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http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/tycoon-mccoll-to-back-rangers-buy-out-1.1016573? One of Britain’s richest men is backing a Ã?£30 million supporters takeover bid of Rangers. Rangers Supporters Trust has submitted a formal acquisition proposal which would involve supporters raising the money through a membership scheme to buy out Sir David Murray’s majority shareholding in the club. It says it has the backing of a wealthy businessman to provide the financial safety net – believed to be Jim McColl, the 58-year-old owner of Clyde Blowers group, whose personal wealth was estimated at Ã?£800m two years ago. The Trust, which has more than Ã?£50,000 in shares in the club and has long called for representation on the board, said it is “very confident” the necessary funds can be raised. It believes 20,000 Rangers fee-paying members, contributing Ã?£1,500 over five years, would be a “prudent, realistic and deliverable target”. In its submission to Rangers, the Trust says: “Rangers supporters can – and will – raise the (assumed) Ã?£30m-Ã?£31m required to purchase the club’s equity when presented with a compelling vision which is inspirational but sensible. “Fan ownership is a viable and exciting way forward and roadmap to a secure, stable future.” You swine wabash lol !!!!!! seriously though if this has been submitted then I take it that the stock exchange must be informed tomorrow AM then.

Zappa I happen to fully agree , however these points are just as pertinent when directed at Ellis , in fact I would say more so than any fans group . Unless the distrust of the RST out weighs the distrust of a London Property Developer

This whole episode will hopefully be sorted out sooner rather than later , as this is a World Cup year , getting in any potential transfer targets will be further complicated as it always is when a world cup is on .

FEW FOOTBALL clubs embrace their own mythology quite like Celtic. They hang on to the folklore like a drowning man would a raft, speaking of the Celtic Way while telling themselves they are somehow different to the other lot, the vulgar team in blue with their anti-football and their negativity and their grinding performances that rarely allow for free spirit and flights of fancy. Celtic, goes the fable, are about beautiful football, about "success with flair" as John Reid, their chairman puts it. It's their way of things, their duty to the deities in their past. On the day they unveiled Tony Mowbray as the successor to Gor ADVERTISEMENTdon Strachan there was a feeling in the room, emanating from Reid and his chief executive, Peter Lawwell, and also held dear by the few fans allowed through the door, that Celtic were going back to their traditions. Mowbray, they said, had strong emotional connections with the club. He was, they stressed and re-stressed, a proud member of the Celtic family whose philosophy on how the game should be played chimed perfectly with the history of the place. Nobody said that Strachan hadn't possessed these qualities, but nobody needed to. Everybody knew that he wasn't Celtic minded. Talking later to some journalists, Reid acknowledged Strachan's great success in winning three consecutive SPL titles as well as two separate visits to the last 16 of the Champions League, but the chairman also allowed the impression to be formed that the brand of football Strachan had deployed wasn't in keeping with the story of the club. Mowbray promised to bring artistry to Parkhead, as their roots supposedly demanded. "The great enemy of the truth," said John F Kennedy, "is myth ââ?¬â?? persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." Lawwell and Reid bought the myth. They endorsed Mowbray's hair-brained notion of spending a season or two rebuilding his team even if it meant the likely loss of trophies. Even when the folly of his vision became abundantly obvious to anybody with eyes in their head, Mowbray received Lawwell's and Reid's public support. Reid said the club owed the manager its "moral backing" as he continued the redevelopment of the team. This creation of his would be carefully sculpted and reborn as a great footballing machine sometime in the future, a team full of elegance and craft, some kind of throwback to the way things were at Parkhead, circa the Tommy Burns years, which produced a whole load of lovely football but just one piece of silverware. The truth is that most of Celtic's greatest days in recent times were delivered on the back of the self-same qualities Walter Smith has brought to Rangers, qualities that Mowbray, in his befuddlement, seemed to demean in the wake of his epoch-making loss at St Mirren ââ?¬â?? namely, pragmatism and organisation and desire. A dogged refusal to get beaten was the raison d'etre of Martin O'Neill's Celtic. Sure, he had fabulous footballers at his disposal. And there was majesty in the ranks, no doubt about it. But above all other things ââ?¬â?? guile and goals ââ?¬â?? it was their manly acceptance of the pressure of Old Firm life that made them a success. They were fine players, but more than that, they were stand-up guys. Same with Wim Jansen's team. They didn't play particularly cosmic football, as Strachan would call it. But they played winning football. Strachan was cut from a similar cloth. When they appointed Mowbray and gave him the go-ahead to rip asunder a side that had won three titles and that had taken a fourth to the last day of the season, Lawwell and Reid forget their history. Celtic's prime duty to their fans and their traditions is not pretty football, but successful football. That is it. Full stop. End of story. Glorious failure (Burns) is in their DNA, and it is celebrated, but the thing they crave the most is victory. If the play is attractive into the bargain, then great. But every legend who ever walked in the door of the place would tell you that their primary responsibility was to win. That was lost under Mowbray. But it wasn't the only thing that was lost. Celtic's thinking has become distracted. Their famous paranoia was in danger of spiralling out of control had Mowbray stayed. Somebody needed to start banging heads together, but there was nobody. As sure as their board of directors bought the myth of the Celtic Way when opting for Mowbray they also bought the fantasy that everybody is out to get them; referees, journalists, the Scottish Football Association. They wallowed in the face of bad luck and awful refereeing decisions. A few weeks ago we stated in this space that their woe-is-us mentality, their apparent search for people to blame for their failing plight was a form of sporting cowardice. They had a bad situation on their hands and the way they opted to deal with it was to whinge incessantly instead of knuckling down like good professionals and trying to do something to arrest the decline. One of the problems is that they are so wrapped up in their own myth as victims nobody seemed to stand up. Certainly nobody stood up at St Mirren when things were going horrendously wrong the other night. What was that if not a shameful capitulation? That's partly because Mowbray cleared out a lot of the men who might have said or done something in these circumstances. Paul Hartley might have tried to snap them out of their self-pity. Or Stephen McManus. Or Gary Caldwell. Or Barry Robson. Or Scott McDonald. But those guys aren't around anymore. Some Celtic fans will tell you that most of that lot needed to go, that they weren't good enough for Celtic. Not good enough for the fantasy Celtic of Mowbray's imagination, perhaps. But plenty good enough to go to St Mirren and get a result, no? Finally, on Friday, we heard the things that needed to be said. We heard straight-talking and none of the fanciful guff of Mowbray's misguided months. The brutal honesty and the sharp focus came, of course, from Neil Lennon, a strangely peripheral figure in the Mowbray regime. Maybe he was too grounded in reality to be welcomed into the inner-circle, but he's the man now in any event. Maybe his inexperience is going to catch him out in the short term, but there was power in his words on Friday, there was a defiance and a straightforwardness about what he said that smacked of his great mentor, O'Neill. "I have told them that Wednesday night was totally unacceptable," said Lennon. "I never want to see that again. I made it pretty clear what is expected of them between now and the end of the season. I want them to play from the gut. They have their professional pride to play for with ten games left. They need to restore the club's reputation and their own. I think there is a softness about us. I'd like to eradicate that. I think mentally we're not as strong as we should be. Rangers have shown over the course of the season that they are quite able to grind out results and we've not been able to do that, we've only done it sporadically. I think there should be more of a tempo to our play as well, more concerted pressure, which I don't think we have enough of." Lennon spoke of wanting his team to have the same mentality as O'Neill's, wanting them to play hard, professional football and not accepting defeat. He didn't talk about the Celtic Way or his duty to entertain or his intention to win matches down the line at some stage. He knows how things are in Glasgow. The first step to being true to Celtic's traditions is to win. It's not rocket science, though his predecessor made it so at times. The board will be hoping against hope that Lennon can make a fist of this. Whether he has the coaching nous remains to be seen, but he's got a lot of other things in his locker, things like hunger and passion and commonsense, commodities that are far more relevant than the things that Lawwell and Reid saw in Mowbray on the day they presented him as the returning Messiah. Now that they've got their head out of the clouds again, maybe they can move forward.

Jim McColl is no ones fool nor is he a scatter cash , he has built all his businesses from relative obscurity never seeking the limelight , in fact the polar opposite to our present incumbent. I realise there is a high degree of , resentment is probably too strong a word , scepticism o here regards the trust , alot probably deserved , however if Carlsberg did takeover's , this would be the one IMHO

good man, predictable as ever , keep it up your definetly winning , dont know what but your definetly winning :box: now I'm away so you can have the last word , go on you know you want it ..........

listen wabash you cannot even grasp the meanings of your posts , you just continue to waffle your way through things repeating yourself until people get fed up trying to make sense of your incessant rubbish , but hey in your world the sky is what colour exactly ??

They can refuse to play in UEFA competitions all they like , the reality of any such moves is that under current statutes they are all licensed by UEFA and ultimately FIFA , by the time that all this went through the relevant courts any players wanting to take part would not only be retired but probably picking up their old age pension . The only change to any clubs plans re-transfers is that they would not be allowed to over spend , it's not only in the Uk where clubs are getting into serious hock , and a recent UEFA study showed that 67% of clubs across europe are in debt that they cannot reasonably sustain

Aye that's why for the last three years there's been a que down copland road trying to buy us , you really post some amount of pish , but you dress it all up with a wee quote here and a wee quote there .

Real may be in debt but they dont make a loss , that's where this plan is different , the days of clubs running up hugh debt will be finished if Platini gets this in , in fact that's one reason why Abramovich changed over �£300 million of debt into loan notes at their last published accounts

The season after this when we have qualifiers ( if we win the league) we are seeded and also play teams ranked below 16th , which should be a formality even to us .

Danny this is more to do with clubs spending outwith their incomes , something we have been paying the price off for a good few years , if Real Madrid make �£100 million in profit then they can spend that , the trouble is the Chelsea's ,Man City's where they are making massive losses every year , remember the Epl owe more than �£3 BILLION

Platini has been working on this for months and has the backing of some major players in UEFA , lets face it the power that the EPL has , it was only a matter of time before something was done to reign them back.

Ok I admit I was a wee bit lazy , too busy switching between the game and this site , cheers Stewarty :)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/article7078254.ece

yes and they dont usually post crap on that site , the name being quoted certainly ticks all the right boxes

I wasn't questioning you maineflyer , at least you have an open mind and are not blinkered by past loyalties , sorry if you took it the wrong way mate. Also I have been told the shares will be sold as LLoyds see fit .

The MIH shares are not going to be sold in parts from what I can gather , and Murray is very very periferal in all this , no matter what one person on here still appears to believe :box:

The deal was always about the shares MIH hold in the club and the necessity to remove us from the hold of a failing company , too many fans lumped all of Murray's shares together , I for one could not bothered in any way if Murray keeps hold of the shares he holds personally

But what exactly is our level at this moment in time when we have been barred from recruiting any new players for 3 transfer windows . and how did he mismanage a team devoid of all their top midfielders , just what difference Miller and Boyd would have made to that team . Also we didn't exactly have the greatest of records up there over the last few years with a full team out , and please dont quote the last two results in isolation . Critiscism is very easy with hindsight and it's something you are very good at wabash , I dont see much constructive critiscism ever from your good self . your more a deflect and avoid type of guy

I cannot really believe this has went to 4 pages , the reality is we had no one else , the only players you could argue with were Miller and Boyd not playing , now my question would be this , was last nights midfield capable of creating chances , the answers probably no , so why is everyone going nuts on this. We came within 2 minutes of extra time , they scored a really jammy goal , yes they had a few chances , but it was hardly a hammering , sometimes these things happen live with it and get over it .

There is a major difference between prioritising their troubles over our defeat at this present period in time . My opinion in not being all that bothered about last night is purely down to the players available to the management , remember we have hardly had it easy up there in the last few years yet we went there last with 3/4 of our first choice midfield missing either through illness or suspension . We went until the last minute with that team until they scored a very lucky goal , over the piece yes they deserved the win , but we were hardly hammered , and yes this game was lost at Ibrox . I never want to see a Rangers team lose but at this present time in the situation we are in with the squad stretched to the absolute point of breaking then I can live with last nights result , and yes that may be tempered by their problems but so what , we live in the west of scotland goldfish bowl and if we cant gloat in their hour of despair then when can we gloat . sorry but that's just my opinion , and before we jump the gun Dundee Utd are more than capable of winning this cup so dont think Septic have it won .

To vbe honest I dont think playing Boyd , Miller and or Novo would have made any difference , we dont have enough back up in midfield , it aint rocket science , apart from Edu the rest were just making up numbers . You might get away with playing Lafferty , or Naismith in midfield when you have your first choice beside them but not when the entire midfield is changed , any way just an opinion

The problem wasn't with the players we rested , it was the players we missed in midfield and none of those missing were rested , I rest my case

Never mind the league is the all important thing , and the thought of that lot throwing their scarves onto the St Mirren pitch is cheering me up no end