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andy steel

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Everything posted by andy steel

  1. andy steel
    Can't argue? Ha! <John Wayne voice> That'll be the day. We're not talking about democracy, though. We're talking about a form of ownership of a product which you have to pay to be a part of. Although this may, in Spencian theory, amount to democracy, it ain't. Widening the ownership base = democracy is a fallacy. I do see the point which is being made but the language is wrong; ergo the comparison is on shaky ground. True, but I see no reason why such a board cannot also be put in place under the single owner model. It was, after all, in operation for most of our history. But to re-iterate, my objection isn't against the principle so much as the outcome, which I see as a bit small-time. I think this is phenomenally optimistic. We have fans who would rather see the club banned from European football than give up their right to behave in a certain way; the idea that they would now take into consideration concerns over image hasn't been borne out by much evidence I've seen. See above. No doubt Rangers could, although I think the analogy is flawed, but my worry is that it would be hampered by the splits, schism and factionalism which repeatedly happens whenever more than about a dozen people get together. If idealism like 'we would know where to draw the line over image' is a tad optimistic, idealism like 'factions wouldn't matter' is Utopian! This is all just my opinion & I'm not trying to persuade anyone else about anything - the only thing that irks me is when posters get all holier than thou should anyone fail to join them upon the barricades. It's not, as I see it, a straight choice between single owner with a God complex or John MacLean style public ownership...there's a lot of ground in between. I'm not sure how much of the above I really believe but the challenge 'can't argue' was too much.
  2. andy steel
    This is important and overdue, because there's been nothing said about Neil Lennon and sectarianism up to this point. I'm going to raise it anyway. There's a guy lives up the top of my scheme who was a complete prick when he was younger. Apparently he's matured now...no-one gives him the time of day, though. If Lennon has matured, (a) about time and (b) its a pretty easy job managing one half of the OF when the other team is in the crapper. Hats off to Lenny for staying calm under no pressure whatsoever. We all saw what he was like when the real chips were down...a scrote. Doesn't excuse attacking him, but let's step back from the hagiography. Mollycoddling this chap by telling him nothing he has ever done will come back to bite his spotty bottom is probably as bad as attacking him for no very good reason that I can make out, probably drink. Amazing he thinks he gets a hard time off the media, he should try being McCoist. He'd last about a week.
  3. andy steel
    Inferiority complex, much?
  4. andy steel
    To be scrupulously fair, lest anyone looking in think we might be a teeny bit anti-RC, anything which went against the will of Johannes Calvin when he was running Geneve, or against the will of the Covenanters during the Killing Time here at home, didn't exactly pass without comment. Intoleranz ist Intoleranz.
  5. andy steel
    Hildy, I've been arguing for almost a decade that clinging to the baggage of the past will slowly see us driven beyond the pale. Part of the reason I prefer a single owner is that s/he will generally be less interested in the baggage, indeed see it as the block to investment and progress it undoubtedly is. And part of the reason I fear fan ownership is that the first order of business for some would be to order new seats for the Govan so it could be a giant Union flag. If you could persuade me that fan ownership meant leaving the baggage behind I think I would jump at it. Sadly, I think it would mean the exact opposite.
  6. andy steel
    Since when was Glasgow in Lanarkshire?
  7. andy steel
    I am with TRPB on this one. There's no need for us (and, I suppose, them) to bring anything to a table other than the prospect of attracting viewers to matches broadcast on TV. That's the audience the money men are looking for, and it matters little to them if the audience of @1m is in Scotland or Bolton; they want those people watching to entice the advertisers, who likewise want those people watching to sell their wares. What did Denver or Seattle bring to the Superbowl that it could sell 30 second adverts for $xm during half time? Not a thing. It was the event itself which mattered, which drew the audience, which sells the beef. If you have an event like that and you throw in two teams like Dallas and SF, you could probably stick another couple million dollars on the asking price. Any league with us in it sells more beef, makes more money, can stick more noughts on the price tag. I grant you it will probably never happen but our fan base means we have at least one card to play.
  8. andy steel
    From the outside, it just seems like the people who are balanced, diplomatic or reasonable get disgusted and resign, and these groups are left with - extremists is not the word, but something like that, not 'middle of the road' types who might unify a support. There has to be a reason so many voices on this board, who I think most of us would say were excellent candidates, packed things in. It can't all be personal, surely?
  9. andy steel
    Oh well. Thanks for trying, anyway. This is symptomatic of the whole ownership problem as I see it (which is very confused, I freely admit!). Lacking that single majority owner, we are left with many small groups who come and go, building up a stake then selling when targets are reached - I do remember doing some vague financials training with Safeway years ago, about how not to panic if the share price fluctuated since it was more often a sign of fund management activity rather than a reflection on the company as a whole, never thought it would come in handy for the football, right enough - unless and until we get the share price to a level where such funds cannot see a sizeable enough return to bother investing in the first place. But how? When there's groups right left and centre trying to buy shares but not to get an out right controlling bloc, in order to prevent one single owner and potential mismanagement? Laudible enough but, potentially, a guarantee of the present difficulty in gaining stability. It just seems like we can't win no matter what until - dream scenario - someone trustworthy buys enough to prevent leeches etc fattening the calf only to slaughter it. The people pushing the fan ownership (well, one of them really) has been banging on about how people have a problem with breaking away from the 'slavery' of single . Hopefully he doesn't read any other threads because I'm not keen on another debate with a brick wall; but there seems to be little appreciation that the fan ownership route can create issues, too.
  10. andy steel
    Well, yes......and no. It does seem like fairly obvious double standards, but it can be looked at as an opportunity as well. If we take the last three years or so in the round and add it all up, it basically boils down to the fairly stark fact that Rangers are not welcome in the Scottish Leagues. We were only handed an invite to start in D3 because it was a money spinner, had the old SFL clubs been flush with cash I do wonder whether they might have pointed us toward the juniors...and who knows what they would have felt? 'Sorry, old boy, police advice...perhaps you could try the P&D amateurs?' There is a continual hostility to anything that comes out of Ibrox; while that might be justified at a boardroom level, given the vast quantities of manure that it generates, look at the reaction to McCoist's fairly light hearted poking fun yesterday. No-one saw any funny side; Rangers are not allowed to be in a good mood. They are only tolerated, at best, if they are in a continual crisis and a perpetually ongoing source of stories; stories which have, ironically, provided many journalists, broadcasters and fans with many laughs. Again, only one side is allowed to be entertained: we are supposed to be suffering. Ex-Rangers players who get involved with the club at present are signing their career death warrants - Brown, being the most vocal, is the most obvious, but anyone tarred with a Blue Brush now or in the past is making their own life harder than it need to be. Where are the Bears in the media? In my 30 years of being aware of football on the radio, there's never been a time when Rangers have been less represented on air; Billy Dodds is hardly a club legend and could easily be said to speak for Aberdeen, Dundee or Dundee Utd before Rangers, although he's handy when they want to have a laugh about EBT's; while Derek Ferguson could easily be said to hardly speak at all, such is his struggle with the English language. Diversifying the media to include more than just Rangers and celtc legends is certainly a good thing; doing it to such an extent that what is by far the best supported club in the country is unrepresented is beyond careless, it is making a definite point. Gordon Smith, John Grieg, Mark Hateley, Ally himself, Derek Johnstone; all these and more used to give a voice, and sometimes a kicking, to Rangers and the fans. Now we have nothing. We have no voice in boardrooms, and when we are grudgingly allowed back in to a minor meeting unless Wallace goes along you can be fairly sure it will be mortifying; the briefings will be immediately and scathing about the nitwit sent along from Ibrox. Send for Bullhut! So where's the opportunity in all this? If a marriage reaches the stage where neither party wants to be together, and one party is more or less throwing the clothes out the upstairs window, separation is usually the result. That's the only logical outcome. Sod getting back to the top flight; I suspect that once our money flows through the game like a drug, and clubs feel financially able to put the boot in, they will do so, again and again. You can't live like that and you shouldn't stay to be abused. I don't know where else we can go, we're a Scottish club and it always seemed slightly nuts to be trying to sneak into England. Sad to say I'm left with little option now, ironically enough thanks to the people who whined and bleated about Rangers moving to England for all those years! The whole shebang is riddled with irony...as well as corruption and incompetence. If the SPFL can afford to advance cash to a club in crisis, one of its biggest clubs at that, and help it out it should do so. That seems like common sense, for the game can hardly afford just to watch Hearts stagger back from the brink of death for a couple of years. They, like us, have been one of the few sides to 'put in' to the game since the war and I think they deserve to be helped out. It is basically the definition of 'league': coming together to form an alliance. It's just a shame that when we were being knifed from all directions (including from inside Ibrox) the concept was not only ignored, but taken to the khazi and used to wipe peoples' bottoms with. Naturally that leaves a bad smell, but perhaps that will encourage us to seek an alternative somewhere else. The air is bad, here, bad. We need to find somewhere fresher.
  11. andy steel
    It's not so much about cash cost as much as it the value of your stadium being considered the premier ground; your club being considered the premier club; your directors holding premier positions and so on. Of course to anyone normal such an overwhelming desire to proclaim your superiority reads like a massive inferiority complex, but that definition rules out most of you know who!
  12. andy steel
    Read headline, thought, probably shouldn't have said anything. Read story, thought, nice one, Ally. I enjoyed that.
  13. andy steel
    I stand ready to be corrected, but is it Companies House who appoint directors? I thought they were more a directory than an actual appointments body.
  14. andy steel
    Ha! I fuckin knew it!! As Bluedell's sig says, Never Forget. never Forgive. Sometimes I lurch into sanity & think we need to move on & then my inner loon kicks in and the thought of working with the people who were dancing on our grave so short a while ago....just makes my flesh creep.
  15. andy steel
    What's annoying is that if he still had any control of Rangers (i don't think he does) the usual suspects would be all over this like a rash. Now that there's no prospect of crippling us still further, he and his like are just allowed to swan about the country, setting up non-existent companies to shift non-existent money about and (somehow) extracting a profit from it. And still people were surprised that the entrepreneurial economic model lead to a global recession.
  16. andy steel
    At a total guess, it's probably so they can say to some other poor dupes 'look at all our companies' and bamboozle them with a trail the length of Oregon should they try to research it themselves. How they are not in jail in beyond me.
  17. andy steel
    So, the point is: - admin of boys' clubs is not very sharp - the SFA are bleeding the game at that level dry, and offering no help on things like the above - every club in the country is at it - & to pursue this kind of case is probably fatuous and counter-productive, in that even the £10 payment will probably be scrapped and the headline is: 'SFA called on to resolve Hearts & Rangers debts'? You despair, you really do.
  18. andy steel
    I hoped we might try to persuade Joe Garner, the Preston striker, to move north in the window. He's on a deal which ends in the summer, he's still only 25 and I rate him highly. In the Miller mould. Two seasons here on a three year deal, hit 20-30 in D1, 15-20 in the top league and get a £3m move to Wolves or someone the next year. Sign here, son!
  19. andy steel
    I realise there's an element of childishness to this objection, but I am massively suspicious of 'calling in' fans of other clubs for advice. We saw what they feel viz a vis Rangers when we were in the crapper, i.e. they wanted us stone dead. I haven't seen anything to suggest that opinion has changed since then and I would be extremely wary of taking advice from any of them. We saw how much legal duty meant to the people at HMRC when they were leaking info to RTC. The list of benefits the other day seems a bit wishy washy to me, and I remain unconvinced. However, there's plenty more fans to bring round to that side, so good luck.
  20. andy steel
    By the same token, urging people to spend money from behind a pseudonym is not entirely cricket either!
  21. andy steel
    Could you set out why fan ownership would be a good choice? People say this, but I don't actually know what it would entail in detail. What would be the model for club going forward, how would it work? If the detail is convincing enough even I would be forced to admit to potential benefits. At the moment it's kind of like government ministers who get up and justify raising the age of retirement and the like on the grounds that 'we're all living longer'...not up here, we're not. Just saying fan ownership would be better isn't convincing enough for me.
  22. andy steel
    Good to see the tidal wave of indifference with which this has been met. They can go all season without letting the ball in their half for all I care, the lingering benefit of the last couple of years has been getting away from them. I wish there was a way to make it last longer other than the obvious.
  23. andy steel
    If Oweny is pals with Ally and Durrant, I wish they'd pick the phone up and ask him to come in and freshen up training. I always enjoyed watching his teams, they play the right way and although I assume he's a celtc fan he always struck me as a complete model pro, in fact an ideal example for any young man in Scotland. Work ethic of a demon, teetotal, always learning...tbh he's probably more Presbyterian than most of us.
  24. andy steel
    It's the use of language that is wrong. Undercurrent suggests a feeling, a movement, which is flowing along out of sight. The implication is plainly of a group of some size, not perhaps a majority but worthy of comment so therefore more than one or two. Whereas the reality appears to be the residue of bigots we are, alas, unable to stop clinging round the ankles of the club and especially posting on club messageboards.
  25. andy steel
    All right then, assuming you are correct, you've surely got to stop with the confrontational language. Persuading people that essentially you are on their side and trying to deliver an even better Rangers won't be easy, but castigating them definitely won't do it! Maybe it will involve putting on a big grin and pretending to enjoy the company of people you could cheerfully strangle, maybe it will mean explaining the same thing over and over again, maybe it will mean banging your head off the wall over a period of years, might even mean buttering up people you can't stand - that's politics, and that's what this is. Still don't think you'll have much chance even then, tbh.
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