buster.

It's not so much about traffic volume on Rangers threads, more about a semi-hidden, in-part, organised structure that has evolved and grown in recent years and features 'professional people' willing to give their time to 'the cause'. It has informal links with the football club (via Brennan/CQN,+) although that is from a distance and they decide their own 'general direction'. Alongside it runs a plethora of bloggers and individuals that seem to naturally grasp the basic and general direction to go with. -------------------------------------- The culture surrounding Celtic always meant it probable that they would be ahead of us in this area. Re. fans 'civil war' - What happened to us under Sir Duped and was further encouraged by SDM/Irvine meant the distance between us and them (re. general fan awareness/organisation) was already vast when the RTC website was set-up in the spring of 2011.

It may in part be but IMO there is a hate based need to maximise damage on us. Firstly, they want to unite the rest of Scottish football against us and increase the levels of hatred, perception of toxicity. Secondly, they want to further damage our reputation and secure as much negative coverage, as widely broadcast as possible. Thirdly, hamper our progress as a football club. This is just another angle that accompanies the 'sectarian card' that they attempt to emphasis at any given perceived opportunity. The Celtic Minded Political machine is a well practised and relatively effective one.

....and when he played in front of them, the defensive unit as a whole looked more solid.

I'm out again..........(said I would try to resist but)....waiting to see final squad.

We need a squad of 20 or so that includes versatile players. If the price is right then I see a young Dominic Ball, a player that we know and has performed in big games, as a no-brainer.

We know exactly what he brings. He did well last season. He is young and can improve. etc Then it comes down to numbers and if his attributes represent value for money.

Thread I can see says We have started negotiations with Dominic Ball today.

He said he was in charge of SD employment review (at least in the ST) He then said he didn't even know if some of the main 'red flags' that had been waved regards employment practice even existed. He said that he didn't know who was responsible for adopting certain employment policies (red flags). If he is in charge of review....what does that say about review ? He admitted to not being able to manage growth regards employment but talked about looking to buy BHS. He said 'people' were the most important thing about SD but they obviously come VERY low on the priority list. He tried to put distance between himself and agencies. He wants them to take a lot of the blame. etc, etc., etc Committee let him dominate the meeting and didn't take advantage of material staring them in face....When Paul Blomfield MP became awkward, Ashley basically shut him up.....although this did give an insight into the Ashley personality. Turner (Union) was excellent and will be generally peeved at MP's performance. ------------- One thing from that is that in a roundabout way he admitted to being very sensitive to media criticism. Interested parties should take note.

Ashley appears to be all over the place. His expensive legal panzer division either aren't as good as they should be or they are occasionally being ignored. SD shareholders would be well advised to push harder to be rid of Mr MASH from their boardroom. I propose that Justice Peter Smith be allowed to sit on the committee this coming Tuesday morning.

Just to mention the DR article on yesterdays events that shines a tiny sliver of light on things. It tells of a judge who wasn't at all happy with the Crown/Prosecutor and the uncertainty that still surrounded proceedings. Full article http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/craig-whyte-sacks-top-lawyer-8111905#f26CbCDxIXX84VLP.97

Funny that, so did I.

There is so much we don't know, or at least so much has happened over the past few months without any indication as to why it has happened, that I'm going to try and keep to the 'transfer thread tactic' of not getting to wrapped up in it until the final outcome is presented.

Bring pre-season on so as to have a better idea of the squad. Maybe it is an age thing but I can't get into this transfer speculation like I did when I was a 'lad', two weeks was enough this year culminating with Barton signing. Back in the day would read what I could of the newspapers when doing my paper-round and in school holidays would walk a mile down the road to the big John Menzies in Princess Street to read all and everything I missed previously. My uneducated tuppence worth is that I don't fancy Toure. It reminds me of deals in yesteryear that had a poor hit-rate and were relatively expensive.

I'm in ........!

You have a group of Celtic supporters who not only wish every conceivable ill upon Rangers, to the point that they don't care about any consequences for Scottish football, but organise and spend their life trying to make it happen. They wish to see us title stripped and then dead, attempting to conceal their hatred with self righteous claims about looking to expose corruption. If you take a minute and go down a hypothetical road that sees them having a degree of success, think about what the finances, atmosphere and prospects would be in and around Scottish football. I doubt that Celtic PLC would want to go there, unless they were sure they'd get out of Scottish football (of which there is no sign of a route).

Are there any examples of SL being used in a similar football enviroment ?

SL would more than likely bring serious sporting integrity issues that may make the whole competition a bogey. They had better think it through properly.

There is one teams support who are well organised, co-ordinated and would most probably be prepared to make an attempt to take advantage of SL and it ain't us.

A little further down the road http://vfjuk.org.uk/uncategorized/109/ So we've got a ' specialist' have we Be careful, he'll send you to jail !!

When I was a young lad in the 70's, we started to dominate the competition (more especially the second half of the decade). If you look back at the records, Celtic won 5 LC's IAR in the 60's but in the following 46 years, only won it 8 times whilst in the same 46 years, we have won it 21 times. Celtic reached 8 LC finals in the 70's and lost 7 of them (3 to us). It's a national trophy and those victories at Hampden are always welcome.

Some interesting numbers I came accross elsewhere SPFL season 2015/16 (TV ratings) Top 5 Clubs by average rating 1 - Rangers - 155,294 from 17 games 2 - Celtic - 149,857 from 35 games 3 - Hibs - 135,889 from 9 games 4 - Ross County - 123,250 from 4 games 5 - Killie - 116,250 from 4 games Top 5 Domestic Games of the Season (Viewers) 1 - Rangers vs Celtic - Scottish Cup - 17/04/16 - 501,000 2 - Rangers vs Hibs - Championship - 28/12/15 - 273,000 3 - Rangers vs Cowdenbeath - Scottish Cup - 10/01/16 - 244,000 4 - Aberdeen vs Celtic - Premiership - 03/02/16 - 237,000 5 - Hearts vs Celtic - Premiership - 27/12/15 - 233,000 Attendences 2015/16 Top 2 averages in Scottish League Football 1 - Rangers - 45,325 (Championship) 2 - Celtic - 44,849 Top Scottish League Attendances 2015/16 1. Rangers v Alloa - 50,349 2. Rangers v Hibs - 49,995 3. Rangers v Hibs - 49,220 4. Rangers v St.Mirren - 49,216 5. Celtic v Aberdeen - 49,050 Top Scottish Cup attendances 2015/16 1. Rangers v Hibs - 50,701 2. Rangers v Celtic - 50,069 Some of the info comes from: http://www.thefootballlife.co.uk/post/145009173811/the-tv-review-of-the-spfl-season-201516 http://uk.soccerway.com/teams/scotland/rangers-fc/1899/

The programme is obviously given 'guidance' for a number of dates, eg. derby fixtures at New Year, mostly Celtic home games after European midweeks etc. It'd be just another wee adjustment.

Away with your political correctness, appreciate the curves and leave us all in peace. In the main the 70's were fine. We put out the likes of Bayern Munich (72) and Juventus (78) in the 70's which was more or less like beating West Germany and Italy at the time. West Germany were Euro Champions in 72 and WC winners in 74. Juventus had 8 or 9 of the Italian national team.

These guys have their pockets so full of money that there isn't any room for anything else, never mind an ego the size of JM's. There will be more money spent by the two Manchester clubs this summer than the Dutch, the Scottish, the Norwegian, the Swedish and the Danish top tiers combined.

He may not respect or be scared of them, but he's going to have to do what they tell him, 'answer' their questions and he won't like it. At a time when many shareholders in SD want change in the boardroom, the fact that he has been very publicly seen to have to climb down and attend the committee is damaging for him. His marauding panzer division are showing signs of weakness and bad judgement and after an especially bad 12 months, his crisis management team would have been desperate for this not to happen. I hope he does goes in with the 'I'm not sacred of you type attitude' because he'll be more liable to drop a clanger. However I think his advisers & lawyers will be extremely careful to prompt and stop him where they deem neccessary. ------------------ Late last year or early this I was going to try and run a thread with all the Ashley negative articles together but saw that the trickle became a deluge and simply going to The Guardian website you could locate them quickly and as for public opinion (never mind Rangers supporters) any reputation he may have had has become badly tarnished.