ergo, most crimes against Celtic fans are probably reported as sectarian.

I don't think we should be too judgemental if we have the odd draw - as long as it's only now and again. The fact that our unbeaten run is already attracting attention shows how difficult it is for teams to maintain such a record never mind a long winning streak. Wanting to win and being drummed into not slipping doesn't necessarily lead to winning for any team. Actually, having a mentality where nothing less than perfection will do is usually counter-productive and leads to nerves and desperation followed by negative mental states when perfection is blemished. It's what leads to players and teams bottling it. Allowing yourself to be less than perfect actually relaxes you and usually leads to better and more consistent performances. It's one of the premises behind "The Inner Game", a series of books original written for tennis but which has been applied to many sports and other performance skills like music.

Yes, they must think he's worth looking at, but the real test of how highly they rate him will be whether they sign him - and then how much they play him...

I wouldn't put to much stock in what a player says - they know it's best to talk up potential team-mates.

Ireland is already free, they are fighting to illegally annexe a part of a neighbouring country and to enforce their own religion upon it and to do so they are committing at best what would be described as war crimes as well as religious cleansing.

I think the ironic thing is that the "Famine" song was at worst a bit crass but look at the furore the media made of it... The joke was fair enough in private but to lecture fans and viewers on crass behaviour and then publicise such poor taste on national tv, should really be a severe disciplinary offence. After all they hounded Dallas out of a job for more private joke.

If they get let off, maybe we should pressure UEFA into appealing their own decision... I think Celtic's problem could be that they're agents have already persuaded UEFA that this kind of stuff must be dealt with severely on our side so I don't see how they can sweep it under the carpet when they provide the opposite end of the same spectrum. I think they should expect a fine and the banning of one of their songs and caution over future behaviour - the precedent is already there. UEFA are new to the issues and so I think they will tend to see it all as similar stuff. They've been reluctantly persuaded it should be acted upon and so should do so even handedly. I don't think the Celtic minded realise the can or worms they have opened. I think a huge difference between them and us is that there is a far greater majority of Rangers fans who know all that kind of stuff from both sides is basically wrong (with a notable number of exceptions) - most Celtic fans can't even countenance the possibility anything they do is wrong, while they think everything we do is evil. It's in the schooling you know... They are due a very rude awakening created by their own hand.

That's not a fair question: how can I say what the evidence is before it has been exposed? If the evidence is conclusive, it will be beyond reasonable doubt. However, I can tell you exactly what isn't - attributing guilt to someone merely because they offered an alternative route to reparations than an expensive court case. He may be guilty as charged but his actions to allow the BBC to apologise cannot even be described as anything remotely related to the concept of evidence. In fact what Mainflyer says makes a lot more sense.

Strange way of thinking for me. Suppose he is innocent, that does not mean he would "sue happily" - who sues happily? Just because you give someone a chance to right a wrong before taking them to court doesn't mean you don't have a case - it's perfectly normal. And just because you have "nothing to hide" does not mean you want to wash your linen in public. You may think you have nothing to hide but I'd bet you wouldn't want your whole life investigated, scrutinised and twisted against you in the media. People don't just want privacy when they have something illegal to hide. To me it seems some with "negative feelings" are a bit keen to justify it and so leaping to some pretty ropey conclusions at the slightest and irrelevant actions. Whyte may be a bad guy or a good guy, but a wise man will reserve their judgement until they have actual conclusive evidence instead of wild extrapolations of intentions and motivations.

I think this is a bit unfair as two things weren't taken into account in previous years - the tax case and no European football. The time we went out to Kaunas we spent loads but probably shouldn't have - that White didn't do this and kept the head is not to me, a stick to beat him with. With CL football and the tax case dropped, I'm sure we'd have spent a lot more than the previous few seasons. The previous regime were stubbornly ignoring the elephant in the room - the one they were complicit in bringing it in. I'm sure we could have saved 400k a year on Bain's salary which could have been a player of the standard of Naismith or a couple of Papac's. It doesn't change the fact that the pay rises were inappropriate and could have otherwise have kept quite a few average earners in a job at Ibrox and able to pay their mortgages. I'd be interested in that too. A while back I made the point that an investor could make quite a lot of his money back by paying himself and a couple of cronies a director's salary. SDM may not have taken a salary but sometime you have to wonder what money he actually bled from the club which was overly generous to himself. If the we lose the tax case then all bets are off for SDM and he will have been a net negative force for the club. There's no point saving the club a wage when you create a £50M tax hole. There may have been business sense behind it but not "good" business sense. Acting purely selfishly is not good business unless there is a clear and present threat of never getting what you owed. It's also clear that a lot of the reasoning behind it came from the financial situation that Lloyds put themselves in which in turn came from the incredibly poor business practices of the BoS which they took over. You can't just rub out the fact that while Rangers were run badly, the bank situation would not have been there had the banks not been run in an even worse way. You could also point out that Rangers would have been fine if they were offered the same kind of government bail out as the banks. Fair enough and deep down I agree with that. But sometimes it's fun to be a bit glib about such things. One thing is for sure, they may not have been deliberately working in Celtic's interest but it is a clear fact they were inadvertently doing so.

I've no idea so can't really comment - but their wages don't seem to be affecting how much we have to spend on players and renewing contracts. The point of the old ones is that the likes of Bain was increasing his salary by about 50% at a time of very poor performance by him (IMO) and at a time when we were making swinging cuts. I always find that kind of stuff disgusting. Perhaps but it certainly seemed that way. A lot of what they did made no sense in terms of keeping the club competitive - which also sustains income streams. I don't think it even made the slightest bit of business sense and they have come under a hell of a lot of criticism from many people more business savy than me. It was the equivalent to Levein's 6-4-0 formation - you didn't need to be an expert to see it wasn't working in a stupidly obvious way.

Maybe the bank saved us but from where I was watching it didn't seem so. As Darthter said a lot of the extreme squeeze seemed to be to the detriment of the club and if it wasn't for the genius of Walter guiding us through and still winning trophies and bringing in European money, it could have spelled disaster for the club. The indiscriminate way they messed with the squad could have seen us nosediving in the league and losing far more season ticket holders. I think the bank took us to the brink in terms of competitiveness and we were exceptionally lucky to hang in there. The finances needed sorting but as we're seeing elsewhere how hard you squeeze things is a contentious subject. I personally think the bank was being far too austere to our great detriment - and that only came about due to the change in management with Lloyds taking over from BoS. We don't know how much better we could have been in Europe had our squad not been treated so shoddily and so could have had a lot more income. Even if that didn't happen they could have been firm but fair and we might have been say 21M in debt instead of 18M. Hardly a doomsday scenario. I think people are really forgetting that the bank totally reneged on the terms of our loan and forced us to pay more back earlier at a time when we were already suffering financially. We were meeting the payments every year without fail and so what was the bank's problem? The overdraft is a different story but the only real problem there is that we'd lost our copper bottomed guarantor. The way I see it, in a time when the bank was writing off debts left right and centre, they went for our jugular to make sure they got every penny as quickly as possible.