calscot

I can't see this "never catch them" point of view. Football wealth is very short term as it basically goes on paying the same players more money. The money is rarely invested, just burned. We're always a season away from disaster and only a few seasons away from catching up. If catching up was virtually impossible then 9IAR and our CL participation would have put us well out of sight of them forever, but that didn't happen.

I think there is quite a big appetite among our fans for some kind of legal retribution for those that have done us harm.

I think in the early years after Souness, football in general was at a low - especially with the English banned from Europe, and in contrast Rangers were absolutely buoyant with the renewed success after some barren years and Celtic being totally mismanaged. Money was mostly based on gate receipts and we had them in abundance compared to elsewhere. There was so much money sloshing around our accounts in a such depressed market that it was almost too difficult to overspend. We were bringing in top internationals for relatively peanuts and so still able to sell them on back in England for a small profit if they didn't work out. Yearly transfer balances were a few million and our top paid players were on between 5 and 10 grand a week. We basically had money burning holes in our bank account. In hindsight, I don't think there was much savvy money management to keep us in the black - but I think this easy profligacy led to bad habits and hubris and hence our huge debt once the rest of Europe, England and Celtic rebounded from their depression.

No matter how well we get ourselves back on our feet, we can never "prosper" without something changing with regards to the disproportionate TV money to the larger countries. We voted to stay British but we're completely out in the cold and alone when it comes to our football. Even if we make a good fist of it and qualify for Europe we'll be struggling to compete financially with the bottom of the English Championship and probably the top of League One. UEFA have negligently allowed European football to fester and rot outside the big 5.

I can't quite see the portrayed AIM point of view. From where we've been standing they have been almost as inept and embarrassing as the last Rangers board in all this. Their own reputation is in doubt.

Er actually, no they aren't in this context. Not at all. They and all the other creditors have absolutely no entitlement to any of the RFFF fund. Their entitlement to Old Co debt is also another story. The fund could choose to give money to whomever it thinks is deserving.

I don't really disagree with that, but I do have empathy for the small, local businesses that legitimately provided necessary goods or services in a professional manner in good faith, and who will never see the money that they are due. That is especially relevant to those that struggle to take the hit.

I would only agree with that if it was hand picked, deserving, small creditors. None of it should go to the likes of HMRC or Ticketus, or anyone who tried to swindle us. However, while it seems an anathema to have the money sitting there doing nothing, it could be perhaps put in trust where it earns interest and is ready to fight possible future detrimental owners with an expiration date where it is spent on something worthy. You have to hope that we're now on the road to full recovery and will never fall into hostile hands again, while increasing fan ownership and aiming for over 50%. The thing about the money is that while it's a significant amount, it should eventually be a drop in the ocean compared to the club finances and so if spent needs to be targeted on small, deserving fan projects, where it could make an impact. The likes of buying shares in the new offer, could perhaps be a waste.

When you think about say 5000 punters paying 30 quid for a live concert, that's half the price of the GM - and at least half of that is pure profit. So how can it cost 4 times as much with a free venue and the only set up being a table a few chairs and a microphone connected to the existing PA? Did over 3000 turn up? That number would make it £100 a head, and probably as expensive as staging a match which includes paying the players. It's just unbelievable that it couldn't be done for a sixth of that at most - even that sounds like someone hasn't a clue how to organise it. How much did the march on Ibrox cost with a few thousand listening to the speakers there for half an hour? A couple of hundred quid?

Is that Google ad-sense in action?

The board have quite a bit on their plate at the moment but they did promise transparency. Off the top of my head, I believe they need to do the following and more: Make sense of the admin and accounts of the club without a proper handover. Facilitate a new Nomad to do their due diligence. Investigate L&L for disciplinary proceedings, execute them, and arrange whatever parting terms are necessary. Stop the draw-down of the second loan from MA and provide alternative funding. Pay back MA loans and provide alternative funding for that. Organise a share issue. Deal with AM and KM contracts with whatever severance. Re-establish a PR department Recruit a chief scout. Organise refurbishment of Ibrox. Investigate onerous contracts and see which can be cancelled or challenged in court. Appoint another fan director. Appoint a CEO. Set up mini-season tickets. All while continuing the daily running of the club.

I presume his main acheivements are finishing second twice in the SPL with Motherwell (without us).

Ally brought in a fitness expert and so I'm not sure if he shoulders all the blame for any lack of fitness. I'm also not sure if there is THAT big a problem as the team have seen off other sides late in the game using fitness rather than finesse. I also think there are a lot of fitness memes which stem from a general lack of understanding of what fitness is about. People thinking that players can train for a full working day every day without a rest. You can't get very fit without rest and there is a lot of knowledge now about the balance of fitness and "freshness" which leads to good form. You even get people saying the likes of Jig needs to lose 2 stone, when there is no chance a slim guy like him even has 2 stone of fat in total in his body composition. For me, I think a lot of our problems stem from a poor attitude from the players. Should a good manager be able to do something about that? Certainly. But I think we're now seeing how hard that can be. Fair enough theory but to be really fair this only seems to have taken effect, just before Ally resigned with a lot of off field problems which led to that. You would expect a gradual change in our results, it's a huge step change around the time of his resignation. When you look at the first 20 games, we lost to Hearts and Hibs who don't conform to your theory and drew with seemingly our bogey team, Alloa. Take those teams out and we beat the rest. After that we lost to the bogey team and Queen of the South while Ally was in the process of leaving. After he left we lost again to Hibs and it then took until two months later to lose again to Hibs and Celtic whom we didn't have much of chance of winning. This is where it really started to slide with loss against Raith and where your theory starts to correlate more is in March. However, that's 2.5 months after Ally left. Looking at it, your theory could work but only if the teams outside Hibs, Hearts (confident from the start), Celtic (mission impossible) and Alloa (bogey team), gained this confidence well after Ally was gone... That obviously quite a subjective view which you're entitled to, but as I've been continually pointing out. I'm not trying to argue people into believing McCoist was great, I'm trying to show the worse he was, the faster we should improve. My main point is that I don't think McCall is going to be massively better - something many are starting to agree with, but having to dance around their previous opinions of him to make it fit with the "McCoist is clueless" meme. I see Ally as more of a 5/10 and McCall about 7/10 - so not THAT much improvement to be gained. McDowall seems to be the one with 2/10 although he didn't even want the job - but like the players, a lack of motivation is not accepted by Rangers fans. So if for you Ally is 2 and McCall is say, only 6, then we should see really be seeing a massive improvement.

He's been playing in the team quite a bit, starting quite young, so shouldn't he be "developed" by now? I've never said they shouldn't be criticised but it goes against the notion that just playing guys from our youth ranks is an easy answer. It always seems that players that people haven't seen much are automatically considered much better than what the case may be. Thanks for proving my point. I'm sure when the likelihood of at least one or two of them not becoming Rangers class is apparent, they will be highly criticised also. We get that your idea of slow witted is someone who doesn't agree with everything you say and you are sychophantic to those that do agree all the time, and then get all touchy feely with them when they happen to disagree with you on something. What was it someone said to you when you did this to them? "Spare the platitudes!" That was funny. I think someone is slow witted when I tell them my opinion many, many times, as clearly as I can, with emphasis, and they still keep getting it completely wrong. Shouldn't you be adding, "in your opinion"? You seem to one of those people who thinks that they cannot possibly be wrong, even though you are proven so, time and again. Thanks again for proving my point - you still get my opinion wrong in this post despite my extended efforts. I've been saying he's mediocre or average for at least a couple of years. You could always show us evidence of what I said a few months ago. That we've suddenly gone from 81.5% win rate to 25% since he left, pretty much backs me up, but then my opinions are evidence based. There is no-one on here who would take the blame for that kind of dramatic slump after they left a job - if there was a consistent regression then fair enough, but this is an incredibly abrupt change, that is too stark to be coincidental. You've also got to wonder how McCall has gone from being considered a half-decent manager, to not much better than McCoist. That fits my view far better than yours. It seems one quality he has is to take a load of crap, overpaid, uninterested players and get them to win 4 out of every 5 games.

I think McCall has the luxury of being able to take risks with his team selection as he's attempting a salvage job - and with the way the current first team are playing, he really has to shake things up. It's like we've been regularly poisoned for the last 4 years and although that has stopped, we're still ill from the previous effects of all that poison. It's going to take a while to get better and while I think McCall is a reasonably competent physician, he's no miracle worker. There really seems to be an extreme malaise among the senior players and it doesn't look like improving any time soon, and even bringing in free agents doesn't look like it could help, as they are not the types we need. It seems to me that he has to dip into the U21 squad, kids are always happy to get their chance. The problem is that we've already played the top ones with plenty of grumbles about their ability - especially Aird, Hutton and Crawford. The one who passed muster has already been sold. The Newcastle players with one exception have been nothing but a distraction that probably exacerbated the already low morale. So there's not that much choice. But anything has got to be better than what's happening on the park for the last 15 games or so. The squad we have was hardly chosen - it was mostly taken from the available freebies in Scotland that would come and we merely took the best on paper. I can't imagine there was any out there that we missed that would be of an upper SPL standard, never mind Rangers standard. We have them by default rather than choice. The only players around that would enhance our first team, we didn't have the cash to pay for. We even lost our best young player to Brentford of all teams - no disrespect to them but this is Rangers we're talking about. If you think McCoist was totally inept then you MUST be expecting a massive improvement now he's gone along with the dark cloud of the evil board removed. However, at the risk of personal abuse for not again agreeing with the extremists, I believe his failures have been highly exaggerated. (Again - just for the slow of wit, I don't believe he was a "good" manager, just mediocre, and toiling in the worst circumstances in our history.) That means that how quickly we can be turned into a better team than the first half of the season depends on how good McCall is. As I've said, he doesn't come across as a miracle man or managerial genius. But he seems competent and intelligent and able to do a job. I think he's a level above Ally but not that big a step and so while I can see us competing again in a month or so, I can't see us sweeping all before us with fantastic football and cricket scores. At best I think it's going to be the usual grinding out results that will not endear everyone to the new boss. I can't see how we can expect more until after the summer. To achieve the dream of great success, AND great football, AND great youth development, AND balance the books, we need some kind of genius that can do it in the cesspool of football that Scotland has become, with not much to spend, and with the pressure to get results from day one, every match day. I don't think McCall is that guy - although I'm not sure that guy exists.

To be fair I don't think we'd being making such a fuss about that retweet from a rep from another club. So maybe not a good example. i think the point is that there are people that will attack the Rangers family (and only us) for the slightest thing we do, and if it's pretty innocuous or even slightly righteous they will twist it out of shape to make it look evil. I'd be cringing if we complained about that retweet from another club considering the context. I think the fans of other clubs would also be defending their own in such a scenario.

It seems to me that if CG had to resign for his tweet, KF should be in for a sacking. Outrageously offensive and probably libellous tweet. How many Rangers fans would actually pay for a ticket and dress up as a Dundee Utd fan, just to stir it up? I think they don't quite get who the mad, obsessive ones are...

I think while many have come back, there are those that will not only need some time change the momentum of their current habits of a weekend, but also who really need a feel-good factor on the pitch. Despite appointing a manager, we're not even close to that yet. We have a 27% win rate since McCoist left, and we're obviously used to far, far better. I'm not sure we need some kind of lovely football to get them back, what I think we need is some thumping wins and consistently dominating games while always looking destined to win. Oh yeah, and an actual good, long run of wins. The fans need not only hope that we can achieve promotion, more so that it looks almost inevitable. Maybe that's glory hunting or whatever, but the change of momentum of fans coming back will probably reflect the change of momentum for our results and chances of winning. Our current first time doesn't look very capable of re-igniting the cold ashes of their previously barely luke-warm spirit resembling glowing embers. If McCall can't do that despite several changes to the team, then he may be "forced" to start to put his faith in some of the more promising young players. No matter the off-field issues which seem to be affecting the seasoned players, the kids will normally be massively motivated to show what they can do for the first team. Normally that's a big risk, but there is little risk if those you depend on for constancy are in fact consistently inept. Of course it's not a panacea - and ironically there are many who argue it is one minute while lambasting the likes of Hutton the next. There also seems to be a lack of leadership on the pitch or at least someone who can do something to prevent the catastrophic slide, so although it may just be an impossible job, we don't know that without changing the captaincy, and I don't think Jig can be too surprised or aggrieved if that happens. The biggest problem is that we don't really have anyone in the squad that deserves the responsibility.

I've said before that tweeting these days, especially if you have loads of followers and a prominent profile, is not much different from an old fashioned press release or statement. You have to be very careful. While I can't personally see much wrong with CG's retweet as Joe Public, he handed his detractors and our enemies, a stick to beat him with. You've always had to be pretty squeaky clean if you want to be a public figure (or keep it all well hidden), and it's far too easy to find dirt from the likes of Twitter which can blow up even if it's pretty defensible. I think there are so many people who don't quite get the implications of social media yet - especially when you take the anonymity out of it.

Can you show me where you've been clear yourself. I've explained myself in a way that I thought was reasonably clear. Then I had to repeat it in very, very simple terms several times. I don't think any interpretation of drivel has much my blame on my part. It's hard to explain to those who won't listen properly when they are too busy getting their knives out for anything about McCoist that doesn't look derogatory enough.

Fair points. Although I do think Hearts sacrificed the cups to do better in the league which gives them an advantage - we never have that luxury. You've also got to be fair in that part of McCoist's fierce criticism comes from the cup results, so Hearts deserve the same kind of criticism. But to be fair to them they were knocked out by Celtic twice who are really the only anomaly in the cup for the likes of Rangers and Hearts. I agree, the league form wasn't that good although a big part of that was losing to Hibs and Hearts where I personally believe that was hugely helped by them wanting it far more than our players rather than raw talent. We were a club heading for the rocks, they are both clubs that have been renewed and have fresh impetus. Hopefully we can now match them for that feel good factor. Well Hibs anyway. One of the reasons I've been concentrating on win rates is that, no matter how horrible the team play football, it's irrelevant to promotion; that's all about winning games. Our team have shown they can do that, but so far have looked dodgy against two of the most likely teams we'll face. The trouble is that while McCall looks like a solid manager, he's no protegy, and his record in big, one-off games isn't great, and that's really a place where we need massive improvement.

As said, it doesn't matter how much you're paid, the uncertainty of not being paid doesn't motivate anyone. I would expect that would count double if you're an impostor. I have all respect for the lesser paid staff and their worries - which must have been stressful for them - which also contributes to a bad atmosphere at the club - which could also affect the motivation of the players. I'm not condoning it, only describing the possibilities. I don't think anyone can rationally argue that something hasn't changed dramatically in the last 10 games. I also don't condone McCoist taking the money for nothing but there could be other reasons behind it - it means he's still employed by Rangers and could have been hoping to be brought back, which obviously didn't happen, or it could have been two fingers to board and to put them under further duress - which did actually happen as they were unable and/or unwilling to spend the money to replace him. I'm hoping he'll go now without a pay-off. I would also like him to either never sell his shares and uses them for good, or donates them to the supporters groups.

I think you're missing the point. No matter how overpaid you are, the possibility of not being paid is hardly going to motivate you to play out your skin. It didn't help our results in administration so it's not just the current players.

I think that's a bit extreme. Somethink like 91 odd points from 36 games while not as much as you'd expect from Rangers in this league, it's hardly terrible. As has been pointed out, you can't talk about the high wages on one hand while ignoring how they were brought in, and the off-field influences. It's a bit one sided. Again I'll say it's about average what you'd expect considering the circumstances. I think a better manager WOULD do better although I think it will take a new manager time to turn the ship fully around, I expect McCall to eventuall do better than Ally. However, it will be hard to compare like for like as he will have full backing of the board and hopefully, bugger all off-field issues. With that in mind, and considering the views on Ally, he really should be a LOT better. We do seem to have a collection of mercenaries rather than a team, but a lot of that has been to do with how we were able to recruit and the strategy of least risk, which seems to have backfired.

Can I ask whom you're referring to? I don't think I know anyone on here who thinks either is a very good manager.