calscot

Shame so many other "newspapers" can't boast the same, with the Guardian being one of the worst. The most unbiased and informative I can find is the The Week.

Like I said, I'm not so knowledgable in this but looking it up, it looks like that would be for the courts to decide. It seems to me that if the whole business can be bought for £5.5M including Ibrox and Murray Park then 18M for the stadium and possibly the training ground could be a reasonable and not a gratuitous sum used to pay off debts and keep trading. There also seems to be the case that the HMRC liability wasn't proven and therefore the company was solvent and from what I've read that means that they could even make it a gift. It also seems to say to my lesser knowledge that if we had a floating charge to the bank then those assets become irrelevant to other creditors like HMRC. Again you're doing your MO of empty one liners, rather than explaining anything, and to me that makes you 0 for 2... but I'm the kind of person who would rather be educated by someone more knowledgable, than be their target for point scoring. I am certainly not envious of expert knowledge in these kind of subjects as I find them tediously boring (as my favoured subjects of things like programming and physics will be to others); however, skimming the surface becomes a bit interesting when it comes to my football club.

Maybe I need to make my point a bit more plain and using everyday knowledge. The loan to the bank was secured on the stadium etc, you sell those assets to the fans and pay off the bank. The bank says, thank you very much and releases its security. Does it not work that way?

I know I'm not that knowledgable on this but come on, what floating charge? If you pay your debt, does the charge not disappear? Who would possess this floating charge if the bank were repaid in full? You'd really have to explain that to me rather than the usual cryptic one liner. I wasn't aware of any other creditors who possessed a floating charge, but in any case, you can adapt my scenario to raise money to pay back all creditors with floating charges. Does that help? How much would that be?

The whole thing for me always comes down to HMRC who made the club unsellable to any legitimate buyer. Who really wants to buy something that could suddenly have a 95M (or whatever debt) and possibly losing at least £18M. The band didn't want to lose that either and so you can see why they wanted rid to anyone and didn't want to give funding. They must have thought we were going to lose or that the chances were too high. However, it seems to me that in glorious Ultra-HD hindsight, what we could have, should have done, is have a player fire-sale, and any other non-essential assets (perhaps even Murray Park - it would have been cheaper to stay solvent and eventually build a new one) to raise the 18M to pay the bank and then limp along until we won or lost the tax case. If we lose, we go into receivership, if we win, we raise capital through share issue. Another option, if we had known the imminent danger, thinking outside the box and with limited knowledge about the legal stuff, would be to sell the stadium and training ground to a fans trust, where ordinary fans as well as rich fans, invest in the stadium company with covenants and voting structures that protect it from being sold or ownership abused. It could be used by the club for a generous termed lease to keep the trust solvent. Then if the football company went bust due to HMRC, we'd still own the real estate which we could allow a phoenix company to use. The assets would then be protected in perpetuity as long as Rangers played there. There's could be accounting and business rules that make this naive but looking back, that could have us in a much better financial position than now and without the onerous contracts. It's easy to use hindsight, but it seems we had the perfect storm of DM, HMRC, LBG and Whyte. And again looking at that, there is only one you can remove that takes away the vast majority of the risk, and that is HMRC. Without them, we'd have been safe - all they had to do was take the 10M on the table.

As usual, the story is highly exaggerated. There's no conflict and no-one is blocking national call ups. We're not even talking about full international games, but U21 which is hardly crucial. It seemed to me that most U21 aren't first picks for their club, but a couple of ours are getting regular games - so to keep that consistent he's talked to the national sides and negotiated them not to be picked - with the carrot that the players will gain more development by keeping their place for their club.

I can imagine the hot and cold balls coming into play now we look like a decent side...

For the team coefficient you get the same points for going out at say the 3rd qualifying stage, whether you went in at the 1st round and won two rounds or whether you went straight into the the 3rd round. No matter how you got there, if you go out you get 1.5 points. The country coefficients count your wins and losses also with 1pt for a win and 0.5 points for a loss, this is then divided by the number of teams and then further divided by 5 before being added to your score. Therefore the country ranking will get more points for winning your games to the 3rd qualifier from the 1st than going straight in. However, your score will be lower to start with for you to be in the 1st round.

Just thinking that that's 37 points maximum you get for winning the EL and 38pts the same as the maximum for the CL. The CL get an extra point somewhere, I think they get 4 points for qualifying from the group and then another point for being in the 2nd round... It's all a bit confusing.

Yes, that adds up.

Looking through last year's points for Barca and Aberdeen, I think you're right. So my apologies. It seems it should say 2/1 pts for win/draw from group stage onwards...

Perhaps but that's not how I interpreted the wording. It only explicitly says you get points for wins and draws in the group stages. That makes a maximum of 12, plus one point for each round acheived, which adds another 5. You may be right but it's not clear from the wording. I'll dig a bit further.

But as said, this is not that relevant for the CL except that we could play earlier, but it should be against teams we can beat. I'd much rather rely on us beating teams we should be beating, than relying on Celtic giving us a by into the next round. It's about banana skins, not the ambition to be good in Europe. That may be but that would also give them more money, more allure to players and more confidence to win the league again with us being second place - which is only where we "benefit" anyway. The full impact of that is negative to me. We'd be seeded for EL1 in any case and and so my point above kicks in. I'd personally rather have more chance of beating a weaker Celtic in the league, but have to negotiate a round we should win anyway, than for them to be successful and give us a by to the next round. Also with the bonus of them being less happy. Agree with that although the chances of a drawing better team are likely to be higher with a higher seeding. At the lower end of the seedings, you're right, it could just mean one reasonably good run 4 years ago.

Just realised that Celtic can only accumulate at maximum of 17 more points if they win all their group games and get to the final so can only add up to 0.875 pts to our coefficient. For this season that unlikely event would move us from 263 to 231. Which wouldn't make too much odds if we won the SC and qualified for the EL. I think in either case we'd be seeded for the first round, and probably not seeded for the next, but it could have a small chance of swaying things in round 2, which could bring us the likes of West Ham. So while it wouldn't affect us much in the CL, there is a slim chance it could affects us in the EL - and that is only with a maximum point scenario for Celtic.

After having a look at that current rules, the answer to that is no, not any more. http://www.uefa.com/memberassociations/news/newsid=1592815.html http://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/calc.html The "team ranking" doesn't get any direct points for winning or drawing in the qualifying rounds. You only get points for going out (I know it sounds odd) or qualifying for the group stage. CL: Going out in the 1st round (unlikely we'll be in that) is 0.5pts. Going out in the 2nd round is 1pt Going out in the 3rd round means no points but entry into EL play offs (but going out here is 1.5pts see below) Going out in the 4th round means no points but entry into EL (but qualification to this give 2pts see below) Group qualification 4pts Group win 2pts Group draw 1pt Round 16 qualification 4pts Then 1pt per round to final EL Out in 1st - 0.25pts Out in 2nd - 0.5pts Out in 3rd - 1pt Out in play offs - 1.5pts Qualification to group - 2pts (This is where Celtic are with 2pts currently) Group win 2pts Group draw 1pt 1 point for entry into each subsequent round So you only get points for wins and draws in the group stages. UEFA say nothing about extra points for winning the competition so it seems the two finalists with the same points in the groups get the same points whether they win or lose. Country points are different and seem to count 1pt/0.5pt for win/draw in qualifiers and 2pt/1pt thereafter, elimination points removed, while some bonus points count (like 4pts for CL qualification) - although this is not 100% clear on either site. Need to look further.

PS You can check my facts at Bert Kassies excellent site: http://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/data/method4/trank2016.html

The way things stand, the poorer our coefficient just means more chances at banana skins of teams at, or below, the level we need to beat to qualify - and having to play to win very early in the pre-season... IF we win the top league we go through the champions route and looking at this year, the last 10 teams were: FK Astana APOEL Nicosia Skënderbeu Korçë Dinamo Zagreb Celtic Malmö FC Basel Maccabi BATE Borisov Partizan Belgrade These are the level of the best teams we will have to face in up to three qualifiers. Yes we will be facing the highest coefficient teams each time, but that does not necessarily mean they are the best - with ourselves hopefully as an example. The way I see it, the seeding is not accurate enough to make too much odds and ultimately we have to be able to beat any of those sides and perhaps three of them. Looking at that, it seems doable, and is a level I think we should and are aiming for. At the end of next season we will have no team points and just the country points which in the current standings would put us as 327th. Two things to remember about Celtic going out - as BH says, they may actually gain more points in the EL than the CL, and remember we only get 5% of the Celtic points = 20% / 4 teams. So if they miraculously do massively well, get to the final and gain say about 20 more points, that would put us up one point to about 286th... So their coefficient points are really not much to worry about. Send them all the ill will you like.

You would expect that there is likely to come a time when being a bit part at Rangers with no say on the board and little influence, while the value of your shares drops, is going to get very uninteresting for someone with no real love for the club. I'm hoping that once the share issue waters down their shareholding, and those they proxy, along with the cancellation of rights of some of the latter, they will get bored and sell up. I can only think that MA has something to do with them not having done so already.

That's all very interesting but when it comes to names, there is so much variation that rules go out the window. You need to hear it from the horses mouth so to speak. For instance, with names of places, in my area there are Woughton, Loughton and Broughton, all within a few miles but each one is pronounced differently. W-u-fton - as in woof L-au-ton - as in lout Br-o-ton as in brought There is just no way of working it out, you have to find out from the locals.

That's all very interesting but when it comes to names, there is so much variation that rules go out the window. You need to hear it from the horses mouth so to speak. For instance, with names of places, in my area there are Woughton, Loughton and Broughton, all within a few miles but each one is pronounced differently. W-u-fton - as in woof L-au-ton - as in lout Br-o-ton as in brought There is just no way of working it out, you have to find out from the locals.

I used to want Celtic to do well in Europe for the coefficient and the reputation of Scottish football - as long as they didn't get further than us. Now I want them to get stuffed in every game. For this season, I obviously want them to get pumped out even from my previous viewpoint. The way European football is at the moment, I see much less relevance to us for the coefficient, as long as we win the Premiership. In that scenario, we have a relatively easy route to the CL group stages where I don't expect us to progress, no matter what our coefficient is. My ambition there is to finish third and drop into the Europa league. Once there, it's all about how good we are with also rans of the big leagues and teams from the lesser countries who should be our peers. It becomes all about how good we actually are relative to European teams, rather than the coefficient. The only difference with finishing second is that we won't have a route to the CL, but then getting the coefficient high enough for that looks impossible as we end up with more teams who go out early and water down the points we accumulate. Not only that, the second place route to the CL is incredibly tough with the likes of 3rd and 4th from the big leagues. Of course if our coefficient was high enough we'd get an automatic CL place for first and a short route to qualification for second place, but I can't see that happening in the foreseeable future if ever - unless there is a massive change.

Can someone give a definitive pronunciation? I read that it was pronounced "the French way" but have since heard about 4 different versions from commentators. I've heard (with the capital being the stressed syllable): TavernEEr - like pioneer TavernEr - like traveller but with the stress on the final syllable TavErni-er - like derrière but with the stress on the second syllable TavErni-ay - what you'd expect in French, dropping the final consonant So which is it?

The irony is that compared to the rest of the league, Stubbs must also have it easy. Objectively, the job of Rangers finishing top and Hibs finishing second should be a relatively easy job considering the resources; however, Warburton's job is much further reaching than that, and he seems to be doing something pretty exceptional at Rangers, and that is in the context of the state of the club the infamous boards left us in. It's probably easy enough to build a new Rome out of the rubble after it's been devastated, given plenty of resources, but as the saying goes, it's not easy to do it quickly, and Warburton seems to be achieving that at Rangers. What is not easy is that there is no room for failure, you have an enormous fanbase with very high expectations, and apart from getting promotion at the end of the season, is not much to do with the league we're in. In reality we're rebuilding a club from the ground up, with the ambition to take on Celtic for the champions of Scotland, and then at least arrive at the group stages of the CL or surpass the group stage of the EC. The irony by Stubbs is that we're now doing it slowly and carefully, and without yet throwing a shed-load of money at it.

There seems to be so many clubs in Scotland who could do with both a chairman and manager that act with a bit of class and dignity. I'm really glad that's something we, ourselves now have.

Wish they'd used a bit of the money to build a higher gantry for a tv camera...