chilledbear

I've not seen them on the Forum. SUMMARY OF MEETING HELD BETWEEN THE RANGERS SUPPORTERS ASSEMBLY AND CRAIG WHYTE ON SUNDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2012 Present: Craig Whyte (RFC Chairman), Jim Hannah (RFC Supporters Liaison), Andy Kerr (President, RSA), Ross Blyth (Vice-President, RSA), Mark Dingwall (RSA Delegate for Rangers Supporters Trust, Tam Green (RSA Delegate for Scottish Delegates) The Assembly delegates thanked the Chairman for arranging to meet at such short notice and then set out the level of anxiety and concern among supporters following the recent media coverage of the Clubâ??s financial affairs. The Chairman said he was well aware of the concern and recognised how important it is to keep the fans informed and united â?? he stressed we must all stick together. The delegates went on to explain that there had been a unanimous mandate from all the fansâ?? representative groups to seek clarification on a timetable for publication of the Clubâ??s accounts. They explained that the accounts would place on record all the financial details and would remove the rumour and speculation. The Chairman explained that the accounts had been held up for two reasons â?? one was the auditors requesting further papers and information from the Club and the other was awaiting legal opinion on the outcome of the Big Tax Case. He confirmed that the audit is now complete and he was meeting the auditors on Monday 6 February 2012 to hopefully finalise the process. He promised to feed back the outcome of that meeting and provide a timetable for publication (see update below). He clarified that, in any event, the accounts had to be made available to the SPL and UEFA by 31 March 2012. He confirmed that after the accounts are published and, subject to the statutory notice period, an AGM will be called. There was then some discussion about the financial transactions around the borrowings from Ticketus against season ticket revenue. The Chairman confirmed the borrowing was over a three-year period and was secured against one of his companies and not Rangers Football Club. He stated that all monies were lodged and transacted through the Clubâ??s bank accounts â?? that included the £18m from him to clear the previous Bank debt, the Ticketus borrowings and the working capital available as part of the Takeover Agreement. In response to questions about the level of borrowing from Ticketus, the Chairman explained that it would be extremely difficult to borrow from any Bank at present and it was necessary to meet the running costs of around £3.5m per month. Questions were then posed about the Big Tax Case. If the case goes in the Clubâ??s favour, the Chairman stated that HMRC would appeal and that would mean a further lengthy period of the same uncertainty and would discourage investors, sponsors, etc. If we lose the tax case, we can appeal but there would then arise the issue of managing any accruing debt. He couldnâ??t speculate on the outcome but made it clear this is a vital period in the Clubâ??s history. He explained that all the shareholders and season ticket holders are the lifeblood of the Club and their interests would be looked after, no matter the outcome. In summary, the Chairman stated we are in very difficult times and we need to be able to reach the point where we can run the Club on a selfâ??sustaining basis. He is fully committed to that goal and will do all in his powers to achieve it. ADDENDUM - As promised, the Chairman provided an update following the meeting with the Auditors on 6 February 2012. He stated that he met with the auditors and they confirmed that they now have the majority of the documentation that they require to complete the accounts. Anything else that they require will be provided this week. They are confident that the accounts will be produced well in advance of March 31st. An AGM will be held as soon as possible after the accounts are signed.

Which one is worth £24m? He has never named the Company.

If the ticketus money has been used to pay the bank debt, where does this leave Rangers? What happens to the shares CW bought from DM? CW must have given Ticketus some collateral in case everything went tits-up, Ibrox, Auchenhowie?

Could be. I thought he paid £1 for the Club. Does purchasing the Club also mean paying off the bank debt?

What does this mean 'BBC Scotland has learned concerns have been raised of a breach of financial assistance regulations'

'Questions were then posed about the Big Tax Case. If the case goes in the Club’s favour, the Chairman stated that HMRC would appeal and that would mean a further lengthy period of the same uncertainty and would discourage investors, sponsors, etc. If we lose the tax case, we can appeal but there would then arise the issue of managing any accruing debt. He couldn’t speculate on the outcome but made it clear this is a vital period in the Club’s history'. From the minutes of the meeting between The Assembly and CW. So no matter what we are in the shit. Who wants a bet it'll happen before the tax verdict is published.

Two meetings this week between CW and Fan Groups. No reports or minutes from either ??

The BBC like many organisations are only interested in people with influence. The ordinary man and woman in the street are looked on at best as idiots, a pat on the head and a dismissive gesture, as if to say what do you know. It's something I have been on about for many years. It was obvious in NI, the republican side always had their 'well educated' lecturers, lawyers, media people to speak for them, while the Loyalists seemed to be ordinary working people. If we come to Scotland in the present time, you can see where I am going with this. Who speaks for us the Rangers Support, any well known Supporter seems to be afraid to stick his head above the parapet. I don't need to name the ones on the other side, there are too many to shake a stick at. Until we can get a well known spokesperson, or at the very least a united support, we will find it very difficult to have any sway at the BBC.

A bit late Ian.

When a season ticket meant what it said.

Was he sent off last game he played for us? Someone saying he could miss a couple of games. Not for me.

I have advocated since the start of the season bringing someone in with fresh ideas, a Ray Wilkins type, even for 2/3 days a week if that is all we can afford. I can agree with all that has been said about tactics, team selection etc. What makes me tear my hair out, is the space we allow the opposition when they have the ball. They always seem to have loads of space and time to bring the ball down and look for a team-mate. Terry Butcher said last season, how much they enjoyed playing against Rangers, because we allow teams to play their football, and that was under WS.

Vosene is recommended

If we see the accounts, we will/should see where the Ticketus money has gone.

As above 1-0 against Raith Rovers, McCulloch scored. Celik played and was subsituted. McKay didn't play. That's all I know.

Taken from FollowFollow Answers needed to satisfy baffled support By DARRELL KING 7 Feb 2012 WALTER SMITH stood inside a deserted Rugby Park and opted to gaze to the future, rather than revel in the moment. It was May 2011, and he had just guided Rangers to their third successive championship after a final-day demolition of Kilmarnock. It was the afternoon the baton was officially handed over to his assistant, Ally McCoist, and also the exact moment a coded warning was fired in the direction of the man who had, just days earlier, purchased the Ibrox club, Craig Whyte. Smith spoke of a pressing need for major investment in the Rangers first-team squad. If it wasnâ??t forthcoming, he conceded, it would be difficult for McCoist to build upon the foundations he had laid over the previous four years, especially with a renewed effort certain from Neil Lennonâ??s Celtic, given how close they had come to the SPL title. Smith had been at a meeting with Whyte along with others prior to the takeover from Sir David Murray and privately wondered if the sums had been done correctly. The fear was that he was millions of pounds out on what would be required, not hundreds of thousands. As the latest Rangers cash crisis continues to rage and the club lurches from one controversy to the next, supporters are trying to come to terms with what some of them perceive to be risky moves the new owner has made, like borrowing against four years of season ticket money for £24.4million from Ticketus. Those who were on the scene at the time are now claiming some of their fears may be about to be realised in terms of a lack of serious investment on the one thing that is the focal point of any club â?? the team on the park. Doubts were in place from the off over Whyteâ??s ability to fund the Rangers takeover; but he got over the line and picked up the baggage that carried some very heavy weight, none more so than an ongoing tax investigation into the use of Employee Benefit Trusts to pay players. His critics â?? and there were many inside the club, including the majority on the old board â?? had one final dig in their statement to share-holders the very night he took over. They questioned whether he had the one thing Rangers needed. Money. But Whyte was in control now, and it was up to him to prove them wrong. Rangersâ?? transfer dealings have become more of a soap opera than Eastenders, but here SportTimes tries to shed some light on what has gone on, where the cash has gone, and just why McCoist has been left in a situation where the strikeforce he attempted to rescue a Scottish Cup-tie against Dundee United last weekend with ended up being the inexperienced Andy Little and Salim Kerkar. THE PLEDGE The burning issue for everyone at Rangers post-takeover was just how much money would be available for new players. The squad had performed heroics to win eight trophies in the previous four seasons, but was in much need of new blood. In part three of the circular Whyte sent to shareholders on June 3, 2011, it read: â??The Rangers FC Group (Whyteâ??s takeover company, previously named Wavetower) has under-taken to provide £5m for invest-ment in the playing squad.â? The grey area in this was that figure was never specified. Would it be for transfer fees alone? Or would it be to pay wages and transfer fees? THE NEW CONTRACTS Rangersâ?? wage bill for the playing staff when Whyte took over was £14m. He quickly moved to tie up three of the squad on new, lucrative long-term contracts. Allan McGregor, Steven Davis and Steven Whittaker were all secured on new deals, and it is undoubtedly good business to secure major assets and enhance their values should other clubs show interest in signing them. But why did the due diligence not reveal that Rangers were spending more than they were earning, if Whyteâ??s figures last week stack up? He was reported as saying the club was spending £45m, but bringing in £35m before any European income from either tournament, which can never be guaranteed. Was it a good plan to rack the wage bill up, especially for a player like Whittaker who, at times, struggles for consistency and was under offer from Turkish side Bursaspor at that time? He is now believed to be earning well in excess of £20,000-a-week, and it may have made better sense to take the Turksâ?? money â?? given the squad needed plenty of new bodies â?? with the cash being spent on contract extensions and the incoming fee utilised elsewhere. The wage bill is now believed to be back up by about £4m to £18m. THE TRANSFER STRATEGY Rangers embarked on some farcical attempts to sign players. Given what we know now in terms of the finances, were there ever any serious attempts being made to sign players like Roland Juhasz from Anderlecht and Carlos Cuellar from Aston Villa? Whyte was reported in the past few days describing a £10m funding gap season on season â?? so where was the money and wages going to come from to bring in players in that bracket, along with the likes of Dundee Unitedâ??s David Goodwillie, who was always going to require a transfer fee of £2m? Whyte admits he budgeted for the Europa League and the potential £5m it would bring â??it would appear that money was being earmarked to fund this level of transfers as, when they suffered the embarrassment of being dumped by Maribor in the qualifiers for that tournament, just weeks after being sent spinning out of the Champions League play-offs by Malmo, all interest in any players with significant fees ended. Clearly, the European money was crucial to these targets, if they were ever going to happen. When the dust finally settled at the end of August on a transfer window that had, at times, left Rangers looking like hapless negotiators, at best, and without a clue as to what they were actually doing at worst, seven players had been acquired. Lee Wallace, Juan Ortiz, Dorin Goian, Alejandro Bedoya, Carlos Bocanegra, Matt McKay and Kyle Bartley, a loan arrival from Arsenal. The first instalment on Wallaceâ??s £1.5m transfer from Hearts was said to be £800k, with the balance still to follow. Exact fees for Ortiz, Bedoya and McKay have been hard to establish, but club sources say the outlay was believed to be £1.2m for the trio who have hardly kicked a ball. Again, Goian and Bocangeraâ??s fees are hard to know for sure, but McCoist has spoken of them being great business at, again, around £1.2m for the pair. So, doing the arithmetic, Rangers spent somewhere in the region of £3.2m in the summer on fees. THE SUMS THAT DONâ??T SEEM TO ADD UP Madjid Bougherra was sold to Qatari side Lekhwiya for £1.8m in August. It is believed this fee was paid in one lump sum from the cash-rich Middle East outfit. Charlie Adamâ??s move to Liverpool â?? and the fee has been reported at £7m â?? would have earned Rangers a further £650,000 as they were on 10% of anything Blackpool sold him for over £500,000. Whyte has said in three interviews inside the past few days that he had to pay off James Beattie to the tune of £1m last August to buy out the last year of his deal. This use of resources is being picked up on by supporters. Whyte was quoted as saying that he had to â??findâ?? £1m to pay another instalment to Rapid Vienna for Nikica Jelavic. This is accurate, but it never came out of the blue. Vienna, in the knowledge that Rangers were having major financial problems, were concerned that they would not get their money if Jelavicâ??s new club went to the wall and therefore had a sum of 2.4m euros (£2m) guaranteed in a payment plan by the Rangers board at that time. Of that, £1m was to be paid in August 2011, and another has still to be paid in August 2012. The management accounts for the end of April/start of May show this, and Whyte would have known this from the due diligence process. Also, what the chairman failed to point out when asked to explain at the weekend exactly where the Ticketus money has been spent in response to allegations that it funded his purchase of the club, was that Rangers took in £3m in the summer for transfer deals outstanding to them. This sum was made up of instalments for the sales of Pedro Mendesâ?? to Sporting Lisbon, Danny Wilson to Liverpool and Kevin Thomsonâ??s to Middlesbrough. In short, Rangers took in £5.45m in the summer for Bougherra, Adam and the balance on transfers â?? and paid out £5.2m on the Jelavic payment, the Beattie pay-off and the transfer fees for six players. That leaves, and there needs to be a bit of give or take as we donâ??t have exact figures for the monies spent, potentially a net profit of around £250,000. But Whyte insists £5m was spent on strengthening the squad. THE JANUARY FIASCO With Steven Naismith out injured for the season, McCoist wanted to bring in one forward last month. If Jelavic was to be sold, it would have to be two. This situation was intensified further when Kyle Lafferty suffered a serious hamstring injury on January 2 and was ruled out for six to eight weeks. McCoist said very early on in the month the nightmare scenario would be Jelavic going just before the deadline. If truth be told, was there a Rangers fan out there who didnâ??t see it being played out that way? Especially when an inflated price of £10m was put on his head, leading to many interested parties backing away. Jelavic was punted to Everton with a few hours of the window left. This was despite a higher offer from Leicester City of £6.5m being rejected in August, and the so-called £9m offer from an unnamed club that was also supposedly kicked into touch. With this oft-mentioned £10m funding gap in mind and no European revenue, would it not have made more sense to sell the Croat back then? Meantime, a botched move for Fran Sandaza fell through, and no strikers arrived. A token £1m bid for Norwich City skipper Grant Holt was laughed out on deadline night. THE TICKETUS DEAL Today, the major question on the lips of every Rangers fan is how can the club be skint when they took in £24.4m from Ticketus in the summer, on top of the £8.8m cash in hand that was shown in the June 30, 2011 unaudited figures (basically season ticket monies), plus all the money Whyte pledged in the circular to put in â?? £5m for playing squad, £5m in working capital, £2.8m for the small tax case and £1.7m for stadium improvements (total £14.5m). That is a lot of cash ... and clearly, as has been shown above, itâ??s not all been spent on the team. If the gap in revenue was £10m, why not just borrow that from Ticketus? The maximum the club had ever taken in advance in the past was £5m. And, while the Ticketus deal is again being digested, Whyte has now used two descriptions of what he claimed was a bill still owed to that company when he took over. Last Thursday, he was quoted as saying it was £7m. Weekend reports suggested it was â??several millionsâ??. The April/May management accounts for Rangers are believed to show Ticketus were owed a balance of £1.7m that had to be paid back by May. It appears that the more things change, the more they stay the same for the Rangers fans. More questions than answers, left to try and absorb an avalanche of claims and counter-claims. Meantime, the clock is ticking on the production of the accounts they badly need to see, and the AGM they deserve. Meantime, manager McCoist is left to consider fielding a guy who has never started a game for the club, and a reserve who has been out injured for the guts of a year at Dunfermline this weekend as he tries to stay alive in the title race ...

The BBC has changed out of all recognition, no arguement there.

Don't worry, he's not going anywhere until he makes his money.

I agree on your criticism of the media, they are out to get Whyte, though I have to say he has brought a lot of it on himself. The thing is, because the media attacks Whyte, it doesn't follow that I should support him, not if I think he is bad news for Rangers.

I don't think he is the person to be the owner of Rangers. He may have lied in Court, he also may have lied to the Support. I support Rangers, not Craig Whyte, they are not the same.

Why do we have to wait so long for the HMRC verdict ?

ITâ??S time for Rangers fans to play the numbers game â?¦ and they must look beyond the most obvious statistic they awoke to today: That two out of this seasonâ??s three domestic trophies are gone after their meek Scottish Cup capitulation at home to Dundee United. Look beyond, too, the fact that they have won just one of seven cup ties this term when European action is considered; that they have blown a one-time 15-point lead in the SPL over Celtic, who must now be short odds to romp to a Treble. Those are the numbers attached to the football fall-out. However, as the embattled manager, Ally McCoist, said before the United humbling which was, significantly, watched by fewer than 18,000 supporters: Does whatâ??s happening on the pitch really matter any more? Given the way just about every one of those in blue hid yesterday, itâ??s not inconceivable that is the feeling in the Rangers dressing room. This looked like a bunch of players who had seen one headline too many, and chucked it. It also looked like a group who, if truth be told, are bereft of real quality as a result of asset-stripping without adequate replacements. And those who do have anything about them, have lost it. But, again, thatâ??s not where the Rangers supporters should be training their sights. Itâ??s hard not to feel sympathy for a support who are in a fog of financial confusion, attempting to find some kind of clarity as to exactly how desperate and dangerous these times are for a club now into its 140th year of existence. And, make no mistake, these are the most perilous times Rangers have ever had to face. But it is absolutely imperative that each and every one of them stops, digests what they are being told, and asks the burning questions of the man who purchased the club last May, Craig Whyte. Letâ??s track it back to then, the time of the takeover. Whyte proclaimed that Rangers were â??debt freeâ?? when he finally sealed a deal to replace Sir David Murray as the majority shareholder. But, inside nine months, if we are doing the sums based on what is being put out there by the owner and chairman, they are now a minimum of £42m in the red â?? £18m to his company, who apparently paid Lloyds for the bank debt, and £24m to Ticketus, after the income expected from 100,000 future season ticket sales was borrowed against. And that is before the potential HMRC liability, which could be as high as £49m if they are found guilty of mis-using the Employment Benefit Trusts, with a tribunal set to announce its ruling on that lengthy investigation some time next month. Whyte was asked yesterday if he feared a season ticket boycott, something which would, of course, put enormous strain on the Ticketus arrangement, as it is after all based on season ticket sales. Well, yesterday his support voted with their feet. What happens if they decide en masse not to renew their season tickets? With the product Rangers have on the park right now, who would shell out up front to fund that? This is a dangerous strategy being deployed by Whyte, and a warning came yesterday when the attendance flashed up â?? but itâ??s too late to back-track with Ticketus. He talks of a £10m gap in funding. Was that not evident when due diligence was done? Would it not have been easier to sell Nikica Jelavic last August when more money was on the table than enter into this Ticketus arrangement, or work at getting that figure down over the year? And exactly why is there a funding gap of that size. Rangersâ?? unaudited accounts to year-end June 30, 2011, showed £9m cash in the bank. Where is the Ticketus money? Are we to assume it will be in the audited accounts that must appear before March 31 in order for Rangers to be given a licence to play in Europe next season? But, and this is based on Whyteâ??s figures, if £33m was set aside from his own wealth for this deal, as he claims, if the £24m from Ticketus went into Rangersâ?? bank, add in the £9m that was lying there from season ticket cash already banked, throw in Madjid Bougherraâ??s £1.8m and Charlie Adamâ??s sell-on clause of £900,000, then thatâ??s over £68m in terms of incomings. Even running at a loss of £800,000 a month, as he claims the figure is, just how can Rangers have no money and have to sell Jelavic on the cheap in what appears to be a bid to get cash in the door just to keep them going? Whyte can, of course, clear all of this up. Produce accounts. Have an AGM. Explain why the Ticketus deal was not in the shareholdersâ?? circular sent out detailing the financial detail of what his takeover entailed. Rangers fans must do the sums â?¦ they must demand answers. http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/sport/...ums-1.1146703?

We can all live in hope, but we listened to an owner and never questioned him for years. We are where we are, because of it.

Riordan was on trial with Blackpool, and thought not good enough.

If it's the truth, should it matter where it comes from. I see Darrell King has a similar piece in the ET.