Latest News - David Edgar RST

[Frankie 8,148]

Yeah, the whole experience thing has to be a contributory factor to the decreasing crowds....

 

The Stuttgart game was like no other European match I've ever been to at Ibrox. Really was a sad reflection of Scottish sport and society that such occasions have been sanitised to the point of library status. But, poor tactics and performances don't help obviously. And the �£40 ticket price was a joke.

 

All this and more needs to be addressed.

[maineflyer 0]

I also think it might be related to the overall sub-text that Scottish football is absolute shit. People are being told it's shit, and those that bother to go along invariably find out that it is, in fact, shit. No money, no EPL, no World Cup for us whilst the rest seem to be pulling away.

 

Also, when I was a kid - even a teenager and young adult, going to Ibrox was exciting not just to see the players, but for the experience. The crowd itself was part of the entertainment. The sanitised experience we enjoy/endure today must surely be having an effect in a lot of peoples' minds at the levels you suggest too? I know this isn't unique to this season but when you chuck it all together it seems to be having an effect in the sense that it's one less thing to keep people there when they might be considering otherwise.

 

All good and valid points. This certainly isn't a time for head-burying. I saw this in the late 1960/early 1970's. I saw it again in Greig's term and Wallace's 2nd term. There comes a tipping point where it all just falls apart and no amount of intellectuallising will stop it. By the same token, the eventual climb out of the abyss provided the very best of times as a Rangers supporter.

[calscot 0]

I agree with what you are basically getting at calscot..... but .... average crowds are going down - you can see it with your own eyes, and the CL gates this year must have been a shock to the system for everyone at Ibrox. Yes, they got the prices wrong, but never the less if they have to lower prices (which is the LAST thing they need to hear) to below what they were even last season or the season before just to fill Ibrox for CL matches there is something in the wind. Surely?

 

If January is bad and June worse, crowds will slide dramatically IMHO. Which is why things really need to get moving.

 

You may be right but your point is directly against the point I was already countering. The recession could also be a factor here as well as many other reasons.

[Zappa 0]

Also, when I was a kid - even a teenager and young adult, going to Ibrox was exciting not just to see the players, but for the experience. The crowd itself was part of the entertainment. The sanitised experience we enjoy/endure today must surely be having an effect in a lot of peoples' minds at the levels you suggest too? I know this isn't unique to this season but when you chuck it all together it seems to be having an effect in the sense that it's one less thing to keep people there when they might be considering otherwise.

Couldn't agree more. The all-seat stadiums, the sit down & shut up policing of the crowds & the agenda-driven campaign against Rangers fans for supposed 'sectarian' singing have all played their part in the death of the atmosphere. The supposed banning of TBB was a turning point IMO & it was no doubt intended to be exactly that by people who want nothing more than to break the backbone of our club.

[calscot 0]

I think one of the biggest problems we have, is that the perception of quality is affected by the Disneyland environment in the EPL which allows people to watch a greater concentration of top players than any league in history, including the Italian league of the 90's. The concentration of talent is probably greater than at any world cup.

 

It has become a showcase for top football and as we're effectively in the same country (and with an English based media) many Scots are watching this fantasy football and then comparing it to a much cheaper, home grown alternative.

 

I think OF fans could forgive their teams for not dishing up Italian style brilliance, but it's different when you're watching better quality on the telly, created at great expense from the likes of Man City and Spurs.

 

Football in Scotland has obviously been in decline compared to England for some time and the gates will fall eventually as a result. We reached a peak and we're now heading for deep recession - and I'm not talking about the economy.

 

Crowds may be dwindling but it is slowly and there are no huge protests at the gates of Ibrox. My point was it's nothing like the early 80's.

 

The only way Scottish football will keep it's head above water is a return to the parochiality of the past.

 

UEFA have crimanally allowed the slow death of football in the nations outside the top 5 countries.

 

Scotland itself has been criminal in allowing our society to treat sport as something trivial. We used to punch well above our weight at many sports, but we're a small country of 5M people in the poorest part of the UK. We've neglected our sporting heritage so much that we'll probably enter a period of punching well below our weight where could have no more right to expect success than similar sized countries like Lithuania.

 

We might still have trumped up expectations of thrashing the likes of the Romanian champions, but you have to wonder where that sort of arrogance comes from - apart from a having greater gdp and a high number of fans through the turnstiles who'd rather watch football than play it themselves.

 

We will only be able to compete with the rest of Europe when we do something different that offsets our small population from the likes of England, Germany and Spain.

 

When you have the worst obesity rate in the continent and one of the lowest life expectancies just what does our culture bring to lift us up to even compete with these countries?

 

We have to turn our whole culture upside down and make sport one of the most important parts of most people's lives- and then invest in the grass roots all the way up to the elite - like it appears they do in Australia who are constantly punching above their weight.

 

We need the average kid to be out at football training or other sports of an evening while his English counterpart is in playing soccer games on his XBox.

 

As a minnow, we need an edge and unfortunately we're actively seeking the opposite.

[rbr 1,247]

Calscot you may have missed the whole point of my post , in no way was I trying to compare apples with oranges , however the fans back then would not have settled for what we are witnessing now , we are basically in a two horse race every season back then you had Dundee Utd and Aberdeen giving us a doing , and we were nearly in as bad a way back then financially as we are now, I dont know how much a �£6 million debt in 84 equates to in today's money but it's a hell of a lot .

 

Today we are so far infront of other teams it's beyond a joke , we regularily are 20 odd points in front of third place teams and that's when we are having a shit season , yet we are still no further forward when you compare us to ordinary european sides , I do take on board your point about the EPL making every one's view distorted but hey that's the world we live in

Edited December 4, 2009 by rbr

[Bluedell 5,329]

I think one of the biggest problems we have, is that the perception of quality is affected by the Disneyland environment in the EPL which allows people to watch a greater concentration of top players than any league in history, including the Italian league of the 90's. The concentration of talent is probably greater than at any world cup.

 

I think that the comparison to Rangers teams/players in our recent history are more relevant.

 

None of the NIAR commitment, and big time players. None of stars of Advocaat. Under McLeish we had Fergie at his height, de Boer, and even guys like Amo that for all his faults you get really get behind, and Lovenkrands who could sometimes offer a threat. The Wallace team of the mid 80s had Cooper.

 

You look at the current team, and there's nothing in the midfield. Absolutely nothing. Boyd is a scorer but it's difficult for many to get behind him given his approach, and defensively we're no great shakes.

 

A generation of fans have been able to hang their hats on something, but now there is nothing.

[Zappa 0]

I dont know how much a �£6 million debt in 84 equates to in today's money but it's a hell of a lot .

It's actually less than �£15m rbr. That's with an average inflation rate of 3.7%.

[calscot 0]

I agree with you Bluedell BUT times are completely different now. I blame the EPL more than I blame anyone at Rangers. NIAR came after hooliganism put English football into the doldrums which also resulted in a bit of a slowdown elsewhere in Europe - and even the Taylor report slowed down the English recovery - while we had already built 80% of a compliant stadium with little debt to show for it.

 

We took advantage of this to become one of the top few richest clubs in the UK and pretty high up in Europe. We also became more attractive to play than for English teams as they were banned from Europe and could recruit the standard of players we'll probably never be able to do again. We were actually paying the best wages in the UK.

 

We had a window of opportunity and we seized on it at a time when Scottish football was already pretty healthy with Alex Ferguson and Jim McLean bringing through talent and tactical nous to allow two tiny clubs in European terms to be among the best in Europe.

 

That made the SPL temporarily become a prestigious and attractive league compared to the stench and decay of the English 1st division.

 

We cannot compare buying half the English team and the best players of a pretty decent Scotland team with the situation now. The world has turned on it's head since then and Man City are now supposedly the richest club around. Our day in the sun has gone and so has that of Scottish football.

 

Before that happened, we still went on to buy a high standard of European player and could compete financially with top English and Italian teams. We were also in a position to pick up the likes of Laudrup and Gasgoigne on the cheap as well as squander 4M on the hottest young striker in South America who was immediately injured - the same happening to one of the best Soviet based players. And that was a time when we were in the black.

 

Then you want to compare with Advocaat's team - a team we could never afford and are still paying for. You can never compare to a team so expensive that it almost made you bankrupt - how can we compete with that again - and the best players at the beginning of Eck's tenure were from that overspend.

 

Both eras are complete unfair comparisons and to me a symptom of what Rangers fans have become. We're now spoiled on a shortlived economic boom immediately followed by credit boom which has turned into a bust.

 

You can fairly compare the early 80's and bring out the memory of the likes of Cooper but I prefer the success of today from our dross of a team to the perpetual 5th place of that era.

 

Going back to the double treble of the 70's under Wallace has become too much of a stretch for most of us to remember.

 

So maybe we need to stop comparing apples with oranges and tackle the real problems of today. We'll never get anywhere harking back to a past that can never be repeated without some great upheaval in our country and an even bigger one for our neighbours.

 

So that's two of the biggest problems I have with much of the posts on here - our current situation is somehow supposed to be the same as when we were finishing well down the table and we're expected to be as good as we were when times were diametrically opposed to how they are now, or when we almost spent ourselves into oblivion.

 

We do have to sort out our problems but we have to see them in the current context. Mendes is supposed to be the player you are looking for but he's been an impostor for most of his time at the club - so what can we do about it?

Edited December 4, 2009 by calscot

[maineflyer 0]

Being kept informed is all we can expect right now.

 

Perhaps it's being diverted into heavy work issues this last week or so, coupled with the diversion of the AGM and the sad end to another Euro campaign, but I find myself not at all informed about the current RST activity. Are they still convinced there a TOSIT? Is that still held to be Graham Duffy? Or have the chairman's remarks on Monday put an end to current plans?

 

Does anyone know if anything is still being actively pursued or are they marooned by circumstance? More than anything else, I'd like to understand what the RST feels are still achievable options - to what extent have the 17 plans been pruned?