Hildy
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Everything posted by Hildy
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It would seem then that Rangers - possibly under the SDM regime - have not negotiated the situation satisfactorily. I wonder what the club is being paid - or has been paid - for making Ibrox available.
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Do you think we'd have seen an elite club gracing Ibrox even if it had been fully available?
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If Bayern. Real or Barca were happy to play us, why aren't they? Why are we playing low grade US sides when we could being hosting football royalty? Is it because they don't want to visit Ibrox at this time, or is it because our board is so incompetent that it can't arrange fixtures against them?
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"If only to see their new stars in action" You got that bit right. That's how big a draw we are to Arsenal fans these days.
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We are enduring three years in the wilderness. We are a football sob story. This spell away from the top tier has been enormously damaging. If we were visible in Europe and competing successfully for the league, we might be able to arrange lucrative fixtures, but in our position, the big names don't want to know because we offer little in the way of competition and play a brand of football that drives people away from the sport. Buckie are happy to play us, but Bayern? I don't think so.
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I don't expect to see Boreham Wood at the Emirates any time soon.
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We would take a decent support to Arsenal, but our appeal to Arsenal fans is so low that many of them wouldn't bother to turn up and see us. Arsenal would be far better inviting a club that will give them a good workout and be of interest to the Arsenal support. Arsenal inviting Rangers is a bit like Rangers inviting Linfield. The diehards turn up but thousands don't bother. If I was the Arsenal manager or CEO, Rangers wouldn't even be on my radar for an invitation.
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If you were an Arsenal fan, would you want to see Rangers invited to a tournament? We're no longer a top division team, we play grotesque football and even when we were in the top tier, the last time we visited the Emirates we were out of our depth against the home team. The attraction of Rangers is historic rather than current.
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The club should, but then the club is run by a small group of people who aren't Rangers fans. The RST is required to say what has to be said.
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A fan-owned club would maximise its potential to the full. Its members would insist on it. Rangers would push hard until it was as influential as its size suggests that it should be. We would have people on every influential committee simply because it would be negligent not to. Right now - and it was the same under SDM - Rangers does not punch its weight, and it isn't going to any time soon as this chaotic regime struggles just to make ends meet. If Rangers was all it could be, we wouldn't have to worry about the dishonest mismanagement of the game because we would be playing an active part in the whole process. If the club was currently taken seriously in the corridors of power, it would already have managed to rid the game of one or two dubious administrators, but who takes Rangers seriously these days? Rangers is not all it could be - not even close - and mediocrity is going to embed itself to the club indefinitely unless there is major and beneficial change. We are a giant of a club on the outer reaches of the corridors of power. This should be totally unacceptable to every Rangers fan. It doesn't need to be like this, but while the club remains in inappropriate hands, we'll be on the outside looking in as clubs like Dundee United and Celtic dictate how it should be.
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Anything that helps to bring BBC Scotland back from being an untrusted broadcasting midden to becoming a serious and trusted media organisation is more than welcome. I'm glad the RST is on the case.
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If Celtic had been subjected to what we have gone through with HMRC, what sort of statement would it have made? WW3 would have been declared and the issue would have been a hot topic at both Holyrood and Westminster. They fight and fight hard. We roll over.
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Look at where we are: The club comes out with a belated and ineffectual statement and it is greeted with cynicism and ridicule. We know and are grateful for the fact that the club is the same one we grew up with, but in our hearts, we surely know that something fundamental has changed. We, the members of Gersnet, are more the club than this regime will ever be, but it has the power and we don't. This is where we are at. When the club speaks, it speaks for a commercial entity that has control of a football club that we have considerable affection for. It doesn't speak for Rangers half as much as we do. We need change: urgently.
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There is a price to pay for being the biggest and the best. Did anyone seriously believe that the fall of the giant would not be greeted by hilarity and glee? When the mighty is humbled, sympathy is rarely in evidence. To fans of lesser light clubs, Rangers was the arrogant bully and long overdue for a fall. The fact that our crisis has been so drawn out and grim has poured fuel on the fire and incinerated the club's reputation for being influential and immortal. Our secret is out now. We are vulnerable and weak and our hard-won reputation that had us marked out as being indestructible and permanent has gone, perhaps forever. Fairness takes a back seat when an establishment pillar collapses. Who really cares if Rangers is the victim in this - apart from ourselves? If Manchester United had endured what we had, would the English football public be in mourning or would it instead be in fits of laughter? It's probably true that the levels of hatred and venom directed towards Rangers are excessive, after all, we have Celtic fans in our midst, but if you are a football fan, and if you have travelled around Scotland following Rangers, don't tell me you are shocked by the way our situation has been greeted. Our pain is their gain. Facts? Who cares about facts? It is impossible for Rangers to portray itself as a victim. What happened happened and pleading unfairness and criminality is not going to cut it. The double standard in Scottish broadcasting ensures that sympathy is reserved for the little guy - not institutions like Rangers that have lorded it over Scottish football for over a hundred years. Maybe certain folk will do jail time for this, or perhaps not, but even if they do, it won't repair the damage done. When a club or institution is as big as we are, it is expected to sort itself out when a crisis comes along, and we have been singularly unable to do that. Don't waste your energy on promises of revenge or threats to withdraw the 'blue pound'. Rangers was blown apart by our own negligence as much as the alleged criminality of others. I'm not angry at all. I'm just saddened that we have been found out to be a castle built on sand.
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So HMRC could keep it going even now? How likely is that?
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That's what Rangers is - an omnishambles. It does not deserve to be supported for what it is. It only attracts support for what it was. Every time Ally McCoist opens his mouth these days he disappoints thousands of Rangers fans, and that's putting it mildly. He infuriates people with garbage like this.
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People used to get annoyed and angry when there was just the Trust, Assembly and Association. "Merge", was the oft-stated advice, so what happens? Now we have RF and SOS as well and the club is trying to get in on the act with a poor excuse for a membership scheme. As Frankie suggests, the more well-intentioned we become, the more dysfunctional we are. We are confusing our own people with mixed messages and ill thought-out schemes.
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We can talk about better coaching and better coaches as much as we like, but it's no more than wishful thinking. It is not going to happen. Rangers has been the rich kid in Scottish football for a long, long time, and it has mostly earned success with wallet power rather than exceptional professionalism, enlightened training methods and outstanding management. Now, with the club in a sorry state, it has a manager steeped in the old ways - but those days have gone. Our ownership isn't trusted, fans will not turn out as they would if the club was in good hands and the team will continue to be as exciting as a rush-hour traffic jam. We have no influence over anything at Rangers. We are customers who dream of a corner being turned even though the growing perceptive element in our midst knows that it won't be, and we are stuck with a management team that isn't rated and mostly isn't wanted. And if the present regime could afford to make the changes required, would you trust it to find the right people? Would you trust it to invest as it will need to invest to match Celtic and not be humiliated in Europe? Don't build your hopes up. It is going to be a grim experience watching Rangers in the next few years. Of course Dave King or AN Other could sweep in, but perhaps the most disappointing aspect of ownership alternatives in recent times is their willingness to stick with the old boys and old ways and hope for the best. The current lot has kept McCoist on; the Blue Knights had plans to keep him, King seems keen to give him money to spend and every other possible owner has hinted the same thing - McCoist to stay. Incredibly, Charles Green was the one guy that knew he needed to be replaced, but he never quite got around to doing it. Feel free to dream, because dreaming has no barriers to success and glory, but reality is going to bite very hard at Rangers from now on. Our best days have been and gone. Only a Rangers revolution can sort this mess out.
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Celtic used an EBT too, widely believed to be for Juninho. Celtic had a re-think over this though, and although they declared the money in their annual accounts, they did not disclose it to the SFA or SPL - unlike Rangers - and after becoming aware of a potential tax liability, Celtic agreed to pay a sum of money to HMRC. Brian Quinn is believed to be the fellow who was advising Celtic on the EBT issue, and he was a former high-ranking employee in the Bank of England. Once Celtic had paid over money to HMRC, they could relax and watch the fun start. Being a well-connected club with influential and clued-up directors certainly benefitted Celtic on this issue. Contrast this with our effective one-man band operation under Murray and the current lot which can't even be trusted to publish error-free accounts.
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The HMRC campaign against EBTs indirectly led to the company's liquidation. If there had been no EBT threat hanging over the club, Murray might have found a more credible buyer although he'd been trying to offload the club for a number of years without success. Whyte steered the ship towards the iceberg, so he was at the wheel when the sinking started, but the EBT issue effectively allowed him to take charge of a ship that he was unqualified to master. Murray sold to Whyte under pressure from his bank - I do not believe he had a choice when it became known that Whyte was ready to enter the fray. Murray's empire had been weakened after the 2008 financial meltdown and Rangers had become a drag on resources, but the EBT threat hanging over the club meant that unloading it had to be a priority. As the EBT issue meant that Rangers was virtually unsaleable, the appearance of Whyte was great news for both Murray and his bank. The use of EBTs by Rangers has to be one of the worst decisions Murray ever made, but do not underestimate the feelings that certain key Celtic-minded people had for Murray. He was detested by some of them and they would have been beside themselves with glee when he and Rangers were humiliated. Did Rangers-hating play a role in where we are today? I suspect that it did, but we may never know for certain. Celtic is still a Celtic-minded club. It knows the politics, the tricks, the traditions and the traumas of Old Firm matters and it's no surprise that some Celtic-minded commentators are better informed on Rangers matters than we are. By comparison, Rangers is a club that has no meaningful connection to its past. It is owned and run by people who know as much about its history as Ally McCoist does about football management. It is a lightweight compared to its rival from the east end. In the Old Firm match-up today, there is an obvious gulf between the teams on the park. Unfortunately, off the park, it's even worse.
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That's very encouraging. Let's hope he is right.
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What is likely to happen now?
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Historic baggage? Does the team you support have historic baggage? Have you given up on it because of it? Opportunities have certainly been missed but the RST's SaveRangers had around £13,000,000 in pledges when things were getting desperate, and guess what happened? The useless and utterly pointless RFFF came along and killed it. Those who pushed the RFFF idea displayed a complete lack of judgement and sent the support scurrying around looking for money that was never going to make a difference. Your so-called 'expert' may have no axe to grind, but maybe you do. He doesn't sound like much of an expert to me.