Tannochsidebear

I got a call this morning from someone who has confirmed to me that the above article written by Darrell King has the true story 100% spot on. He told me who his source was that is quoted and why he was involved in the story. I also hear that Murray is a busted flush and has been holed up in Perthshire for the last 3 weeks unable to run any of his businesses, as the property crash has had disastrous consequences on his portfolio and the bank have had enough. Dave King is close to buying the club, but the haggling from Lloyds is preventing this from taking place. King is wanting the bank to accept 40p in the �£1 for Rangers debts, like the bank are doing to troubled Companies all over the country, but the bank are holding firm for all the debt to be repaid. Over the next week or two, the campaign against Lloyds will start to gain pace to try to force them to accept King's deal. Be ready to close your Lloyds/Bank of scotland accounts and write to them expressing your disgust at their handling of the situation. Bain is staying, and is apparantly fighting really hard for King's people to come through, and will be rewarded with keeping his job. (I dont like that bit, but there you are) Once in, King will go to the fans with an investment plan, perhaps shares, perhaps something else, to get the fans to own more of the club, and have more of a say in the club. If the bank accepts King's plan, it will give the club a debt of around �£12M, and we will have to sell 1 top player in January to get the debt down to �£10M, which will be our new manageable limit going forward. The bank have been seriously threatening to put us into administration, and dont seem to believe that relegation to div 3 and no europe will have much of an effect on ST uptake!! It looks like just playing hardball, but we are no f*cking toy to be bartered around with, or some wee 3rd rate business that nobody would miss if it went to the wall. As always with these rumours and counter-rumours, you are at liberty to believe what you will from the above, but anyone who knows me knows I dont post rumours, and I do know people who know people and hear things, hardly any of which I actually post on messageboards, but this is too serious to ignore. Oh how we laughed at Timmy in the mid-nineties when they were 30 minutes from closure, we are not laughing now.

I think all the groups can do is offer support to the manager and playing staff, and ask for further clarification from the board about the influence of HBOS in the following; 1. The day to day running of the club 2. The acceptance or refusal of any bids for current players 3. How acceptance or refusal of any bids for the shareholding held by Murray In addition to this I would also like clarified the following; 1. What limit is imposed on our bank facilities (both long-term and ongoing)? 2. What is our current balance, and what peak borrowing figure does our cashflow forecast suggest we will need between now and the end of the season, assuming no transfer activity in January in or out? 3. Is the �£15M Murray group facility still available? If so, are we using it? 4. Has due diligence been completed, or is in the process of completion, between the club and any potential buyers in the last 12 months? If so, what was the reason for the failure to complete? These are just off the top of my head, and I am sure there are many more. I wouldn't expect the club to reply to these questions either, but it is better than just releasing a statement asking for clarification of the situation, and does not have a go at anyone at the club, but is just asking some pertinent questions from worried fans.

With Bougherra, Mendes and Thomson all out it really restricts our options and will probably be a case of who is fit and slotting them in wherever. From the bbc site the matchday squad for tomorrow is; Rangers (from): McGregor, Whittaker, Papac, Weir, Smith, Naismith, Davis, McCulloch, Rothen, Novo, Lafferty, Boyd, Miller, Loy, McMillan, Fleck, Beasley, Alexander. Reluctantly I would go with :sw: :sp: :ss: :sn: :lm: :sd: :kl: :kb: I really dont see where we are going to create anything from that centre midfield unless Davis really pulls out a performance which we haven't yet seen this season, as McCulloch only goes backwards and Beasley has been disappointing and Naismith seems to have lost his early season spark. This is why I have went with two big strikers as I think our best chance is to get the ball in to them early. I am fairly happy with the defence, but it could be a long afternoon not for the purists but lets just get the 3 points and start the re-building of the confidence.

Friday bump for the predictor league. Get those predictions in bears, can Hamilton continue timmy woes, can we go 4 clear and put the pressure on them, or will the Hibees be top of the SPL!!

The last issue promised a new issue out for the Unirea match, so I bought the "Champions League" edition, only to get in and find it was the last issue and I had already read it. Coupled with a disgusting chicken burger from the van outside the Copland road stand, my smartcard not working before the game and I had to go round to the ticket office to get paper tickets to get in, and to top it all off the actual match itself, it wasn't the best night out I have had.

Good luck to the wee man, I'm sure there are another couple of Euro goals in him yet.

Rangers 3 Unirea 0 Boyd 2, Davis But i'll settle for Rangers 1 Unirea 0 with a last minute og. Just get these 3 points tonight Gers, I really dont care how.

�£22 to watch the champions of Scotland play a match against the Division 1 Champions in a nice wee all seater stadium in beautiful Perthshire is not too bad. It is the �£38 to watch the Champions of Scotland play a sectarian Irish mob in a meccano set of a ground with poor visibility, a dreadful sound system, and a turgid smell coming from the masses who cheer of terrorists and applaud the war dead, that is a really tough one.

Always happy to discuss anything to do with Rangers with like-minded bears UCB, especially if it involves positive proactive topics. I look forward to it.

I read this report this morning and posted some questions about the plaques on their boards. I am glad they are publishing quite extensive minutes of their meetings and they do seem to be genuinely wanting to engage as many fans as possible, true to their word from the fans forum. Although it seems the committee at the top are doing their bit and putting in some work to this, I am not sure about the underlying area men. Despite checking that my contact details are accurate, I have heard nothing all season from them in an official RSC capacity about meetings, agendas etc. Some more work to do in that regard I think.

Well the RST could do worse than to either re-visit their 15 point plan from a few years ago, or the absolutely splendid STS publication (I would say that of course), as a starting point for the issues that matter to Rangers fans. I would love to see the RST taking on issues like a Rangers museum, the matchday atmosphere, or commercial income streams, and coming up with a costed, positive, plan of action to put forward to the club as a starting off point. Of course, the problem is that the board ignored the STS publication as pointless as the RFC board would not want to take these things seriously, so I am having some difficulty in working out what they actually now want to do, other than media stuff, and what they are doing it for. That would be the starting off point for me, to find out if this is a serious attempt to put forward some positive plan of action, or just a "we need to do something, even the Assembly looks to be getting better organised, and our numbers aren't going the right way" kind of reactionery plan. If I believed that the RST was now taking a very different line of action than it has for the last year and is looking to put some solid work in on a positive agenda to give the club well-worked out alternatives to the club's current malaise, I would be delighted, and so would many other bears.

Smith has today said that there was a phone call from Bougherra's agent to McCoist. Quite why, instead of phoning his agent he couldn't have phoned the Gaffer I dont know, but if that is the reason we are given it is either (a) the correct version of events or (b) Walter's way of making the story go away, and he has dealt with Bougherra privately, as it should be. Either way, the mountains the media made out of this without knowing any of the facts was way out of line but fairly typical of what we expect from them.

Ah, my first groan. I'm truly honoured.

The thing is Norris, to you and to me his form this season has been below par (being kind), but it was deemed good enough to get him not only into the squad but into the starting 11 of a decent European International side who had two important WC games to play, and were a man or two short. Obviously, those watching Mendes on behalf of the national side thought his form was decent enough, while we discuss dropping him from our threadbare squad. I am not sure quite what that says about either the Portugal national side or Rangers supporters.

I have to disagree, I dont think Terry McDermott even had a managerial peak!!

There are many examples of African and South American players having "travel difficulties" and being late back to their clubs from international duty. This does not give the right for the media, without knowing any of the facts surrounding this incident, to stir things up and speculate. For some reason we had Clyde on the bus coming back from Perth on Saturday, and after our match, instead of talking about our game, or the rest of that days upcoming games, they went on and on about how "disrespectful" this was to Walter from Bougherra, and that the player is working his ticket out, wants away etc. Then, 2 days later when the real story comes out, will we get apologies, retractions, plenty of airtime to clear it up? As I dont listen to this station I wont know, but I am pretty sure I already know the answer.

Well predicted Shroomz, a Mendes no-show today. This is where international football really pisses me off, when it affects the performances, fitness and availability of our key players.

This is an over-rated shouter (not commentator) who somehow thinks people want to read about his opinions on football when he cant even be honest about his name. Credibility = zero Maguire, stick to talking about your own team please, and leave us alone. You should have plenty to say about Monkey-heid's running of your beloved hoops, so run along to your nearest provo-fundraiser and let off steam there where the good majority of the population dont need to hear you ramblings.

So Murray has no control over Rangers at all since stepping down as both the chariman and a director of the club, but 2 of his staff are appointed to the board?

Another poor set of forecasts from me, although I did get the 1-1 sheepy game right, I didnt think Hamilton would get anything, nor Motherwell and as usual I over-estimated the extent of the victory for the Teddies. Just made it into the top 10 of the gersnet league table now, and it is quite tight. How did you all do this week?

Just the nice wee type of story there should be a lot more of, instead of the normal lies and made up lazy bull we get offered up on a regular basis.

Anyone else receive PM's from KT08 looking for verification of his "rumour"?

Edu will give us another option in midfield, where I believe we have struggled this season, and the sooner he is back the better, but it may be he needs time when fully fit to get match-fit. Thomson is another case in point. Very lacklustre and poor displays recently could be due to not quite being fit enough yet to play his best stuff.

A great gesture by the club, and no surprise tha the talentless Rangers hating Spiers has a go. He just cant help himself. No surprise either that Clyde are fully supportive of him and his poison. It would seem a marraige (civil partnership surely!!) made in timmy heaven, and thankfully is easily avoided.

Although we are part of the UK, in footballing terms we are just as seperated from England as France or Holland, and that is the point I was making. Look at the fuss created just to put in an U23 team for the Olympics. All home nations FA's were having kittens at the thought of losing their identity, and were vehemently opposed to any team that could call into question their independance. Are the SFA going to allow us just to leave our league to go to England on the argument that we are all British anyway? No chance of that, and popular opinion in this country would defend them all the way, as would the media who would be out of jobs if football could be covered nationally (UK) from London. I am suggesting we stop making excuses for our predicament, and start using the positives to run our club properly, represent our nation proudly in European competition, and be in a decent position if the Sky bubble bursts and all EPL clubs are bankrupt. We can be a decent club on the European stage, as we have always been, from within our own domestic league, and we should be encouraging the other clubs to try to get to our level, rather than write them all off and try to leave for what is fashionable now, but may not always be such. And last but by no means least, to put our fans first, and ensure that we dont have regular 1000 mile round trips, some of which during the working week. It is us, the match-going fans, that should be considered more than anything else, as without us, there is not much left.