calscot

I've always found that sort of censorship annoying where the word can be in another word. Surely there is a way of doing this with regular expressions that avoids it but recognises it with surrounding non alphabetical characters plus a possible trailing 's'? There are so many sites where you see people who want to go for ****tails. Don't want to be cocky but I'm cocksure there's a cockup with that one, due to the cockamamie number of words that contain a certain four letter word, especially for Londoners who are flying plumbers that play badminton while strutting around in bright clothes.

Yeah, could someone translate it into English? I would try Google but don't know what language to translate from.

They were down so low that the promotion of Hearts made a big impact and put them up a bit again. Guys like this jump on things like that to say they are improved.

The guy makes no sense whatsoever, and I don't think he understands football at even a little bit. Most fundimentally, he doesn't get that every year there are 12 clubs who finish in some order. Every year there are six clubs in the top six AND even in the last few years there are six clubs that don't. Saying such and such a club enjoyed a top six finish has no relevance to anything whatsoever. The only difference is that one more team can celebrate that each year - but how is that really so enjoyable when deep down, you know that you are in reality, one place lower. It's enjoyment of the delusional. What kind of club enjoys effectively playing in a lower league as the standards have dropped so far without Rangers and without the blue pound - and all the extra money that Rangers bring in via TV and advertising? They are effectively relegated - you may as well say that Hibs are loving it in a lower division as they are fighting for second place instead for a top 6 place. So Hearts should deliberately get relegated to repeat a most enjoyable season of winning the league in storming fashion? The debts have been wiped with downsizing and board members swapping loans for equity. Our debt is lower too, but that doesn't mean we haven't suffered and continue to do so. His "couple of thousand fans" seems pretty ignorant - didn't we just take 12k to Kilmarnock? I think one unfortunate thing about the fan boycott last year is that without it, the second tier would have had an average attendance higher than the top one. It's still pretty close this year. How does that work with a couple of thousand? The fact is that the average attendance has gone from almost 14k in 2011 to almost 9k in 2014. Even if you add 40k of the Rangers home attendances into that mix, you get it back up to about 12.5k max, which means every club has lost about 1.5k on average for EVERY home game. That's about 30k a season and probably about 1m pounds each, before losing at least another million to commercial and TV income. Income must be down at least 25% on average - but we are told they are surviving, but that doesn't mean they haven't suffered, which is obvious that they have. So they wouldn't swap the experience of being in the most boring top tier league in the world, which has become below average standard in Europe (and think of all the lesser footballing countries) where they have NO say whatsoever about where the title goes, for having Rangers back in? Why, because they all finished one place higher, and not even on merit? Maybe we should be asking how much Dunfermline and St Mirren have enjoyed their experience - or Hearts and Hibs. And next season we can ask Dundee Utd, if they are having a great time without Rangers for an extended period. The guy just doesn't get that there are a finite number of teams and for every winner you have a loser. It's the fundamental rule of sport. The only thing he gets right is that there are definitely self centred people in clubs who would rather delude themselves that things are better because the standard of competition has been artificially lowered which falsely makes some of them look slightly better. Maybe we're also enjoying not being in Europe because there's too much competition - just like Celtic much prefer the Europa league to the Champions League - not. It's a horrible, negative, destructive attitude, and the sad thing is that it pervades Scottish football and so many fans - with the exception of us. Maybe that's why we are the people.

I think he's one of those people who get so rich and powerful, and so many people kiss their arse that their ego inflates so much they get some kind of god complex, where they think they are totally a massive level above everyone else, and can do what they like with impunity. I'm hoping that one day soon, that is his undoing and it all comes crashing down around him, like seems to happen a lot in fiction.

As said before, I don't think the fighting fund is needed any more, as we now have a Rangers supporting board who are as up for defending the club and its trophies as much as we are. Not spending the money just means it's probably doing nothing for a long time. If the club are struggling for cash to fight stuff like this, we can always do another whip round. We can fight any attack without the fighting fund money.

To be honest, I don't really know what this has to do with Hibs but it does show you that when you wear your club's colours you are considered to be representing it and any poor behaviour can bring shame to something you purportedly love. The one positive side of this type of reporting for us is that it highlights that the general media, especially the BBC's, portrayal of Rangers as the evil club while everyone else is nicey, nicey is given a bit more balance. Our fans just have to remember that when it's us, the boot kicking us is always bigger. If "we are the people" we have to show what kind of people we are.

Pity they've already bottled it about three times this season...

I think in the Conference and below, there is not much of a Christmas and so the gains for playing against Rangers could outweigh the loss of losing a promotion spot - which wouldn't affect most of them.The lower the leagues you go, the carrot of playing us becomes relatively greater and the stick of potential loss of promotion diminishes. I would have been happy to start in say the National League North.

The thing that gets me is that the likes of Borussia Dortmund rake in over €75m for advertising - and while I see their bigger market, surely it's mostly still limited to a fraction of the population due to lots of other big clubs. I don't understand why we can't command a proportional amount with regards to fan base. Other income they have is over €22m for conferencing and catering as well as over €19m in merchandising. Surely we're missing a trick somewhere? I realise we can't compete with their €82m in TV although Scottish football has effectively sabotaged itself there - as well as Scottish people severely undermining the marketability of the product by paying to watch English football, and it would be a massive increase if we could just get the income proportional to the viewing figures there. I think we missed a massive trick in not attempting to join the English Conference or even lower, three seasons ago.

Most successful businessmen tend to put aside personal relationships and feeling, to try to work out the best deal for the company, even if it means dealing with people they hate.

I expect their team to be more nervous than ours - the pressure on them to win will be immense and the manager's job will be on the line. Their fans will be over arrogant while being unable to cope with the thought of losing. Their camp will be rampant with negative vibes. Conversely, I think our side will be full of positivity and confidence with caution.

I recall that the away clubs have been complaining all season about being put in the corner with highly restricted views while large parts of the stadium with better seats lay empty...

I agree but it could maybe affect your ability to sell when half your stakeholders mindlessly trash the product.

I can't see how you can sell the history of the game when one half continuously claims it doesn't exist...

That's fair enough and I see your point, but also see it is a very personal and subjective point of view. It doesn't even start to take into account other people without a season ticket who still go to a high number of home games but can't get a ticket to an OF game. There are about 36k season ticket holders (I think) and about 44.5k attend home games on average. That's 8.5k without a season ticket. I have no idea how many are the same person but there will surely be a distribution where there are probably well over 20k unique people who turn up and a significant portion will go to quite a lot of games - just not enough to make a season ticket worthwhile. When Celtic come I calculate there being about 6.5 tickets for not non-season ticket holders, if you remove the opposition fans you have about 13.5k tickets available (with the 1k difference account for by segregation). That's 7k more Rangers fans who can go to the game. I think they are also worth thinking about. There are also minors who are never allowed to go to the game who would be given permission by say their mother, if there were no away fans and little trouble. Again it's a personal view. There is historically more than a 50/50 chance that a celebration of a win against Celtic will be at Ibrox, without away fans that means 7k more Rangers fans are would be more than likely to experience what you have felt but who are now denied. Fair enough. I've read stories that away fans are usually next to the large columns that support the old stand and badly obstruct the view for many. I also know from experience that the front 5 or so rows of the new stands are not covered from the rain. It was just an extra point that Parkhead is not a great stadium to visit in itself. Are you saying that there was no atmosphere at the big European nights when we were playing a big club and had a 50/50 chance of winning - say the home game to Leeds where away fans were banned? I think there might be something missing from the atmosphere - probably something hateful which possibly adds spice, but I can't see how that equates to "severely detracting" from the atmosphere. I also think that those previous atmospheres are gone for good - there was still a bit of good nature, banter and general rivalry mingled in for a while; I think that's completely now gone and it's just pure hate and bitterness left. I'm not sure how many truly miss the atmosphere of the 1980 cup final. Maybe the atmosphere will be badly affected but thinking about it, I'm not so sure - especially if we win. There's also probably not much worse than have them taunt us while our fans leave early in droves when heading for defeat...

The ironic thing is someone posting "Absolutely barmy" as a reply to a post without the slightest explanation is in itself, absolutely barmy. Care to expand even a little bit?

I understand that but I do think things have changed massively, and I still think 51.5k Rangers fans at Ibrox outweighs the support from and enjoyment for the Rangers fans at Parkhead - as well as all the other points. While I can see you'd want to go, I would expect vicariously that putting even a penny in their coffers these days would be significantly off-putting. There's plenty of other down sides, like the police intimidation and possible kettling, abuse around the stadium from Celtic thugs. Then there's going to be the crap on the tannoy about us being a new club. I can see the pros and cons but the cons now hugely outweigh the pros in my mind. I think the support for the team affecting performance would even itself out, and I think the likes of Warburton is good at convincing the team to use it positively - and it didn't stop us from beating Leeds at Ellend Road.

As someone who doesn't get to regular games I may have a different point of view to some, but I think I'd personally be happy with no away allocation in these games. for a few reasons. 1. Less trouble, no segregation problem. 2. Not having the Green Brigade set foot in Ibrox. 3. Not having their messed up, misspelled, offensive banners at Ibrox. 4. Not having their offensive songs at Ibrox 5. Not having them wreck our stadium. 6. Half the number of games where our players are in danger of injury from stuff thrown at them. 7. More than zero chance of a ticket for less frequent game attending Rangers fans - like me. 8. I also don't think they'd sell out and so lose money. We would probably actually sell a few more tickets due to the lack of segregation. 9. More reporting on the game and less gleeful reporting of the arrests afterwards - especially when some stories will be about "Rangers fans" and the rest about "football fans". On the other side I don't know why a Rangers fan would want to go to their shit-hole and be put in a seat with a terrible restricted view and then be subjected to their abuse an offensive song list. For me I would really have little sympathy for fans who would be deprived of attending Parkhead, for many reasons, but mostly due to having far more sympathy for the thousands of fans who want to attend the Celtic game at Ibrox but can't get a ticket. That infinitely outweighs those who want to hand their money to Celtic in my opinion.

It's a bit of a stretch but possibly interesting, that if you extrapolate our results against Hibs, Falkirk, Kilmarnock and St Johnstone (the teams a wee bit below the average calibre we'll be facing), after 28 games we'd have about 53 points - 10 behind Celtic, 6 behind Aberdeen and 3 ahead of Hearts - with them having a game in hand. To me it shows we probably need a bit of improvement in consistency from the games we had against the higher level teams we've been facing, if we want to get to the top of the league.

I think apart from Hibs and Falkirk, there is a noticeable gap - as evidenced by the games against St Johnstone and Kilmarnock. For example, QotS are almost perpetual 4th or 5th place and yet never get promoted - think there are usually up to 3 teams above them that join the SP merry-go-round and perhaps 1 or 2 below them having a unusually bad time of it - currently St Mirren and Dunfermline. The SP teams obviously can pay higher wages and relative cream rises to teams in the top tier. While, as in most years, we should be able to beat all of them most of the time, bar Celtic, I think in our current situation, we'll find it harder to do this consistently with the current squad. Part of it, might be like our excuses for Europe where we're not used to playing that standard week in, week out. But I think everything is a bit higher of standard from skill, to fitness, to managerial nous, and it all adds up to a much more difficult game. It wasn't such a problem when we were bringing in mult-million pound internationals who could command 20k a week, but we're now more of a level of Hearts' spending a decade ago, the gap between us and the SP teams is now less. Fortunately, Celtic are a bit crap at the moment but we all know that they will spend loads to improve - they seem to have been saving up for it. I think we are currently of a higher quality than Hearts, but not by that much, so whether we can overtake Aberdeen and challenge Celtic is not one we can confidently answer - well me anyway. But then, like Celtic, we should also be spending a war chest to compete from the starter gun back in the top tier. Our current squad is yet to show they have what it takes, and our manager, although looking very savvy, is still relatively green when it comes to winning major trophies. The Championship is a harder league - Celtic aside, but he didn't exactly win it and his experience of it is just one season. I think he can do it, but we shouldn't underestimate the difficulty nor count our chickens.

Sorry, lost and won what?

When you look at the stats (facts) using Wikipedia as a source, it doesn't seem like Warburton is playing that many U21s from our own ranks. The season is almost 3/4 of the way through and drawing a line on all players U21 as of today (as it's the easiest way to calculate age and games) then he's only played 3 of these boys 8 times with 6 of those as substitutes. Now there are another 58 for loans but that doesn't help our youth development and future squad. There is also Barrie McKay who turned 21 in December but then you'd have to calculate how many games he's played at U21 (maybe 25?) and then you'd have to do the same for all 21 year olds when comparing previous years. So I think today's cut off is relevant for our purposes. Last year it was 6 players, 81 games and only 17 as substitute. 2014 was 103 games with 36 as substitute. 2013 171 (62) 2012 50 (?) 2011 66 (?) 2010 59 (?) So apart from McKay and loans, our youngsters are not getting much game time which was also a criticism in previous years when the prevalence of youngsters in the team was higher. Whether this is a good or bad thing for development is up for debate - especially seeing as apart from McKay we didn't really benefit from the exceptionally high number in 2013. Feel free to correct any of my figures.

But from what you're saying, it seems that "most" people who support Rangers would just as easily give in to family and peer pressure had they been born into a different demographic, and therefore just as easily supported Celtic in different circumstances. I can say for myself that as I chose freely I could easily have chosen Celtic, had the names and colours been switched; however, due to being free I also know who I am and I don't believe it would have lasted long as there would be too much I would feel uncomfortable about. There is plenty I feel uncomfortable about with Rangers and the more extreme supporters but it's at a far lower level than at Celtic. For a start, I could not reconcile the identity not being Scottish. I am uncomfortable about the Northern Irish and English identity some try to slap on Rangers and also with those that put Britishness before Scottishness. However, I'm very comfortable with the mainstream Scottish First and British second identity. I would not be comfortable at all with the Celtic mainstream identity of Irish first, Scottish second and British not at all. I'm not comfortable with the anti-Irish bias at Rangers but it's at a low level, while I don't know how I could reconcile the intense anit-Britishness of Celtic fans, especially as I am British. Then there is the terrorist support, I'm uncomfortable with support for Loyalist paramilitaries, but again it's at a low level, I could never endorse the pro-IRA stance of Celtic. I'm also not comfortable with the religious aspect, but again, I find Rangers generally more secular while Celtic promote their Catholicness, which for a non-Catholic is not only difficult, it seems a lot more extreme a religion than the CoS which is at least somewhat humble and democratic. I'm not a fan of religion at all but the Catholic church seems to be one of those religions that noticeably and continuously, negatively affects the world. I find it more malignant than most. The CoS is pretty benign in comparison. However, I'm not comfortable with the Orange Order connections with Rangers. On a selfish note, I suppose I'd also find it very difficult to support a club where I had little chance of playing due to not being of the correct religion. When I grew up the Celtic team had generally about 8 Catholics in it, in a country with 18% of that religion... There are lots of other reasons why I would be more likely to drop a support of Celtic compared to Rangers, but the point is that as I chose freely, there is almost no chance that under different circumstances I'd be a Celtic supporter today, due to who I am as a person. In the same way, I might not have actually been a Rangers supporter if between 5 and 8 years old, someone started explaining some of the "history" mentioned in this thread to me. I'm hoping there are a load of others like me, rather than "mostly" not.

Are you sure it's not legal - or is it that it's not a legal requirement to answer?