JohnMc

I was given vouchers for Greaves about a decade ago, they accepted them from me in June of last year. Greaves is a proper sports shop though.

I read this article a few days ago. It's about FC United of Manchester but it feels relevant to this thread. http://www.afinelung.com/?p=7297 It strikes me as profoundly sad that someone would feel there is a conflict of interest between the board of the club and of Rangers First. It's a little dispiriting.

One day I'm going to write about how McCoist is the most important manager in Rangers history. One day soon. Surely we're not hawking Hardie around if he just signed a new contract? If Waghorn gets injured we're short of options up-front, surely Hardie will feature before the season is out?

Got to say I'm in entire agreement with this. Falkirk are having another excellent season with a fraction of the resources Hibs or ourselves have. Also, when you see the shambles Dundee Utd have become you realise just how good a job Houston was doing there. He clearly knows how to develop young players.

Lena Martell, REM, The Monkees and Neil Diamond, that's four musical references not ever seen in the same article before, well played. I love that you're getting pulled for your 'SNP Stasi' line, that's hysterical. I'm tweeting a link to The Federal Commissioner of the SNP Records, Renfrewshire Branch. You, my friend, have just become Zersetzung!

I know Douglas Rae, he's a decent man. I've no idea if this incident happened or not, and neither does he, he's going by what a couple of supporters have told him. A couple of members of his family were in the away end during the match though.

There's a misconception as to what the 'winter break' is actually for. Forget about the weather, it's not connected to that, the word 'winter' is misleading in this. The winter break is designed to give players, and so teams, a 'break' allowing them to recharge their batteries for the second half of the season. Popular belief has it that most Scottish footballers are unfit, heavy drinking, junk food gobbling feckless morons pissing their careers away. The reality is somewhat different, most are actually fairly diligent when it comes to fitness and conditioning and almost all professional players during the season play with injuries. The winter break is supposed to help players get over these injuries, either through a complete break or through intensive physio, a small op etc. There is a school of thought that says England, and sides with the majority of their players in the English league, perform poorer at World Cups and Euros because of the lack of a winter break. The intensity and physicality of the football in England leaves players in poor condition by the end of the season. Anyway, put me in the 'League Cup revamp is a further indication that those running the game don't have a clue what they're doing' camp.

Was he very clear though? I felt all along he could have made the story go away in a second by unequivocally stating 'I've no interest in going to Fulham or any other club at this time and won't be leaving Rangers in the foreseeable future'. Had he said that the story dies, but he didn't, he was ambiguous enough to allow the story to run for another day until he eventually did make a very clear statement. For the record I don't have any problem with Warburton using the apparent (and I believe Fulham are/were interested in feeling Warburton out) interest from Fulham to remind everyone he has other admirers. I have no problem with Fulham making advances on our manager and I've no problem with our board intimating they'd improve his package rather than see him leave. Warburton is clearly an intelligent man but I wonder if having not spent his entire working life in football means he sometimes misses the nuances of the professional sport, particularly the media side of it. I'm all for holding the media to account but there was a 'story' here and I don't feel their 'reporting' on it was unfair. By complaining about it we run the risk of being seen to complain about 'everything' and that could lead to us being ignored on the genuinely important things.

I agree, but it's still a story, no? When Dundee Utd were looking for a manager John Hughes was being discussed openly in the media as their favourite despite his contract with ICT and him answering all questions about it with the 'I'm the ICT manager and don't want to discuss another club, thanks' type of line. Football is an industry that runs on whispers, inside knowledge and 'say one thing but mean another'.

The story the BBC ran about the board being willing to increase Warburton's salary and transfer budget was written by Richard Wilson and Alasdair Lamont - http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/34980312 I wouldn't class either as people who'd purposely try to damage Rangers or Warburton despite their employers. Indeed I'd go as far as to say if they are claiming board sources there might be some veracity to it.

We need to be careful we don't become paranoid here. What Warburton achieved with Brentford didn't go unnoticed in the English Championship and if anyone thinks Fulham haven't considered Warburton for the vacant post then they're deluding themselves. Fulham have been 'rejected' in one form or another by three other managers now. So rather than approach Rangers and be rebuffed again they've leaked it to the press that they're interested in him. That puts pressure on Rangers and also allows them to see how Warburton reacts to this indirect approach. Until last night Warburton was at best ambiguous in his answers to the Fulham questions. 'I'm at Rangers and I've a job to do here' 'it's disrespectful to discuss this' that type of answer simply fuels the speculation. Had he came out and said 'I'm not interested, I'll not be leaving Rangers for Fulham, end of' the story would have ended there, but he didn't until last night. The truth is of course Warburton was interested in Fulham, would any of you not be interested if another company made it known they'd like to employ you and probably pay you a lot more than you're earning just now? So I'm going to speculate that Warburton has weighed up what he currently has and perhaps what out board have intimated he might expect in the future, added that to what he might achieve with Rangers, measured it against Fulham, and decided he's better off where he is. For now. But for the life of me I can't see what the media have done wrong here and we should be careful not to let our distrust of them cloud our view on the reality of professional football.

The once great Valencia are now the play thing on 'super agent' Jorge Mendes, who along with the owner have turned Valencia into a club for bringing players to the attention of larger wealthier clubs, players who just happen to be represented by Jorge Mendes. The list of players Valencia have sold in the last few years is really eye-opening. It's a disgrace but it's a salutary tale, they got themselves into so much debt that they became easy prey. Sound familiar. If you want to see how powerful Mendes is look into the Bebe transfer to Man Utd, a transfer of £7.4 million. He was playing third division Portugese football just five weeks before Man U bought him. Ferguson had never seen him play. Needless to say he played like a third division player. The transfer stinks and some people made a lot of money. So yeah, Gary Neville going to manage a club for the very first time in a country he never played in and he can't speak Spanish. Nothing to see here, move along...

Well done to the board, hopefully an example other football clubs and large sports retailers will follow...

Thanks, I don't know him. He'd a lovely run on that clip.

Who is number 11 for us?

Can the law courts tell an independent body such at the SFA what to do? Surely the only recourse to law would be if they hadn't followed their own procedures? It's clearly just another salvo in the dirty war King and Ashley are fighting, after all even if he get's it overturned King's place would simply be taken by a person of King's choosing, it won't make much material difference.

I'm so pleased you pointed that out, the line 'those players wouldn't have signed for Rangers if it wasn't for EBTs' is simply supposition yet is getting a regular airing currently as if it's irrefutable fact. Murray was a huge gambler, everything about him suggests he would have found a different way of raising the money.

I'm not sure if Ashley actually is able to influence the club through his shareholding currently but I like this move even if it's just a symbolic 'get-it-up-you'. Well played Mr King.

It's not David Murray or one of his companies though, is it? Charles Green fronts something that loses people money, who'd have though it.

It's not about a dignified silence, it's about speaking clearly, loudly and intelligently about what's important. How can we defend EBTs? The best we can say is they were borderline legal and that's clearly in dispute. Accept we lost that battle but make sure we never have to fight another like it and we'll win the war.

Personally I hope this isn't appealed and that's it now over. There is no 'winning' on this, even if the case had gone against HMRC again we still lost. Our playing squad was shredded, our reputation trashed globally and our club destroyed. We suffered Craig Whyte, Charles Green and Mike Ashley, he's still not gone away and the other two are still capable of inflicting damage on us. We published figures today showing we lost over £7 million last year, we lost even more the year before that. We lost guys, whatever those judges said this morning we bloody lost. Aside from the sheer bloody hurt those EBTs have been responsible for they are an immoral affront to decency, legal or otherwise. Why shouldn't millionaire footballers pay more income tax? Why aren't we cursing the greed culture that clearly permeated at our club at the time and ultimately brought it down and why aren't we doing everything we can to make sure it never infects our club again? Whether they were technically legal or specifically used in accordance with proper guidelines it doesn't matter now, the damage is done and can't be reversed. We can expend a lot of energy discussing this or we can accept that there's nothing we can do about it anyway. Does it give some people an opportunity to go looking for a pound of flesh and others the chance to pontificate about financial doping and so on, hell yeah. So what? It's done and can't be undone. It's time to look forward again, not back. We survived after all, they threw everything they could find at us and we survived. We fought with each other and we survived. We were raped and pillaged from within, often with the tacit and unquestioning support of a lot of the fanbase, but we survived. We've a team again who are at last worthy of our jersey, we've a manager who inspires us and excites us, all of our energies should be going into building a future, a future a rich shareholder would like to further disrupt. We've other more important battles to fight now, this one has past and we lost it, big time. Accept that, learn from it and move forward again. Let them come for our trophies, let them call us cheats, it'll pass and I'm not persuaded their's an appetite for it at any level above internet moron or failing columnist. Let's not lose site of what is actually important today. It's an exciting time to be a bear again, let's focus on that.

The anger towards the Record on this thread is severely misplaced. Apart from the fact the 'story' is in a number of papers it's also clearly been released by Rangers or someone close to them and with their tacit blessing. We're involved in a dirty war currently and this is another salvo aimed at Ashley and Sport's Direct and intended to portray them in a bad light. King alluded to Sport's Direct attempting to outspend Rangers in court to keep their deal in place, here's an example of it. I've no idea the veracity of the story but it's attempting to explain why certain contracts and deals have not changed and certain obstacles remain in our way.

Hah, some good lines in that, applause.

Matt McGlone one time (may still be) Celtic fanzine editor apparently saw it quite differently and was the prosecutions star witness. Zaluska was clearly raising money for refugee orphans when he was the victim of an unprovoked attack by Paton. Jinty McGinty's is becoming a magnet for lunacy.