ian1964 10,578 Posted November 9, 2012 Share Posted November 9, 2012 Rangers FC Official @RFC_Official AMcC - Our thoughts are with the hard working Hearts staff, their players & fans. We know how hard it can be & we hope they come through it. Expand 53m Rangers FC Official @RFC_Official AMcC - We understand and sympathise more with Hearts probably more than any other club, because we've been through it too. Expand 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
calscot 0 Posted November 9, 2012 Share Posted November 9, 2012 But SFA incompetence aside a weaker Scottish game is NOT in Rangers interest - a strong Scottish game is. Also you may not like it but Celtic are showing that a decent showing is not beyond Scottish teams yet - it seems you have already given up on the scottish game and are happy to accept a lesser product as long as we are at the top. I also want us to be at the top, but at the top of a strong league and we wont get that by allowing multiple teams to go to the wall. What makes a strong league? It seems to me you need about 50m people who want to pay for expensive TV subscriptions to watch it. We don't have that and never will. I'm not saying Scottish football should give up but there is absolutely no benefit in destroying yourself by trying to compete with the English et al. We actually did that when Advocaat came along and look where we are now. You have to know the reality of where you are and try to make the best of what is readily achievable. Once you've realised that you'll never be a property magnate it's maybe time to make sure your own house is as good as it can be. I can see no way of making Scottish football strong in the current manifestation - as they say, take a load of individual sticks and it's easy to break them, put them together in a bundle and they become too strong to break. We need a revolution of ethos and the only sure way for that to happen is for the current system to have a disaster. That's what makes people realise that they need to pull together. If some clubs go by the wayside so be it - they just weren't strong enough and if you want a strong league you need survival of the fittest. In the business world poorly run companies die all the time and others amalgamate to keep themselves strong. Perhaps that's what's needed in football. But in the end we going to be a lesser pile and so to sit top of it is about as good as it will get with the odd, short European run or result as a bonus. We used to think we could be as big as Barca but now a Scottish team beating them is an amazing feat akin to Berwick Rangers beating us all those years ago. We messed up by not creating a British league about 20 or 30 years ago when the interest in England may have been there and two formerly small Welsh teams who used to kick around the lower divisions have now become pretty big clubs compared to us - from a country where football is their second sport and the population is 60% of ours. I think we even messed up that we didn't attempt to join the English Conference rather than SFL3. Unless there is big change, then Scottish football will never be strong. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
amms 0 Posted November 9, 2012 Share Posted November 9, 2012 Mate were going round about in circles here again, I think there should be less teams you don't. You want responsible people who run their clubs right to be used to prop up the clubs who should be left to fall by the way side. I didn't say anyone should be used to prop anyone else up, where do you get that from? Spreading revenue more equitably has nothing to do with propping up and everything to do with fairness. You think some clubs are 'dross', I don't know who you mean by that. The loss of clubs like Hearts, Kilmarnock and Dunfermline would be a bad thing for Scotland and for Rangers. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest gogzy Posted November 9, 2012 Share Posted November 9, 2012 good official line to take. personally I am of the opinion that they made their bed, so lie in it. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
amms 0 Posted November 9, 2012 Share Posted November 9, 2012 Doesn't seem to work for Denmark or even Belgium and other countries. Scotland thrived in Europe for years by concentrating the wealth on the top teams. Even now we have Celtic doing not too bad but what do the likes of Motherwell achieve? If we shared the wealth equally, we'd have a league of teams about Motherwell's level, maybe a bit better but we wouldn't have the OF who can actually sometimes challenge for the second round of the CL or the latter stages of the Europa league. England now do the same thing - they have a Premiership team for every 2.7m people. That's equivalent to the ratio of OF teams to Scottish population. I disagree entirely. Scottish club football was a force in the 60s and early 70s when we had truly competitive leagues. Clubs like Hibs, Dundee, Hearts, Kilmarnock and Dunfermline were all capable of beating Rangers and Celtic, they were more than capable of winning cups and in some cases winning the league. Wealth wasn't concentrated in those days, gates were shared, sponsorship barely existed and TV rights were almost unheard of. We remained at least competitive in the late 70s but most of our best players were outside Scotland by then. Our next period of being any sort of force in Europe was the early 1980s. You had 5 genuine league challengers each season, shared gates, little to no sponsorship or TV money and English football in the financial doldrums. It's not coincidental. Since then us and Celtic have made the final of the Europa League once each, a tremendous achievement but not to be compared with the old UEFA Cup which was a much harder trophy to win. But it wasn't just us. Sweden, Belgium, Romania, Austria, Portugal and of course Holland were all producing club sides capable of competing in Europe then. Celtic have had a good week, but let's not get carried away, the sun shines on every dogs arse once in a while, it hardly proves that Scottish football is structured correctly. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
calscot 0 Posted November 9, 2012 Share Posted November 9, 2012 I disagree entirely. Scottish club football was a force in the 60s and early 70s when we had truly competitive leagues. Clubs like Hibs, Dundee, Hearts, Kilmarnock and Dunfermline were all capable of beating Rangers and Celtic, they were more than capable of winning cups and in some cases winning the league. Wealth wasn't concentrated in those days, gates were shared, sponsorship barely existed and TV rights were almost unheard of. We remained at least competitive in the late 70s but most of our best players were outside Scotland by then. Our next period of being any sort of force in Europe was the early 1980s. You had 5 genuine league challengers each season, shared gates, little to no sponsorship or TV money and English football in the financial doldrums. It's not coincidental. Since then us and Celtic have made the final of the Europa League once each, a tremendous achievement but not to be compared with the old UEFA Cup which was a much harder trophy to win. But it wasn't just us. Sweden, Belgium, Romania, Austria, Portugal and of course Holland were all producing club sides capable of competing in Europe then. Celtic have had a good week, but let's not get carried away, the sun shines on every dogs arse once in a while, it hardly proves that Scottish football is structured correctly. Firstly, I thought the Premier League was invented as the league WASN'T competitive enough? Secondly, you're talking about times when no country had TV money and teams shared gates. What do you do when Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Man Utd keep their gate money and have huge TV incomes? Do you really think reducing our own income will help against them? Celtic have had a good run this year and we had one when we got to the final; it does happen now and again as you say. But would those runs would have happened if you removed 30% - 40% of the club's income? They've already done it against big odds so I severely doubt it. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
the gunslinger 3,366 Posted November 9, 2012 Share Posted November 9, 2012 Doesn't seem to work for Denmark or even Belgium and other countries. Scotland thrived in Europe for years by concentrating the wealth on the top teams. Even now we have Celtic doing not too bad but what do the likes of Motherwell achieve? If we shared the wealth equally, we'd have a league of teams about Motherwell's level, maybe a bit better but we wouldn't have the OF who can actually sometimes challenge for the second round of the CL or the latter stages of the Europa league. England now do the same thing - they have a Premiership team for every 2.7m people. That's equivalent to the ratio of OF teams to Scottish population. we thrived in Europe when gates were split 60 40 between home and away. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
54andcounting 0 Posted November 9, 2012 Share Posted November 9, 2012 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
aweebluesoandso 290 Posted November 9, 2012 Share Posted November 9, 2012 Rangers FC Official @RFC_OfficialAMcC - Our thoughts are with the hard working Hearts staff, their players & fans. We know how hard it can be & we hope they come through it. Expand 53m Rangers FC Official @RFC_Official AMcC - We understand and sympathise more with Hearts probably more than any other club, because we've been through it too. Expand Ally showing again the class that all the other SPL clubs so obviously lack. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
kuznetsov 0 Posted November 9, 2012 Share Posted November 9, 2012 Ally showing again the class that all the other SPL clubs so obviously lack. he actually had an implicit dig at one or more clubs. if you listen to his exact words on the sky interview. which i applaud btw. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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