Green Article In The Record

[ian1964 10,707]

WHEN Charles Green first walked through the front doors of Ibrox the biggest fear among Rangers fans was that they were getting landed with another Craig Whyte.

 

Five months on, it’s beginning to look as if what they’ve actually got is their very own Fergus McCann.

 

OK, I can’t claim to know the man currently at the helm of my club and steering it through the most troubled waters in its 140-year history.

 

The truth is I’ve met him just once. For about five seconds.

 

But I will say this – I’m really beginning to warm to him. And I don’t think I’m the only one.

 

His latest comments in today’s Daily Record have struck a chord and not just because he’s talking about staying in place until the Champions League theme tune is blasting out around Ibrox once again.

 

No, it seems Green has caught the bug. We call it Rangersitis.

 

And the way he is talking reminds me very much of the approach The Bunnet brought to Celtic all those years ago when he turned that club around.

 

Wee Fergus put his cards on the table and told Celtic fans he would be working to a five-year plan. He promised them – as a fan himself – he would restructure their club from top to bottom within that timescale and then leave. And he was as good as his word.

 

Now Green appears to be singing from a similar hymn sheet and I don’t think it’s any coincidence that, having spent so much time at the club over the last few months, it seems Rangers have got under his skin.

 

Believe me, as an Englishman who came up here in 1990 I know how that can happen. Rangers are not just another football club. Rangers are a way of life.

 

Twenty two years later I’m still here and I can’t imagine living or working anywhere else. The club means that much to me.

 

There is a magnetism about the Old Firm that people just don’t understand until they find themselves wrapped up in the middle of it all.

 

And I think it’s hit Green right between the eyes.

 

He’s been at Sheffield United in the past and they are a big club in their own right. But they pale into insignificance when compared with the scale and pull of Rangers.

 

And I think that’s probably caught Charles by surprise. He thought he knew what he was getting involved in but in reality he didn’t have a clue.

 

As a businessman – and a smart one at that – he will be seeing opportunities open up that he didn’t even know existed when he first gained control.

 

There is money to be made and that’s another big reason why he’ll be in no rush to move on. Let’s be honest, there’s no way he could have imagined selling 38,000 season tickets for a club in the Third Division.

 

Even I have been stunned and delighted by the sheer ferocity of the support behind the club, so a guy like Green must be pinching himself. Half the teams in England’s Premier League don’t shift that amount of tickets.

 

But if there’s money in it for the businessmen that can only be good for the football side of things. And if the aim is to deliver Rangers back into the Champions League then, ultimately, everyone will be a winner.

 

I may not have had a proper chat with the man but people I know and trust – who have the club’s interests at heart – have spoken with him and are impressed with what they heard. They tell me he is a credible guy with credible plans.

 

That means he has come a long way from those early days when no Rangers fan wanted to touch him with a bargepole. The fear was that he was a snake oil salesman looking to cash in on a club that had already been dragged through its darkest days by Whyte.

 

It has taken Green time to win people over and understandably so.

 

But he is working hard to gain their trust and he’s defending their club, which hasn’t always happened in the past.

 

He’s standing up for the fans and Rangers and fighting for their best interests. In short, he’s putting his heart and soul into their club and that’s all any Rangers supporter ever asks of those who represent them.

 

I’m not saying Green has won all the hearts and minds at Ibrox. He hasn’t. But he’s proving himself to them and although he probably still has a lot more to prove, he is saying and doing all the right things.

 

And now, by saying that it’s no longer just about turning a fast buck, by buying into the dream of returning the club to the top of the game before he leaves, he is showing he shares all the ambitions of the supporters. He is displaying the kind of passion that is a requirement of the badge.

 

And he is also acting with the transparency the Rangers fans deserve after everything they have been put through over the last couple of years.

 

He’s the opposite of Whyte – and a throwback to Wee Fergus.

 

And if he delivers what he says he will – whether it takes him four years or 10 – then his place in the history of Rangers will be secured.

 

Mark Hateley

Edited October 27, 2012 by ian1964

[ian1964 10,707]

ALLY McCOIST regularly fights with Charles Green over what they believe is best for Rangers.

 

The Ibrox boss wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

For he’s certain the club has the right man as chief executive to fight their corner.

 

Green told SunSport this week he can never envisage a day when he will sack Light Blues legend McCoist.

 

His respect for the man faced with the monumental task of leading Rangers out of the SFL over three years and back to the top flight and Europe couldn’t be greater.

 

And McCoist admits the feeling is mutual.

 

He said: “I think the one thing you have to say about Charles is that, thankfully, he has not attempted to kid anyone on.

 

“He stated when he came in ‘I am here to make a few quid but, in doing that, I will get the club back to where they belong and a success again’. The vast majority of supporters and staff would accept that.

 

“You would have to ask him yourself, but I think he’s probably been taken aback by the support he has received.

 

“I can’t speak for him, but maybe Charles is feeling a bit duty bound to represent the supporters and the club to a further extension of what he planned. Surely that can only be a good thing.

 

“In my opinion, the most important relationship at any football club is manager and chief executive. It has to be.

 

“It is safe to say that him and I won’t agree on everything. He is probably as forthright and demanding and in your face as anybody.

 

“But I have to tell you, I don’t mind that.

 

“I spent the majority of my time here fighting with team-mates, but we all wanted to get to the same end.

 

“I am not saying we fight all the time, far from it, but I think we have a very healthy working relationship.

 

“He phones me up, we have a cup of tea and we talk.

 

“He knows what he wants for the club. If that means me getting one or two players less in the transfer window than I wanted then that’s the case.”

 

The Green and McCoist partnership is critical for the future of Gers.

 

And the boss said: “We have to trust each other. And by that I don’t mean ‘No, I don’t trust him’.

 

“The experience of the last year has not been good.

 

“I went on record as saying it didn’t matter who came into our club, in terms of buying it over and becoming chief executive, they would have to earn the trust of everybody. Not just me, the supporters, the staff, everyone.

 

“Charles, in my opinion, is well on his way to doing that.

 

“I don’t think for a minute he will trust me 100 per cent at this moment in time. Trust has to be earned. It is the same as respect. You don’t give someone trust, you don’t give someone respect. You earn it.”

 

The fading Daily Record yesterday claimed Green was in another bitter fight with the SFA over £200,000 being denied them following former Rangers midfielder Charlie Adam’s move from Liverpool to Stoke.

 

They reported it was the governing body who had sent the agreed sell-on cash to administrators Duff & Phelps.

 

But Rangers last night confirmed it’s the ENGLISH FA who diverted the money, which actually totals £220,000.

 

Gers sold Adam to Blackpool in August 2009, and the six-figure sum was expected directly from the Seasiders.

 

Green now faces a scrap with the FA.

 

McCoist has no doubt the Yorkshireman, right, will be ferocious in his determination in this and other disputes with authority.

 

He said: “My take on it is that we have the right man fighting our case. I know him well enough now to know he won’t be walked over.

 

“He will fight for every penny he thinks is ours.”

 

McCoist is relishing going head to head with Clyde boss and SunSport columnist Jim Duffy tomorrow.

 

Duffy recalled his sparring days with McCoist on the park and the Gers manager — his top of the table side still seeking a first away league win of the season after four embarrassing flops — said: “I’ve certainly had some interesting clashes with Duff. He was a good player, an intelligent defender.

 

“The way he played the game, you could see there was real potential for him to be a coach or a manager.”

 

McCoist confessed he is not full of the joys about his side having to play on another artificial pitch at Broadwood.

 

He said: “I totally understand the synthetic pitches.

 

“But, listen, they are not for me because I want to play on grass.

 

“I believe that football at that level should be played on grass.

 

“But if we are good enough to win the game, we’ll win the game. It’ll be nothing to do with surface.”

 

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/feeds/smartphone/scotland/4612460/Charles-is-having-a-BIG-impact-now.html#ixzz2ATcxfHiN

[der Berliner 3,680]

The fading Daily Record yesterday claimed ...

 

Is that not food for an inter-paper clash over there?

[Guest ibroxted]

CG seems to have caught the bug, this can only be good for the club. He wants to make money and I'm ok with that , when its combined with the Rangers getting into your blood it becomes a very powerfull mix.

AS for the transfer moneys, its time to go to court, time to stop messing about and show everyone we truly mean business

[ian1964 10,707]

Glenn Gibbons: Green must think we are yokels

 

CHARLES Green, the cartoon Yorkshireman whose deepest pleasure seems to derive from revelling in his own, tell-it-like-it-is “honest”, also appears to have been afflicted by a condition not uncommon among natives of that peculiar county.

 

That is, a crass inability to tell the difference between blunt speaking and rudeness.

 

Like Brian Clough, Geoffrey Boycott, Fred Trueman and other well-known boors from the region, the Rangers chief executive is at risk of simultaneously offending everyone in sight and of tumbling into parody every time he exercises his tongue. This certainly gives him a veneer of ridiculousness, but beneath the clownishness there are implications which should cause the Ibrox club’s followers a certain concern.

 

When Green had to apologise for insulting Aston Villa recently, the most significant element of his outburst was not that he called the Birmingham club “useless” (hence the grovelling), but that he should, quite without compunction, underline the point he was trying to make by introducing a “fact” that was a complete fabrication.

 

Trying to talk up Rangers’ entitlement to a place among the biggest clubs on the planet, Green said, “Why should Manchester United get £320 million (in annual revenues, much from TV) and Aston Villa, who are useless, get £250 million?”

 

The figure attached to Villa was plucked from the ether, and bore no relation whatsoever to the £90m+ that was lodged as their revenue in the club’s latest financial returns. What should be at least slightly disturbing for anyone with a chance of coming within Green’s field of influence is that he should quite unhesitatingly invent a figure he must have known could be exposed as a blatant lie literally within a few seconds.

 

This readiness to dive headlong into near-certain condemnation as a glib charlatan suggests two things, neither of which could be considered commendable. The first is that he simply doesn’t care, an insouciance stemming from the belief that he will be able to talk his way out of any potential embarrassment.

 

The second, however, is much darker and should be considerably more discomforting for anyone likely to invest either faith or money in the chief executive’s plans for Rangers’ revival. It is that he is a firm adherent to PT Barnum’s most famous dictum: “There’s a sucker born every minute”.

 

The evidence so far makes it difficult to resist the notion that Green arrived in Glasgow with the conviction that anywhere north of Leeds is a backwater populated by yokels who would be susceptible to the famous mushroom system of cultivation (“keep them in the dark and feed them a load of manure”).

 

How else would anyone explain not only the aforementioned Aston Villa nonsense, but this week’s staggering public somersault over his claim to have received death threats from rather feverish Rangers fans in the wake of his taking control of the club? Unusually, Green supported his reporting of the abuse with the entirely credible revelation that he had been forced to move house almost on a weekly basis in order to avoid the possibility of GBH or worse.

 

The instant he learned, however, that Rangers supporters were “upset” by his claims, he rushed to the club’s website to reassure his former tormentors that they are, indeed, the world’s greatest fans and that he merely reported the threats as a way of demonstrating how far “we (meaning, presumably, this band of brothers) have come together.”

 

As a form of monumental audacity, the expectation that this explanation would have been accepted without question by anyone with an IQ in double figures may even have topped the absurdity of the Villa affair. It is also as despicable an insult to the national intelligence as it is possible to imagine.

 

In a fertile period for commentators, Green’s risible antics were accompanied by the reappearance on stage of his predecessor, Craig Whyte, the latter promising a future of intriguing developments by implicating Rangers’ administrators, Duff and Phelps, in dubious practices.

 

These allegations will surely be settled in law, but, in the meantime, Whyte took the initiative in the matter of claim and counter-claim by producing evidence that included recorded conversations with a senior executive in D&P who has consistently denied all allegations of impropriety.

 

If this episode proved anything, it was that, whatever else may be said of Whyte, he is no fool. Time may show that those who thought he was made the biggest mistake of all.

 

http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/sfl-division-three/glenn-gibbons-green-must-think-we-are-yokels-1-2602048