Last night may have forced Murray's hand

[ian1964 10,724]

Without a couple of last minute goals Celtic could have been heading for 7 in a row...

 

5 out of 7 is still pretty dominant especially when they are averaging about 12 points more than us a season with our titles included. And their European record is better too.

 

Frightening thought, and i just don't see us getting much better for a long time

[calscot 0]

I foolishly thought that with DM bringing in Le Guen and promising huge new funding that we were about to overtake them again...

 

How naive I was.

[stewarty 2,025]

I might be wrong here, and I'll bow to superior financial knowledge if proved correct, but the JJB deal is worth an initial downpayment of £18m.

 

This is spread over 10 years, the duration of the deal, meaning we get a £1.8m franchise type payment for every year of the deal. That being the case, how can Murray skim off the top? If he was paying himself a salary, taking dividends or any other means of direct payment then this would show on the books, right?

 

Whatever his tactics with the financial situation of the club, be it with a view to selling or not, all the rest is speculation and with no hard evidence.

 

Yes we're not 'net spenders' and the gap between us and Celtic is growing and Calscot's point about us being a couple of late goals away from being on the end of 7 in a row is pretty scary. I'd never thought of things in that way and ponders the question - where do we go from here?

 

PLG is the first step but Rome wasn't built in a day. We can build a young team and look to the future but if we want to compete and be consistent then we need to buy some experienced players and look to build the squad around them.

 

My opinion is that we need 2 experienced players. One centre half who is a natural leader and organises the defence, and also an experienced goalscoring striker who can take over from Prso who clearly isn't the player he was in his first two seasons. If we can stretch to getting those I believe the rest of the squad we have could easily develop into a team who can compete with Celtic who, after all, are doing the exact same things as we're doing, except doing this a season later and have had more success which is mostly due to our downsizing - not because they are vastly superior.

[craig 5,199]

I might be wrong here, and I'll bow to superior financial knowledge if proved correct, but the JJB deal is worth an initial downpayment of �£18m.

 

This is spread over 10 years, the duration of the deal, meaning we get a �£1.8m franchise type payment for every year of the deal. That being the case, how can Murray skim off the top? If he was paying himself a salary, taking dividends or any other means of direct payment then this would show on the books, right?

 

Sorry stewarty but you aren't correct here. Yes it is a 10 yr deal but the 18 mill was an up front payment - the deal is actually a minimum 48 mill, so Gers get 18 mill up front (not 1.8 per yr over 10 yrs) and they ALSO get a MINIMUM of 3 mill per yr for 10 yrs.

 

So to use your "franchise" example it is 18 mill up front plus a franchise fee of 3 mill per year.

 

Believe me... there are ways of hiding payments to yourself - I have seen it a number of times in the past - however, I don't believe that it is happening with DM - I think the 18 mill is there but rather than use it to strengthen the squad he has used it to reduce the debt.

 

Whatever his tactics with the financial situation of the club, be it with a view to selling or not, all the rest is speculation and with no hard evidence.

 

True, but he HAS said he expects to leave in the next coupleof years.

 

Yes we're not 'net spenders' and the gap between us and Celtic is growing and Calscot's point about us being a couple of late goals away from being on the end of 7 in a row is pretty scary. I'd never thought of things in that way and ponders the question - where do we go from here?

 

Indeed, were it not for those last day title wins we would be staring down the barrel of a potential 9 in a row, which is sad because their dominance has come very much hard on the heels of them being almost bankrupt and VERY inferior to us. However, that in itself is a good thing in that we know that we are in a mess right now but if THEY were on the brink and are now dominant, with the right management at Rangers there is no reason to think we could not rise again and be the dominant force.

 

PLG is the first step but Rome wasn't built in a day. We can build a young team and look to the future but if we want to compete and be consistent then we need to buy some experienced players and look to build the squad around them.

 

Yes, and PLG could very well be the first piece of the jigsaw - I think he has under-estimated the SPL but he is a very smart man and I am sure he will be thinking of players that will be suited to the rigours of the SPL, seems he has so far brougt in players that would suit a French type game, good for Europe but not so for SPL. Agreed re experienced players - for me the spine is most important - McGregor looks like he could be the keeper for a few years if given his chance and confidence is there, Fergie seems to be getting back to his previous best - if only we could get 2 centre-halves that could be more dominant then we wouls have a strong spine and then you can slowly improve the other positions.

 

My opinion is that we need 2 experienced players. One centre half who is a natural leader and organises the defence, and also an experienced goalscoring striker who can take over from Prso who clearly isn't the player he was in his first two seasons. If we can stretch to getting those I believe the rest of the squad we have could easily develop into a team who can compete with Celtic who, after all, are doing the exact same things as we're doing, except doing this a season later and have had more success which is mostly due to our downsizing - not because they are vastly superior.

 

Agreed re Celtic, I don't think that they are that much better than us - but they have the winning mentality - although to be fair WGS did a great job pre-season by bringing in JVoH, Gravesen and Jarosik. We need the winning mentality and it will breed confidence (I have still to see a team play better this season than we did in the first couple of games of the season - if we had turned those first 4 or 5 games into wins there is no saying where we COULD be right now - all ifs, buts and maybes though).