bmck

craig, outstandingly well done in being 3k up m8.

I am not a Murray fan but I some times think that you all forget that its his ball yes say what you like but thats the reality of it all

i dont think anyone is forgetting that, to be honest.

Well, a pound is a sensible bet , and if it comes up......you'll be wishing you had a tenner on , ye jist canny win eh!

its madness. madness.

not good for mental health.

I'd take Boyd instead of Buffel, at least you know what you're getting with Boyd

actually meant to say Boyd. thought i had. had to do a double-take on why you had said that. meant boyd and novo upfront.

Aye, unless it comes up...... , then you'll be pissed off, you can always punt a pound mind, just for an interest .........!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

stop it man! i was being sensible there!

________________McGregor_____________

 

Hutton____Svensson____Hemdani___Smith

 

Sionko____Ferguson____Clement____Adam

 

_________________Buffel______________

 

_________________Novo______________

I'd take that team, swapping Buffel for Prso, and making it a front two.

You mean another mug in the making , don't do it mate it's a terrible habit

ah the blessings of being too skint to properly afford to stick on a bet at the moment anyway. 'tis for the best.

depending on the cost.

a replacement for burke perhaps? says he's a striker but i'm sure he played right wing against us.

For tonights games I have

 

Roma

St Johnstone

Chelsea Werder Bremen draw

 

 

�£10 treble will win me �£152

its just the money that gets me. i see "tenner gets me 152" and automatically think its a good deal. a gambler in the making.

you dont strike me as an existentialist calscot. a humanist, aye, but no an existentialist.

However, I suppose the good thing in my opinion is that they are helping a new secular, non-political Rangers to rise out of the ashes.

its not quite a phoenixian rise though is it? its more like we're fumbling around in the ashes.

aye, i think you're right frankie. when i used to be into shares i remember looking into how honest they had to be in the release of their figures, and it seems to be pretty strictly regulated. anyone with shares in either rangers or mih should have a pretty full outline of the figures.

moved it over here m8.

It's an interesting point and we do now have an accountant on our board.

 

However, as well all know even accountants disagree on some issues and even the very best of them often find it hard to dig too deeply into Rangers (and specifically MIH's) accounts.

 

I'll maybe have a word in his ear and see if such an exercise is possible.

good stuff frankie, cheers!

i think mills is a decent shout. i've never liked him, but he could do a job while we regroup. has that bit of dig about him too.

Yes, that's true, we could put a few scenarios of how much he would make or lose depending on the share price and people could work out the rest for themselves.

yup, i think this would be a fairly good idea. del made a good point though that this kind of investigation into murray may lose all the ground the RST has gained with him.

I think one problem is, the answer can't fully be given till DM sells his shares and we find out what he gets for them...

true, but you could still consider everything up until now, and make decent projections on what he would get.

for instance, "if murray gets 50 mil for the shares, he would lost 5 million in his tenure here" or whatever.

calscot, think you pretty much summed it up in the other thread hwen you said (like frankie, alanmidd and others before you)

Instead of spending 30 million a year or 3 million a year, we need the middle ground of around 6-10 million a year depending on our earnings from Europe.

all formal treating of the subject aside, this is the simple common sense of the matter.

it was a horrid disappointment of a football game. man u were extremely disappointing. i was looking forward to some nice football from both teams, but it was abject pish.

What about the �£14m we earned from the JJB deal that is sitting in the bank?

 

Surely we will spend some of this in January!!

This seems to have been another slight of hand. You, like most of us, got the impression that the JJB deal "that was to rock scottish football" was to be invested in the team and turn our fortunes around. However, it turns out that we get the largest part of 14 million in dribs and drabs over as many years, and the rest went to paying off the debt.

Frankie,

i dont know what you think of this, but there seems to be a lot of confusion between pro-murray and anti-murray groups (surely represented in the RST's members) as to exactly how much murray has put in and taken out of rangers. there's loads of speculation, loads of strong feeling - but very little in the way of fact.

would it be worthwhile for the rst to get in a forensic accountant just to clear the whole issue up, with a view to safeguarding murray's name or whatever? something that was clear and factual so there would be no more debate between rival factions who think murray is our saviour and those who think he's the anti-christ.

has he single handedly given us all his money, or has he turned a profit from rangers? this would clear all that up.

Murray is clearly a master politician. Like most politicians, and men of his intelligence, he is no stranger to logic and rhetoric, and certainly is not ignorant in the art of manipulation of human passions. What he says, he says convincingly, and eloquently - saying all the right things, it would seem, at all the right times. You are left with the impression that to disagree with him is to have a petty minded grudge, or to have ill thought out your position.

This isn't even a criticism - without these attributes Murray would not be the immensely succesful businessman that he is. Without these attributes I would suggest that we would have not enjoyed a great deal of the success we've had in years gone by. But these attributes immediately shift the burden on us to analytically consider what he says, so that we may be sure that we are not being hoodwinked. I've spoken to many fans who "have this feeling" that we're being done over, or think Murray is clearly at it, but who can't state clearly what the problem is.

So, in the next few paragraphs I'm going to consider Murray's statements, and argument, on what I consider to be the main issue surrounding our team: the lack of quality players in the side. I just don't think a great deal of the players playing are good enough, and that no amount of formation tinkering is going to change that. This sentiment has been expressed by fans and the media in asking "is there going to be significant investment?". The rest of the post considers this in a little more detail.

Murray, in response to questions of investment, answers along the lines:

"Would you rather see us in millions of debt like last time, or would you prefer, as I suggest, we only spend what we earn?"

This is intricate rhetorical craftmanship, and to properly unwrap it, it is helpful to be able to clearly, clearly state what is wrong here. To be able to say precisely where the misdirection lies. To this we turn to logical fallacies, formal and informal.

1. The bifurcation fallacy

Now, I've crafted his response in the form of a question in order to highlight this point. I think I have fairly represented his argument, so can't really be said to be setting it up in a certain way to knock it down.

Basically, the bifurcation fallacy asks you to accept one or two options, when there are more options available. They are often emotionally loaded, and are used by politicians quite a lot.

For example, Tony Blair might say "Would you rather let Saddam kill innocent children than go to war with him?". Basically, it says that if we don't want to go to war, we want innocent children to die. But the question is crafted in such a way as to rule out other options that may equally stop Saddam killing inoccent children: assasinating him covertly, applying international diplomatic pressure, or a whole host of things. The point being, that the only two options the question presents are not the only two possible options.

Bringing this back to Murray, he forces us into two options: either spending what we earn, or spiralling back into uncontrolable debts. He sets it up so that those who oppose his vision (spending only a percentage of our profits) wish to see the club in hopeless debt. But these are not the only two options - the economics of business must account for being able to reasonably speculate to accumulate. Even if it turns out that this is not feasible in our current condition, we should be shown how and why it isn't possible without having to accept on faith that some decent investment in the team is going to bankrupt us, by being forced under faulty logic.

2. The non-sequitur

This is another way of stating the above, but Murray basically asks us to believe the following:

1. Spending causes debt

2. We should not be in debt

3. Therefore we should not spend

The non-sequitur fallacy means, in latin, "doesn't follow". That is, we can believe 1 and 2 without neccesarily believing 3.

A quick example of a valid argument would be:

1. If I'm human, I'm a mammal

2. I'm not a mammal

3. Therefore, I'm not a human

This is valid, because 3 clearly follows from 1 and 2. There is no room for ambiguity.

However, this is not so with (my outline of) David Murray's argument. Spending does indeed cause debt (well, overspending), and we, indeed, shouldn't want to be in debt. But these things do not necessarily combine to mean we shouldn't spend. Why? Because you can agree that spending causes debt and that it would be ideal not to be in debt, while still thinking that the best way forward is to spend. As above, this is common in business, and may best suit us (or may not).

Conclusion

I'm not saying that spending some hard cash to improve the team is the best way forward. I'm only saying that the rhetoric that comes from Murray is not air tight. He could very well be right on both accounts - perhaps only spending what we earn IS the only option other than steamrolling back in to debt, and perhaps in practice we SHOULDN'T spend. But the talk, the arguments themselves, the words that come out Murray's mouth are not enough to prove this. Without the supporting evidence and adaquate explanation of the facts and figures we are left with nothing but rhetoric that is persuasive to the passions (no rangers fan wants to see us so badly in debt), but logically unsound.

You could be right but another 2nd place (or worse) won't be enough for many of the fans who still sit on the fence when it comes to Murray.

 

Especially if they don't see us competing in the transfer market.

 

As I say, Murray bases his life on his ego. The bruise on that ego is getting bigger and blacker by the second.

i've said before that the only way murray will turn us around is as a matter of pride. just reading an article from a while ago by spiers of all people who was, at his house, goading him about rangers then current goalkeeping crisis (charbonnier's injury), when he picked up the phone in the middle of the night grinning and called a top german goalkeeper saying that he had outlined terms and would be in contact with him soon. he ended up going one better and getting klos.

but there was an arrogance about him, and a passion. we seem still to have the arrogance but not the passion. perhaps when his ego gets sufficiently dented we'll see that return.

The difference is that even at the height of Celtic's UEFA run and high spending we were still winning stuff.

 

Now we're not and if the status quo remains there's nothing like 2 trophyless seasons to concentrate the mind.

ah, but in murrayworld, do you not think that the "europe after christmas" and, perhaps, one cup win will constitute success in a rebuilding stage?

enough to convince himself and the fans that we're "going in the right direction" and the like.

if celtic strengthen in the summer and have total dominance next season the problem is just put off till next year, probably with a chairman-to-manager buck-passing. something like paul and mr murray agreeing by mutual consent that while he is a great manager, the spl is not for him, and leaving on those terms.

i dunno. i do see what you're saying, and i wish i could believe it would force his hand, but i just dont.

Most probably mate but in the last couple of weeks we've seen how strong support for Murray is.

 

He promised us we'd never be 2nd to a Celtic side while he was in charge. Time for him to deliver on that promise or time for him to leave.

 

For those of us who question his commitment and love for the club, last night's result was arguably the best one in many ways.

aye, i know man, but i'm not sure what makes now different than, say, two days ago, or a month ago. we've been playing second fiddle to celtic for years now and he's managed to keep "us" all convinced that he's the right man for the job. i dont see that celtic getting through to the latter stages (and strengthening accordingly) is going to force his hand any more than finishing third in the league, or having the worst start to a league in 20 years.

even with these two things happening he's said he wont significantly strengthen, i dont see that celtic getting through to the final stages is going to force his hand.

as much is i would like to.

maybe i'm just too cynical. you're clearly right, in that if his promises were true, this would motivate him. but i dont see any reason as to why he'll do it this time ahead of any other time.