Supporters Direct chief calls on Rangers fans to unite...

[andy steel 0]

True, but it's also open for decent sane Rangers fans who are also willing to invest at a level the ordinary Bluenose cannot, or in other words our entire history up until Murray's Thatcherite experiment.

 

Equally, fan ownership leaves the door open for a whole airport's worth of baggage handlers/people with the best intentions but no experience/emotionally driven and therefore not very objective punters like us/etc to come marching up the stairs.

 

It's not a case of 'this option good, this option bad' for me.

 

However, since you lot are part of the 'I actually got off my arse and did something' brigade I certainly admire you; but I disagree with your aim, just the same.

[Hildy 0]

Andy, a fan-owned club would still be open to investment from wealthy fans, indeed wealthy fans could stand for election to be the club president.

 

Dave King parted with £20m when SDM owned it. Why would he not do the same when it is in the charge of the Rangers support and professionally run?

 

With a bad owner, we have someone who can stay in position for a lifetime. With a bad president, we have someone who can be removed democratically after four or five years.

 

We are running a colossal risk at the moment, and it has started to hurt us.

 

The dream owner of Rangers is not a billionaire Arab.

 

It is you and me and a hundred thousand others.

[Bluedell 5,679]

Any new group that sets up in opposition to the RST will effectively be a splitter when people are crying out for unity.

 

It would not attract or interest me.

 

I'm sure that there will others with that view, but on the other hand there may be some who are attracted to it because it's not RST.

 

It's probably best though to wait for the details and then a proper assessment can be made on the pros and cons.

[Zappa 0]

Personally, I don't really understand why the RST didn't have a mechanism already in place for the fans to buy the club out of administration. I might be completely wrong, but it strikes me that while the RST has always been well meaning and had the best intentions of developing fan ownership, when push came to shove and the club was there for the taking, the necessary mechanism simply wasn't in place. That then says to me that there was not only a lack of foresight, but also a lack of real tangible drive towards the Trust's ultimate goals in the years leading up to administration and it was a good number of years too.

 

I'm at the point now where I don't know what to think about fan ownership. I used to think it was a pipe dream and one that wasn't even necessarily the right way for our club to go, but now I'm not so sure. The one thing I will say, is that the trust really need some better advice than what they got when investing £250k in the IPO because that really was not good value for money in terms of buying shares and (in retrospect) it would have been far more prudent to not jump in trusting Green & co's IPO, but hold off and buy in the market at a much lower price.

[bossy 0]

Personally, I don't really understand why the RST didn't have a mechanism already in place for the fans to buy the club out of administration. I might be completely wrong, but it strikes me that while the RST has always been well meaning and had the best intentions of developing fan ownership, when push came to shove and the club was there for the taking, the necessary mechanism simply wasn't in place. That then says to me that there was not only a lack of foresight, but also a lack of real tangible drive towards the Trust's ultimate goals in the years leading up to administration and it was a good number of years too.

 

I'm at the point now where I don't know what to think about fan ownership. I used to think it was a pipe dream and one that wasn't even necessarily the right way for our club to go, but now I'm not so sure. The one thing I will say, is that the trust really need some better advice than what they got when investing £250k in the IPO because that really was not good value for money in terms of buying shares and (in retrospect) it would have been far more prudent to not jump in trusting Green & co's IPO, but hold off and buy in the market at a much lower price.

 

I agree with some of what you say. The problem with the RST is that they have very laudable aims but - a bit like Paul Murray and Jim McColl - when push comes to shove they just never seem to be there.

 

Actually, I am a supporter of the RST and a member. I also invested £500 through them at the time of the IPO. But I think they suffer from gross timidity and naivety when it comes to furthering their aims.

[RANGERRAB 3,731]

Andy, a fan-owned club would still be open to investment from wealthy fans, indeed wealthy fans could stand for election to be the club president.

 

Dave King parted with £20m when SDM owned it. Why would he not do the same when it is in the charge of the Rangers support and professionally run?

 

With a bad owner, we have someone who can stay in position for a lifetime. With a bad president, we have someone who can be removed democratically after four or five years.

 

We are running a colossal risk at the moment, and it has started to hurt us.

 

The dream owner of Rangers is not a billionaire Arab.

 

It is you and me and a hundred thousand others.

 

As far as I know Dave king doesn't believe in fan ownership so I'd say he'd unlikely to want to become involved were fan ownership of Rangers ever to happen.

[Ser Barristan Selmy 222]

Fan ownership is a silly idea that I wish folk would stop going on about

[D'Artagnan 173]

Quote from Mark Dingwall on FF:

 

Goodwin is also being very disingenuous as he's been encouraging a small group of former RST members to set up yet another organisation in competition with the existing organisations despite the RSt being a fully paid up and constituent member of Supporters Direct,

 

The new outfit was conceived in deceit and as a former RST board member I have watched in horror at the behaviour of certain former colleagues.

 

Trust this mob Goodwin is promoting with a tenner a month? After seeing some of them in action I wouldn't trust anything they are involved in further than I could spit.

 

That whole thread has gone totally pear shaped - some particularly serious allegations being levelled on it.

[RANGERRAB 3,731]

How many supporters organisations do we have? There are far too many

[Zappa 0]

I agree with some of what you say. The problem with the RST is that they have very laudable aims but - a bit like Paul Murray and Jim McColl - when push comes to shove they just never seem to be there.

 

Actually, I am a supporter of the RST and a member. I also invested £500 through them at the time of the IPO. But I think they suffer from gross timidity and naivety when it comes to furthering their aims.

 

Regarding Paul Murray and Jim McColl, as far as I'm concerned their parties (in their various forms) both made credible bids for the club. I really do think that Green & co were a 'stick-on' for want of a better phrase because I always believed that there was something not quite right about the administration and if I'm not mistaken, the guys from Duff & Phelps even let it slip themselves that they had contacted Green in the February.

 

Regarding McColl's last minute bid, I think that was done to highlight the fact that the administrators really weren't playing by the common rules with their so-called 'binding agreement' with Green & co. It certainly seemed more of a legal maneuver than anything else because everyone knew there was this so-called binding agreement.

 

Getting back to the Trust though, I think it was a bit strange when we went into admin and there was the 'Save Rangers' campaign which was basically pledges as opposed to actually handing over money. That just didn't make any sense to me, but the Trust must have realised that they didn't have a mechanism in place and needed to go down the pledge route to get the ball rolling. In the Trust's defense on that subject, there was also a major issue with their pledge campaign infringing on the RFFF campaign, so I think that a lack of communication with the Club maybe put a dampener on both of those.