Tom English: Walter Smith not blameless at Rangers

[26th of foot 5,827]

English has a few decent points well made, fair enough.

 

However, it appears Walter Smith is this week's target of choice.

 

The usual suspects have been chorusing on Walter's conduct since the weekend, English has added his contribution. I heard some of Radio Snyde's contribution last evening and a couple of articulate Yahoos were allowed to demonise Smith and demand he be made to answer for perceived ills. The objective Host of ra Show, Jim ra Tim Delahunt was busily reinforcing these calls with, "maybe closer scrutiny should be paid to Walter's contribution".

 

The RTC Blog has set a precedent on behaviour that cannot be let go. On a morning when it appears Dunfermline could be liquidated by early next week, the Hootsmon's Chief Football Writer has chosen to focus on Walter Smith?

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It was hard to listen to Walter explaining our wage bill as 'we have to because we're Rangers' and not come to the same conclusion as Tom English.

 

There's an argument that the club needs to be seen to act big in order to sell ST's.

There's an argument that the club could have drawn 'them' in a Cup, and wanted to avoid a double figure defeat.

There's an argument that those in charge were feeling their way and made mistakes.

 

But the argument 'we had to spend because we're Rangers' doesn't wash.

 

I really don't think the problem is spending on the players, it's the spending on the board, the missing millions AND a massive shortfall in income.

 

Even with all the greed and other stuff, the board have been pathetic in the latter regard and totally relied on ticket sales which in this day and age is usually a small fraction of the potential income.

 

We should easily have a turnover of around £31m instead of £19m. Yes we have less money from TV and sponsorship and no European money but with all that we were up at 60 odd million.

 

We might be in the lower divisions but we still have 45k supporters filling the stadium and a pro-rata greater number loyal to the club and so the commercial earning potential shouldn't really have diminished to less than 10% of what it was.

 

As mentioned before, despite bringing in almost 80k supporters, Dortmund's income from gate receipts is less than double ours, yet their turnover is about seventeen times our amount (about £340m)! They get over £100m from commercial income alone. Surely a club our size with the support we have we can bring a paltry tenth of that?

 

When it comes to local marketing you'd actually expect us to have the potential of more than 50% of Dortmund's income - we have more than half the fans.

 

Maybe the trouble is that by having a partnership with Dormund you don't alienate the rest of the country and become despised by a quarter of the population...

 

We definitely seem to be doing something wrong...