Excellent post from FF

[Bluedell 5,329]

Season Ticket sales are our biggest input and a vast number of holders will never support a boycott of renewal. Only when sales of these drop dramatically are Rangers likely to react and by then it is possibly going to be too late. I know of many who said they were giving up their ticket for one season only for them never to return.

 

I understand season ticket numbers are down on last season to the extent of 4,000-5,000, and they are expecting further drops next season.

 

I'm not sure what a boycott would achieve. Bigger losses, poorer quality on the pitch, driving more people away, and making the club less appealing to any buyer. It becomes a bit of a vicious circle.

 

We seem to be heading that way anyway without any organised boycott.

[maineflyer 0]

Of course there are solutions but they have to be credible ones.

 

You and I may agree that protest and/or ticket boycotts may be the only way to force the club to listen to what we have to say but the appetite is not there. Especially not when we can still win leagues and we need season ticket money to maintain our competitiveness - or indeed or very future.

 

However, there must be some way we can make our annoyance known before people start to drift inevitably away anyway. Season ticket sales have fell a fair bit over the last 2 seasons when we've won leagues. How much will they fall if we lose the SPL?

 

I've been saying it for long enough that we need a credible focal point to help us publicise the valid criticisms and concerns we have. I'm at a loss as to who or what that could be. Neither of the fan organisations seem able to lead/unify. No former player seems interested in standing up. We have no friends in the media to speak of. When was the last time our fan reps had their say in the Scottish Executive? Do we even have any celebrity fans anymore?

 

If we get beat tomorrow night, lose the SPL and the cups to Celtic then any protest movement may naturally increase. But we lost everything in 2007/08 without as much as a whimper from the support as a whole. It would take another year at least before momentum was strong enough to really worry the club.

 

Protest is all well and good (and I'd buy into it right now) but it needs to be tactically perfect for it to work. Amongst all the articles like this one painting a balanced view on the status quo, I see absolutely no protest strategy per se offered from anyone to change it. That's my point.

 

I made and still make no claims on ultimate effectiveness but I think unilaterally denying credibility is over the top and, to be fair, entirely subjective. To leverage a result is an obvious strategy - there are only two questions, do we understand the objectives and will the strategy deliver them? I believe the answer is yes, therefore the strategy is certainly credible. Bluedell doesn't believe it will work so for him the strategy isn't credible.

[Frankie 8,131]

I made and still make no claims on ultimate effectiveness but I think unilaterally denying credibility is over the top and, to be fair, entirely subjective. To leverage a result is an obvious strategy - there are only two questions, do we understand the objectives and will the strategy deliver them? I believe the answer is yes, therefore the strategy is certainly credible. Bluedell doesn't believe it will work so for him the strategy isn't credible.

 

Unilaterally denying it may well be a large jump but you only need look at previously under-subscribed protests under worse circumstances to see why I'd make such a generalisation.

 

You may get 50% support online (probably much more in fact) but beyond that you'll struggle for 10% (or probably less).

 

Again, I'm not saying protests to any scale wouldn't work, I'm just saying for that to happen you need good planning, fan unity, leadership and focal points. I see no evidence of that but will gladly help achieve it given the chance.

[Totti 0]

I don't understand how Bain has done a good job, everything he does is wrong.

 

How can the CEO of a disorganised, clueless organisation be considered competent.

Edited February 23, 2011 by Totti

[calscot 0]

I don't really understand what the goal of a protest of boycott is.

 

The manager is leaving, and we're appointing someone who in the current circumstances will satisfy most. The owner has stated and shown he wants to sell up. The debt is reducing which if we're not taken over should naturally lead to a more stable state where our income is our budget instead of being slashed to pay back capital and interest.

 

Boycotting season tickets will not directly affect the outgoing manager or disinterested owner, but will affect the reduction in debt and the spending of the new manager and be off-putting to potential buyers. That seems to me that it will only prolong the current discomfort and support the continuation of the status quo.

 

I would say that a significant proportion of season ticket reduction is an endemic thing across all clubs and Celtic have been hit about 50% harder than us. No matter what positive changes are possibly effected at the club, attendances will unlikely be back to where they were until the economy and financial feel good factor start to bounce back. The financial gap between us and the EPL is another external factor which is unlikely to change and that affects not only the standard on the pitch but also the relative standard compared to what people watch every week on Sky or MOTD. And that's brings us to another factor, in Scotland we get more comprehensive coverage of our neighbour's football than we do our own - even if our football was somehow more enjoyable to watch, the perception would be skewed by the high exposure and fancy packaging of the EPL.

 

I don't think those three external factors can be changed by any protests or ticket boycott. The timing is just not right.

[Frankie 8,131]

I don't really understand what the goal of a protest of boycott is.

 

This is a fair point to be honest.

 

Personally I just want better communication between the fans and the club. We don't need to know every single fact but given we're about to invest another �£15-20million into the club at renewal time we're surely entitled to know the direction of the club.

 

I don't think any Rangers fan is being unreasonable here. We don't expect to win the CL every year and we appreciate the financial playing field is skewed against us in many ways. However, we still have a huge fan-base and all the tools to be a successful, innovative club.

 

I also think we could cope with losing a league or more if we knew it was leading to a new club - one based on youth, scouting and fan involvement - as opposed to one on risky transfers and short-term loans.

 

All in all Rangers need to be more forthcoming with how they see our future - with or without SDM/Lloyds. If the current board think we're being strangled by the owner then they should say so and join with us. If they don't think a new owner is viable, then they should show us why and work with us to an alternative.

 

Again, in my opinion, I think some initial clarity could be achieved by organised protest. I don't necessarily mean rabbles outside Ibrox or banners within stadiums but an organised campaign of raising awareness. There exists a variety of medium to get our message out there and all the media are desperate for stories. Meanwhile, we work together as fans in the background to find common ground and unite to provide positive, credible solutions.

 

As always, this is all much easier said than done.

[Frankie 8,131]

Just to put some meat on the bones, I like the idea of an annual Rangers Rally which could be used as an ongoing vehicle for lobbying the club.

 

Imagine something like the flyer below - a day of debate and entertainment at a suitable venue. Open to all with invited guest speakers, this could be a chance to not only have a NARSA type event at home but bring together bears with like-minded opinions to discuss the issues of the time.

 

The organisers could spend a few months beforehand working on getting the subjects into the media spotlight via newspaper letter pages, radio phone-ins and supporter group meetings. Then an agenda could be agreed, experts invited to speak and ideas shared to provide solutions and innovation for our club.

 

I'm oft told of a strong Rangers family based on principles that may be disappearing year on year. Something like this would perhaps reverse such a trend while giving everyone the chance to have their say. Imagine hundreds of bears attending and the event expanding into something even bigger with charity, heritage and political arms. All with no membership fee obligations and anyone welcome to get involved. Could we then reclaim the ground we've lost?

 

We can all dream I guess.

 

[Frankie 8,131]

I'll expand the above into an article tomorrow...

 

...and correct the spelling within the graphic...

Edited February 23, 2011 by Frankie

[bmck 117]

One other point to note is that while it's tempting to direct ire at the club for failing to stand up for us, they are as much symptom as cause of our recent woes. For the short term present the kinds of things that Rangers fans are abstracted to believe in are highly out of fashion - they symbolically represent a lot of things intellectual types are nervous about. Be it empire, union, nationalism, illiberalism, what's happening at the club, and how are supporters are being portrayed, is almost directly corrolates to the fact that society's opinion formers tend to be leftist ideologues. Note, I'm not referring to genuinly leftist people - but a horrible parody of leftism that hates British history, views Scotland as part of an empire, sees British dabbling in Irish/African affairs as Evil, believes we are a force for evil in the world, falls over themselves to apologise for themselves and any hint of prejudice that may unconsciously be being emitted by them, etc.

 

Just like in films we make the older people racist, and pour all our anxieties about the issue onto them, Rangers fans are being scapegoated as the natural venting for all the unease about British history and multiculturalism etc from the opinion informing elites. These people essentially constitute a sort of new establishment defined by defiance against an imaginary establishment that no longer exists, if it ever did. The fact that we appear to have run out of friends in high places to spearhead any kind of movement just shows this. It won't be until people who care about Rangers enough start consciously or unconsciously regaining the top places in society that this will reverse itself, and those in the club won't find the bottle until such people are there. Celtic fans can't distinguish between petty leftism, Celtic, Catholicism, Celtic - most Rangers fans have the good sense to be able to divorce their politics, ambitions, and support from each other, but it's precisely the lack of politicised Rangers fans in high places that have left us open to such attacks - not the club itself. It's been a shift in culture that it seems like we've been caught the wrong side of. Unless you take the long view.