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Everyone on this site has football experiences, views, stories and opinions. Everyone also wants things to be better in the future too. These are bonds that make us who we are and this forum what it is.
I’ll share a few experiences with you now.
I will never forget an impromptu and inspirational 60 minute Q. and A. masterclass by Davie MacParland to a group of relative youngsters at Hampden in 1975 after Scottish Unis had played a friendly with his team.
It was “over the moon Brian” time for me on finding a £5 note in my shoe. This was after I played my first game (unexpectedly) as an S form in the Highland League when my club’s Aberdeen-based players had been held up by a road incident.
So happy and corrupted was I that I never questioned the widespread practice of giving money to amateur players thereafter so I’m part of the problem.
I also sat next to a young Jim Leyton who came to Butchart to watch himself on a match video after he had let in two goals when we dumped Deveronvale (where he was on loan) out of the Aberdeenshire Cup. It was the very early days of video and Jim had never seen himself on a tv before.
Every person in the SFM community will have equally diverse and interesting experiences and I’m going to share one more with you now in a little more detail.
In the mid 90s I was given an amazing insight into how Scottish football really worked. In many ways it hasn’t changed much since.
Back then I was part of a small group brought in to help find funding for the upgrade of Tynecastle with the urgent need to construct three new stands. At the time it was a massive requirement for a very financially challenged organisation and at a push there were potentially just about enough pots of monies available from several sources to trigger the investment from the Football Trust and squeak over the line.
The most critical pot was mobilising the fans.
My role was to find a way of getting them to come aboard working with some fine lifetime Hearts fans like the late Alex Kitson so it would all look like a Hearts Community rather than a Mercer initiative.
The then, colourful Hearts majority owner was under constant pressure on other fronts at the time.
The team was not really performing with relatively new manager Jim Jeffries trying to get best out of predecessor Tommy Mclean’s mixed bag of old pros and kids. Making things worse was a growing, highly critical and very vocal consortium of local business people trying to get Mercer out (and themselves in).
I guess you could say in today’s parlance that they were RHM and civil war was very much happening down Gorgie way.
Anyway I can’t now recall all the detail and apologies if my memories have fused a little but a key AGM type meeting for Hearts shareholders at Ingliston was coming up and there was an agenda that looked like it might hurt “The Chairman” as Wallace liked to be called.
Never any flies on him though, he had seen the danger signs and was ready in his own way.
He turned up with his trusted few and simply yet quite brilliantly hijacked the negative agenda and ignored the real issues. He didn’t have a solution for them and couldn’t implement the changes that were in reality needed but quite simply he kicked all the trouble into the long grass.
He did this because he fundamentally understood that most shareholders in the room were just ordinary football fans and wanted nothing more than to be able to talk about football the game, Hearts their club, who they were due to play next and who would be playing.
It was that simple.
Mercer’s message to all that night was “Yes things have been tough but our best possible future is with me”.
He rammed this home by confidently telling the assembled body that Hearts were on the up because we had a new manager who needed time and then blew everyone away by announcing he just signed three amazing new players for them, Giles Rousset, Bruno Pasquale and Hans Eskilsson. After the applause and mayhem died down he had won.
Bruno and Rousset were newsworthy in any Scottish football context one being a French International and the other an ex Juventus tough guy with a EUFA and a couple of Coppa Italia winners medals.
Oh and Eskilsson had amazing hair.
Mercer’s simple bit of insight, showmanship, brinksmanship, call it what you like, led to the survival of his regime.
In a parallel maybe to what the SFA did after their meeting with Craig at the Hotel Du Vin in Glasgow, Mercer had enough time to be ready for the trouble he knew was coming and used his power to ignore the real issues and the detail and move on with a big gamble.
Looking back Wallace got a lot right .
He understood what the majority of ordinary football fans wanted. He’d also learnt that good press was needed and came from feeding the football writers enough tasty exclusives so they’d look after him in a symbiotic relationship, the kind of relationship that remains much the same today.
Even back then in the days when there were less full-colour pages pre-allocated to certain teams to fill and more able journalists to fill them, the sports pages were about game reports and gossip rather than insight.
The packs of hacks all craved being handed tasty semi-exclusive stories.
It was and ever is thus and in those days the Daily Record was a wee gem with circulation nearer 700K than the 200K-ish today and amazingly all its costs were covered by it’s advertising revenue alone. The proud boast of Endell Laird was the purchase price was pure profit.
With hindsight Wallace may only have postponed the inevitable campaign by the RHM rebels that night at Ingliston. History tells us that the Robinson/Deans rebellion eventually forced their chance. They did have to dig much deeper financially than they ever wanted when their time eventually came, and soon fell out too, but that’s another story.
Wallace’s long grass was just never going to be deep enough to hide the issues he wanted to ignore but to his credit on his watch the stadium was upgraded and the first Scottish Cup since 1956 was paraded to the fans.
Mr. Mercer was an operator who like others before and since could see personal and business value in owning a club.
He cultivated friendly football writers.
He learned that the SFA could be difficult to deal with but much less so when you placed people on their various management boards. That was key to the inner power sanctums and brought you at best influence and at worst early warnings.
He may have been autocratic but knew you needed powerful friends at other clubs too and was always close with David Murray in particular.
So what has this little piece of retrospection and a handful of Finloch football stories got to do with a blog on SFM?
Last week I met Big Pink for the first time over a few coffees.
It was like meeting an old friend in the pub because of all the stuff we’ve lived through and shared over the last 5 or so years.
We talked about stuff and traded stories and opinions on life, football and about SFM what it does and what we are.
We got on to the subject of it’s future and with my business background he asked me to consider a piece for the blog about where the SFM, our fledgling business might go from here.
I maybe agreed too hastily because I have found it challenging to gather and spell out my thoughts.
So this is very much a starting couple of steps to bring in the SFM minds and set up future discussions following this blog and when we meet in Perth in April.
My starting point was to first consider what we are today.
It’s a personal view but to me SFM is a valued medium I come to most days. It’s for when I want to find out or to discuss what is happening.
It is populated with a bunch of people with different backgrounds, skills and insights, is always polite and often very funny.
I’d actually like to see more headline blogs because I enjoy them but our biggest value will always be analysis discussion and good humour.
SFM is fundamentally different to the MSM back pages that still offer us all a mono diet of whatever day-to-day gossip they have been spoon-fed by the Level 9’s of this world or made up and maybe embellished with a random phone call for a quote.
Yes their world is declining and will inevitably see fundamental restructure and change but that change has in reality nothing to do with how they cover and will continue to cover Scottish football.
I’d even posit (to use a wee word I’ve learned from the excellent JJ site I visit sometimes) that the red tops currently see their style of football coverage as a way of slowing their inevitable declines because it delivers the difficult to reach male audience their advertisers crave access to.
As a spectator I’d say the MSM in Scotland mostly seem to suffer from a polarised demographic focus/ bias too but that can never excuse their revisionism or the Spiers and Haggerty episodes we’ve just witnessed.
There is one benefit though. One you maybe hadn’t thought about from all the dreadful MSM football reportage.
The stuff they collectively generate enables all of us to have daily conversations with friends and strangers without actually saying anything about anything.
It gives us our daily top-up for the international language of football minutiae we all converse in every day.
I’ve been able to speak it fluently since I was in my teens. You know the kind of thing – the ins and outs, the ups and downs, the comings and goings and the toings and froings.
The good news, the bad news the made-up news – its all part of being involved with a team or indeed just being a football fan and it’s all conversation for the males of our species.
There are plenty of places I can and do get access to that kind of stuff but SFM isn’t and never has been a source.
I quickly found out that most of my pals don’t want to talk about side letters in the pub on a Friday, or the need for asterisked titles because they are more interested in tomorrow’s match and who will be out of contract at the end of the season.
Without being disrespectful in any way I think they are cut from the same wood as the majority of Mr. Mercer’s Hearts shareholders and if I’m honest part of me is too.
That has given our administrators and clubs too easy a ride.
Beyond the gossip it is fair to say in the last 40 or 50 years football has changed beyond all recognition.
It has become a source of power and money and as we know proverbially and in real life power can corrupt and money can be the root of all-evil.
The stuff happening at FIFA now can be no surprise to any fair-minded fan and I’d be inclined to think that there have been finagled decisions at the top for longer than the current stewardship of Mr. Blatter.
Way longer.
Football-land is a dirty world. A world where all the transparency is for show and real stuff has always been controlled and rewarding for those in the right places.
Closer to home football in Scotland is no different. Power and money have been the origins of our own North of the Border soap opera saga.
Its sometimes been very funny, often been entertaining too but is ultimately tragic and a sad indictment on our country.
Being Scotland nothing is ever as simple as it should be.
We started from a unique kind of place where for over a century we have had to live with an unhealthy, quasi-tribal, two-club duopolistic domination of all things football including the fans, the trophies, the money, the media attention and the administrators controlling our game.
The stark reality of 2016 is our biggest club/economy now finds its real ambitions thwarted, potentially forever, by its location in our restrictive league structure. It has nowhere currently to go and annoyingly the biggest league in the world is just over the border and part of the same country in political terms.
This is a destabilising influence on our game that won’t go away until change allows the next evolution.
Our second biggest economy as we now know had to cheat a little to keep up, post Fergus, and is now making its way back to the top end but with some truly nuclear baggage that I guess we still really only know the half of. Nothing will be simple in its return to what we’re told everyday is its rightful place. It too is a latent destabilising influence awaiting like a grumbling volcano.
What depresses me is the fact that the much-vaunted return of our dysfunctional duopoly is not a formula to recreate the European success we all took for granted for so long. Those days will never return.
The decline of the Scottish giant that was and is Rangers has dominated our thoughts because it encapsulates so much more than what is wrong with our game.
It is a huge business and establishment fall from grace. A shocking story that has become an elephant in the room to our politicians, our media and many of our fellow fans and is still playing out to deafening silence in some quarters.
In the manic run up to the decline of David Murray’s club we benefitted from insights from the seminal RTC and were bombarded with mass denials from almost everywhere else.
We witnessed the £1 sale to Craig Whyte, the subsequent McCoist European failure, the eventual slide into messy liquidation with tax issues etc.
Our administrators failed us all the way through because they had a different agenda.
Our MSM didn’t want to know partly because it involved more than regurgitating press releases and partly because it was real news for real reporters and not back pages gossip.
Their editors failed us there too, big time.
Now the revisionism and invention of the post-liquidation ephemeral club and company scenarios has been creative to say the least.
I remember Mr. Traynor’s initial headline and smile how he and others are now wading in a contradictory swamp of their own making. It’s all confusion when it needn’t be.
I only know the kind of stuff that really happened because of this site and its RTC predecessor.
Four or five years on and I think these guys (SFA, SPFL) acted like Wallace Mercer did at Ingliston and ran roughshod over process to “win”.
These well paid admin staff were never off-piste though and our clubs share complicity for their actions to varying degrees.
If I was Regan’s or Doncaster’s devil’s advocate I could just about comprehend that they acted because they feared for their TV revenues. The prospect of being without half of their duopoly ace card and the blue fans scared them and they were mandated by the clubs to maintain the status quo.
I don’t mean all the clubs but if we look at the key committee structures we’ll easily see who were in that inner sanctum at the time. They collectively decided to throw their rulebook out the window and there is no grass long enough to bury their collective actions because truth always outs.
Cast yourself back a few years not long before the St Valentine’s day 2012 news when the push was all for a 10 club league.
I remember Stewart Milne aggressively trying to sell us all a 10-club league because of the TV revenue it delivered (to the few).
At that time there seemed to be a collective “TV Gold Fever” prevailing in the cabal of top club chairmen that makes the real decisions and tells our administrators what to do.
Luckily they failed.
They nearly failed again too in 2012 with their tawdry 5 way agreement and we all owe a debt of gratitude to the late Turnbull Hutton whose personal integrity, bloody-mindedness and leadership meant a significant change to the premeditated 5 way plan that our top clubs had all signed off.
Since then we’ve all suffered from Armageddon and long may it stay.
SFM has been at the forefront of the last five years. A place where fans from all the clubs come together to question, analyse, give insight, balance, consciousness on all aspects of the meandering road that has been this story so far.
It’s all recorded on our archives somewhere too. We’ve noted and discussed the following and more –
- Two different signatures from the same club on the 5-way agreement
- Two different and concurrent memberships of the SFA
- Players TUPE-ing for free and no lawyers getting rich in trying to get them back
- Pre-season games being cancelled because of registration and insurance issues
- The Brechin game coming too soon for the paperwork
- The entry-round in The Ramsdens Cup for the old club or is it the new club?
- Record crowds, an even more aggressive songbook
- Ian Black getting a surprise call-up and a bit of a game to legitimise The New Rangers with their first cap
- Millions raised from a gullible city and desperate fans but still several last gasp saves needed to avoid new financial stramashes
- A charity that pays for holidays in America
- Quasi-legal stuff with dodgy parameters for questionable enquiries like Nimmo Smith
- Bryson and his logic that Spartans could and should have used to stay in the cup
- A “Hopelessly Conflicted Chairman” re-elected and a new one who has fitted in seamlessly
- Real legal stuff like HMRC appeals, and phrases like side-letters
- Charlotte Fakes and maybe even Fake Charlotte Fakes
- Fit and proper persons running our clubs
- Recorded conversations
- Onerous contracts
- Metaphysical concepts of what football clubs in our courts with big bucks being spent on our behalf by our administrators
There is and has been a whole lot more and more to come on the schedules too.
How much of this would I have found on our MSM?
Very little – so thanks to those who go the extra mile for us including John Clark, EasyJambo and others at the courts, Phil who will never go away, James Doleman and others too including JJ – all playing blinders where the hacks don’t dare.
Finally fast-forward to today.
Most Scottish fans probably know a little about the stuff I’ve touched upon and we’ve debated in depth. Not enough though.
But we have Darryl Broadfoot who is the SFA so we can all sleep rest assured each night.
Going forward we must address how we communicate as a medium to spread the word.
Ask yourself – Is what we do more important than knowing Rangers signed Dean Windass’s son from Accrington Stanley on a free because he’s going to play for England one day and stuff like that?
I’d say it is different although both have a place.
Our challenge is to create more impact with ours.
In finishing I have one serious starting proposal to make as a community but first a thank you.
Thank you to all the blog writers and posters because we have collectively created a site where real stuff can be dissected and discussed politely and in a non-partisan way.
Well done to the mods in particular and to our community In general
My simple proposal as our first step forward is to start a Wikipedia style library of the facts and keep it on our site.
Dates, happenings, people and all the stuff that will not allow any of it to stay buried forever in the long grass. The kind of detail that is in Auldheid’s amazing and resolute Resolution 12.
Chapter and verse whys and wherefores with dates and names.
This will achieve three things.
- It will create bedrock for us as a trusted media channel whatever we decide to become.
- It will put stuff factually into the public domain forever.
- It will contradict any highly paid revisionists trying to change what really happened for their own agendas into the future.
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https://theclumpany.wordpress.com/
That’s what I wanted to say at April 5, 2016 at 10:16
5 stars to The Clumpany *****
seeing there are a few reds firing off letter’s, i shall and hope many others will jump on board.
this time in my post making it quite clear to the club i will be advising family and friends to seriously think about where to spend their money next season or if they want to comply in the big charade as well as the subject res 12 and their complicit silence.
no doubt i will be underwhelmed by their response if any.
motor red
April 5, 2016 at 23:37
“ If they want to comply in the big charade”
“What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”
(Hitchens Razor.)
IANAGAINAPRIL 5, 2016 at 22:40
Well the Clumpany did warn us.Its going to be full on P*** for months.DO one thing motivate your club whoever they are to skelp them at every possible opportunity and send them straight back down.Its the only way you will feel better.Nothing agin Sevco supporters BTW its the media needs curtailed and the only way this will stop is they get humped non stop.
================================
I have never subscribed to the view the media can’t influence what is happening in the game. I certainly don’t believe some Celtic fans would have booed Fergus McCann had the media not compared him so unfavourably to David Murray. Yet McCann had to run his club honestly within its means while Murray had the full might of the Bank of Scotland behind his.
Next season the media will do everything in their power to ensure any influence they can have will help Rangers win the league. It’s going to be a very dirty game and no matter who the Celtic Manager is he’ll need a thick skin, as will his players. The Aberdeen Manager may be another who finds he’s not quite as popular as he is now if he threatens to rain on the Ibrox parade. For Aberdeen read Hearts or any other club. Whether it’s bias, fear, or for commercial reasons it is surely beyond doubt now the media only want a successful club from Ibrox ruling over all others.
upthehoopsApril 6, 2016 at 07:12
IANAGAINAPRIL 5, 2016 at 22:40 Well the Clumpany did warn us.Its going to be full on P*** for months.DO one thing motivate your club whoever they are to skelp them at every possible opportunity and send them straight back down.Its the only way you will feel better.Nothing agin Sevco supporters BTW its the media needs curtailed and the only way this will stop is they get humped non stop. ================================
I have never subscribed to the view the media can’t influence what is happening in the game. I certainly don’t believe some Celtic fans would have booed Fergus McCann had the media not compared him so unfavourably to David Murray. Yet McCann had to run his club honestly within its means while Murray had the full might of the Bank of Scotland behind his.
Next season the media will do everything in their power to ensure any influence they can have will help Rangers win the league. It’s going to be a very dirty game and no matter who the Celtic Manager is he’ll need a thick skin, as will his players. The Aberdeen Manager may be another who finds he’s not quite as popular as he is now if he threatens to rain on the Ibrox parade. For Aberdeen read Hearts or any other club. Whether it’s bias, fear, or for commercial reasons it is surely beyond doubt now the media only want a successful club from Ibrox ruling over all others.
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Seems to me that the media are also influencing potential sponsors by painting as positive a picture as possible and creating a fairy tale ‘return’ aura to the story to deflect from the truth of a club that has bought three promotions by outspending all rival clubs massively, while creating huge debts (the biggest in the league) and massive losses (the biggest in the league).
Big oxymoron on the BBC news this morning! Correctly informing the public that ‘Rangers’ entered administration and were (in the process of, actually) liquidated, then including the old ‘returning to the Premiership’ nonsense.
My sister just sent me a link on Facebook about the same BBC criticised rightly above for welcoming the return of their vision and version of Rangers to their rightful place.
It was a small piece specifically criticising the Panorama programme on Monday 4th that avoided any focus or even mention of British Dependancies and led the viewer to focus on Panama.
Here’s a para that sums up the piece and drops a wee nugget in at the end.
“In deliberately obscuring the key role of the British money-laundering base of British Virgin Islands in these transactions, the BBC have demonstrated precisely why the entire database has to be released to the scrutiny of the people, rather than being filtered by the dubious honesty of state and corporate journalists. The BBC targeting of two very low level British minions at the end of their programme does not alter this.
The BBC could also address why their Pacific Quay HQ in Glasgow is leased for £100 million from a hidden ownership company in the Cayman Islands.”
Cheap and tawdry journalism masked as real reportage from our self same BBC many of whose “full time” employees are all registered companies to leverage tax breaks not available to ordinary workers.
We are all stakeholders of this organisation.
ALLYJAMBOAPRIL 6, 2016 at 07:59 Big oxymoron on the BBC news this morning! Correctly informing the public that ‘Rangers’ entered administration and were (in the process of, actually) liquidated, then including the old ‘returning to the Premiership’ nonsense.
————————————————-
Maybe I heard it wrong but I was shocked when on National TV the mentioned administration followed by the clear use of the word liquidation – I didn’t hear them use any words such as return though. Cut to the Scottish news, no use of return until Derek Ferguson comes on and perhaps deliberately only states that “fans will see it as a return to where they belong”.
Perhaps, just perhaps, our message has got through to the BBC. I don’t for one minute think the BBC have changed their viewpoint, but maybe they advising to cut out the obvious use of “return to where the belong” as the number of complaints was going to arouse interest from the beaks upstairs?
I see Livingston FC have had to apologise after a quite shocking
post on their official twitter feed!
http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/livingston-fc-apologises-for-rangers-twitter-gaffe-1-4091035
I’m not clear what was more offensive, the suggestion that second tier rules would accommodate the needs of Sevco (by re-scheduling the final game for tv) or mis-naming of Sevco as “The Rangers.”
It is extraordinary the contrast between the MSM triumphant return propoganda stuff and how a low profile tweet on the feed of a second tier club can lead to such a rapid retraction. It’s a funny old world.
I was wondering, given the current media excitement about corruption (although it can hardly be described as shock news!) and now with the new FIFA boss being accused of dodgy dealings whether it would be worth a second journalist “mailshot”? We have all these financially aware journalists pouring over these Panama papers – what if they were handed a local story, full of intrigue, benighted folks, porn producers etc with the majority of the research done in detail and the story basically already written for them by the finest of the fine folks at the SFM?
Sports journalists obviously aren’t interested – but financial journalists…. I guess the downside might be the on-going court cases complicated what can and can’t be published.
Sadly, but not surprisingly, even Louise White on what I think is the Kay Adams programme is buying into the myth: or being bullied into it by the producer.
Just how deeply,deeply rotten is that station, when even intelligent non-sports journalists are capable of repeating, parrot-fashion, the lying mantra of the SFA?
And these are the people 9(!) of course who will claim to be neutral and unbiased when talking about politics?
Who could believe a word?
And now Murdo wheeled in by arrangement as an ex-Celtic player spouting forth about welcoming them ‘Back. ‘Standards have dropped slightly over the years.’…..
Most of the football people ‘love’ the “Old Firm” games…..’
And Miss White being very snippy with a caller who explained about the new club, applying for membership and being admitted to the lowest league. ” As far as I am concerned”, she says, ” they are Rangers”.
So much for reasoned discussion, as she carefully keeps her copy-book clean and the Controller happy.
Comment on Look Back to Look Forward by woodstein. , April 5, 2016 at 23:28 https://theclumpany.wordpress.com/
That’s what I wanted to say at April 5, 2016 at 10:16
5 stars to The Clumpany *****03
_____________
Many thanks! A quick glance at last night’s reporting and through today’s newspapers following Sevco’s promotion demonstrates the extent to which our sports media is little more that a cesspit of apologias for rule-breaking, creditor-stiffing and one apparently indestructible football ‘club’. For some (but not all) in our media (an industry which – at its best should speak truth to power and investigate things that others would rather keep hidden), Scottish football only has any value whatsoever if there is a Rangers-flavoured entity at or near the top of it. The tiresome ‘Old Firm’ nonsense can be churned out endlessly and oh-so-lazily, and the rest of the game can GTF.
Scottish football has become an embarrassment to the world’s greatest sport, and to Scotland as a nation. No morals, no regard for rules or level playing fields and absolutely no serious consequences for a team in Light Blue which went to the wall owing creditors millions and having systematically screwed the taxman.
It really is an extraordinary thing when the media is willing to dispense with the norms of society and systematically lie in order to preserve a dead football ‘club’ while the authorities look the other way. It suggests that there is something truly rotten in this country.
Some folk are doing good work to try and bring about some sort of accountability and justice (including people on TSFM and those behind Resolution 12). But right now it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that you are an absolute moron if you pay a single penny into any part of Scottish football. And yes, that does includes attending matches in support of your own club (NB I know that comment will upset a lot of people). The people in authority with the wherewithal to make it a genuine sport and deal with the misdeeds of the past seem unwilling to do so, and the media which could give them a kicking for resting on their laurels would seemingly rather talk about the ‘Journey’ and the ‘Old Firm’…
It’s a farce. But a farce that seeks to get your money under a false pretence of genuine competition, and which is slowly but surely destroying our game.
Finally, you might be interested in reading yesterday’s piece “Death, Hypocrisy and Taxes” which systematically dismantles the Daily Record over its differing attitudes to the ‘Panama Papers’ and Rangers. You can find it on my blog site at the usual address.
Have a great day!
TC
J C
you believe what you want to believe.
” there’d pill” is reference to the Matrix film you can have the red pill which is the ugly truth or the blue pill which is,
Just as the first word went to Murdo (no doubt by arrangement) so the last word ( presumably also pre-planned) goes to New club supporter.
Well done, Louise, you fit very neatly into the SMSM mould!
I hope you are capable of feeling shame at your part in propagating a myth.
I know many of us rant and complain about the illogical, unquestioning presentation by the media following Rangers demise. The complete abandonment of critical faculties when reporting on last night’s result at Ibrox is unsurprising. However Radio 5 Live was very exact in its report around 7am this morning. No reference to previous world record championships won or ancient history, a team called Rangers won promotion to the Scottish Premiership after working its way up from SPFL2 over the last four years.
JC I had to switch that off before I had a stroke shouting at the radio lol. She def wasn’t for letting it be discussed that they are not the same club. I am glad I didn’t have a client in the car at the time as my tongue would have been in a sorry mess having to keep biting it lol.
Talksport at about 6.00 this morning did mention them going up through the leagues after being readmitted into the bottom tier after suffering liquidation I thought at the time that will be changed later and the guy who read it out would be getting the sack lol
tayredApril 6, 2016 at 08:32
ALLYJAMBOAPRIL 6, 2016 at 07:59 Big oxymoron on the BBC news this morning! Correctly informing the public that ‘Rangers’ entered administration and were (in the process of, actually) liquidated, then including the old ‘returning to the Premiership’ nonsense.————————————————-Maybe I heard it wrong but I was shocked when on National TV the mentioned administration followed by the clear use of the word liquidation – I didn’t hear them use any words such as return though. Cut to the Scottish news, no use of return until Derek Ferguson comes on and perhaps deliberately only states that “fans will see it as a return to where they belong”.
Perhaps, just perhaps, our message has got through to the BBC. I don’t for one minute think the BBC have changed their viewpoint, but maybe they advising to cut out the obvious use of “return to where the belong” as the number of complaints was going to arouse interest from the beaks upstairs?
____________________________
Sorry to spoil it for you, but I live in England so don’t suffer BBC Scotland, and the lady introducing the ‘Rangers’ story described them as having gone into administration and then liquidation. She then told us they were back in the top tier. I heard this at least three times this morning as the ‘story’ was repeated about every half hour. Later the story was introduced by another lady presenter with a mention of administration but the liquidation part was missed out! Admittedly I didn’t hear each and every introduction and switched off before, no doubt, at least two more re-introductions of the story.
It was all handled as though ‘Rangers’ had suffered a misfortune and had, as in some fairy tale, shrugged off adversity and, without outside (SFA/SPFL) help, without MSM help, had managed to create a same club belief that fooled non-Rangers men into investing money in RIFC. Money that has now all been spent on the most expensive football team ever to grace (did I say grace?) the lower levels of Scottish football. And, of course, no mention of the disastrous , year on year, annual losses – the greatest losses ever in the lower levels of Scottish football.
Now, I admit it would be churlish to suggest that the winning of the Championship should be downplayed by all the negative truths, but those negative truths should surely induce a more subdued ‘congratulations to (The) Rangers’ from all the media, especially those not reliant on ‘the blue pound’ and currently indulging themselves in a moral frenzy over those who cheat the taxman and hide their money abroad!
On the impression the media give Joe public down here.
I’ve just returned to work after a holiday, and just before I left, one of my colleagues talked to me about ‘Rangers’ ‘returning to the top’, he seemed to think it was a real feat. Despite me putting him right, he started again about this ‘feat’ yesterday.
To be honest, the legal and financial stuff was way above his head, and he does support Chelsea and seems to see a connect with a ‘big club’, and his eyes glazed over quite quickly, but he did come away with one pertinent point. He, just like all ‘ordinary’ fans, just wants to talk about the football and couldn’t care less about anything else*. He genuinely isn’t interested in any cheating, and even shrugged off our separate discussion of the recent doping scandals, particularly those surrounding Leicester together with the claim that they are getting help from certain refs, for the same reason. I suspect, though, if it was Chelsea and not Spurs and Arsenal chasing Leicester, he’d have been adamant that cheating was going on.
* A situation many have pointed to here and elsewhere on the internet.
To be honest, while we may mock the useless MSM coverage of the Rangers scandal, it’s been job well done down here, where ignorance is truly bliss!
Allyjambo – fair do’s. I may well have heard it wrong, probably still in shock from hearing the ‘L’ word. Interesting that that word was dropped from the final bulletin. I wonder if the BBC had been receiving calls….
Just a reminder that even though it’s a step forward for liquidation to at least be mentioned in the media, that still isn’t an acknowledgement by anyone that matters (in a publicity sense) of new club. They are happy to mention liquidation of the company,but believe that the separate club is still ‘returning’ to the top flight.
When they confirmed to me that Rangers hadn’t been relegated but started afresh in the bottom tier, even the SPFL couched it carefully in terms of ‘the company’…..
1. Had Rangers Oldco been able to agree a CVA with its creditors, then it should have been able to emerge from administration (as did Hearts and Dunfermline) without further sporting sanctions. However, a CVA was rejected by Oldco’s creditors. This led to Oldco being liquidated. Newco applied for membership of the SFL and was granted associate membership but on condition it started in SFL Division Three. Newco bought the assets of Oldco from the administrations and took Rangers FC into the SFL. Rangers FC were not relegated from the SPL.
2. The European place that would otherwise have gone to Rangers for finishing 2nd in the SPL could not be taken up by Rangers FC due to UEFA Rules applicable in circumstances where the owner of a club goes into liquidation.
They refused to answer my follow up asking how the club was separate.
tayredApril 6, 2016 at 11:13
Allyjambo – fair do’s. I may well have heard it wrong, probably still in shock from hearing the ‘L’ word. Interesting that that word was dropped from the final bulletin. I wonder if the BBC had been receiving calls….
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I think it’s all a bit like Spiers and English. Prepared to tell some of the truth, then ‘balance’ it out with an (accepted within the media) mild untruth.
‘The Rangers are back’ mantra, while very annoying to those who know the reality, could argue to be referring to the spirit of Rangers if ever questioned; an idea that might be acceptable to us all if everything else was admitted, and so even journalists of some integrity might be happy to use it as a way of making their piece more striking. The bears, I think, have managed to convince themselves that liquidation is no biggie, and so are prepared to accept the odd mention as long as the statement isn’t about NC/OC and is, in fact, in celebration of their club. This allows them to claim they (the Spiers/English style media) are even handed while giving the impression of being more intelligent than the run-of-the-mill sports hacks.
In truth, I do expect that the National BBC presenters are working from scripts largely prepared from information passed on by BBC Scotland and couldn’t care enough to question how it could be that a liquidated club can ‘come back’ anywhere! They are, of course, more bothered about how they look on screen (both male and female) than getting the truth out there, and will have spent more time in makeup and practicing their delivery, than researching this, or any other, news item.
Can I just mention,briefly,I put on radio 2 in the hope I could avoid the ongoing nonsense.
How wrong could I be;I was utterly bemused at around 7.50 this morning,by the triumphalist reporting by the Greek sounding guy who’s name escapes me on the Chris Evans show.”Back at the top of the sports report” “54 titles won” “Owned by a South African Billionaire”…….This may not be verbatim,but as best as I can remember,sorry don’t know how to find it and play it back to you
NAWLITE
APRIL 6, 2016 at 11:51
2 0 Rate This
They refused to answer my follow up asking how the club was separate.
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They cannot answer it because it simply isn’t true. The club merely changed the type of entity it was. It’s all there in the history.
Four young chaps had a dream and started a football team. That team became a members club (1872) and in the fullness of time it changed into a private limited company (1899). The private limited company then went public, floated on the stock exchange and became a public limited company (2000). For absolute clarity at the time that PLC failed to obtain a CVA and was placed into (ongoing) liquidation (2012) it did have a holding company. Wavetower (as was) owned something like 85% of the shares in the PLC.
They will not answer the question because they do not like the honest answer. They are more fond of the myth Charles Green created, the separate club / company. The continuity myth is strong because it suits a lot of agendas, it being a lie is just an uncomfortable truth. There was no point at which the PLC owned the Club, it’s just nonsense.
Of course we all know that, Homunculus, and I was just confirming that the question was asked and not answered (for the reason you rightly reiterate).
Rangers Football Club, although the final sum is yet to be decided upon, owe creditors, including HMRC, many tens of millions of pounds.
Sevco Scotland however, who later changed their name to The Rangers Football Club six days after they played Brechin in the Ramsden cup, do not.
It’s a subtle wee thing involving two rabbits and one hat that a six year old child could see through. To think that at one time we, as a nation could boast of some of the finest minds and inventors the world has ever known.
I think we should stop worrying about our backward trend in coefficients, and start worrying about the depletion of our population’s brain cells.
HomunculusApril 6, 2016 at 12:25
NAWLITE APRIL 6, 2016 at 11:51 2 0 Rate This
They refused to answer my follow up asking how the club was separate.
===========================================================
They cannot answer it because it simply isn’t true. The club merely changed the type of entity it was. It’s all there in the history.
Four young chaps had a dream and started a football team. That team became a members club (1872) and in the fullness of time it changed into a private limited company (1899). The private limited company then went public, floated on the stock exchange and became a public limited company (2000). For absolute clarity at the time that PLC failed to obtain a CVA and was placed into (ongoing) liquidation (2012) it did have a holding company. Wavetower (as was) owned something like 85% of the shares in the PLC.
They will not answer the question because they do not like the honest answer. They are more fond of the myth Charles Green created, the separate club / company. The continuity myth is strong because it suits a lot of agendas, it being a lie is just an uncomfortable truth. There was no point at which the PLC owned the Club, it’s just nonsense.
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And that myth of Charles Green’s was created by a man now reviled by every bear in the world as the lying cheat who should never be trusted. The man who, through his counsel in a recent court case, confirmed to us all that he didn’t buy Rangers Football Club, he just bought a basket of assets. This went unchallenged in court and was reaffirmed at a later trial where the judge laughed the same club notion out of court.
In different circumstances I would be amazed at how people, who all stated Rangers FC had died, and clearly believed the club had died, could have their minds changed in an instant, by a man of no legal standing, then, knowing him to be a lying cheat, continue to accept one of his lies as the truth, without question!
It’s quite understandable why the Rangers supporters would want to believe this lie. Those who accept and promote it it because it is convenient to them, however, and particularly those who are in positions of trust, such as the SMSM and football authorities, by their continuance of this lie are as bad as Green himself!
If TRFC was indeed Rangers FC, then it would be very easy for a member of the media to put together an article or documentary that explores the issue and proves the same club argument. It would be a widely read, or viewed, article and very cost effective and make those involved very popular with those they wish to be popular with. It would be one way of helping Scottish football to ‘move on’. There can be only one reason why this has not been, and never will be, done! I am certain, though, that a number of hacks, perhaps some journalists, have looked at the possibility of doing something like this, but have found that the article likely to be produced would not be all that popular with those they wish to be popular with!
CORRUPT OFFICIAL
APRIL 6, 2016 at 12:45
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Rangers, currently in liquidation have debts of (best guess) around £120,000,000. Only a fraction, if any of that will ever be paid.
The Rangers who have existed for around 3-4 years have overspent by around £34,000,000 (so far) in that short time. They currently have debts of around £11,000,000. That’s the PLC, the subsidiary have debts of around £18,000,000 but that is to the parent company so genuinely is an internal matter, it’s really the groups debt which is important.
The overspending and building of debt is only getting worse, they are spending more than they earn and seem unable to do anything about it. As far as I can see this will continue for as long as major shareholders and supporters are willing to provide the board with more money. If they want to strengthen the squad in the summer, and everyone seems to think they will, it will have to come from borrowing, a share/rights issue or selling other assets.
It’s an incredible story, which is only really surpassed by the media’s apparent ability to totally ignore the most important parts of it. Rangers bought the championship, at the second attempt, by overspending what will probably be about £40,000,000 by the end of the season. That is not an achievement, it is madness.
HomunculusApril 6, 2016 at 12:25
‘…It’s an incredible story, which is only really surpassed by the media’s apparent ability to totally ignore the most important parts of it. ..’
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It long ago ceased to be a ‘football’ story.
It is now of course a run of the mill story about a corrupt football establishment, protected and defended by the usual suspects- partisan (or easily frightened or bought) pressmen, partisan ( or easily bought or frightened) broadcasters, and other elements of the ‘Scottish establishment’.
The utterly fatuous remark made by Louise White ( worthy, indeed, of the other Whyte!) that ” The SFA say it’s Rangers” as her justification propagating the myth just about says it all about the depths of grovelling abandonment of any pretence at ‘investigation’, of digging out the truth come hell or high water, to which the BBC in particular has sunk over this issue of SDM’s cheating and its consequences for Integrity in Scottish Football.
Pacific Quay’s emanations from its transmitters in support of that cheating are fouler by far than the effluent from its sewers.
In my opinion.