Gaspode

On the positive side, we may be the first club to achieve herd immunity [emoji23][emoji23] (if it exists)

STV news have said that the crowd for this QF clash with QOS will be around 25000. So much for fans not walking away!

That just about sums it up pretty well.

Yet another player who shows a total lack of ambition by choosing to play in the lowest league in the SFL. Just proves that some players care more about the money than the standard of football on offer, pretty sad really.

Kilmarnock manager Kenny Shiels says there must be a second tier of the Scottish Premier League established next season, with Rangers playing in it as the Ibrox club should be competing against "professional people" and not "part-timers such as Albion Rovers and Stranraer". Yet more arse licking! Getting a bit sick of hearing how Rangers should be catapulted into a SPL2. Why should a team that cheated for years and ended up in administration and got what it deserves by starting again in Div3 be allowed to go into a SPL2 ahead of all the other teams in the lower divisions?

Sevco fans must be gutted that the SPL looks to have secured some financial stability with a Sky deal looking imminent especially after all the bollocks spouted out by Green and Co about financial meltdown in the SPL. :lol: Lets see how much debt Sevco ramp up trying to pay guys £7000 plus a week on greatly reduced financial incomes for Sevco as they attempt to win promotion out of the Fizzy Pop Leagues.

That makes it about £9k a week incl. bonuses? They'll have run out of cash by the September weekend at this rate.

Good point!

So with the news the Beattie and Black are training with the Orcs, anyone fancy a wee bet on Craig Levein becoming the first international manager to pick a striker from the lowest division available?

Yet another shady character with a dubious past joins Rangers:- Rangers newco ‘assisted’ by former banned football agent StretfordPosted by Andy Muirhead After the recent issues at Ibrox with Sir David Murray and then Craig Whyte leading Rangers into liquidation, the last thing they needed was another character with, at best, a dodgy history. Sadly for Rangers newco fans it seems that their new board led by chairman Malcolm Murray and chief executive Charles Green have welcomed football agent Paul Stretford on board. Charles Green is reportedly using the services of the agent, who was banned in 2008 for 18 months and fined £300,000 for a number of misconduct charges handed to him by the English FA, relating to his acquisition to represent Manchester United and England striker Wayne Rooney. A spokesman for Rangers newco said: “Paul Stretford is assisting the club.” The news of Stretford hooking up with the Ibrox side, comes days after the club reportedly accepted the 12 month transfer embargo on them by the Scottish FA, which starts on September 1st 2012. That means Stretford will be at the front of the Rangers newco transfer deals – an idea that all Rangers fans should be worried about given his previous working practices. In July 2008, the English FA found Stretford guilty of seven of the nine charges against him, which included making false and/or misleading statements to the police and in court. Three months later, Stretford left the agency Proactive claiming ‘huge and irreconcilable differences’, however he was in fact sacked for ‘acts of gross misconduct; and the agency In October 2004, a case against three men charged with trying to blackmail Stretford collapsed, after it emerged that the football agent had misled the court by giving false statements when giving evidence. Stretford had told the court that he had not represented Rooney before December 2002, when the striker was represented by agent Peter McIntosh. But two documents showed that Stretford had poached Rooney by September 2002, and the prosecution stated that they could not rely on Stretford as a witness. Prosecution barrister John Hedgecoe said at the time: “In the circumstances, and having seen those documents, in particular that one dated September 19, we do not feel able to rely on Paul Stretford as a witness in this case.” . “In view of his importance as a witness to the way in which we have put this case from the outset, we have decided that the only appropriate course is to offer no further evidence.” If that was not enough for the controversial football agent, he got on the wrong side of Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson over Wayne Rooney’s desire to leave Manchester United, before he signed a new five-year deal with the club days later. Ferguson stated: “I think he [Rooney] took bad advice and when he saw the impact of the fans and my response he realised – and I’m sure plenty of people told him – that he was making a big mistake.” The Govan-born manager then claim that Stretford was ‘not the most popular man in the world – certainly at our club’. With the recent goings-on at Rangers and the Scottish FA demanding to know everyone involved in the consortium fronted by Charles Green – who are now in control of the Rangers newco – if Stretford is part of the newco board and an investor in the consortium, how he will pass the FA’s fit and proper fitness test is anyone’s guess.

I hate to disillusion the Orc hordes, but this is unlikely to go the way they hope. Prince Albert did not become King Albert - he became King George VI. It has been mentioned the Price Charles is likely to take the name King George VII after his grandfather. (King Charles I caused the English Civil War and as a result is responsible for the only time that England ever experimented with being a republic, and King Charles II was a closet catholic (NOT a good thing in English politics at that time) and a compulsive womaniser. So there is some informed speculation that he might choose to be King George VII instead (his names are Charles Philip Arthur George.) Seems unlikely Prince William will become King William given the connotations.

I'd be more concerned withe them having a say over the other subject up for discussion today - a change in the voting system from 11-1.

Kane Hemings is going to feel awful lonely up there by himself!

Oops - there goes another....

Green doesn't have any choice in the matter - under TUPE they have the right to the same wages and conditions as previous.

Now that Raith have publicly said "No to Newco" in the first - is anyone keeping a tally of the SFL clubs?

A sensible piece from a journalist without the OF specs on (Paul Hughes) can be found here

I'd assume the same of Clubfoot, there can't be anywhere else stupid enough to pay him what he is getting at Newco.

SCOTTISH football’s bosses are on the brink of securing a revolutionary rescue package which will see Rangers play in the First Division next season. SFA, SPL and SFL chiefs were locked in talks last night as a six-hour summit went on past midnight. The meeting was aimed at reaching agreement on radical proposals to deal with the chaos created by the financial carnage at Ibrox. SFA chief Stewart Regan hosted the secret gathering aimed at bringing an end to the Rangers crisis. After days of talks between the three ruling bodies, Record Sport understands SFA chief executive Regan, SPL counterpart Neil Doncaster and SFL boss David Longmuir thrashed out a four-point blueprint to revolutionise football in Scotland. The trio have been tasked with reaching a broad agreement over the future of Rangers as well as reforming the league structure. This is to bring clarity to the current chaos as the clock ticks down to the SPL general meeting on July 4 when the members will vote on the Ibrox club’s fate. But negotiations could now deliver a cast-iron deal which would allow the SPL to offer guidance on a way forward and that in turn would see the emotive vote become nothing more than a box-ticking exercise. As Record Sport revealed this week, proposals are in place for Rangers to go to Division One and common ground has been reached on host of issues. A key part of the plan would see SFL clubs handed compensation payments from the SPL as part of a deal with Sky to broadcast live Rangers games in Division One. Clubs across the country will now get the chance to give historic plans the green light. The four key points on the agenda were: ●Finding a mechanism that will allow Rangers to parachute straight into the First Division next season. ●A guarantee that play-offs are introduced immediately at the top of the First Division for a place in the SPL. ●The distribution of short-term payments to SFL clubs from the SPL to allow Rangers’ First Division games to be shown live on Sky. ●A timeline to form one body, the Scottish Professional Football League. Regan has managed to unify both leagues and mediate over the squabbling which has been the stumbling block. Assurances have been made to SPL chief Doncaster that the Sky deal will remain in place but he has been playing hardball over the amount paid to First Division clubs to have Rangers’ games broadcast live. Longmuir’s battle for a fair deal for the SFL will have huge implications for lower league clubs as they will gain historic capital from a merger with the top flight. Also on the agenda was the SFL’s bid to install a strong representation within a new SPFL set-up and a stumbling block has been the SPL’s insistence they get a 3-1 ratio in favour of board members. The SFL demanded an even split on any new board which will also include a new chief executive as well as one independent sitting on the ruling panel. Regan’s bid to deliver a broad consensus over the way forward also involved discussions over the appellate tribunal’s transfer embargo on Rangers. This is the kind of shit I was talking about yesterday that could potentially happen, League bosses bending over backwards to accommodate the cheating tax dodging B'stards! Reagan etc really are making up the rules as events unfurl surrounding Rangers. What is the point in having rules?

Businesses struggling on the edge of insolvency can be expected to create administrative havoc as they duck and dive to survive. The result is usually a set of accounts that are riddled with errors & misstatements and a complex paper trail that makes it difficult to understand who owns what. There have been a few surprises in the unravelling of Rangers FC, but the club being a legal disaster area by the time it entered administration on 14th February was not one of them. What is a surprise is that the administration process does not appear to have improved matters. Insolvency practitioners would typically see simplifying and clarifying as their first task. Yet Duff & Phelps appear to have made the Rangers situation even more opaque than when their took over from Craig Whyte. A representative of a major Rangers creditor- who has a detailed appreciation of the facts- described the current situation at Ibrox as “an unholy mess”. He said this in the context of a discussion about the lack of transparency over who actually owns what. He is of the view that this disaster will require many visits to the Court of Session before it is sorted out. There are many fragments to this tale that just do not add up: stories of no banking facility for Charles Green’s newco; reports that season ticket receipts are to be paid to the oldco bank account (from which only secured and preferred creditors would be able to draw ahead of the cash going to the unsecured creditors- i.e. Duff & Phelps could use this season ticket cash to pay themselves); and then there is the bizarre situation regarding the transfer of player contracts plus the failure to provide the required notice periods per TUPE regulations for players whose contracts, it has been claimed, have been sold to Green’s newco. It does not help that Mr. Green appears to have some difficulty with providing any explanation of events that is not riddled with logical and factual inconsistencies. Either he and Duff & Phelps have made a monumental error in their interpretation of TUPE rules for the transfer of employees or they are ‘playing dumb’ to cover for another problem. If I was the suspicious and cynical type, I would conclude that this deal is not as done as has been claimed. It has been rumoured on messageboards that Green did not have the funds available to conclude the deal as planned and that Duff & Phelps proceeded anyway- giving Green time to pay from the proceeds of season ticket sales. Certainly this would explain some of the strange circumstances described above. Players could not be sent TUPE notifications if their contracts have not in fact been transferred yet. Duff & Phelps would doubtless prefer to receive season ticket funds directly rather than wait for Green to make good on a promise. If a sufficient number of fans of oldco-Rangers carry out their threat to boycott season ticket renewals, it could force a default by newco. The legal mess that would follow would render all debate about in which league or division the newco should play to be moot. There would simply not be a team representing what was once Rangers next season at all. Good to see Rangers fans could still destroy their own club!

Ibrox season-ticket renewal money gathered by direct debit is being held in the oldco Rangers' bank account, where it can be claimed by creditors, after Charles Green's group failed to make the necessary banking arrangements. (Herald) Charles Green on realising that he has fecked up again. :lol:

How very dare you Sir! Personally I'd rather see them in the 3rd (annihilation would be my most preferred option, but the slightest possibility of them getting humped by Forfar, etc on the way up the leagues would be too good to miss). I'm simply wondering if the powers that be will pull any and all strings available to avoid dropping them into the bottom division.

Am I the only person who thinks that if the NO vote looks increasingly likely the SFA will step in and suspend them for a year instead, before the vote is due so they can't be voted out? (Hoping that we'll change our minds in the coming season and allow them back in next year instead?)

It would need to be 7/11. The vote requires 66% according to SPL rule book.

Looks like Hearts may be about to vote No against a newco as well if Romanov's comments are anything to go by:- Keith Downie ‏@STVkeith Romanov outburst: He says Rangers have "lived beyond law and all morals" and "football will come back cleaner and stronger" without them. Good to see Motherwell consulting their fans, pity more teams aren't following this example.