2012 in review

We thought it would be good to show the audience we have had over the last few months, and to say thanks to all those who have helped to make this a thriving community in the short time we have been on the go.

A Happy New year to all from everyone at TSFM.

 

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

About 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. This blog was viewed about 3,500,000 times in 2012. If it were Liechtenstein, it would take about 64 years for that many people to see it. Your blog had more visits than a small country in Europe!

Click here to see the complete report.

The Dismal Art of Whataboutery

by Stuart Cosgrove for the Scottish Football Monitor

In the early years of the new millennium, ‘The Battle of the Saints’ was a First Division encounter. Both St Mirren and St Johnstone had been relegated and were among the favourites to return to the spiritually suffocating SPL. Winning the First Division title was a mixed blessing. It provided a football moment that old firm fans could only dream of – an open-top bus round. But victory meant you were back in the SPL, a league that had been shaped for the benefit of the two big clubs. Continue reading

The Real Battle Begins?

The increasing attacks on social media by the main stream press, fuelled in some respect by David Murray’s vague threats of litigation against bloggers, has brought into sharp focus the challenges facing the Blogosphere. It also brings into even sharper focus the prescience of Stuart Cosgrove’s assertion that this summer’s ‘epistemological break’  had begun to marginalize the Scottish sporting wing of the MSM. Continue reading

Why the Beast of Armageddon Failed to Show?

A Blog for Scottish Football Monitor by Stuart Cosgrove

At the height of summer of discontent I was asked to contribute to a BBC radio show with Jim Traynor and Jim Spence. ‘Armageddon’ had just been pronounced and if the media were to be believed Scotland was about to freeze over in a new ice-age: only a cold darkness lay ahead.

To get the radio-show off to a healthy and pretentious start I began by saying that Scottish football was experiencing an “epistemological break”. It was an in-joke with Jim Spence, who I have known since we were both teenage ‘suedeheads.’ I was a mouthy young St Johnstone fan and Jim was an Arabian sand-dancer. But even in those distant days, we shared a mutual distrust of the ‘old firm’ and in our separate ways wanted a better future for our clubs. We both grew up to become products of the fanzine era, Jim as a writer for Dundee United’s ‘The Final Hurdle’ and me as a staff writer for the NME. Without ever having to say it, we had both engaged in a guerrilla-war against what Aberdeen’s Willie Miller once characterised as “West Coast Bias”. Continue reading

Of Assets and Liabilities

Much has been written on this blog, and previously on RangersTaxCase.com regarding the assets and liabilities of the former Rangers football club – however little has been done to look at the rest of the SPL and Scottish Football as a whole.  Was it just Rangers making ridiculous ‘asset’ valuations or is there other clubs in real danger of following RFC to the grave?

Before we get started a quick explanation on the figures.  They were all taken from the latest accounts as appearing on Duedil.com, so some are from 2010’s figures.  I have also ‘tidied’ them up a little so that they are easily understandable, removing things such as minor stock holdings. Continue reading

Three Shakes … and a Twist

Guest Post by James Forrest
Those who like to read the techno-thrillers of Tom Clancy will remember well the scene in The Sum of all Fears, when the nuclear bomb explodes in Denver, outside the stadium where the Super Bowl is being played. Clancy handles the moment in two very distinct chapters. The second is a vivid and frightening examination of the explosion’s terrible effects as they are felt, firstly in Denver and then experienced around the world. Continue reading

Naming the Rose

We spend an inordinate amount of time on this blog arguing about what the re-emergent Rangers should be called. It is a rather circular debate with no way of finding any consensus. The dispute between Rangers (“The Rangerists”) or The Rangers or Sevco (“The Sevconians”) and its claim to be the club that was formed in the 19th century is spurious. Whichever way you look at it, the continuity of the “brand” is undeniable and as long those who wish to keep buying that package are satisfied that the wrapping is authentic – where’s the harm? Continue reading

Commander Green, The FIFA man, and life after the Murray Empire

Good Morning,

A number of years ago I sat and watched while the late David Will, one time chairman of Brechin City, former President of the Scottish Football Association and Vice President of FIFA, peered over the upper rims of his glasses at the assembled board and management of St Johnstone Football Club and proceeded to brand them all as a “shower of thrawn buggers!”.

The reason for the tongue in cheek outburst from Scotland’s highest ranking official from the world of football was the organisation of the centenary dinner celebrating 100 years of the Perth Club— which the club saw fit to hold well outside the centenary year. Will had been invited to speak as a guest at the dinner ( yes Mr Cosgrove I was there ), along with then manager Alex Totten and Craigie Veitch the former sports editor of the Scotsman. Continue reading

Make our Mind Up Time

I have been receiving quite a bit of  unflattering mail about the “agenda” being pursued on this blog. Depending on the correspondent, that is defined as  either denying people their civil right to gloat, hiding the “truth” that people of the RC faith are welcomed and encouraged to come to Ibrox, or indulging in Chamberlain-style appeasement with the banning of the “H” word and other incontrovertible rights-to-insult.

The objection to moderation of any sort appears to be at the root of these diatribes. Our position here in terms of moderation is clear. There is no “agenda” other than a desire not to be chasing up posts containing the rantings and ravings of partisan types who “demand” their right to be heard no matter how objectionable it might be to those hear it. We are not here to service a conduit for conspiracy theories based in Masonic Lodges or the Vatican. There are plenty of places where people can indulge in that kind of stuff, but the moderators here are just not interested. The administration of the site takes around four hours per day. That’s a long time trawling through posts which often set out deliberately to insult, abuse or otherwise cause offence – mildly or otherwise. Continue reading

Charles Green – What Will Football’s Authorities Do?

Charles Green has declared war on the Scottish football authorities. His statement and that of Duff and Phelps today deserve detailed analysis, which is ongoing at McConville Towers as we speak, and will be concluded as soon as Stewart Regan, Neil Doncaster and Peter Lawwell tell me what to write.

For now, I wanted to speculate if Mr Green had managed to forget the terms of the SFA Rules, under which Rangers FC was censured for his comments some time ago. Mr Green could well have forgotten, as the censure took place as long as eleven days ago. Continue reading