JohnMc

As you know my thoughts are complete speculation, I've no unique insight or special background knowledge on this, it's all just made up oot my own wee heid, so take it all with a pinch of salt. Your Leeds supporting pals could well be right, they could know more than me, no doubt about that. For me the reason I think the focus will remain on Leeds is simply due to the access they can get to the EPL and it's money. Leeds last reported turnover was £190 million. Bournemouth, the 'smallest' side in the EPL, turned over £141 million in their last reported accounts. That's the least available in that league. That's over £20 million more than Celtic who've won the league and played in the Champion's League and who most accept are pretty well run. I think we'd need to win the Champion's League to get anywhere close to that kind of income. In reality Leeds are more equivalent to Newcastle in terms of size, location and potential than to Bournemouth. Newcastle's last reported turnover was around £300 million and I suspect that's where 49ers think Leeds can get too. For that reason I think Leeds will remain their main focus, that's where the potential profit is. Get Leeds established in the EPL, make them a top half of the table side and count the money coming in. Now, before any of that happens Leeds need to get promoted, something that seems easier said than done. They're well placed currently, but it's not a given. If they fail to go up then who knows what happens, maybe that changes things, but if they do go up then I suspect every effort goes into keeping them up and establishing them as a permanent fixture there. I don't know where we fit into that.

That's the million dollar question. Ultimately they're a venture capitalist business, so they want to buy into/invest in businesses they believe can grow and be sold for a profit. If we look at Leeds, they bought a smallish shareholding, then increased that to 49% and then bought 100% of the club. Last year they brought in Red Bull, although what share of Leeds Red Bull own isn't clear. Ultimately, they'll want to sell some, or all, of Leeds for a profit. Currently European football clubs are seen as a good investment by American VCs for reasons that I'm not entirely sure of. So I'd guess they'll want to increase our value, that can be achieved by getting us into the Champion's League on a regular basis and increasing our commercial and broadcast income, probably our ticket income too. Or, they can gut us, cut our overheads to the bone and run us as a vehicle to support Leeds, which would be one of my worries. If they are trying to build a structure of clubs whose aim is to provide players, data, coaches and expertise for Leeds, in the hope of selling the whole 'package' to another investor, then we'd fit the criteria for that fairly well. The owners of Man City are different. They're looking for respectability, soft power in Europe, influence on culture and opportunities to expose Europe and beyond to the wonders of United Arab Emirates.

Currently we at least have the pretence of independence and we're not forced into service for just one club. But the point you make is fair, we're a step on the ladder, not the destination for most players. There are examples of good and bad ownership in football, full stop. We've had bad ownership in past that had nothing to do with America. It's not that they're American it's that they own Leeds already and have no emotional connection to us at all. It's just business to them.

I appreciate this is all speculation and must be treated with a pinch of salt, although at first glance there does seem to be some substance to it. I can see the attraction of it to our current board. They're getting no thanks currently, a significant and vocal percentage of our support are quite critical of them and they face further seasons of managed decline, or downsizing at least, with little prospect of that changing short term. Most of them invested with their hearts, I imagine their heads are wondering if that was the right decision now. So this opportunity, if it is is realised, might be very attractive to quite a number of our significant shareholders. Personally it's not how I want to see Rangers owned. I'm naturally wary of any business with the words 'venture capitalist' anywhere near them. I've worked with a number of companies over the years who welcomed investment from venture capitalists but later regretted it. They want a return, that's all that matters to them, it's all about turning a profit. How anyone expects to make a profit out of Scottish football is beyond me. I worry that the plan is to make us a step in a pyramid, a pyramid that will almost certainly have an English side at its apex. That's where the potential to make money lies, so it makes sense that's where the focus is. This group have no love for Rangers. They have no sense of our history, our rivalries, what's important to us, our position in the culture here and our demands and expectations. We'll be an asset, a brand to hawk, a page on a ledger. Someone decried our club as being like a bowling club recently. Perhaps, but at least there's some accountability around a bowling club committee, they need to walk and live among us. I do accept that they won't want to destroy the club, not deliberately at least. They might introduce good governance, new ideas, fresh investment and indeed some success on the park, it's entirely possible. I suspect, not for the first time, I'll be in the minority on this. It's just not how I think football clubs should be owned and run. They're not 'normal' businesses, the emotion tied up with a club precludes it from those 'rules'. In America a club is viewed as a franchise, to be bought, sold and moved for a greater return. That's not how European football is. I hate what's happening to football in England. Clubs are losing what made them great, they're becoming sanitised, tourist versions of their old selves. The same clubs in name only.

Is this just for league games, or is it all matches? Thanks for creating it, it's very interesting.

I was once at a conference in America a few years ago and at a dinner in the evening the conversation moved to teenage music. Scottish guy I was with told a story about him and his mates meeting up in a youth club where they'd "sit round a tranny sharing a fag, listening to the charts". This sentence, which made perfect sense to me, led a guy from San Diego to get quite annoyed with him. I'm not he ever believed our innocent explanation.

I used to drive up to the Knockagh Monument war memorial to listen to Rangers games when I lived in Northern Ireland. This was before digital radio far less the internet. The memorial sits on top of a 1,200 foot hill overlooking the Co. Antrim coast towards Scotland. I discovered that not only could you pick up Radio Scotland there but West Sound radio too. I'd drive up on a Saturday afternoon and listen to the commentary. I listened to Aberdeen play Dunfermline in a relegation play-off on top of a toilet block in Coober Pedy, a small mining town in the Australian desert. I'd met an Aberdeen fan and he had a portable tranny and the game was being broadcast on the BBC World Service. Coober Pedy is an unusual town in that everything is underground because of the heat and dust. So we needed some height to pick up the signal and that was the only building we could climb up onto. It was 7 in the morning or something too. We got some funny looks.

Other than making Cammy happy sacking Clement now achieves vey little. Most of his backroom team will leave with him, so we're into caretaker territory for a few weeks or months. Who would that be, Alex Rae? Neil McCann? McCoist? Certainly I think we can kiss goodbye to going any further in Europe. I think the board have already made up their mind and Clement won't be in charge for next season. They'll take the next few weeks to sound out a successor, as that person may already be in a job events will either change quite rapidly or we'll limp on until the inevitable announcement in May. I think Clement is a dead man walking and he probably already knows it.

On the criticism the board are currently getting. How many of us thought Clement was a poor appointment when he was announced? How many of us thought Beale was a poor appointment when he was announced? What about Gio? I was quite pleased when GvB was announced as Gerrard's successor. As disappointed as I was when Gerrard left I thought the club had found an able replacement. He'd a connection to the club, had won a title in Holland and started pretty well when he first joined. The games the led to Seville will last a long, long time in the memory. I wasn't pushing for his sacking when it came, but most were, results were poor and performances too. It wasn't a surprise when it happened. Beale looked like the ready made replacement. He knew the club, had been part of Gerrard's success, was rumoured to be the brains behind it all and was keen to rejoin us. Again, at first he seemed an inspired appointment. The side started playing attractive football, January signings, Cantwell and Raskin, looked like big improvements to the squad and we went into the close season with genuine hope. For me it was apparent something was very wrong quite early on in the new season, I remember leaving the Olympiacos pre-season game very concerned about our set-up, style and new signings. His sacking, when it came, was a relief, for whatever reason the early promise had disappeared and change was needed. Clement was an unknown to me. No previous connection to the club or indeed Scottish football but with a decent track record in management including titles in Belgium. Once again his initial impact was good, for a while it looked like we might even win the league, something that looked impossible when he joined. Ultimately we didn't, falling to almost inexplicable defeats at Ross County and Dundee. We lost the Cup Final too, harsh refereeing going against us. The summer saw an exit of some familiar names, most of who the support felt had run their course, replaced by players largely unknown to us. This season has been not unlike Gio's, struggling against sides we should beat with a lack of energy or drive around the side. We have had some great performances and good results in Europe and finally beat Celtic, quite comprehensively. But it's a results business and Clement leaving would not come as a shock to anyone now. Each of those managers was backed, to an extent. But I'd argue through this time the club has 'downsized'. The loss to Malmo under Gerrard and our failure to qualify for the Champion's League that season was possibly the catalyst for a lot of what has happened since. Off the field the executive offices have been a revolving door, with a number of senior and important positions becoming vacant. I don't know Patrick Stewart, I've no inside info on him, but as a fan his appointment doesn't look like a ridiculous one. He has football experience, he understands how a big football club is run and the little we've heard from him he's not said anything worrying. Whether he'll be any good at it only time will tell. The work overrun on the Copland Stand in the summer was a poor look and an expensive one too. Clearly a project that was badly handled. On the plus side this board finally, after many, many false promises, addressed the challenges facing our wheelchair supporters. There should be criticism but also some credit too. There have been other works carried out on the old stadium too, often work that is essential but not visible to the average supporter. Work that should have been done long before it was. No board is above criticism and this one certainly isn't. Mistakes have been made and more will be made, that's the nature of these things. But on balance are they doing a bad job? I mean it's a low bar but they're undoubtedly the best board we've had this century.

You're not advancing your argument, Cammy, if you're comparing our current board with the one in the mid-80s. Whatever their faults, to compare them with a "bowling club committee" is utter nonsense. Putting words in David Holmes mouth is also mendacious at best. Our board are far from exempt to criticism, clearly they've made mistakes. But it's no bowling club committee, there are some serious people on the board and involved with the club's ownership. I don't know Graeme Park, but Douglas Park is a serious businessman and someone who doesn't suffer fools. Have a gander at their accounts and see if you still think they're "amateurs". There are many, many examples of people who have been successful in business being unable to transfer that success into running a football club. There are many reasons for that, the main one being how success is judged. Rangers could lose a fortune, but win the league, and most people will judge that a success. Unfortunately we had an owner who ran the club that way. This current board, for all the bad decisions they've made, want the club to stop losing money. Very few supporters will view that as success, fewer still seem to really care, but if we all want a club to support/criticise in the future it's imperative they achieve it. Our losses off the pitch are currently of far more concern to me than our losses on it. For what it's worth I think Clement will go, I doubt he'll be our manager at the start of next season, short of winning the Europa League, and even that might only buy him until October.

It's good there isn't a definitive answer to this thread, it should be a mix of misery personal to each poster. I was at the Hamilton Accies defeat, it was a huge disappointment and big media splash but Accies were in the same division as us and we were going well in the league so that helped soften the blow. The first game at Ibrox I took both my sons and my sister's boys too was also against Hamilton, a few seasons back. We lost to them for the first time since the cup game. It cost a fortune for us all to go, Rangers were total gash, there was nothing but anger in the stands around us, it was not the introduction to Ibrox I had planned for them. My sister's boys ended up St. Mirren fans. The defeat to Stirling Albion when their manager was away getting married was a low point. Not only were we defeated, but it was the sheer amateurism of it all, it genuinely felt like we were a Saturday morning side playing in public parks. I travelled to Aberdeen for the game when Durrant was on the receiving end of a career altering injury. In the days before mobile phones the guy I was meeting to get my ticket from didn't show up, there was no way of contacting him. I nearly got my head kicked in on Union Street, wasn't able to get another ticket so missed the game and ended up listening to it on a MW radio, Charlie Nicholas scoring the winner for Aberdeen. That was a miserable day. I've seen us humped by Celtic a few times, but strangely the game that was a particular low for me was at Hampden in the cup. Advocaat was still in charge and O'Neill had joined Celtic as manager. I was living away and had travelled back to Scotland for the game. We had Reyna and Mols sent off, Celtic bullied us all over the park, Larson out-muscled Bob Malcolm for the only goal, Neil Lennon controlled the midfield and was instrumental in both sending offs and in throwing us completely off our natural game. It was a watershed moment, I knew everything was changing, Celtic weren't a flash in the pan. I'd argue that was the start of our current troubles, that night at Hampden and how we reacted to it.

It's hard to be anything other than emotional after a result like that. Months, indeed years, of frustration rise to the top and spill out. Players, management, directors, owners and indeed other supporters are to blame. People need sacked, someone, anyone. The need for blood is a given. In January 1967 Rangers lost to Berwick Rangers in the Scottish Cup, until yesterday a match regarded by many as our worst defeat in the tournament. By 1967 Rangers hadn't won the league for 3 years, and it would be another 8 years before we won it again. In total we went 11 years without a title, from 1964 to 1975, difficult times to be a bluenose I imagine. There was a demand for blood after the Berwick defeat. Jim Forrest and George McLean were dropped and never played for the club again, both left the club permanently within a few weeks. It was a difficult season for Rangers in 67. We reached the final of the Cup Winners Cup, a match Jim Forrest would almost certainly have started in had we not sold him a few months before. We lost 1-0 to Bayern Munich, playing the match with a centre half up front. Celtic won the treble and the European Cup. Manager, Scott Symon, had credit in the bank after 13 years at the club, but he was gone by November. We'd appoint 3 more managers before we won the league again. The manager who finally took us to the league title again was Jock Wallace, who was in goal for Berwick that day. Wallace is unfairly maligned as an old-school blood and thunder manager. In actual fact he was a tactician and a genius with psychology. It took Wallace 3 seasons to finally win the league. He recognised that what Rangers lacked was mental, not physical. The players didn't believe they could win so he took them to a beach in East Lothian and made then run up and down the sand dunes until they were sick. Afterwards he told them they were now the fittest side in the country and they believed him. It was nonsense, but that doesn't matter, the mental barrier had been broken. Rangers won 3 titles in the next 4 seasons. Wallace left and we wouldn't win the league again for another 9 seasons. Sometimes it's difficult being a bluenose. Yesterday is still raw. That will pass and we'll realise the Queen's keeper had the game of his life, he saved 5 goal bound shots, plus one was headed off the line. We'll realise they had one shot on target and it went in.Defenders and keeper need to look at themselves. We'll also realise our captain failed to convert a penalty. Under pressure, knowing not scoring would see us lose, knowing not scoring would pile untold pressure on the players, knowing not scoring might cost the management team their jobs. He didn't score. I wonder how much of our problems are mental, not physical.

That's interesting, Rosseau, thanks. Bajrami is one of those payers where the stats seem much better than what I witnessed. Jefte gets the ball up the park, then stops and passes it back or sideways, my eyes were accurate on that at least. It also shows how important a player Cerny is at that level, if we didn't know that already.

There's an argument that even if everyone was fit we'd still add Danilo, Hagi and Nsiala anyway, leaving Cortes out. Hagi and Danilo offer more in terms of where they could be played and the impact they could make, Cortes, from the little I've seen of him, is a wide player only. With Cerny, McCausland, Hagi, Bajrami, Igmane as well as Ridvan and Jefte we're covered out wide, albeit not all of them are 'wide attacking' players naturally. For all this suggests Cortes is out for a longer period, it also suggests Danilo is expected back soon.

My formative years following Rangers were like many of us I expect. Catching 'football specials' to Paisley and Dundee, standing outside a pub you were too young to enter while waiting for a supporter's bus, you and a mate deciding at 1.30 on a Saturday you'd go to the game that afternoon and not worrying about tickets or anything like that. Scottish football was different then. The football was better, a better standard of player overall, much more competitive, with some genuinely world class managers pitting their wits against each other on a much more level playing field than we have today. The grounds though were terrible. While nostalgia brings a rose tinted memory of standing on terraces across the country, feeling the involuntary sway of the crowd, trying to find your way back to your pals if you left to visit what passed for the toilet, often little more than holes in the ground. Good time, but in truth many were crumbling death traps, we were literally treated like animals, herded, shouted at, regularly attacked and demonised by the media and popular culture, how more people weren't seriously injured, or worse, is simply down to luck. Add to this Dickensian picture the fact that Rangers weren't very good. I hear the cries of anger about our current state and remember back to when I was a teenager, watching clubs like Aberdeen, Dundee Utd, even Hearts for a spell, dominate us, far less Celtic. For various reasons we simply didn't have a good enough team. John Grieg, perhaps our greatest ever player, was unable to rebuild an aging but very successful side (why is a debate for another day), his successor, Jock Wallace, was a giant of a manager, the man who'd stopped the greatest Celtic side of all time, who'd delivered two trebles. Even he couldn't sustain a challenge and against a backdrop of massive industrial decline, high unemployment, social unrest and a city that was covered in soot, slowly being demolished and left to rot our Rangers side was devoid of class, of guile and of hope. Davie Cooper, our only true spark of brilliance was disillusioned and out of form, Bobby Russell and Robert Prytz simply weren't at the level we needed, as popular as they were. This was my Rangers, they'd last won the league when I was 8, I was barely aware of it. Rangers were also rans, workmanlike players struggled and and fought but were regularly bettered. I didn't really know any different. Against this background a waif was introduced to the side. I use that word deliberately, Durrant was neither tall nor strong, he genuinely looked like he was about 14 years old, in truth he was 18, so not much older. His sprite like appearance was accentuated by a shock of long curly hair, fashionable at the time, but unusual on a Rangers player, our team seemed to made up of guys for who fashion was something to be avoided, like winning trophies... He seemed to come from nowhere, his friend, Derek Ferguson, had been known to most of us since he was a schoolboy. He'd made his debut at 16, our youngest ever if memory serves correctly, he's featured in countless Rangers News features and as a support we were anticipating his greatness, but Durrant seemed to appear from stage left, unheralded and without fanfare. It was a side that featured many home grown players; Kenny Black, Hugh Burns, Dave McPherson, Robert Fleck were all regulars, some of who we had high hopes for. Durrant looked the least likely to succeed, and yet he very quickly showed us what we'd been missing. His speed of thought was only matched by his sureness of touch. Stamina made up for his lack of strength and he was fearless when facing tackling that was encouraged in those days but would see you banned for months now. The bigger the stage the greater he shone. I'd been waiting for Ian Durrant my whole life without realising it. As an ugly, lanky, spotty teenager with no patter and even less confidence here was someone who seemed to have everything I didn't and he was pulling on the the light blue or Rangers too. The media had fixated on Celtic's young 'stars'; Charlie Nicolas, Paul McStay, Peter Grant, but now we had someone who was more than their match. He cemented his immortality for me in two games against Celtic. The first Old Firm at Ibrox under Souness when he read a revitalised Davie Cooper weaving run and flick to bury the winner past Bonnar in front of the Copland Road. Rangers were back, and this time it was for real. Later he dominated a League Cup Final against Celtic, scoring our first and running the game against a very good Celtic side. There was a moment when Celtic were attacking, the ball was half cleared and fell to Durrant inside our box, instead of hoofing it first time into the stand, he let it roll through his legs, catching it with his heel while turning quickly, suddenly he was facing away from our goal, with every Celtic attacker wrong footed and we were on the attack. It was a sublime moment, one I expect most present have long forgotten, but I never will. It was a moment of skill perfectly executed in the most brutal of fields, a slip or error would have left us exposed and probably a goal down. We need not worry, we were in the presence of greatness, if only for a short time. I had never been in awe of a Rangers player like this before. I could write more, but most probably know how his career was derailed. In truth despite some great moments, he never regained his previous levels. But for a few years in the bleak 1980s nothing shone as brightly as Ian Durrant.