andy steel
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Everything posted by andy steel
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There's more... Frankie and the rest of the Tranent crew are arguing in vain for Grope, the waiter, to bring them salt and sauce for their chups, eh. He stands, arms folded, insisting he's never heard of such a thing. The Real Papa Bear has derBerliner pinned to the wall, regaling him with his adventures in Germany back in the day. Craig is trying to tell anyone who'll listen that living in the Bermuda isn't that great, but no one is buying. Bluedell sits, brow furrowed, worried about the Gentleman's Club accounts and when we will see them, while Pete tries to tune the TV to popular Dutch TV show, 'Totalle Wipoot'. This week's show, from Amsterdam, promises to be a good 'un, as brave or foolish contestants have to drive a tram through a square full of Tims. -
Oddly I was just thinking about Edu only this morning. Maybe the question should be, just how good was Smith in getting these players to perform consistently at a title winning level?
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I see an old ironwork lift inside one of Glasgow's many magnificent city centre buildings, operated by an elderly, retired Bear. After riding the rickety old thing (the lift, that is) to the top floor, heavy mahogany doors open to reveal a richly furnished, deep pile carpeted room, boasting a vista over the chimneys of our post-industrial metropolis. Leather armchairs are pulled up to the open fire, quality newspapers & periodicals are being perused over a warming brandy. On a sideboard, various cold cuts await the hungry Bear while in the kitchen, Michelin starred chups, that staple of the Weegie diet, are being prepared. In a corner, Super Ally tries to control his temper as AMMS waves a warning finger: 'none of those nasty sectarian songs, young man!'; elsewhere, Gribz, his body wrecked by years of alcohol and travel, has collapsed in a pile of his own airmiles. Gunslinger is trying to persuade someone to go and see 'Philomena' with him after the game, while Zappa, taking a break from annoying everyone over 30 with his young people's dance music, is putting the finishing touches to his wall mural. After Diego Rivera, he calls it 'Blakey, Controller of the Boardroom'. Upon the clock striking 2, the club shall empty as one and all head for the tube or chauffeured charabanc to make their way to Ibrox. I could really dig it.
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Even so, and I don't disagree, I just can't intellectually justify getting involved at a celtc like level over the football. There's more to life than that. Btw, I think we are over estimating the celtc minded's 'power' within the establishment. Whereas previously excluded from certain professions, they are now as able as anyone else to be a dentist, or an accountant, or whatever, but the largest (and most ignored) group of - how to put it - 'not ethnic Scots' - in this country are English people. I often wonder how it is the Radio Scotland can find loads of Irish accents and not a single English one, unless Terry Butcher is between jobs. If the Irish were marginalised to the extent that English folk who have moved here are they would be doing their dinger! The much-feared 'Chastisement by Steel'. Counselling is available! How cool would it be if we could raise enough money to actually hire some city centre rooms and have a real Gersnet Gentleman's Club, complete with bar, dining room, and giant screen TV? Ah, if only!
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I dunno, there's a good reason I couldn't look at RM anymore. Gersnet might have the thinkers you're talking about , I would agree there. You could be right, I don't think I know enough of either set of fans to come to a decision on proportions tbh.
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As much as I'd like to hit the 'agree' button, there are plums both in our and their support, just as there are in every club's support.
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RLS, surely.
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Well, I like a laugh of a Monday morning, so fair play to Jackson. No doubt, in his campaign against 'stirring the hornet's nest', 'grandstanding' and doing away with bampottery, he will be marching into the Record office this morning to demand the end of the 'Hotline', which has, for decades, featured all of the above. He will be holding a mass meeting in the car park to insist that writers who have earned a living since before I was born doing all the things he berates Mr Lawwell for doing be sacked forthwith; given that it is 'dangerous', we can scarce have one rule for The Record and another for fitba team. I don't necessarily disagree with the points raised in this article, but from a Daily record writer? Come on.
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What I'm taking from this debate is that neither the 12 team nor the 18 team top league are going to cut the mustard; so, unless we can organise some kind of fresh competition with new opponents (a Euro league of some kind), essentially the game is just dying while trying out a variety of drugs to stave off the fateful day?
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That seems like reason enough to do it, though?
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Blimey, that was grim.
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Tom English: The way of things between Celtic and Rangers
andy steel replied to ian1964's topic in Rangers Chat
You are right, but I was on our website a few weeks back looking for vacancies and discovered to my unbridled joy that we were looking for staff in the megahut (20 yrs retail experience, ideal for me) with bags of enthusiasm (I am, you may have noticed, a Rangers obsessive and would salivate at the thought of spending all day in a Rangers shop) willing to work on a zero hours contract. Er, no thanks. This ties in with the points made in the D'Artagnan thread about how morality just doesn't exist in football. It's all about the pennies, which makes it all the more boaky when clubs try to give it the 'social conscience' routine. -
That would be my hope, too, TRPB. I like watching the Bundesliga and seeing each team or stadium sponsored by a strong local industry, usually a worldwide brand. Ties between such companies and their locality can only protect such communal feeling. I admire Germany and Germans enormously, with the obvious historical caveats, and hope that you are correct - but I'd have said that Britain, too, was a solidly community based society in the 1960's (despite all that cobblers about the sexual revolution etc - that must have applied to about 2% of the UK, if that) and it didn't take much to destroy it - just plain old self interest.
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I think the best thing about this long piece is the trailer, but anyway, here's your Sunday morning... When we got kicked out the SPL, one thing I thought would be good was that when international breaks came around, we at least would have a game to look forward to. The idea that we could have internationalists playing for us down amongst the dead men never occurred to me, and while these dreary weeks without even a competitive international game to watch are dull, they do at least give you a chance to look a the bigger picture. As usual, it's a dispiriting one, with the main news of note being the appointment of a raft of directors at Rangers - temporary or otherwise, time will tell - and celtc's continuing attempts to remove Rangers entirely from the game in Scotland. Booooring!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsSbhdo0kQI So instead of waxing gloomical about the same old stuff I've groused above before, I shall this week offer a menu of possibilities for the future, things the game could engage with and maybe create a freshness about that stalest of products, the SPFL. These are all nicked from other sports, but that's no reason to dismiss them. Other sports are booming, thriving even, in these difficult financial times by innovating: we could learn from them. First up, a boring marketing/community bonding opportunity. BT show French Ligue 1 games, and you see every side has the regional tourist board advertised on their strips. Watching the Aussie football this weekend, I see they are the same. 'Do the CG experience!' exhorts the brightly coloured either Adelaide or Perth shirt (my Australian geography is not great). Given that there's plenty of space available on SPFL shirts, they ought to employ this device to get as much exposure (limited, I admit) for each club's region or city. Given how fast Scots clubs are declining, anything which re-engages them with their communities ought to be embraced. The current rugby world cup is attracting huge audiences in England, Wales & France; at the end of the game, both teams take a lap of honour, during which players pose for photos and sign autographs for fans. Perhaps this ought to be home fans only, and only then after a win, but it's an idea which would take an extra 10 or 15 minutes for the players and which would reinforce the bond between fan and player. And to any player who couldn't be bothered, they would have to shoulder the consequences should they dip in form! Cricket's 20/20 competition has brought in many innovations since it appeared about 10 years ago, nowhere more so than in the magnificent Indian Premier League. Features include an audio link between a fielder (usually the skipper) and the commentators while bowlers are walking back to their mark, or during a drinks break; while the heat doesn't require such a break in Glasgow very often, there's no reason why keepers could not be linked up by an audio tech behind the goal while their team are up the other end of the pitch - in cricket the interviewed player just breaks off should he have to, and goalies could do the same. Likewise, since there have been trackside reporters for decades, let's get them broadcasting the actual sounds of the sideline, rather than some mediated, filtered, cleaned up version. If this causes issues for managers or coaches who can't go 45 minutes at a stretch without effing or blinding, that is their problem - if they want TV money, they can behave to minimum live TV standards. This kind of technical innovation would allow the SFA or SPFL or whoever to approach broadcasters with a fresh product, offering superior access to players or staff, rather than a pale imitation of England's success. The IPL also require their grounds to build a little VIP booth, which is for competition winners rather than high heid yins, and include big comfy armchairs and fridges filled with Pepsi products. Practicalities might make this hard, but we are too much in the habit of saying 'we can't' when we need to be saying 'we have to'. Such competitions and prizes must be a money spinner as well as ideal product placement, an area we need to maximise in order to tempt what appears to be a highly reluctant commercial sector back to our moribund product. Joint managerial press conferences could be introduced, which ought to go some way to enforcing managers to act like adults. I think we can think of the one exception who would still stick out his petulant lower lip, and no doubt the media would be annoyed at losing their precious controversial moments, but the aim is to make the product better and financially healthier. Childish and whiny complaints will not bring in investment, a relatively mature product might. No doubt every reader will have ideas of their own. We all know that the game needs radical change at a purely functional level, especially the 4 games a season nonsense, but there's lots of room for tinkering around the edges and freshening up what is a sorely tired product. Just sometimes we need to turn our thoughts toward what we can do to make the game better, rather than the understandable constant harping on about what's wrong with it. Let's hear it for positive thinking, even just for a week!
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Almost certainly not. They will have been told that at some future time, when it is more advantageous, the club will re-activate the complaint. No doubt we can expect such a pitiful gambit when we approach or enter the top level of the game. What is really sad is that this is the thinking which is running the game. Fair enough if you're a Tim, baffling to me why every other club in the land is so happy to buy into allowing one club to be permanently dominant. Have they no ambition at all?
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Are you sitting down? - Tom English makes a good point!
andy steel replied to The Real PapaBear's topic in Rangers Chat
<testily> You'd think it was state secrets we were talking about. -
You can't eat principle, unfortunately. Nor will you attract many players to your club side on the grounds that you are morally superior to the team offering £1m a year more. It's all relative anyway. There's someone at the Tim agm fantasising about how they bring a smile wherever they go...perhaps the speaker doesn't actually go to many games, or lives in Scotland. Or Holland. You'll never convince me that capitalism holds any solutions to the world's problems. Alas, as I was aware when we debated the point on RM a decade ago, I can't convince anyone that socialism or anything of that ilk is the answer either. So, like Rangers, I shall try to get myself as far up that ladder as I can, drawing it up behind me. I suppose I would admit that events of the last few years have made me completely intolerant of anything other than Rangers getting back on top, coupled with a visceral desire to see certain clubs suffer, for decades, in revenge. I won't see that on the back of good intentions.
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All fair points but even in Germany, the tripartite business model involving management, government and workers is breaking down even as we write; Fr.Merkel's desire to impose Thatcherism on her country will see it, too, move toward the model where the gaining of capital rather than the means of gaining it is all that matters. I can see no reason why the German municipalities will be able to resist when the full power of the federal govt. is turned on them: assuming the CDU follow through on their market led reforms, when the central funding is cut things like community partnerships in sport will be amongst the first to go, directly affecting football clubs. Maybe the Lander will be able to mobilise regional feeling to the extent that they can fight off such things, but a glance across Europe in the last two decades does not fill the left-inclined onlooker with much cause for hope. Maybe some civic minded German citizen can even take it to the BVfG and get a ruling...I'm not optimistic. Give it five years and I think we'll see Arab and Russian money in the Bundesliga as well. dB will know more about the nuts and bolts of this than I, mind you. I don't disagree with your views, but I don't think we can operate as the sole 'Islamic Bank', so to speak, in British football.
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I was talking about the word 'retards'...for fuck's sake.
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No, I don't think it will. The only thing which gets respect, power and your hands on the levers of control in this country (the UK) is money. How you got it may raise the hackles of the few remaining socialists left rumbling around the margins of the body politic, or garner a few headlines when it suits newspapers to pretend they are not capitalist enterprises themselves, but it won't stop you being powerful and it won't stop you being in charge. There never has been any morality in football that I can remember and I see no point in marching into the future with an ethical manifesto when all around you are operating in extremely shady fashion. I agree completely with Bossy's utterly ruthless Rangers man as being what we need - it's what every club needs at its head and has done since the days of the comittie were ended during the awful 1980-2007 period. That's how the world operates now and the football world is no exception. Many may disapprove of Man City's new wealth but none will be able to stop them; some may look askance at Man Utd's debt levels but no-one is mad enough to take them on; others may consider Barca or Real Madrid models of financial insanity which make our recent past look quite prudent but again, these are the players before whom all bow down. Bluntly, what matters is having money, not where it comes from. Ideally it would be clean but if it has to be dirty, so be it. It's a dirty war.
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Don't agree that we need to include morality in our considerations. I suppose it would be nice, but I don't find the thread of upright goodness running through our history to which others frequently allude; add to that our present desperation & I don't find myself caring how or where Dave King got his money from, as long as he's willing to lob tons of it at Rangers. Also I think your tutor was talking balls. The chances are that the successful writer will be successful because he/she finds an empathetic audience who believe the writer is speaking to their soul, but they cannot set out to do that. It's a fortunate by-product.
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I will say against Lawwell that when the two clubs do eventually meet again, remarks like his won't help it go without incident. There will be no point claiming after the event right of free speech or anything - overheating the engine will only lead to one thing. I remember saying to a fellow poster months ago that the preview article of the first game against them writes it own title: There Will Be Blood.
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But there's a couple of reasons why we ought to be wary, Mike. I reckon all of us are united in feeling that Lawwell is a tit, probably ought to be given a skelp by the SFA since his comment was unbecoming an office bearer (chortle). But... We have to be really aware of Rangers trying to take attention away from the shambles that is the current boardroom; We've been here plenty of times before (we will take action!) and nothing ever happens; We have zero allies in the game at the moment and are thus unlikely to win any battles, let alone one over the man whose snake eyes holds the chairmen of other clubs' rigid with terror; And so we need to box really clever, ideally by establishing our history at the expense of Timothy's obsession, as so excellently set out by AMMS earlier on. I'm all for the club standing up for itself, but pick you battles, pick your battles.
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Each to their own, I suppose. My only comment would be to wonder why the fuck you feel the need to use language which reflects badly on Rangers supporters.