calscot

I've reread my posts and I explicity used phrases like "some people" and "some Rangers fans". Cammy, you're the the one who turned it personal, I even explicitly said it wasn't personal. In fact reading back, I think I was reasonably polite and made thoughtful points - maybe a bit too thought provoking for some... All I was doing is making the point that a lot of things done by football fans are not pure of heart but because they feel part of a group and therefore want to show they are part of that group and also totally against another group. It's a pretty basic premise which explains racism, sectarianism and all sorts of football violence and related abuse. Quote: "The in-group-out-group bias is among the most well documented and widely observed phenomenon in the social sciences." If you think that's rubbish then fair enough, but if anyone wants to turn it into some paranoid attack themselves then I'll leave them to it. The posts were reasonably on topic and in direct reply to other posts. My main point is that just because you make an unprovoked attack on a guy with a Celtic top on does not mean you hate Catholics and just because you attack a guy with an England top does not mean you hate the English. It does however pretty much mean you are a complete thug and probably hate the supporters of those teams. But immediately bringing out the racial or sectarian card is pretty much jumping to conclusions. And just because you sing GSTQ at a football match doesn't always mean you love the royal family. I'll deal with the Cammy's first line and then leave the rest: So how come I didn't bring it up, you did! Also while telling me I was talking rubbish... I'm not here to get personal but you seem to always turn it that way.

You may do but how does that make my statement rubbish? You seem to be taking my statement very personally - I said some people, I did not personally mean you. But it's the old Springer show logic coming out, "I'm American and I'm not fat so America can't be the fattest nation." But let me ask you how often and where you sing these songs? Did you sing along when it was played at the BBC closedown? Would you sing them at Firhill if you just happened to support Partick Thistle instead? If you really spontaneously burst into the national anthem in your life outside Ibrox, I can imagine that a lot of people think you are a complete nutter. It's funny that there seems to be no other team in the country that have any supporters with the same pride in their nation as you and other Rangers fans... and that includes teams in England too. In fact even Fulham fans didn't join in and actually call the singing, "poisonous". But then maybe I've got the source of the in-crowd thing wrong, maybe if you're on the extreme edge of being proud to be British it is "in" to support Rangers and not the other way around... Ah, I can see I've hit a soft spot here. Sounds like you've chosen the perfect football club with a big section of fans who seem to exaclty match your beliefs. You even get to feed your compulsion of singing GSTQ and have a load of people join in. But then it could just be a big coincidence... And here was me believing you treat everyone the same... Hate is a very strong word for people you don't even know... The thing is, would you believe what you believe if you were brought up as a Catholic near Parkhead and went to St Timothy's school? Or is there a chance that you would be the complete opposite? The point I'm getting at is that many people adapt their whole belief system just to fit into what they see as the "in crowd", there are many research papers on this. We are all susceptable to some degree but some more than others. I think you are naive that you really think Rangers fans want to sing GSTQ for any purist nationalistic reasons. Even the highly indoctrinated Americans don't spontaneously burst into their national anthem during sporting occasions, they do it in an organised way at the beginning due to tradition and that's it. The thing about this "in crowd" thing is that there is automatically an "out crowd" thing which creates discrimation, abuse and violence between opposing groups when people take it to extremes. The Old Firm rivalry is a great example of this and it's happening now between England and Scotland fans except it's becoming one sided as the Enlgish don't see us as good enough to be their "out crowd", they've chosen Germany instead.

This reply seems out of order as I can only can't find anywhere where Jim disagrees with this and in fact he says this exact thing himself... Perhaps you should read his post again?

Ah, but Rangers fans don't actually sing it for any real pride in Britain reasons, do they? They only do it to get up the noses of the Tims - just like most of our repertoire... Some people love to buy into this "in crowd" identity thing and go the whole hog with their football team and so with Rangers that seems to mean being a loyalist/royalist, anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, a unionist, a Tory voter, pretending to be a member of the orange lodge, a prod (whatever that is), an Anglophile, a Boyne celebrator, an Ulster-man, a pope fetishist, etc, etc. Oh yeah, you have to hate anything to do with Celtic with all your passion. Their role model must be a cross between Tim Brook Taylor and Ian Paisley with a bit of Michael Carroll thrown in...

I think Murray may have learned not to just pay the asking price and think, "ah, well it's only an extra quarter of a million." These add up to millions over a few years, and extra millions are what we need. We seem to be moving to an era where every penny counts and where we will never be held to ransom. I think Murray will squeeze every deal saving as many thousands as he can which can then be used elsewhere. I think he probably does this for his other companies and realised he was being naive and profligate in his dealings with Rangers. I also think there is the fact he now knows it's his own money he's playing with, not just ours. All in all I think it's healthy for the club. We should have a decent budget but it will be spent wisely and no money wasted. We could emerge as contenders in Europe when other clubs in other countries suddenly find themselves in the same situation we were in a few years ago while we are financially strong. All it takes is a saturation of customer spending for the satellite telly companies.

Sounds like a spoof to me... If the news was released it would be all over the Scottish press like a rash.

I agree with you but what level of debt gearing ratio is good for a football club? We must be at about 20% which sounds pretty high. Perhaps 10% is more realistic. To make use of debt you have to make sure the earning returns on your spending are greater than the interest you are paying. In football the returns are an unknown quantity as spending does not always bring success - something we have learned the hard way. A year ago, our interest was 10% of our turnover and that was crippling us. I think there must be a reasonable amount of cash available as PLG refers to "millions", it's just not in the tens of millions like we expected or hoped for and I would guess it is around five or six million. However I think the manager will get around five million every year plus profits on player sales - something Murray is probably banking on. Le Guen will know his budget and must be happy enough with it or he wouldn't have come. I think he would only come if he could trust Murray and so he obviously does. Murray may bullshit us, but he's probably up front with Le Guen. He know's he can't afford to blow it with such a great catch of a manager. They are probably playing it down to dampen our high spending expectations, which have been wildly discussed at around the 18M mark, and also to help in hard nosed negotiations which seem to be our trademark these days. However I'm trusting Le guen to make the most of the money available, he really does come across as having his head screwed on straight.

Clearing the debt does increase future funds due to not having big interest bills.

But do you think clubs will buy it and reduce their prices because they feel sorry for us?

I'm not sure about the CL money - we only seemed to make an extra 1.5M in the half yearly statement due to increased costs. Player bonuses and stadium costs (with police etc)? It could also be that instead of 18m to spend in one go he might have 6M per year for 3 years which wouldn't be too bad. Or it could be a smokescreen but then he's losing the fans trust by contradicting himself all the time. I'm sure there is a reasonable amount of money or Le Guen wouldn't have come but I don't think Le Gaffer was ever looking for fantasic amounts of funds and I don't really think he needs it. If we get Elmander for say 2.2M, Clement for 0.9M and say another couple of players for 2.7M he'll have brought in 10 new players for 6M. That seems enough to be going on with.

I would say it depends whether the guy attacks English people in general or just those with the football tops on...

Not saying this is right but it's not peculiar to Scotland. I've had verbal abuse for wearing a Scotland top to rugby matches shown in pubs and rugby fans seem a lot more civilised than their football counterparts. In fact I get verbal abuse quite often for being Scottish in general and more so lately as I won't support England, but I take it as banter and laugh it off. I also got dogs abuse for painting German flags on my face a few years ago for an England v Germany game. They all thought I was German so was this racism too? I'm sure you'll get a load of abuse for wearing Dundee top to a pub full of Utd fans. It's pretty par for the course for football fans anywhere. But there is a massive difference between verbal abuse and being attacked. The former is pretty debatable but the latter is despicable.

Cammy if it was a racist attack like you say, whatever top he wore wouldn't matter, it's where he's from that counts. If the guy is racist against the English he'll probably beat them up if they wear Sweden tops too. However, I think that's the hole in your argument about it being pure racism. He attacked the guy for displaying his team colours not where he is from and he'd have probably done the same to a Scot or Swede or whatever in the same England shirt. Sounds to me that instead of being racist the guy uses football rivalry as an excuse to vent his need for violence. He probably attacks people who support a different league team to him as well.

Just because it's one Scotland, many cultures, does that mean we have to support all teams from countries of people in Scotland? Sorry I don't understand your comment.

Actually scratch that, that's the usual reason a team is missing, but I do remember that the last few teams have been missing a few weeks ago. I think that is an error on their pages, they've been dicking around with them and there are usually only two pages to display all of the teams. However they've increased the vertical spacing and so a few teams no longer fit on two pages. So I think the pages may be there but the system doesn't seem to know that there are now 3 pages and so won't navigate to the last page.

Gersfem, if Rangers are missing it's usually because they are updating the pages. They are still a bit backward at Ceefax.

Used to be a fantastic player about 5 years ago. No longer the threat he was but he'll definitely score a decent amount of goals. Not the worst signing in the world but hardly building for the future. The likes of Malonie could learn something perhaps...

They also seem to use Gerrard as a forward behind a single striker now and again.

Thinking about it though, the last time England were pretty average but seemed to be lucky in almost every game, they got to the semi-final where they finally played very well and unluckily lost on penalties... But Germany were awesome up until then and had a bad game. They deserved to go through for their overall performances.

I thought England were the better team in the first half but the swedes defended well and Rooney couldn't get his shots past the defenders. The first goal was one of those that rarely work but now and again they dip perfectly. It was a great goal but they can't expect one of those every game. In the second half Sweden were very dominant and were unlucky with the save off the line, hitting the bar twice and being denied a blatant penalty. They were a bit loose at the back though and there was nobody marking at the back post allowing a free header for England's second goal which was totally against the run of play. I think England have been lucky for all three games and that luck could just be about to even itself up. Yes they've avoided Germany - they are happy because they presumpiously want them for the final. However they could be quite possibly be put out by Equador if their luck changes, and not really have had a big glamour tie at all.

PS The English used to say he could only score in a shit league...

I never hear that - wish I had!

They should be put away for racist attacks. Complete scum who shame the whole of Scotland. I've never understood why anyone would get violent over someone wearing a football shirt.

I think I'd prefer Johan Elmander from Brondby.

I've watched the odd 20 minutes here and there of the Young Guns on Rangers TV and every time I see Fan-fan, he looks a bit dodgy. If he can't impress in the reserves it's no wonder Eck didn't give him a first team chance. I thought PLG had told him to find another club as he doesn't rate him either. Not surprising if he's been watching video's of the reserves. BTW They seem to play Boab a lot in central defence and he looks pretty dodgy there too. He's definitely a midfielder to me. The players that always seem to impress me are Ashikodi, Carcary and N'Guessan.