calscot

I think it's pretty obvious he changed direction - perhaps because he had a bit of a squad and had a tiny window of opportunity to bring more in, and if you want to use the "forced to play youth" thinking that's up to you. It doesn't mean the direction he took was a good one. However, you're drifting off the point again and McCoist really does seem to be your bogeyman. I think the fate of his successor had more to do with Ashley and chums than Ally. After all he must have had a reasonably large influence in how things went under Ally too. I really have no idea why you came up with that, it's a sudden, weird ad hominem from out of the blue. Either make a decent point or just leave it, I have no desire to join you in some strange, Freudian pissing contest and have no interest whatsoever in your self-love. If you really can't help yourself, start a thread about it on another forum; however, I won't be joining in. It's not even about praise, it's about the level of criticism which has gone beyond reason and disagrees with the facts. I am sure, even without all your obsessive self loving, that you would take umbrage about being told you were "found out" by those you continually beat in a competition. No idea what that's about, but to me it's just football. Happens to every team. Happened to Warburton against St Johnstone, and that's without McCoists excessive handicaps. As I've said, when you look at the mitigation, the worse that you think McCoist is, the less impressive that MW is. To really gauge McCoist we needed to see him without his hands tied. It seems the one year where things were a bit smoother and unencumbered for him was the the third tier, and when you still think about the tribulations to get to that point, comparing that league for McCoist to the Championship for a fully backed Warburton seems a somewhat fair comparison. However, it turns out both are out of the League cup, and McCoist is one win ahead of MW in the league. Now that doesn't make him better and I agree that the football is much better to watch now, but you'd think if he was as garbage as you say, and Warburton is a top gaffer, then there should be a noticeably huge gap in the comparison in favour of the incumbent. The facts don't bear your opinion out, and while agree that McCoist wasn't a great manager, I see no need to turn it into an all or nothing thing. You think I argue black is white because that's how you seem to think yourself on this subject. You think black, I disagree and so you think I'm saying white. There are shades of grey and when you put other aspects in there are shades and hues and brightness of colour. The hue could be the type of football played and you think that was a horrible one but it's a different argument - and not one I've been arguing, except the point that again it's not black and white. I've never agreed it was, but I did point out that it's hard to sack someone who is doing just enough, or for them quit, as they think they are doing a job and can improve from there. Only to a certain extent, but by the same token, the manager is the responsibility of the club. In the end it's the club that get the history of the results. As such, whether you think it was garbage will be irrelevant in 20 years time. As I said, make a point instead of diversion. It was the domain of your post, in black and white. No, the dispute was managers who could not beat McCoist, "finding him out".

And the fact is that McCoist played youngsters as much as most Rangers managers. But again, whether playing a load of youngster automatically makes them Rangers class is purely subjective and irrelevant to the point. He got pelters for the results at the beginning of his second season, when trying to use youth. I don't think it's a coincidence he changed direction while he could - while still playing some youngsters regularly. But you're just going off on a tangent. No, I just couldn't be bothered typing virtually quite a few times when it was virtually meaningless to the point. I never said that. I think a lot more logically than that. I do, however, realise the power of the internet meme. Same tangent as before. Supposing McCoist played more youths who were obviously not good enough, and his results were worse, would you be praising him now? I think not. No-one is disputing that. But the fact is that despite being exceptionally handicapped, the journeymen did a minimal job. I leave you to misinterpret that or get it. Up to you. As I said before it's not relevant to the point - that other managers found him out. His football was just about effective enough until we went into meltdown 2. You need to read stuff and try and understand it. It's pretty logical and not too difficult. It wouldn't look like one of your posts with out a "f*&king" outburst. I didn't realise you don't know the difference between supporting a football team and buying a pie and I can't be bothered explaining something so obvious in detail - the pies are not the club, they are the catering company - and if they were fine then yes you would be attacking them. Another point missed. So you're saying only your opinion counts? I'm not saying black is white - black and white seem to be the exclusive domain of your viewpoints. I see things in many shades of colour - and that's the point I'm making. As well as the fact that the league table does not lie, and does not have a subjective opinion.

Many of the youngster that got a game were slagged off by many of the fans, especially when the results were a bit ropey to start with while playing a load of them. The likes of Aird got plenty of game time and still gets slagged off. That's pretty contradictory about what it cost us. Like "virtually" was sooo important to the meaning... I will endeavour to quote you fully in future. Popularity of opinion does nothing for its veracity - as you should know about certain popular opinion about the status of our history. In any case, it's not relevant and highly subjective, whereas league football in reality is about the objective metric of collection of points - and to get the better of a manager, you have to beat him in the game and on your position on the table. Schumacher might have been boring and had advantage of the best and most expensive car, and might have been keeping a younger driver out of a seat, but you can't just say that the other drivers had found him out, or that he was garbage. It's not quite the same as it could be argued that he had higher quality opposition but again that's subjective and does not detract from the point. That's simply bollocks. It's not about questioning McCoist: you are saying the team were utter shite, IF they weren't utter shite, that obviously makes it an insult and defaming the club. At least have the decency to not twist my words. Winning the league, no matter what style you play, or advantage you have, can hardly be described objectively as garbage. As alluded to earlier, Celtic fans usually have the opinion that we've always played garbage football, while they were the "cavaliers". Although the veracity of "utter shite" is always subjective, the point is that you'd expect someone with affection for the club to be a bit more diplomatic due to the contentious nature of the accusation (actually you'd expect them to be far, far kinder). You certainly go to a lot more games than me but perhaps that make you feel justified about putting the boot in when you feel like it - that's just not the way I feel about the club.

I think I should reiterate the main point I was making - no matter how horrible the football a team plays under a manager, it is hard to justify the opinion that he was "found out" by the other managers, if the team don't lose a single game to any of them.

As I've said before, I watched games on TV when available and any highlights I could find, which may not be anywhere near the same as watching every game live, but there is a distinction to seeing football you find pleasing and getting results. Also, I recall seeing plenty of stuff on telly and online that wasn't "utter garbage", especially the first half of the first season, and I saw plenty of games on TV or streams where while it wasn't scintillating it was perfectly watchable and somewhat enjoyable - and with far less long balls than was moaned about. The last game I was able to get to was the Newcastle game, and that was really enjoyable. The fact you found it all "utter garbage without exception", I think has quite a big proportion of being your own problem. Are you sure you would find the football of the likes of Struth that enjoyable? If so, how do you know? As I've said before, there are plenty of football fans who follow lesser teams with lesser players (postmen and plumbers and all) who play worse football and who also don't have the benefit of much hope of winning anything far less winning a title while never losing a game. Under that premise, I have more respect for a not so successful manager than a fan that labels his own team "utter garbage" when the results just don't bear that out. I really didn't think we were that kind of people. As I said that kind of trash talk goes beyond just insulting our manager, it insults the team and club. Can you imagine a Tim vandalising our wiki page, saying Rangers are a club that play utter garbage football without exception..? It seems you'd be fine with it.

Teams who are "found out time and again", don't go through a season unbeaten. You might not like McCoist and he wasn't a great manager, but there is no need to do the "say something derogatory often enough and it becomes fact" stuff, when it's patently not true when you look at the facts. When you are overly derogatory you are just being insulting - as you'd expect from a rival. When you are insulting about your own manager about how we played, you're also insulting the club - especially by pretty much ignoring the problems we've had, which you'd think a Rangers fan would get. By all accounts McCoist did a job that was the most difficult in Scottish football history for 3 and a half years (whether you think he was any good or not), and he left when Llambias came in and made an increasingly arduous job virtually impossible - as can be seen by our drop in results at that time, which two subsequent managers couldn't correct - one without Lliambias and the shit board - who was probably the most highly rated manager in Scotland a few year back. The strange thing is that taking your comments at face value and factoring in Whyte and admin, the shit board, the fan boycott etc, you look at the results and it would seem that without the shit we had and with a bright new dawn, with the fans back and a progressive management team, it would be difficult to argue that we made any progress at all compared to a manager you think is so shit. There has been improvement in results but it's been pretty marginal (worse than two years ago and not much better than the start we had 4 years ago) and could easily be wholly attributed to the improved situation of the club. As I've said before, if McCoist was found out by all the other managers, the facts and mitigating circumstances, make our current management team look not that much better and any optimism would misplaced - apart from some nicer football to watch now and again. Basically you're coming out with the rhetoric that we were completely shite, when we weren't THAT bad. I would say that's a strange position for a fan. I can ignore that kind of crap from the Tims but not when it's from one of our own.

Haven't seen Rangers facts twisted so much outside of Timidom...

Maybe we should also ask them the hypothetical question about their soft loans from the Coop Bank - At the moment Celtic believe they are legit and there is no decision to say they are not (although is it not being investigated?), BUT supposing in the future, there is a decision that they were providing an unfair financial advantage, in light of that, would Celtic be happy to give up all titles accumulated while they were in effect? This is no different to the scenario that Rangers found themselves in. We don't know if Celtic will be found to have had an advantage, but "common sense" suggests they obviously were. But the question is, IF it's found to be illegitimate are they happy that they have the sporting integrity to immediately hand over their titles to the runner up? I very much doubt they'll agree to that. They would protest their innocence while not having the faith in their innocence to say taking the titles is fine. There is only one club in Scotland that continually shows that it has an interest in consistent justice for all. For the rest it's "if it's Rangers punish them hard, but not if it's us".

It is amazing how brazen Celtic are about something that they also did. Their two defences of this have no integrity whatsoever. 1. They did it a lot less. (if you put it into the false perspective that it was actually a crime as they believe, it's a bit like someone vilifying a bank robber who stole 17m from multiple banks, but saying they are completely innocent because they only robbed one bank of 250k, and when arrested, paid it back. The fact that those they vilify also offered to pay it back but were refused and instead demanded 4 times the amount which they couldn't afford is lost on them.) 2. They don't care about title stripping because the year they used it, they won nothing. (They can cheat as long as they don't get caught or if they do get caught, it doesn't count if they didn't win anything.) I really hope DK points this out, because it's totally absent in the press for some reason.

Celtic once again tacitly admitting that they are deliberate and unashamed cheats.

Ashley is starting to be reminiscent of a fat Montgomery Burns, complete with his posse highly aggressive lawyers. He's incredibly rich, powerful, evil and takes everything personally. It's a horrible combination that can lean me towards a more socialist point of view (from around the centre). People just shouldn't be allowed to become that rich, it's just obscene and highly dangerous.

It seems obvious that so many people want to punish Rangers due to hatred and basically are instead of seeing a crime and wanting to mete out the punishment, they just want the punishment and are trying desperately to construct a crime to justify it. The biggest argument for those like Tom English, is completely circular and unprovable. It goes: You broke the rules and so titles should be stripped. But we didn't break any rules. No, but you did gain an unfair advantage which you wouldn't otherwise have had which allowed you to win more trophies. But we didn't win more trophies, we've actually won less than usual due to EBTs. Just because EBTs didn't help you win more doesn't mean you shouldn't be punished for breaking the rules. But we didn't break any rules...

Had a thought that using the anti Rangers arguments - all trophies won with non-Bosman compliant contracts should be stripped... Pre-Bosman contracts broke European Law and therefore tied players to clubs when they should have been free to leave. The Bosman ruling is the Equivalent of the Court of Session ruling - except that it indicates clubs were breaking the law rather than just not having a tax return accepted on a disputed technicality.

His statement has shown English to be the bigoted fool that he is.

How dare he! :-)

Shows why good grammar is - good. Reminds me of someone showing me an online dating profile for a woman who was listing her interests without punctuation, which went something like: Walking Socialising Gym Eating My Children Cinema Wine

I really think some expert should publish just how much we saved on tax during that time - subtracting Murray's payments as well as the fees to the accountants for administrating it. The ironic thing is that the bag of a fag, layman's calculations, it seems to be pretty low in the scheme of things, but the figures being deliberately misinforming people are much much higher - either it's the actual payments or they include penalties and punitive interest. The "players wouldn't come" is completely erroneous, as for Murray, the most important thing was the team on the park, and so there could have been cut-backs elsewhere, more borrowing, more out his own pocket, more out the likes of King's or Lewis's pockets, share issues, etc. The main fact is that at worst, we delayed a tax bill which is now due - but unfortunately, the way HMRC has chased us for it and multiplied it by about 5, has been so over the top that they have put the company out of business, rather than being able to collect. I realise, they don't care as it sets an example that has other companies shaking in their boots (and possibly paying more tax than they really should). For me, that's not living in a country with a properly democratic, enlightened and civilised government. Seeing as it took them 3 goes to get a verdict against Rangers, surely that also proves no real wrong doing, and no punitive charges applicable. It seems to me that in cases like this, the tax demand should be made with market rate interest only. THEN the rules changes to close the severe ambiguity of the scheme. Future breaches can then attract punitive measures. It's not fair to punish someone for doing something that they and so many experts think is legitimate. I also think that HMRC should only be able to back so many years - say 7. It seems stupid to allow tax liabilities to completely unknowingly build up to levels that cripple a company. We need taxes paid, but it does the nation no good to put tax paying businesses to the wall when they think they are within the rules and no complaints are made for a decade. Not only does (and has) it reduce revenues, it's discouraging businesses from thriving, people making a living, and affecting employment. Tax is about providing for the nation, to make it a better, and fairer place for everyone. As such it should come from an attitude of benevolence to the citizens, treating them with a duty of care - while making sure the correct amount is paid. It shouldn't come in the form of witch hunts. Look in contrast to what we did with the banks (whose crimes are massively dwarf that of Rangers) - we saved a few using tax payers money we will never get back, but doing so also saved the finances of a large number of citizens. What HMRC have done by their bludgeoning tactics has affected the lives of probably over a million citizens, and the pride of a whole nation. They have done damage to the whole psyche of the nation and as such have totally abdicated their duty of care. Would the country be a better, happier place today if HMRC had done the "common sense" thing and settled for say, £20m over 10 years? I think so. It's pretty f*cked at the moment with divisions, hatred and bitterness towards fellow Scots as bad as they've ever been, and national pride is at a new low. It may be "only" over football, but as we know, that is something engrained on the Scottish psyche. We have enough laws and blame given to football for societies ills, so there is no excuse for massively exacerbating it by being totally inflexible over a point of tax, that seems to be pretty bendy when it comes to big companies like Vodaphone.

I think one of the worrying things is that we'vehad 4 games this season against what are ostensibly bread and butter, SP sides (Hibs three times and St Johnstone), and lost 50% of them. The fact we were the better team is at least promising, but it's not a good record when you consider that this is the standard of team we will be facing most weeks next season, presuming we are promoted. Celtic have drawn twice and lost once to SP teams in 15 games (in all competitions) and so if this was the our SP competition, we'd have to win all 11 games in hand to pip them by a point - then play them at least once and at minimum achieve a draw, to stay in the lead. Even if we count some of the wins in the bag from our the top of current league as being similar to the bottom of the SP, we're still talking about having to not drop a point from about 6 SP games. But even taking the results as they are as if from one big division, we'd be 1 point ahead of a badly performing Celtic, despite having played mostly the bottom teams, while they've played mostly the top - and with one game due against them and another one soon after that. I agree that this looks like too tall an order for our current side - and that's against a pretty poor Celtic side with an unconvincing manager who you'd be expect to be replaced by a better one next season as well as some marquee signings to "put us in our place". We also had a bad month where we struggled to beat some championship sides, and you would guess that the likes of the 1-0 win against St Mirren, could easily become a 1-0 loss against the likes of Motherwell - while outplaying them overall. We're winning most games and with some style, but the problem is that in the SP that is not enough to usurp Celtic, even at the level they have dropped to.

One of the most pertinent and sensible articles I've seen on the subject from the press.

They obviously attracted players who would "otherwise have taken their services elsewhere".

Spiers is "obviously at it", as he likes to put it about Rangers. He compares us to Lance Armstrong. Lets compare: 1. Deliberately breaking unambiguous rules to gain an advantage. LA - yes, RFC - no, CFC no 2. Intentionally breaking ambiguous rules to gain an advantage. LA - yes, RFC - no, CFC yes 3. Dodgy use of tax loop holes LA - don't know, RFC - yes, CFC yes 4. Declaring facts of contentious procedures to the sporting authorities LA - no, RFC - yes, CFC no 5. Covering up and denying contentious procedures LA - yes, RFC - no, CFC yes 6. Guilty of crimes LA - yes, RFC - no, CFC yes 7. Dodgy use of moral principles to gain an advantage LA - yes, RFC - no, CFC yes 8. Subverting the integrity of democracy for sporting advantage LA - don't know, RFC - no, CFC yes 9. Corrupting governing bodies to change rules on the fly to gain sporting advantage LA - don't know, RFC - no, CFC yes 10. Attempting to pressure governing bodies to remove titles of rivals using erroneous reasons for sporting advantage LA - don't know, RFC - no, CFC yes So it seems Rangers are nothing like Lance, whereas Celtic have some similarities and are in some cases worse.

More Celtic minded attempts at cheating their way to titles and using complete lies to do so. Rangers did nothing illegal.

Where does Spiers get the 25m from? From what I've read the financial "benefit" seems to be less than half that for the players. At least he's not continuing to deliberately pull the wool over the public's eyes by implying it's 46.5m, like many so called journalists. As usual, I found the contribution from former Rangers players (McCall) very weak to start with and just based on honour and winning on the pitch, which kind of misses the point, but then he chimed in later with the "legality" argument. Good on him. O'Dea is just a fud, and like most Celtic minded seem to have totally missed it that Celtic used at least one EBT too - they continue to tacitly admit they believed it was cheating and they deliberately and knowingly did it anyway. The fact it wasn't cheating doesn't take away their open intention to cheat. Spiers does not understand tax laws but has been in contact with Jo the tax guy, and so might start toning it down soon. The main point from Jo is that Rangers broke no rules - you can't "break" tax laws as long as you submit a true return. All it means is that, if you get it wrong, your tax liabilities are higher - as may be the case. If Rangers finally lose the case then it's just a tax bill that becomes due, and until the case is complete, that bill is not substantiated. Where is the cheating? Spiers was about as bad a propagandist as you can get, trying to bring Lance Armstrong into it and so on, which is just totally different - and more akin to Celtic's behaviour. He also said that you'd have to be an idiot or something to argue the EBTs were illegal and then kept implying they were illegal...

The debate about what we could have afforded is just total supposition. Supposing we didn't use EBTs but signed the same players, it's obvious that we could have done the same but acquired more debt. However, we could also have cut back elsewhere. The more you look at the EBTs the shortfall we would have had shrinks. I don't know where the payments to Murray come in as he said he worked for us for free, so perhaps that's an MIH liability. Then there's the 500k annual fee to administer the EBTs which would not have to be paid. Taking all that into account it's hard to give a figure but to me looks like we might have had to make cuts of something like 1.2m a year to be in the same financial position. Now over the 10 years those cuts could have gone into many places - perhaps the training ground, the stadium, the youth system, the standard of hotel, the jumbotrons etc, etc. Perhaps we would have been in a position where changing the name of the stadium would have been a more attractive proposition. Perhaps we just wouldn't have paid for some of the duds who hardly played. But when you look at the butterfly effect it's hard to say whether any of that would have made us less or just as likely more successful on the pitch. We could have cut a lot and it would have had no impact at all. If they really want to do this, they have to start looking at all clubs, especially as it seems for Rangers that the question of legitimacy of the tax avoidance seems to be irrelevant to the fervour to strip our titles. In that case we need to punish all tax avoidance schemes, soft loans, favourable land deals, CVAs, etc, etc. There are clubs that may not have any trophies to strip but shouldn't they be relegated? Celtic were guilty of the heinous crime of the EBT kind and so surely deserve relegation for that? As well as their many other crimes. There is also the Penn State precident - and perhaps Celtic had players from their youth system that they "would not otherwise have acquired", if it was known that they were employing a sex offender. In fact how many senior players would be put off by them shamelessly employing such a person had it not been covered up? A lot of people are reticent to talk about that sensitive part of Celtic's history as some kind of respect to the victims, but it seems to me that continually brushing it under the carpet does no victim of that crime any justice. However, when we are made out to be the biggest villains in sporting history, that one really sticks in my craw. This is a club that have supported Hitler and terrorists, cheated their way to many a title including the our UEFA final season, tacitly admit they are cheats over the EBT thing, pressurise referees so much that they went on strike for the only time in history, immorally subverted a democratic vote about whether we should be allowed to stay in the SPL, uses any loophole to progress in Europe, and their crime list goes on and on.

Sorry, I thought you were referring to the Marseilles bribery scandal.