chilledbear

RANGERS’ kids stormed to the top of the SPFL Under-20 League last night with a good 2-0 victory against former leaders Hibernian at Murray Park. Goals either side of the break from Luca Gasparotto and Darren Ramsay gave Gordon Durie’s side a deserved success against their Edinburgh opponents. Manager Ally McCoist, his assistant Kenny McDowall, first-team coach Ian Durrant and goalkeeping coach Jim Stewart all seemed impressed as they looked on. The result sends Gers two points clear at the summit with Motherwell leapfrogging Hibs and Inverness to sit second after their 3-0 win at Ross County. Club snapper Kirk O’Rourke was at Auchenhowie as a seventh successive triumph was achieved and his best pictures can be seen below. Remember you can purchase exclusive images from our dedicated photography website too. Simply click HERE to see our selection. http://www.rangers.co.uk/news/galleries/item/6106-gallery-u20s-beat-hibs

GORDON DURIE has welcomed Darren Ramsay’s re-emergence in the under-20 side after he capped an excellent display against Hibs last night with a stunning clinching goal. The 18-year-old’s wonderful strike from 30 yards sealed a 2-0 victory at Murray Park which sent Rangers to the top of the SPFL Under-20 League. Having climbed from ninth at one stage, they are now two points clear of second-placed Motherwell in a congested table. Ramsay put so much more into the game than his long-range effort and he was a standout on the left side of midfield. The youngster hasn’t been spoken about much in recent times as he has lacked fitness and drifted in and out of Durie’s side. Since before Christmas, however, he has knuckled down and got himself back to the kind of form his coaches seek from him every week. After a good outing against Ross County last week, Ramsay made a big impression once again as manager Ally McCoist and his coaching staff looked on at Auchenhowie. Durie was excited by his performance too and is now looking for that kind of contribution from him on a more regular basis. He said: “That was probably the best I’ve seen from Darren and we know he’s got that ability in him. He was excellent. “To be fair to him, he has been working really hard over the last couple of months to get his fitness levels up. “His goal capped off a really good performance from him and that’s what he’s got to show week in, week out. “It’s going to be hard for the boys to get back into the team and we’re looking for good competition for places. “It was a wonderful strike from Darren, He’s got these new white boots and I don’t know where he’s got them from but he can keep them. “He spotted the goalie off his line from 25 or 30 yards out and he thoroughly deserves the goal he scored.” http://www.rangers.co.uk/news/academy-news/item/6109-darren-was-dazzling

Selling players on the cheap because we need the cash [if this is what we end up doing]. When we have a Supporter willing to invest so we can improve the team, will only end one way.

Gallagher did well at East Stirling. Rangers have turned down East Stirling’s request to keep Ibrox youngster Calum Gallagher at the club for a second month on loan. The 19 year old has made a very positive impression on the Shire’s Head Coach John Coughlin after grabbing two goals, including a last minute equaliser against Albion Rovers last Saturday, in four games. Coughlin said: “Calum has been terrific and I would have really liked to have kept him. He quickly became a favourite of our fans however Rangers are quite right to keep him there.” Club chairman Tony Ford said: “We would like to place on record our thanks to Rangers for allowing the temporary transfer of Calum and we have greatly appreciated having him here.” “We would also like to wish Calum every success at Rangers.” Read more at http://spfl.co.uk/news/article/shire-miss-out-on-gallagher-stay/#CHg88vHmEKdLOpZ4.99

McKay to stay at Ton until end of season MORTON have agreed a deal to sign Rangers winger Barrie McKay on loan until the end of the season. Tuesday 28/01/2014 by Chris Jack The 19-year-old was one of new Cappielow chief Kenny Shiels' first signings when he replaced Allan Moore as boss, with the Gers kid agreeing a short-term deal last month. The Ton's abandoned Championship clash with Queen of the South on Saturday was due to be his final match for Shiels' side. But after holding talks with the Light Blues, Shiels has now struck a deal to keep McKay at Cappielow until the end of the campaign. The capture of McKay is a major boost to the Ton as they bid to haul themselves away from the Championship relegation zone, with the Murray Park kid now set to benefit from an extended period of first-team football. Shiels told SportTimes: "Barrie is coming back to us until the end of the season. It has been agreed. We'll do the paperwork and that will be it. "He has made a good impact for us since joining us so it is great news for us. "He is a good player so we are pleased to have him until the end of the season. "It is good for us and good for Barrie. He is improving all the time, which is great. "He has progressed well recently and hopefully there is plenty more to come from him between now and the end of the season." Meanwhile, Morton are expected to today confirm prices for the re-arranged Doonhamers clash after the game was rescheduled for tomorrow night following the death of 74-year-old Ton supporter Andrew Kemp at Cappielow on Saturday. A statement on the club's official website said: "Further details regarding the match and admission arrangements will be posted here tomorrow [Tuesday] once confirmed." http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/sport/spfl/mckay-to-stay-at-ton-until-end-of-season-149876n.23284739

http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail.html?announcementId=11846527

You have to be joking. No more of these signings please. Whatever happened to the, sign them young and sell them on ?

I would love Ally to win the SPL with Rangers, just so he could give the finger to his critics in the media. I just don't know if he can.

C'mon you would love it, an Easdale at each side of you !!

I'm not sure any outsider would understand this. Rangers need investment, someone ( a Rangers supporter ) wants to invest millions, no one from Rangers has spoken to him.

No matter what we think of Ally as a Manager, what The Club/Board have been doing the last week is below the belt, and not worthy of Rangers Football Club.

I'll back Rangers always, and the team that is on the park. It doesn't mean I am satisfied with what I am watching.

If Ally will not try different tactics/formations now, there will be no chance when we progress up the Leagues. In fact we all know nothing will change under Ally, same old with dwindling crowds.

Brechin last October. It's more the fact how Ally is a WS clone, now I can understand why, after all he was with Walter for so long. I am advocating that we need some freshness in the Management team.

As far as I can see we have an inferior Walter Smith as Manager. Where Smith employed tactics to win in Europe, Ally does the same to win in Forfar. From everyone back at corners to playing a central midfielder out wide, one up front to no substitutes before 70 mins. It would be almost impossible NOT to win the Leagues last year and this, as Frankie says next year will be a lot tougher. There is no excitement or freshness about us and will be mirrored by falling attendances till the end of the season.

Good cop, bad cop. Wallace and Irvine.

With a ' Training Schedule' being posted in certain places, there seems to be a bit of a campaign being started.

It can't all be cuts remembering he will depend on ST sales. Talking means nothing. So far we have had the players wages cut debacle, not a good start.

WITH replies that raised many more questions than he answered, Rangers manager Ally McCoist has stealthily picked his way through the minefield that is the current financial ‘situation’ at the Ibrox club. Having backed his players in their refusal to accede to chief executive Graham Wallace’s request for a 15 per cent pay cut, McCoist tried hard not to get into the blame game over the current money troubles at Rangers. But in the middle of a press conference in which he was asked searching questions about those cash problems – tomorrow night’s match against Forfar Athletic wasn’t even mentioned – there was one telling instant. McCoist said: “The chief executive at the moment is aware that some of the problems are there because some of the decisions were made for the short term, maybe a year ago.” Asked point blank if some of those decisions were made for “other people’s benefit”, the manager nodded his assent. The clear implication is that he feels some of those investors and directors of bygone months made decisions that lined their own pockets rather than fill the club’s coffers. That is why Rangers are now facing a new crisis. The club’s leadership can deny it until they are blue in the face, so to speak, but when potential administration is openly talked about and players and staff – McCoist himself has sacrificed half his pay – are asked to take salary cuts, then something is very seriously wrong at Rangers, not least because player costs are down to a third or less of overall turnover, as McCoist claimed, which begs the question: where exactly is all the money going? Having already reduced the player budget for this season, McCoist had no reason to suspect cash problems and asked no questions when he was told he could sign players. “Not being an accountant,” he said, “maybe I have it totally wrong but the player budget coming down, I was looking at – wrongly obviously – season tickets, costs – I’m doing it on the back of a fag packet – it kind of fits. “We had a lot of money in from an IPO [initial public offering of shares] and we had two amounts of season tickets but I was obviously wrong, and I obviously am wrong. “I just went about my business signing players. The chief executives that I have had so far… Charles Green the first one, then Craig Mather came in. I was wanting to bolster the squad and that’s what I did. No one said it was a problem.” McCoist eventually did ask some questions of Wallace, a man he patently considers honest and trustworthy. “He didn’t go into great detail,” said McCoist. “He just said some mistakes had been made. He said to me that some decisions that were made, in hindsight, possibly should not have been made.” Given his previous experiences, McCoist was asked if he would be within his rights to withhold his trust from the new chief executive. The manager replied: “Possibly – but I don’t think that would do us any good. “I have to do my best to forge a healthy working relationship with the chief executive. It has to be in the best interest of the club and everyone within it. And that’s what we’re both doing, believe me.” It will be several months before Rangers fans will be asked to renew those season tickets, and McCoist will understand if they are uncertain at the moment. “There’s a lot of water to go under the bridge before then,” said McCoist, “At the end of the day the fans will make their own decision on what they’re seeing. Right now, there’s a lot of work to be done by everyone before we can start thinking about season tickets again.” By any objective analysis, the problems at Rangers have one root cause – the club continues to operate as if it is in the top tier rather than in the third tier of Scottish football. So should Rangers have downsized to, say, Championship size? “Again, I don’t know, that’s for the financial people to discuss,” said McCoist. “I don’t know what the financial situation of the club would need to be, what the break even point was, what the costs were – that’s a question for them to answer.” McCoist has been asked to the next board meeting to discuss football matters. Asked if he would like to stay while the board talked about money and other matters, McCoist said: “I’d need to think about it. If it benefited my relationship with the players and the staff, then yes. But as you’re probably aware, in the current climate sometimes some of the stuff I don’t know suits me as well.” Better the devil you don’t know, is how he might have put it. 20 questions 1 How serious is the “severity” of the situation as Ally McCoist calls it? 2 Given that chief executive Graham Wallace, pictured, initiated the attempt to get the players to take a pay cut, and given that McCoist has backed the players in such a strong refusal, is the contradictory stance of the chief exec and manager a concern for the board? 3 How much is the club losing per month? 4 What are the average monthly figures for income and outgoings? 5 How much money remains from the share issue? 6 Is the club paying all its tax and VAT bills on time? 7 Are all debts being paid on time? 8 Are the club’s bankers, accountants and auditors comfortable with the current situation? 9 Given Wallace’s call for cuts, can the board say if it approved his strategy? 10 Did the board in any way initiate these potential cuts? 11 If the cuts are to proceed and the players won’t take a pay cut, where does the board see the savings coming from – player reduction or other staff wage cuts and redundancies, or both? 12 Given that the manager claims the player budget is a third or less of club costs, can the board say what the other two-thirds consist of? 13 Can the board give a guarantee that administration is not being considered? 14 Since the newco took over the club, who has made profits from share deals and how much did they make? 15 How much has been spent on paying off staff? 16 What new sources of investment are being sought, i.e. another share issue? 17 In the interests of transparency, will the board name the people behind shareholders Blue Pitch Holdings and Margarita Funds? 18 Since June 2012, how much has been paid to outside consultants? 19 Does the board intend to invite Dave King to discuss investment? 20 The chief executive told the manager that, with hindsight, bad decisions were made. What were they? http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/spfl-lower-divisions/rangers-previous-regimes-blamed-for-money-woes-1-3273992#.Utt_ykmjwdA.twitter

Cheers for that amms. It was more a view on youngsters in general than Mitchell in particular.

The first thing to do is get rid of Irvine, that will stop the rubbish and save money.

I don't know whether he would have made it at Ibrox under a different regime, but we should be taking these decisions earlier. Surely by 17/18 it can be seen if the lad will be a player, it would save money and give the youngster a chance of making it elsewhere, in football or another walk of life. I feel we keep lads on just to fill up teams.

I think what makes it so sad, some actually fall for this crap. I just can't believe we have supporters who don't seem to mind the Easdales, Stockbridge and Irvine. Nah, I'll be there till the end, son and grandson when I'm gone.

Sometimes I wish we were gone rather than the laughing stock we have become.

It was always going to happen. The only imponderables were when the ill-wind would finally whistle through the corridors again and how exactly the numbers crunched this time around. Some 23 months after many of them gathered to hear Craig Whyte tell them that the club was going into administration, the Rangers players filed into a meeting room at Murray Park after training early on Thursday afternoon. If some were not already bracing themselves for the worst, the grim look on Ally McCoist’s face soon changed that. Graham Wallace, the club’s chief executive, hardly attempted to gild the lily at the AGM on December 19 last year when he stated that current expenditure was too great for a top-flight club let alone one in the third tier of Scottish football. In that moment, the die was cast. Wallace initially met McCoist last week and for all the manager maintained a positive outlook he knew that harsh decisions would soon be upon him. On Wednesday the pair met again along with club captain Lee McCulloch. This time the tone was more sombre and it concluded with the idea of a 15 per cent wage reduction for playing staff being floated. The deal might not have been chiselled into tablets of stone but any hope the manager had of delaying the taking of medicine until the end of Wallace’s 120-day business review ended there and then. On Thursday, McCoist summoned the squad to a meeting room and once all were present he handed the floor to McCulloch to outline the proposed 15 per cent wage cut. The initial response was predictably subdued. One source revealed: ‘The players were shocked when Jig (McCulloch) outlined what was being asked for. They were asked for a simple yes or no to the demands. Many of the younger players couldn’ t afford to take a hit like that. ‘They had been warned something was in the pipeline but no one expected a gun going to their heads.’ Once the penny had dropped and thoughts had been gathered, there was anger: Why were players – not all of whom earn anything like £6,000 per week – being asked to take a drop in their money when those who were asking the question had not led by example? Contrary to some reports, the wage cut was not dismissed out of hand there and then. Only a fool would anticipate it being agreed, however, especially if there’s no similar gesture forthcoming from those on high. So there we have it: A proposed wage cut to stave off the very real threat of administration not two years after the club last fell into the centre of the earth. You could say it’s remarkable and, in one sense it is, but only the hard of thinking will not have seen it coming. If the definition of insanity really is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, then Ibrox is indeed the mad house of world football. It was bad enough that a combination of David Murray’s voodoo economics and Craig Whyte’s lies destroyed the oldco. For Charles Green and his gang of spivs to pull the rollercoaster back up the hill and to try and do it all again beggars belief. After the initial demise, they re-started in the Third Division, not with a tight belt and a canny three-year plan, but like some 21st Century Loadsamoney character, snapping up some of the best players in the country on wages they could ill-afford with no regard for a ledger that showed a burn of £1m a month. Anyone who dared question the need to pay £7,000 per week to players in the fourth tier of Scottish football was looked upon like they had two heads. Green, a man who said he wouldn’t leave Ibrox until he heard the Champions League music again, didn’t have any long-term considerations. It was all about dressing the window ahead of a share flotation in December 2012 but, in reality, the club was a financial basket case yet again. The £22m that IPO raised – together with two years of season tickets - evaporated on running costs and immoral executive bonuses. By the time Green left the club for a second time last August, his ‘big Yorkshire hands’ having taken over £1m out of the club, talk of another insolvency event was unavoidable. Annual accounts showing a £14.4m trading loss up until June of last year provided an ample illustration of the financial vandalism the so-called saviour of the club had reeked upon it – not that it would be troubling him too much in his Normandy chateaux. Paul Murray, the former director, hoped that he and three cohorts could take advantage of the worsening financial position by gaining seats on the board at the AGM but the growing influence of the Easdale brothers put paid to that – as well as Dave King’s immediate plans to becoming involved again. There remains mounting frustration both among fans and within the Ibrox dressing room that, thus far, 2014 has brought no sighting of the ‘significant investment’ those who opposed Murray had promised was in the pipeline. Ultimately, despite yesterday’s bombshell, players and management do see Wallace as an ally even though the chief executive could procrastinate no longer. Brian Stockbridge, the finance director, is on record as stating that the club will have just £1m in the bank come May, meaning savage cost-cutting is inevitable. Yesterday the whispers turned into cries of help from the rooftops. Sportsmail revealed last week that upwards of £1m is to be trimmed across the board but there are fears that this is now the thin end of the wedge. The football department is braced to bear the brunt of any economies but all areas of the club are now under threat. If McCoist’s players do eventually agree to the 15 per cent drop, the squad might just survive intact for the time being. If they don’t accede, the manager – and the club – have no obvious way out. Paying up the bulk of the value of the contracts held by the likes of Emilson Cribari and Sebastien Faure is a non-starter. Money has already flown out of the door to square up the likes of Fran Sandaza and Dorin Goian and, besides, there is no credit line. Loaning some players out might make a minimal difference but finding potential suitors is another matter considering the sky-high wages many players are on. Similarly, selling a prized asset is easy in theory but not quite so in practice. Only Lee Wallace would command the kind of fee that would make it worth the bother but there is a fundamental stumbling block to that: The player doesn’t want to go anywhere. Last night Wallace’s agent Gary Mackay told Sportsmail: ‘Lee Wallace wants to be a Rangers player at the end of his current contract and longer if possible.’ Footballers on good contracts not being willing to just up sticks and leave because it suits a club will come as nothing new to Graham Wallace – given his previous employment as CEO at Manchester City. But that was a club swimming in cash. Rangers as a business is sinking and today it is hard to escape the mental image of the chief executive frantically trying to stop the ship plummeting beneath the waves of financial misadventure by spooning water off the decks. He’ll have to work phenomenally hard to succeed. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2540928/Two-years-devastating-fall-financial-abyss-Glasgow-Rangers-face-painful-prospect-fight-survival.html#ixzz2qeBSyaQF Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook