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Colin Kaepernick of the SF 49ers (an American Football Franchise, for any learned judges among us).

There are two choices. Either Man City's acquittal is corrupt or UEFA's charges were incompetent. Either way it says a lot about the continuing decline of football as a fair and competitive sport. Cheating is endemic in football. Players cheat routinely at game level, clubs cheat at every opportunity and those running the game make the mafia look like the Salvation Army. It's hardly unique in the "sporting" world but football has become so seedy, the stench of corruption so pervasive, that were it not for my deep attachment to Rangers I wouldn't cross the street to watch another game. UEFA, FIFA, names that make your skin creep, run for and by the rich and the very rich. It's like Celtic in Scotland, only on a grand scale.

I don't mind clubs coming in for Morelos at all. I want more than 20M Euros, though.

Surely 'equality' is about equal access to opportunity rather than forced distribution of wealth? In a country like the United States there can be little doubt that the colour of your skin has a direct impact on the opportunities you are given. This sits uncomfortably with the 'American Dream' narrative that's so important to many there as well as the belief that 'anyone' can 'make it' and the whole "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses" idea that's so intrinsic in American culture. That's how I've always understood it anyway. I don't think that idea is as set in the DNA of our culture here though. Class has always been a much bigger barrier in this country and it's fairly colour blind. While plenty of people from modest backgrounds have found success in various fields in the UK the concept is not as important in our culture as in some other countries. Anyway, back to Rangers. Sport is one of the areas where you will see black people have high profiles and success. In our current culture being good at sport brings not only wealth and profile but also a platform. I think that's why many black sports men and women feel the need to speak about political matters, there is an unseen pressure on them to use their profiles that equivalent white sport's people perhaps don't always feel. As football is the highest profile sport in this country footballers have the biggest platform. The current Rangers team has a far higher percentage of black players in it than the support does. That's not racism, simply that the black population of Scotland is less than 1% and it's smaller again in Northern Ireland, the two main areas we draw our support from. So, in all honesty, 'black issues' aren't high profile among our support or indeed in our country. You could argue the black players at our club and the club as a whole should keep out of these topics, after all what have they got to do with us? But then if these subjects matter to them perhaps we should encourage them to speak about them, to teach us, to help us understand what being a young, black man in 21st century Britain is actually like. I've almost no insight into that. I've a lot of respect for Jermaine Defoe. Not only is he a talented footballer but he's an impressive human being as well. He's a consummate professional who has made sacrifices to ensure he's made the most of his talent. He's also demonstrated empathy and enormous responsibility for others. His friendship with the terminally ill child Bradley Lowrey seemed genuine and heartfelt and his use of his profile to help that boy and raise awareness and money for his condition and others like him was exemplary. So if Jermaine Defoe wants to use his profile this time to raise awareness of racism in society, I'm okay with that. I think that's a good thing. If that involves 'taking a knee' or wearing an armband or some other symbolic gesture that might make someone like me, who has known very few black people and gives the subject little time, pause for thought then I suspect that can only be a good thing. If the club want to support him in this I'm okay with that too, if some, or all, of his teammates want to join in then I'm pretty relaxed with that. It won't change the world, but it might help enlighten some of it. As for politics and football not mixing I tend to disagree. Football clubs used to be a reflection of the communities they came from, we certainly were. This is hardly new. I read an obituary of Jack Charlton at the weekend and was reminded of the money and time he gave to striking miners during the 80s, Robbie fowler was fined once for wearing a T-shirt in support of striking Liverpool dockers and recently Pep Guardiola was reprimanded for wearing a label badge raising awareness of issues in Catalonia. Most modern football clubs want to keep sponsors and broadcasters on side and so tend to take a very corporate view of 'politics', fearing a backlash or criticism if they make a misstep. Rangers will be no different I suspect. They'll follow the mood and media narrative and take their lead from that. Forgive my cynicism. As someone who started watching football when many ground's idea of a toilet was a wall with a trough at the bottom and which by half time was ankle deep in urine the idea that we're speaking about toilets for trans people is almost amusing. I suspect the club will wait for the politicians to deal with this and legislate one way or another. As we're responsible for voting for them that feels like a wise move.

West Ham might have him

The wages of these footballers will take a fair old hit. ?

You don't have to sign up to BLM to subscribe to anti-racism.

Says who? Are people to pick and choose what parts of BLM the act of taking the knee supports? You are trying to define what it represents whereas others will interpret in a different manner. Who is correct? If BLM stuck to the one issue of anti-racism then it would be more straightforward but they have not, and therefore support of them as an organisation goes beyond the support of the anti-racism message.

Getting Bristol City into the top flight would be viewed as a higher achievement than winning the Scottish title with Rangers, in England. Wouldn't surprise me, although I suspect Gerrard wouldn't want to leave Rangers without winning something. 0 trophies out of 6 is a poor return.

I wouldn't mind seeing us promote that more widely, not just in images at Central Station. It's often forgotten that we had an Egyptian muslim playing for us in the early years of last century.

Surely nobody can grouse about that.

How about "The Rangers"?

I dont know why we bother to have a youth at up. Mcrorie is the last player I can remember to come through the ranks and we punted him out on loan.

Hot off the press!! We will have to wait a few days for the full judgement; well, Coronavirus has lengthened the time taken to clear deposits. Manchester City's Champions League ban lifted by court of arbitration for sport Cas also reduces City’s fine to €10m City have denied wrongdoing throughout David Conn Mon 13 Jul 2020 09.34 BSTLast modified on Mon 13 Jul 2020 09.56 BST https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/jul/13/manchester-city-champions-league-ban-lifted-cas-court-of-arbitration-for-sport Manchester City’s two-year ban from the Champions League for a serious breach of Uefa’s financial fair play rules has been overturned by the court of arbitration for sport, which has also reduced the club’s fine to €10m (£9m) from €30m. Cas’s panel of three lawyers found that City failed to cooperate with the investigations by Uefa’s club financial control body (CFCB), which oversees FFP compliance, begun in February last year, and imposed the €10m fine for that. The panel said City had shown a “disregard” for the principle that clubs must cooperate with a governing body’s investigations, and conducted an “obstruction of the investigations”. However on the central finding by the CFCB’s “adjudicatory chamber” (AC) that City’s Abu Dhabi ownership had disguised their own funding as independent sponsorship by the state’s commercial companies, Cas found “most of the alleged breaches were either not established or time-barred”. As those were the most serious findings, that had resulted in the AC banning City from European competition for two years, “clearly more significant violations than obstructing [Uefa’s] investigations, it was not appropriate to impose a ban on participating in Uefa’s club competitions for MCFC’s failure to cooperate with the CFCB’s investigations alone,” Cas said. The quashing of the two-year ban represents a major victory for City’s hierarchy in the conclusion of this bitterly-contested episode, and a defeat for Uefa and its semi-independent CFCB structures. No full judgment was issued by Cas, only a brief one-page press release, so the full reasons and explanations will not be made public for “a few days,” Cas said. City said in a statement: “The club welcomes the implications of today’s ruling as a validation of the cub’s position and the body of evidence that it was able to present. The club wishes to thank the panel members for their diligence and the due process that they administered.” City, whose executives had furiously denied wrongdoing and throughout a 20-month saga consistently accused Uefa’s processes and decision-makers of being biased against the club, had appealed to Cas after the adjudicatory chamber of Uefa’s club financial control body (CFCB) imposed the sanctions in February. The Champions League ban, a most severe sanction, and a €30m fine were imposed by the CFCB after it concluded that City had committed “serious breaches” of Uefa’s FFP regulations “by overstating its sponsorship revenue in its accounts and in the break-even information submitted to Uefa between 2012 and 2016”. Uefa said in response to Monday’s verdict: “Uefa notes that the CAS panel found that there was insufficient conclusive evidence to uphold all of the CFCB’s conclusions in this specific case and that many of the alleged breaches were time-barred due to the five-year time period foreseen in the Uefa regulations. “Over the last few years, financial fair play has played a significant role in protecting clubs and helping them become financially sustainable and Uefa and ECA [European Club Association] remain committed to its principles.” The lifting of the ban will come as a huge relief to City in terms of status, finance, their prospects of retaining Pep Guardiola as manager beyond the end of his contract next season and their hopes of holding on to key players and attracting signings. Kevin De Bruyne had publicly said he would review his situation if the ban were upheld. The guilty finding followed an investigation sparked by the publication of “leaked” emails and documents by the German magazine Der Spiegel in November 2018. A selection of the published City documents appeared to show that City’s owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan of the Abu Dhabi ruling family, was mostly funding the huge, £67.5m annual sponsorship of the City shirt, stadium and academy by his country’s airline, Etihad. One of the leaked emails suggested that only £8m of that sponsorship in 2015-16 was funded directly by Etihad and the rest was coming from Mansour’s own company vehicle for the ownership of City, the Abu Dhabi United Group. FFP rules are aimed at encouraging clubs to break even and spend only money they make in revenues, not pay excessively for players in wages and transfer fees subsidised by outside funding from owners. The system means that sponsorships are an important element of clubs’ financial reporting and ability to sign players, and must truly be commercial revenues from outside companies, not disguised owner funding. City refused to comment or engage with initial inquiries from Uefa and the CFCB’s investigatory chamber, on the basis that the emails had been leaked or stolen. Der Spiegel, in its extensive coverage, had anonymised its source as “John”, and quoted him saying he had not hacked computers to obtain the emails. Shortly after Der Spiegel’s publication, the source was identified as a Portuguese national, Rui Pinto, who was arrested shortly afterwards and has been charged with 147 criminal offences, including hacking and other cybercrimes, which he denies. The charges relate to Portuguese football clubs and other organisations, not to the “leaks” of City’s or Uefa’s emails. After the CFCB’s investigatory chamber began a formal inquiry to examine whether the documents did expose the overstatement of sponsorship income, City initially welcomed it, and said they would present evidence to show “the accusation of financial irregularities are entirely false”. However the investigatory chamber was not convinced, and charged the club last May. The Fiver: sign up and get our daily football email. The adjudicatory chamber, chaired by José Narciso da Cunha Rodrigues, a former general prosecutor in Portugal, and including the prominent English sports law barrister Charles Flint QC, determined after hearings in January that City had indeed committed serious breaches of FFP, and also that the club had failed to co-operate in the investigation carried out by the investigatory chamber. City then issued a public statement accusing the process of having been “prejudicial” and claiming it had ignored “a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence”. Declaring that they did not recognise that the CFCB and its senior lawyers operate independently of Uefa itself City alleged that it was “a case initiated by Uefa, prosecuted by Uefa and judged by Uefa”. The club’s statement expressed confidence that they would get “an impartial judgment” at Cas. A few days later, however, City’s chief executive Ferran Soriano acknowledged the independence of the CFCB chambers, by saying of them: “This is not Uefa,” and describing Uefa as an “association of associations” with people who work “very hard for the benefit of … the clubs of Uefa like ours, but also for the benefit of football”.

No sorry was suppose to come after enrolling in MyGers I have e-mailed club re matter.

Staggeringly I see he has just won Arsenal player of the month. How a once mighty club have fallen if a defender who can’t defend and costs you the winning goal in the big derby match gets POTM. There is a good reason Arsenal are 9th, 43 points behind the leaders, and continuing to throw huge money at defenders who can’t defend is a good place to start.

Sounds like a total non-story

As long as money is not stolen or the proceeds of crime then it's no one's business how much they spend or how they spend it City have been great for the English game this past decade more power to their wallets ?

If Bristol make an offer he would be silly not to go down and talk to them and see what they have to offer he might have a better chance of success out of the west of Scotland bigoted madhouse.

Minimum wage for all and no Jimmy Hill to save them

I think he can do the job of back-up to Tav.

We all seem to agree that BLM is a political movement that has several aims, some of which are not directly about anti-racism. I don't have a problem with Jermaine Defoe 'taking the knee', as he said he would. I do have a problem with Rangers FC promoting or aligning with the BLM movement because it is a political movement.

I can't either. I believe he is 100% committed. PLUS...if he dumps Rangers for Bristol City...and that goes tits up...he won't have anywhere to turn. No one will want to touch him...save for some fourth division side...IMHO.

You know nothing of the south, the culture, or people, other than the scant few times you may have driven through or visited on 'holiday'. Stick to Europe bud, something you know about...you'll not look like an ass in the end.

It was an assumption I made. We've had players of various ethnicities and nationalities for several decades.

I must have missed this caveat. Where did the club say that? Regarding the OP, for what it's worth I'm sick of the political stuff becoming conflated with the club. Equally I'm sick of the increasing restrictions on free speech. As far as the trans debate is concerned, I have a view that would be very unpopular with all trans people but I don't want our club to get involved in that debate. Leave that to the politicians and law makers to sort out (although in my opinion this current government mob will screw that up too). Our club has demonstrated that it can't even get enough support to ask for an enquiry when everyone knew corruption was afoot in our league, so who will care one bit about what our club thinks about non football matters? As a club and support we have much bigger problems to deal with if this idiotic/dangerous 'social distancing' continues. I've still not seen or heard anything from the club that suggests we are preparing well for the repercussions if the stadium continues to be empty. So to worry about who is standing next to us in a toilet is utterly irrelevant to me at this point.

I'm beginning to hate that club. You just knew it would be overturned by the way the BBC and others kept focusing on the countdown to the appeal in their headlines. I think corruption may have started, or at least have been accelerated, by the abandonment of amateurism in the Olympics and Rugby Union.

Southern White racist nonsense. Brought to you by the same people who told you that Covid did not exist and that they should fail to recognise social distancing as it impinged on their 'freedom'.

Anyone who has educated themselves about the BLM agenda knows it isn't just about racism. It's overtly political.

That is not what they would be doing if they take the knee or whatever. I think only Spurs have refused but maybe that is to do with a large Jewish support. Even so very much doubt that displaying a BLM banner implies support for your first 2 propositions; it is simply an extension of the idea that racism is wrong.

I'd take €20m. More would be better of course but buying clubs are well aware of the financial realities of the Scottish game. A key test of our DoF

I always thought TB was overly biased when commenting on Tierney. I never thought he was that bad in previous games, but yesterday he was truly woeful: couldn't receive or hold a ball, couldn't pass or cross, and his defending was non-existent, merely jogging about. I still prefer the moniker 'crispy hips'.

Agree. And what are the costs having youth teams and all the various coaches when virtually none of the players become first team regulars? Could that money be better spent elsewhere?

I see Kierney cost the Gunners again today, losing his man at a corner to concede the winning goal in their big derby match. Then was hooked again shortly afterwards. He really is the most awful defender £25M can buy. Never mind, having played about half a dozen games in a row an injury must be just around the corner for the Cadbury man.

Instead of taking the knee, how about Rangers doing the hokey-kokey before every game. Show them kaffliks what’s what.

I'm too busy trying to defund the Police and destroy the nuclear family. Sorry.

The whole trans rights argument is really complicated, in my opinion. It's not something that I've given a huge deal of thought to, but I am in favour of them having some rights to an extent, but there is a line, and Gonzo's point highlights it. People should be able to live their lives as they want but people should not be able to pick and choose which toilet they use, Charloch's point also highlights the danger of adopting a specific organisation as a way to make a point, on racism on this occasion. English football and the media are going overboard in support of BLM, and there's an element of bullying in it. It was good to see some F1 drivers not willing to take the knee but show their support for anti-racism in another manner that wasn't in support for a questionable organisation like BLM.

I wonder if people would be so dismissive of Charloch's points if they took a young daughter to Ibrox and saw a man dressed as a woman following her into the toilet. Just saying...

Neither. The Charter promotes an agenda that is destructive of the dignity and rights of women. Rangers have many female supporters. Promoting trans rights means vitiating women’s rights. It’s a zero sum game. If the club wants to position itself in alliance with such a subversive agenda it ought to expect rigourous questioning of the policy. What does the Charter mean for female-only spaces in Ibrox Stadium, for instance? Rangers are throwing female supporters under the bus by endorsing trans rights. Of course, they are not alone in this. As far as BLM goes, many Rangers supporters gave their lives to fight the kind of fascism BLM espouses. We are rightly proud of the role our armed forces play in the life of our country, and we celebrate this at Ibrox. You can’t affirm respect for our forces and take the knee for BLM at the same time. It is right to support the Kick it Out campaign. Racism has no part in football. Neither does the kind of Marxist fascism BLM espouse and enforce. Being anti-women and pro-fascism wouldn’t be a good look. Many women are waking up to the implications of the trans agenda. For instance, my wife wouldn’t patronise a business that promotes a pro-trans agenda. She isn’t a bigot. She is a woman who understands. It isn’t an abstract theoretical question. Chasing woke points has real-world consequences.