amms

I'm probably in a minority of one but I've actually got some sympathy with Levein. To an extent I think he's been stitched up by the media over this. The omission of any Rangers players from the squad isn't that much of a surprise. Really only Wallace, Broadfoot, Alexander and Black are in serious contention for a call up currently. Broadfoot is just returning from long term injury so his exclusion isn't much of a surprise and Black has never been picked before so again no surprise. Leaving out Wallace and Alexander need explaining. His belief that Mulgrew and Fox are his preferred choices for left back is fair enough, we can disagree with him on this but it's not a ridiculous decision. For me leaving out Alexander is more puzzling. The specialist nature of goalkeeping and his ability to get into the squad when not in the Rangers first team previously suggests to me that he would still have a good chance of getting in despite playing in the 3rd Division. But for outfield players there can be no doubt playing in Div 3 is going to hold back their careers. Even the most one-eyed of us must surely accept the drop in quality of opposition will affect performance. I've no problem with the Scotland manager saying that those playing at the highest level will be looked at first. His subsequent call up of Black is then surprising. But I think it's a one-off call up and will be his last for a while. It makes little sense just now but I can only assume it is try out a formation Levein has in mind and his preferred player, probably Scott Brown, isn't currently available to play in. Some of the press have it in for Levein. For professional or personal reasons they don't like him and they have decided to make life difficult for him. This is simply something they have picked up on to beat him with. Wallace isn't Messi, leaving him out is hardly going to make a huge difference to the outcome of the match. I don't think Levein is a great manager, he fell right into this tabloid trick which doesn't say much for him and his Scotland sides have been less than inspiring. Both Smith and McLeish proved that a bit of organisation and a lot of endeavour will see most of the population support the Scotland team. We know our limitations, we just want to see them compete, we'll accept defeat if we've at least done that. But for me this smells of tabloid agenda driven stories, Rangers still sell papers and getting a Rangers angle in on this helps circulation. We're being used and in the end no one wins accept Rupert Murdoch and Trinity Mirror, I for one have no interest in helping either of them.

It is curious though. Dundee Utd must have some idea why they've not been paid, if indeed they haven't been. You wonder if they contacted Rangers after Green's statement and said 'what about us?' or did they simply send out a press release? If they did the former and were given a reason then the statement is pretty poor form, if they didn't contact us then why not. If they did and didn't get a satisfactory answer then making a public statement is fair enough I suppose. One thing is clear though, our relationship with Dundee Utd is clearly very poor. This is a matter that should be handled privately between the two clubs, not through the BBC. That it's not being tells us all we need to know about clubs in Scotland.

My second submission for The Blue Library. Butcher My Autobiography by Terry Butcher and Bob Harris The Rangers crowd can cheer a tackle almost as loudly as a goal at times. Few sights in football are as rousing for us as seeing an opponent being stopped in their tracks by a crunching, no nonsense, take the ball and the man tackle. I stand and cheer them, fist clenched, like a wild-eyed savage. Indeed Iâ??m embarrassed to recall the summer we signed both Basil Boli and Brian Laudrup because I was much more excited by the signing of Boli than Laudrup. Iâ??d seen Boli in the flesh playing for Marseille, he looked formidable, powerful, skillful, athletic and arguably one of the best defenders in world football at that time. He wasnâ??t. In mitigation though Iâ??d point out that the last time signing a defender had excited me that much it was Terry Butcher. He was. Even today the signing of Terry Butcher seems inconceivable. Unlike poor Boli, Butcher actually was one of the best defenders in the world at that time. Heâ??d just played in the 1986 World Cup and been chosen for the team of the tournament. His England team had lost to the eventual winners, Argentina, and in particular to the genius of Maradona, and even that was a much closer game than most of us remember. Indeed Butcherâ??s entire career is the stuff of Boys Own legend, which only makes the fact his autobiography is so poor all the more annoying. Much of the criticism for that must rest with Bob Harris who has joint credit on the cover. How you can take a story as exciting and full as Butcherâ??s and turn it into this turgid, plodding rubbish is quite a trick. Harris is a professional writer, which tells you all you need to know about the state of English tabloid journalism. The book follows a standard chronological order, rarely deviating from it. From his early, relatively idyllic, life in Lowestoft, to signing for Ipswich Town the club he supported, playing for England, signing for Rangers, Coventry and then onto management. Butcher is almost the identikit footballer for that time. A local boy, he marries his teenage sweetheart at a young age as all footballers seem to do, and becomes a regular in an Ipswich Town team that was one of the finest English club sides ever. He enjoyed a long relationship with Sir Bobby Robson, he clearly knew him well, annoyingly this relationship isnâ??t properly explored. Robson was a fine tactician and a great man-manager, yet little of that is imparted here. Instead we get the clichéd drinking stories. Indeed Harris and Butcher seem to want you to believe that Terry is a borderline alcoholic, even though that simply doesnâ??t ring true. Drinking to excess is clearly part of British football culture, thatâ??s news to nobody, but I struggle to accept Butcher was anymore than one of the lads on that score. Yet this is a recurring theme. He calls it his Jekyll and Hyde personality but Butcher is no schizophrenic, he just got a bit of a temper and is a bad loser, not uncommon in successful footballers. Butcher dedicates only 3 chapters, out of 24, to his time at Rangers, yet the cover has him in Rangers kit celebrating a league triumph rather than the blue of Ipswich, perhaps that was the idea of the publishers financial director (the reverse is the iconic, blood spattered England player). Surprisingly Butcher actually spent less than four years at Ibrox although his influence and impact at Rangers suggest longer. Butcher was the finest centre-half in the country when he joined Rangers. His arrival, more than anyone else, signaled what Souness was trying to achieve, Butcher was the cornerstone around which that great Rangers team was built; he was our talisman. Itâ??s no coincidence that in the 87/88 season he was seriously injured and Celtic won the league. Even the worst written books contain some interesting information. Butcher was â??tapped-upâ?? to join Rangers, a strictly illegal practice, by his co-author of all people. No doubt some Celtic supporter filled with Corinthian spirited outrage will start a blog about this and attempt to have all the trophies we won whilst he was with us removed. Still, we werenâ??t the only ones, Manchester United did too, as did Spurs, he turned them down for us. Butcher also talks about the pre-season training before the 87-88 season being the reason we lost the league. Souness experimented with playing friendlies to regain fitness rather than the more conventional running based fitness work, it didnâ??t suit the players and they started the season very badly. After the infamous Celtic game where Butcher, Chris Woods and Frank McAvennie were sent off and Graeme Roberts ended up playing in goal for most of the match, all four of them were reported to the Procurator Fiscal in one of the Scottish legal systems darkest hours. The policeman who formally charged Butcher apologised to him for having to do it, and David Holmes told him, Woods and Roberts the club would not stand in their way if they wanted to leave after the case. Most surprising for me was that Walter Smith approached him about becoming his number two when Souness left. When the book was first released newspaper serialisation focused heavily on his take on the â??religiousâ?? side of Glasgow football. In fact itâ??s only a small part of the book, and in keeping with the rest itâ??s poorly handled and factually inaccurate. However Butcher does hold a mirror up to us. His experience is telling, he rightly points out the absurdity of a lot of our songs, songs he freely admits he embraced when he first arrived. Indeed Butcher has made a pretty good living out of being first a Rangers player and then an ex-Rangers player. I personally, along with 20,000 others, took an afternoon off work and drove from Glasgow to Sunderland to attend a testimonial for a player Iâ??d never heard of before the game, and canâ??t recall today, all because Butcher was the Sunderland manager. He remained popular with the support until relatively recently, indeed this book proved something of a turning point. His leaving of the club was undignified. He handled it badly, something he himself now admits. Had he agreed to play instead of refusing, had he not spoken to the TV station Souness had banned he could have rehabilitated himself and he might have seen out the remainder of his contract at Rangers and gone on to the coaching side under Walter Smith. He could have been Rangers manager today had he not taken a childish huff in 1990. Yet thatâ??s not properly examined in this book, a career defining moment is brushed over in a couple of pages. If Butcher is actually a boring, hackneyed, dullard then Harris has portrayed him perfectly. But you canâ??t help but hope he's not and I feel that the Butcher story, straddling the â??old daysâ?? of football and the modern age, a player blessed with ability and energy, so pivotal to Rangers and to England has simply been badly told. Perhaps Bob Harris was another bad career decision on Butcherâ??s part.

No worries then, leave it with me. Now, do I actually need to talk about football in it??

Go on, I'll have a go if you're desperate. Happy to do East Stirling if you want, when do you need it by?

Quite professional looking, having heard about it before I'd assumed it would be more 'fanzine' style. Will it be available online or as an app or only in magazine format? Best of luck with it, it looks great.

Haha, surely the last club any player with even an ounce of ambition is going to sign for is Hibs! No matter what league they are in they have a manager who is clearly miles out of his depth, has only months if not weeks left in the job and will be a difficult quiz question in a few years (aarrgghh, what was his name again, looked like the bastard love-child of Nevin and O'Neill, got gubbed in the Scottish Cup Final, oh what was his name??). Add to that Hibs have a board who change managers with an alacrity only bettered by Hearts and you can see why players might just be wary of signing for them. But yeah, blame Rangers, blame the players, blame greed, (how dare they want to earn money, why everyone knows Dean Shiels and Sandaza are already multi-millionaires) but whatever you do don't blame the Hibs board, manager or supporters for their own mess.

Did they, news to me. Personally I thought Clyde pretty much showed the rest of Scottish football how to behave during that period, their honesty and candour was very refreshing.

Why would we refuse them?

Calscot, I'm not sure about some of that, some pretty big generalisations being made there. I take it you aren't suggesting that stuff is taught at school but rather in the home? I think you need to find some new friends mate, the ones you have sound bonkers.

There is some merit in what you are saying Calscot but I think you need to be careful at describing the choosing of a football team to support as being "sectarian". It's a loaded word and implies a conscious decision which most of us didn't really make. In truth most Celtic supporters 'choose' Celtic because of family ties and peer pressure, they are 'introduced' to them by older brothers, fathers, uncles and school friends but the decision to support a team is made at an age when you are in no position to understand the implications of it. In the same way many of us 'chose' Rangers because of the influence of family members or friends. There will be exceptions obviously but I'm not sure it is fair to describe a process many of us went through as sectarian. It could be argued that I support Rangers because I'm a Glasgow Protestant, however in truth I support Rangers because my Dad did, my older cousins did and most of the boys in my class did, throw in Davie Cooper and Bobby Russell and you have a lifetime love. Is my being 'Protestant' incidental or was it critical to my 'decision'? If someone chooses to raise their child as a Roman Catholic in Scotland and send them to a RC school the likelihood is they will support Celtic because most of their school friends will. Choosing to be an RC is a sectarian decision then, so is choosing to be an agnostic, or a Sikh or a Zoroastrian. I don't think that's what Murray is getting at. His point, and this is one that's been made on the Rangers Standard by others as well, is that some of the Rangers support and indeed aspects of the club, weren't pro-Protestant they were anti-Catholic when the opposite couldn't really be levelled at Celtic. It's arguable if that's entirely true but I think thats his point.

The point of the article is to inform and spark debate I imagine, that's the point of pretty much everything that's written anywhere. As this thread shows it seems to have worked. Whatever view held on Murray's work he's a recognised contributor on Scottish football and has written extensively on 'the Old Firm'. What he's trying to say depends on your reading of it I suppose. For me I took from it that whenever Celtic have been in difficulties in the past Rangers have supported them, either through words, actions or indeed inactions. That it was accepted between the clubs that we've common interests and they are best served by supporting each other at boardroom level. Murray is expressing his surprise that they didn't 'help' us this time round. Indeed he's making the point that no one helped us and expressing surprise at this. Whilst us fans might say 'well what did you expect, we knew that would happen' he's making the point that it is surprising in a historical context. His point about the increasing 'Irishness' of Celtic and its undoubted influence on this is well made. Rangers are more open and inclusive than at anytime in the last 100 years, yet Celtic seem to be going in the other direction. That a PLC operated company would knowingly make decisions that will fundamentally have an adverse effect on their 'business' is staggering when actually analysed. You could say that the 'Old Firm' no longer exists now. I enjoyed the article, Murray has been quite critical of Rangers in the past, I thought his view, as a 'neutral' from afar was quite illuminating actually.

Yes unfortunately I think 'route-one' football will be required at times this season, hence Kyle. It won't be pretty but I suppose it's more important that we keep winning. I'll add my voice to those saying winning every league game is unrealistic. Our first 11 is far stronger than the opposition but our squad is still small and we'll get injuries and suspensions in the course of the season. We'll play some matches with inexperienced young players and they are always vulnerable to 'off-days'. Ally seems to be buying quite wisely, bringing in experience, essential for any squad, as well as some guile which the squad lacked until very recently. But we'll certainly drop points in the course of the season, I'm certain of that.

I thought UEFA had banned the ownership of more than one club, didn't ENIC fall foul of this eventually?

C'mon, are we seriously believing the Scottish and Newcastle own Ibrox? I mean if nothing else ask why, what could possibly be in that for them? Nah, someone somewhere is putting two and two together and getting girafe.

Lovely, well done.

C'mon, are you really criticising a book you've not read? Off the top of my there are something like 20 contributors, some are brilliant, some are good, some are average and one, Speirs, is poor. But if you take the book as a whole then it is excellent. If you read it you might not enjoy it of course, I don't know you well enough to be sure. But on the whole it's a well written, thoughtful collection, at times informative, at times challenging indeed uncomfortable reading at times, but worth the effort. From the little I know of you I think you would enjoy it. I should write a review of it....

Have you read it?

And a good few others too, be fair. It was an excellent book, Speirs piece was illuminating, mainly because it read like a work of fiction, showing him to be, at best, a fantasist.

Bringing in people from outside is what got us Doncaster and Regan! Of course you can be impartial. Make sure anyone involved cannot benefit from the decision and make sure there are rules in place that need followed. I don't believe everyone hates us, the SFL have shown us that. I don't believe the clubs in Div 3 hate us, indeed I think a few now have a grudging respect for us, indeed i'd say that's the case for most of the lower 2 divisions in Scotland at least. Celtic aside most of the supporters of other clubs I know think a line should be drawn under this now, the 'punishment' we've had is enough for them. There'll be exceptions I'm sure but the majority feel that way in my experience.

Mmm, Media House don't work in a vacuum, they don't set the agenda and create the stories, whatever we might think. Media House, like all PR companies, take instruction from those who pay their fees, in this case the board and CEO of Rangers. Their currency is having good relations with the media, feeding the media lies is not in their interest whatever we might think about them. For all the spin in PR reputations and honesty are vital. The media will not play ball if they are constantly being told whoppers. The denial in this story will have come from the club, not Media House, if the story turns out to be true and the club has lied about it then Media House would have a problem with the media. No way would Media House advise the club to deny a story that someone could easily disprove. They might advise 'no comment' but not denial.

I think excessive corporation tax will be the least of our worries this year. The article is whiny and daft, if Motherwell or Hearts or St Johnstone wanted to sign Dean Shiels or Ian Black I'm sure they could have, what's the problem? If they can't afford him then that shouldn't preclude us from signing him, as long as we can. Questioning the ambition of a player who leaves Kilmarnock for Rangers, whatever division we're in, is a first for me frankly.

You are on to something you know. The total blanket coverage Rangers have received in the last 6 months looks like continuing while we're in Div 3. That must be sticking in the craw of a few SPL directors, particularly ones in the East End. the novelty factor we now hold, whilst not being happy about it, has given us a point of difference that none of the SPL have. The only thing that will bring bigger crowds on a regular basis to most SPL clubs is them playing better, they clearly aren't all going to be able to do that so expect some serious problems for some of them later in the season. If Hearts can sustain a title challenge they'll draw bigger crowds, if they can't they won't. It's not rocket science and applies to all the SPL clubs outside of the Tims. I expect they'll see a drop in attendance no matter what happens.

Surely the correct response would be along the lines of 'I disagree with this/him, he's talking rubbish' rather than criticising the guy who posted it who clearly didn't write it? Leggat polarises, like most regular commentators on Rangers related stuff sometimes I disagree with him. On this occasion he is making a valid point though. The influence Celtic have over the SPL is clear to everyone, what could Lawwell be promising that Doncaster or an ICT or St Mirren director couldn't? The SPL has been shown to be corrupt and driven by avarice and self-interest, pointing out who is clearly pulling the strings isn't a bad thing.

Is he still an agent? It's quite a couple of statements from him. I can't help but feel he's actually making some veiled threats with this "Football is a murky business. That is why HMRC are taking such a keen interest in it. Recently a Spanish football official revealed that 75% of the money in the Spanish game is what they call “black money,” i.e. it is not recorded for. This is rife in football. Anyone who believes that Rangers are the only team in Scotland who have been guilty of making unrecorded payments is either very naive or insane. The recent furious salvo by Ally McCoist at the way Rangers have been treated highlights not only the anti-Rangers agenda being relentlessly and vigorously pursued by many in the Scottish game, but also the astonishing hypocrisy of people who live in glass houses themselves. Sooner or later someone will break ranks and tell the truth about other teams’ dodgy dealings. When that happens, the full fury of Rangers’ fans will be vented on all those who have put the boot in to our crippled club." I mean he must know 'stuff', bloody hell he was Mo Johnston's agent at one time.