Uilleam

We won. Surely you can cut the Drama Queen some slack?

Thaaaaaank Fuuuuuuuck!!

Stick or carrot. The trick is to know which, when

Well, we picked up considerably. Criticism works.

We are poor. There is no disguising this rather brutal fact.

The drugs have started to take hold. (You somewhere around Barstow?)

Neither were we....well, maybe we were.....it was gey hard to tell.

FFS! Rangers cannot -can never- have a manager who anagrams to Colin Wanker!!

And we have greater, wider, aspirations (?). Perhaps we should, firstly, aim to best them, and put them in their place, before engaging larger aims.

Do they -does anyone- believe that the world - continentals by the score, Barcelona, Real Madrid, and all- gives a fuck about two bald men fighting over the gap-toothed plastic comb of Scottish football?

Do you suggest that they are not out to show the world what they can do?

It is measure of where we are, how far we have sunk, that we seek consolation, and enjoyment, in the travails of others. Mind you, it is a pleasure to see Pederasts FC defeated, and it always was so, even when we were riding high on the hog.

And you would win, if anyone was foolhardy enough to take that wager.

So, where is rasellik's move going? Here is the take from today's Times, which has some interesting quotes from the claimants' solicitors. Celtic FC ‘ready to pay out’ millions for abuse claims Lawyers for boys’ club players are set to enter talks Marc Horne Tuesday September 19 2023, 10.30pm, The Times https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/celtic-fc-to-settle-claims-in-boys-club-sex-abuse-cases-t5wg9bn97 Celtic are poised to make multimillion-pound damages payments after indicating they want to settle legal claims over systematic child abuse at their feeder club. It comes after evidence disclosed in an investigation by The Times contradicted and undermined the Scottish football champion’s insistence that it was an “entirely separate organisation” to Celtic Boys Club. More than 20 former boys’ club players have joined a class-action lawsuit that was due to be heard in court later this year. Four senior figures connected with the boys’ team, including its founder, have been convicted of sexual offences against young footballers, prompting claims that it represents the largest child abuse scandal in British football. Celtic has previously contested the claims, insisting the boys’ club was a separate entity with which it had “historic connections”. However, Thompsons Solicitors, which is representing the survivors, has halted its legal action after the Parkhead club indicated that it wanted to negotiate a settlement. The Times investigation began in 2019, when it disclosed that Celtic funded the boys’ club and employed the predatory paedophile Frank Cairney, 87, who ran the feeder team between 1974 and 1991. The abusers Jim McCafferty, Frank Cairney, Jim Torbett and Gerald King It also revealed that Jim Torbett, 75, who was jailed three times for molesting boys after the former Celtic manager Jock Stein granted permission to launch and lead the boys’ club in 1966, ran Celtic’s chain of shops selling official merchandise. The law firm said: “Thompsons Solicitors are pleased to confirm that Celtic have indicated their intention to enter settlement negotiations within the context of the . . . litigation. “This litigation relates to cases of historical abuse at Celtic Boys Club by the convicted paedophiles, James Torbett and Frank Cairney. “Celtic have not formally admitted liability [nor] made any other formal concessions but their desire to enter negotiations to explore the possibility of a settlement of this action has been made clear. This means that parties will ask the court to adjourn the forthcoming proof to allow work to be undertaken to value individual cases.” A source close to the survivors said that they were delighted by the breakthrough. “This finally destroys, once and for all, the ludicrous claim that the boys’ club was a completely separate entity,” the source said. “We always knew it was nonsense and our tactics finally dragged Celtic kicking and screaming to the negotiating table. We have been vindicated. There is still a long way to go but this is a very good day.” Investigations by The Times disclosed Celtic funded the boys’ club and employed the paedophile Frank Cairney Lawyers acting for the former players argued that the boys’ club and Celtic were “intimately connected” and the senior club was “vicariously liable” for assaults carried out in the youth set-up. It is understood that damages settlements will be negotiated on an individual case-by-case basis, with the expectation that Celtic will pay substantial multimillion-pound sums. At a hearing in February Ian Mackay KC, acting for the survivors, said that lawyers had uncovered evidence of close links between Celtic Boys Club and Celtic FC. He argued that the clubs were intimately connected. “Players played in Celtic strips and wore blazers that were virtually identical to those worn by Celtic FC players,” he said. “Football kit, holdalls and training gear [were] provided by Celtic FC. Celtic Boys Club trained at Barrowfield, the training ground of Celtic FC, and Celtic Park.” Mackay said that in the 1980s and 1990s Jack McGinn and Kevin Kelly, then senior members of the Celtic board, spoke to the suspected abusers and ordered an internal inquiry when allegations of abuse in the boys’ club emerged. “Because of the controlling hand of Celtic in the boys’ club, we say that Celtic FC are vicariously liable,” he said. In January a sheriff found that Cairney indecently assaulted a teenage player in the changing rooms and tea room at the Parkhead ground and a training facility used by the first team. He exploited his position to prey on three boys between July 1978 and June 1989. In 2019 Cairney was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for abusing seven boys over 20 years. During the latest hearing, a police video was shown in court, where Cairney said he had been directly installed as head coach of Celtic Boys Club by Stein in 1970. Cairney said: “[Stein] says, ‘You will take the Celtic Boys Club under-16s. I will put s-forms [schoolboy players] in there and you are responsible.’ It was called Celtic Boys Club but it was Celtic under-16s.” In 1990 Celtic View, Celtic’s official magazine, said the boys’ club manager was on their payroll. It congratulated Cairney, “in his 20th year on the Celtic staff”, and said that the Celtic board had decided to “increase their support and investment in the boys’ club”. A year later Cairney stepped down after returning from a team trip to New Jersey. McGinn, then chairman of Celtic, accepted his resignation and “pressure of work” was given as the reason for his sudden departure. It later emerged that a 16-year-old player had accused Cairney of abusing him in the United States. In March Torbett was found guilty of sexually abusing a 13-year-old player, causing “incalculable harm”. Before jailing him for three years, the judge, Andrew Cubie, told Torbett that he had used the club as “an elaborate front for recruitment of young victims”. He was imprisoned in 1998 for abusing three boys, including Alan Brazil, the broadcaster and former Scotland international. Torbett was jailed for another six years in 2018 for molesting boys between 1986 and 1994. Torbett ran Celtic FC’s chain of club shops in the early 1990s and organised testimonial events for first team players and coaches, including Tommy Burns and Sean Fallon. In 1986 Celtic opened an investigation after concerns were raised about the welfare of young players. It cleared Torbett and other boys’ club coaches, describing the claims as “false and scurrilous”. In 2019 Jim McCafferty, a former boys’ club coach and Celtic kit man, was jailed for six years after admitting 12 charges relating to child sexual abuse. He died, aged 76, in prison last November. In 2018 Gerald King, a former chairman of the boys’ club, was convicted of abusing four boys and a girl. Three other men with ties to Celtic and Celtic East Youth Club, a now-defunct feeder team in Edinburgh, have also been found guilty of serious offences against boys. Celtic was contacted for comment. Comments for this article have been turned off

Indeed. I don't think that the guilty may hide behind such contract in the criminal court.

Perhaps rasellik in Europe merely illustrates the Peter Principle in practice: Scottish fitba' enters its 'champion team', which has reached the top of its league structure, its pinnacle, into European CL competition, which is where that team has reached the level where it can no longer perform with any degree of competence. The outcome: rasellik challenge just Peters out..... Pleasing, that.

A total masticator, then?

You got 'The Fear', yet?

Circumstances, since then, have changed. The fhilth's aim, clear for a number of years, is to kill Rangers stone dead, or to render Rangers totally irrelevant. It pays only the most cursory of lip services to 'TOF', as it no longer views that brand as an economic imperative. Its end is to make Scottish league football uncompetitive, and to use this engineer a relocation to a more lucrative arena. It has friends at UEFA, assiduously cultivated, and its eminence grise is on an influential club committee there. As I have said before, rasellik is not a gentlemanly organisation. If it is prepared to conceal, for decades, the sexual abuse of minors, for its own benefit, then it will not baulk at stabbing Rangers....in the chest. I hope that Rangers is sufficiently aware, to do, if circumstances permit, the right thing, and move to kick it out of football permanently. The 64 000 dollar question: is the rest of Scottish football so under the Parkhead thumb as to render Rangrers totally impotent?

It seems to me quite obvious that the decades long cover-up(s) of child sexual abuse at what we must surely now, following its offer to settle, call its feeder Boys' Club produced some significant level of sporting advantage. If it had been known, publicly, that pederasty was allowed to flourish, and to continue flourishing, unchecked, then recruitment of promising young footballers would have been stymied. It was able to sign up youngsters, and, ultimately, promote them to the first team, because the Club consciously concealed sex crimes. Stripping of 'Honours' should only be the start of it. The Club should be expelled, in all the ignominy it deserves, from Scottish football, and this banishment should operate sine die.

Still trying to stuff banknotes into victims' mouths.....

Brighton & Hove Albion, then. Here's an interview with BHA's owner, Tony Bloom, from The Times, last Friday INTERVIEW BY MARTIN SAMUEL Brighton owner Tony Bloom: Poker still influences a lot of what I do The man they call The Lizard’ reveals how his club sell their best players at peak prices but still keep improving Martin Samuel Friday September 15 2023, 2.45pm, The Times https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/brighton-hove-albion-owner-tony-bloom-interview-gambling-poker-football-club-whrvn637z Bloom is renowned for taking some of the coldest decisions in football Tony Bloom is talking about the best bet he ever had. Not the biggest, not the most lucrative. The one that gave him most pleasure. It’s 1996, long before Starlizard, syndicates and data analytic, long before he bought Brighton & Hove Albion, and long, long before he was arguably the most admired owner in English football. Back then Bloom was simply a professional gambler who had previously worked in accountancy with Ernst & Young. And he had spotted something. Before the 1996 Cricket World Cup, Bloom had noticed that the limited-overs game had changed and that the country best set up to take advantage of it was one of the hosts, and the eventual winners, Sri Lanka. “You know how it goes in sport,” he says. “There are just times of different innovation. They had pinch hitters at the top of the order, Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharana, the wicketkeeper, and they scored very quickly early on, which didn’t really happen back then. Now everyone sees it as obvious — plus they had Muttiah Muralitharan.” Bloom is murdering some of these names, by the way. It doesn’t matter. He’s not commentating, he’s just betting. And he hasn’t got a team around him at this time, either. These days Bloom is known for making some of the coldest, most calculating decisions in football, but he sounds almost wistful recalling his 26-year-old lone-wolf self, working into the small hours, calculating the odds. “The Sri Lanka bet was just from feel,” he says. “It wasn’t number-crunching. It was me and a pen and an Excel spreadsheet. Sri Lanka were a bit of a nonentity in cricket at the time. They’d had some good results in the lead-up and I just thought they were mispriced. It wasn’t like I was super-confident, but I took them at 66-1 and again at 50-1. I didn’t have a huge amount on it. I wasn’t betting that big. I’d have had a few hundred pounds, no more. I can’t even remember what I won, but it was decent for me at the time.” Bloom collects his trophy from the Queen after the horse that he owns, Energumene, won the Queen Mother Champion Chase at Cheltenham in March. He returned to the Amex that evening to watch Brighton beat Crystal Palace SPORTSFILE And Bloom’s been doing very decently ever since. Within the year he had come to the notice of Victor Chandler and by 2002 he had set up his own online football betting company, serving the Asian market, which he sold three years later for £1 million. He’s been beating the book consistently for more than three decades now. Not only as a smart gambler and poker player, but as chairman of Brighton, a club somehow contriving to sell their best players at peak prices, while consistently improving. On Saturday they travel to Old Trafford, where it would not be considered a shock if they defeated Manchester United. Brighton have beaten United home and away the past two seasons, they won two and drew one against Liverpool last year and beat Arsenal in two out of three meetings. “The odds are close,” muses Bloom of the market on another Brighton victory over the self-appointed elite. “It’s a lovely position to be in, a beautiful position.” It wasn’t such a good position when Bloom unveiled the strategy that we now know transformed his club. The top-ten plan came after a season in which Brighton had finished 17th under Chris Hughton, avoiding relegation by two points after a run of two wins in 23 matches. It was at this point in 2019 that Bloom sent an internal missive, later released publicly, setting out his vision of Brighton as a club that would finish consistently in the top half of the table. Bloom enjoys the moment of Brighton’s promotion to the Premier League in 2017 REX FEATURES Outside the south coast, it was largely ignored. Inside, there were sharp intakes of breath. Bloom also dismissed Hughton, who many believed had done a fine job simply maintaining Brighton as a Premier League club. Yet Bloom wasn’t interested in attritional survival. As he says several times during our conversation, he’s an optimist as well as a risk-taker. He wanted to look up the table at where Brighton could go, not over his shoulder at the void. He thought Hughton’s brand of football couldn’t get Brighton there. He replaced him with Graham Potter and set about building the club we now recognise. “We’d escaped relegation but we’d made an error because all we had talked about in our second season in the Premier League was staying in it,” Bloom says. “And it’s a big deal, survival, but we shouldn’t have been talking about it so much because then you’re only aiming for 17th. And if you fall short, you’re relegated. So we had a poor season, a terrible second half to the season, but I wanted to look towards the future. “So we said, ‘Let’s set the men’s team a tough target — to be consistently in the top ten.’ Doesn’t mean we get there in a year, or that it happens every season, but it’s gettable. We had a board meeting and then we communicated it internally. People were a bit surprised given how we finished. But then Graham came in. We didn’t always get the results the performances deserved at first, but we started playing better. And look, if we had finished 15th the next six seasons, then got relegated, it wouldn’t have been because we aimed higher. We didn’t say it would happen. We didn’t even put a time on it. But, sometimes, you’ve just got to put it out there as a target. “I’m always an optimist. After three seasons we finished ninth, then sixth. And, yes, it could have happened even quicker. But I am surprised at how good we are right now. Not just finishing top ten, but playing such good football. We played like a top-four team the majority of last season. In a different year, we could have finished fourth. We can compete with any team. I’m not surprised we’re in the top ten again. Graham’s an exceptional manager but Roberto De Zerbi came in mid-season and took us to a different level, playing so well in so many games. And he’s always pushing. He’s got that Sir Alex Ferguson mentality — nothing’s ever enough.” As a gambler, Bloom’s first great love was poker. He is, by all accounts, a quite brilliant player. The reptilian nickname — “The Lizard” — comes from a certain ruthless cold-bloodedness at the table. He won the Australasian Championship in 2004, and has career tournament winnings of $3.8 million [now £3.06 million]. He claims his best performance was a year ago when, on holiday in Las Vegas, he took two days out to play in a Poker Masters event, which he won. What made it special is that it was his first poker in four years. Bloom says he no longer has the time. And yet, talking with him, he’s never far removed from the poker table. In a world greatly distanced from the image of dingy, smoke-filled back rooms, Bloom speaks of poker as informing his every business decision. “It’s a really good game,” he says. “It uses so many different skills. It’s about risk, calculated risk, understanding of situations, reading people, there’s a lot to it. I miss poker. It can teach people lots about life, about individuals, about personalities, character — the psychology is big. There have been parts of the game that have helped me in terms of making decisions and certainly running a football club — the calculated risks in particular. Bloom would not have sold Caicedo had the player wanted to stay with Brighton, not even for the £105 million they received EPA “People make decisions in life all the time, and even not making a decision is a decision and a risk of sorts. But in poker you’re always thinking odds, the likeliness of things happening, the risk if you go in one direction, or another. So that understanding does help. What sort of players to go for, the hiring of a head coach — which is so big because your season lives or dies by that. Running a business, running a football club is all about decisions. The skills I learnt from playing poker influence a lot of what I do.” Bloom’s best poker-related football decision? The hiring of their present coach, De Zerbi. “That element of risk is always something I’ve enjoyed,” Bloom says. “When you’re younger you enjoy risk for its own sake; it’s only when you get older that you learn to balance things up and take the right risks in the right situations. Roberto hadn’t played or managed in the Premier League and in an ideal world he would have [before they appointed him]. “So what’s the risk? We weighed it up with a lot of other factors and decided to take that chance. So then we analysed his performances as a head coach throughout his career and spoke to people who had worked with him, players who had played for him. And then we had the meeting and it was really good, and it became obvious he was the clear No 1.” The “we” in that sentence are the analytics experts that are the cornerstone of Brighton’s success. Starlizard, the company Bloom founded in 2006 to aid with his sporting predictions and bet execution, provides his football club with some of the most innovative data available, enough to be paid £3 million in the most recent accounts. Bloom no longer runs the business — the separation began as far back as 2008 — and is instead its main client, both personally and through Brighton. Starlizard has other patrons in football, but none are in the Premier League. Meaning Brighton stay smart; or smarter. It is presumed that were De Zerbi to quit tomorrow, or were they to lose the striker Evan Ferguson or full back Pervis Estupiñán, there would be another cab off the rank in days, but that’s too simplistic. Brighton have started the season well, but it is far too early to say there will be no effect from the losses of Alexis Mac Allister and Moisés Caicedo, to Liverpool and Chelsea respectively. Contrary to the assertion that Brighton is an analytics-driven production line, Bloom did not want to sell Caicedo and would even have turned down Chelsea’s £105 million had the player not made it plain that he wished to leave. I wonder if there will come a time when Bloom the Brighton fan overrules Bloom the cold-blooded pragmatist. When the sense of looming achievement is so palpable — next week brings the first European fixture in the club’s history, a Europa League group stage tie at home to AEK Athens — that he may find himself saying no to the next small fortune. “Well, we weren’t selling Moisés for £85 million,” Bloom counters. “And unless other clubs match our valuations, no one goes. We’re competing against opponents with a lot more resources and it’s tough. Caicedo’s world-class. It’s not as if we just have someone sitting there who fills in and it makes no difference. In the summer, with Moisés, I would have preferred to keep him, even with that huge Chelsea bid, because this season with Moisés we could have been anything. And maybe we can be, still. “But I was looking at Moisés and, barring a serious injury, I thought there was no way he was going to lose money if he stayed another year with us. But he made it quite clear that he wanted to move. So weighing it all up, there was an acceptable offer, and he left. But if Moisés had been happy to stay I’d have kept him for another season, no matter what Chelsea bid. “I always watch the games as a fan, but outside that I have to think of the football club as a business, because the people who don’t only end up one way — and it’s not a good way. I do look at certain things other clubs do and think, ‘I’m not sure that’s the best way.’ The choice of De Zerbi was another example of Bloom’s penchant for calculated risks MATCHDAY IMAGES LIMITED “The Super League breakaway I was very angry about. It had no chance of success, I was as certain as I could be about that. And what annoyed me most was that when these owners bought into these clubs they knew how it worked, the Premier League, qualifying for the Champions League, they knew. And just because they weren’t getting as much money as they wanted, they chose to go with these European clubs that were looking enviously at our league. I was really disappointed, really annoyed. If Brighton were ever in that position, I would never have even contemplated it. And Brighton will always be part of the league that wasn’t part of the Super League — we’ll always be the anti-Super League.” I ask if he takes personal satisfaction, then, in making the wannabe breakaway clubs pay through the nose for the talent that little Brighton have unearthed. He gives a diplomatic answer, and then another one, and another, and we agree that it is probably me that is living vicariously through the pleasure of Brighton make the “big six” pay for their arrogance — and taking the wonderful talent Ansu Fati from under the noses of Tottenham Hotspur was a joyous coup too. But something about the mischief in his eyes is the one time there is an undoubted tell in Bloom’s visage, the moment when it is very easy to read his poker face. “Every club in the world has players poached, even clubs in the top three, and we’ve got to live with that,” he says. “What is never going to happen is our key player goes mid-season. So it’s not just about winning the league, or having an exceptional season, and it’s not just about the numbers, either. I’m always looking at everything. We have to do what is right for the football club. So if we do have a season that could be exceptional, that comes into what is best for the football club too. “The recruitment of players is paramount. If you don’t get the recruitment right, you’re going to get relegated, even if you are a big club. But I think we’ve done well because I still say this is the best squad we’ve ever had, despite the players that have left.” Match days in the directors’ box at Brighton are a family affair. Bloom’s brother, Darren, is there, his uncles Ray and David also. Apart from a couple of years there has been a Bloom in the Brighton boardroom for half a century now. The present chairman has no intention of letting that change. “I never viewed Brighton as a risk and I’ve loved every step of the way,” Bloom says. “I do have sympathy for other owners because I know how difficult it is. Some are doing their best and are just not capable. Even if they are capable, they can’t make it very successful or sustainable. It is extremely hard to run a club well, to be successful, to be sustainable and take the fans with you. “I think I bring a lot to the football club. It’s a family club and there’s not many of us about in the Premier League. I envisage being part of Brighton for many, many years to come. The Bloom name will be there a long time.” What about a suitor from Saudi Arabia, I ask? “That’s not happening,” Bloom states, definitively. “There is no amount of money.” And even if there were, you still wouldn’t bet against The Lizard holding an even better hand.

Gewurtzraminer.