Gaspode
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Posts posted by Gaspode
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Sevco fc VS Queen Of The South Ramsden cup semi final at 7:45PM tonight.
That trophy won't last long for the sevcovians.
STV news have said that the crowd for this QF clash with QOS will be around 25000. So much for fans not walking away!
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Sandaza playing at Peterhead, St Johnstone playing at Parkhead. Diddy.
That just about sums it up pretty well.
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Gutted that Fran Sandaza has taken down his Facebook page again. I was just about to call him a c**t.
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.
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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?
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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.
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Gregory Ioannidis @LawTop20Greek media reporting that Kafes' two-year deal is set for 500k per year including bonuses.
That makes it about £9k a week incl. bonuses? They'll have run out of cash by the September weekend at this rate.
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Craig Levein? A striker?
Good point!
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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?
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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.
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A question was asked the other day as to why there is such a fascination with Wills and Kate in the Orc Hordes,..........When the other one eventually ceases to be, he will ascend the throne and will then be King..William.
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.
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So surely Rangers won't get a vote on Dundee/Dunfermline?
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.
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Kane Hemings is going to feel awful lonely up there by himself!
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Keith Downie @STVkeith
STV understands Jamie Ness is to refuse move to Rangers newco. Further senior stars could be set to follow today. http://bit.ly/MPihb2
Oops - there goes another....
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He could move on loan also. Charles Green appears to be a shrewd customer, so he wouldn't want the players transferring to the NEWCO if it was going to damage his consortiums bank account
Green doesn't have any choice in the matter - under TUPE they have the right to the same wages and conditions as previous.
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Now that Raith have publicly said "No to Newco" in the first - is anyone keeping a tally of the SFL clubs?
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A sensible piece from a journalist without the OF specs on (Paul Hughes) can be found here
THE POLLS OPEN…SCOTTISH football will never be the same again.
It’s changing right in front of our eyes. By the minute, by the hour, by the day.
The catalyst has been the demise of Rangers.
The accelerant has been the determination of fans from every club in the SPL.
That makes for sore reading for the Ibrox supporters struggling to comprehend what’s happened to their club.
Across the city it’s a source of celebration for the Celtic fans who lay claim to uncovering a decade of alleged tax evasion and financial doping.
Across the country, though, it represents the chance to achieve something that seemed impossible not that long ago.
A revolution.
With the old Rangers in the process of liquidation, one of the first things the New Rangers had to do was apply for membership to the SPL.
Had it been the decision of the chairmen and the chairmen alone, I’m pretty sure Rangers would have been back in.
But while they were busy counting the value of the current TV deal with Sky, what they didn’t count on was the feeling of the fans.
They have made their stance clear beyond all doubt. For once, their views seemed to have been taken on board.
Ask the pessimists and they’ll assure you it’s the beginning of the end. The SPL without Rangers would be like a windmill without the wind.
It wouldn’t work.
I’m an optimist though. I think this whole, ugly business opens the chance for the beginning of something better – for EVERYONE.
Year Zero.
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to re-set the clock and start all over again.
The chance to make every club an equal, instead of the sideshow to the Old Firm they used to be.
It should have happened a long time ago. Clubs were simply too scared to see lucrative clashes with Celtic and Rangers wiped from the fixture card.
Last season’s shambolic attempts to re-structure the SPL proves that.
So while dealing with the immediate issue of where a Newco Rangers play, Scottish football’s paying customer might just have pushed through a way to re-vitalise our game.
The first real whiff of change emerged last Thursday.
Motherwell Football Club decided to lead the way, releasing a statement regarding their stance on whether or not to vote a Newco Rangers back into the SPL.
Their position was simple; the fans would decide. Take the logical conculsion and you only had one outcome.
Newco 0 SPL 1.
Then Inverness Caley Thistle piped up. They claimed their supporters didn’t feel Rangers had been punished adequately enough. The club inisted they would listen to their fans.
Newco 0 SPL 2.
Then it was the turn of Hearts, who made their feelings clear through their loose cannon owner Vladmir Romanov.
Rangers were cheats. They had lied their way to numerous SPL titles, Scottish Cups and League Cups. They were to blame for all of Scottish football’s ills.
As were BskyB, apparently, as Mr Romanov accused the satellite giants of ripping the heart out of Scottish football.
Must be my imagination but I don’t recall Vlad tearing up the fat cheques Sky have sent his way for four Old Firm games and four Edinburgh derbies every season.
Anyway.
Before the ten o’clock news hit our screens on Thursday night, Dundee United chairman Stephen Thompson confirmed his club would be voting no.
Newco 0 SPL 3.
As of today Hibs, Aberdeen and St Johnstone have all unofficially cast their votes.
Newco SPL 6
Of course, there is one cast-iron vote in favour of Newco Rangers getting back in. I still can’t get my head round the fact a club who isn’t actually a member of a league gets to vote on whether they’re allowed entry, but a vote is a vote.
Newco 1 SPL 6
So there you have it. It seems like a foregone conclusion. The Rangers Football Club are NOT getting in the SPL.
Plenty of journalists on the Scottish football beat have been debating this for weeks. All we could do was loosely guage opinion to form our own, but no-one ever knew for sure.
Now we do.
The big question is will it wreck or revolutionise our game?
Personally, I’m excited by the prospect.
Is it because I have an agenda? Absolutely – but not against Rangers. I just want to see our game flourish on an even playing field.
The old Rangers are no more because of the mess they got into by owners who shouldn’t have been allowed to run a bath, never mind a football giant.
Their punishment has been the winding up of the old club. The Newco deserves the chance to enter Scottish football free from the stigma of what went on before.
It seems like the SPL members feel the same, but that’s only half of the solution.
There’s only so much guess work that can go into calculating what happens to a Scottish Premier League without Rangers.
Will Sky pull the plug? Will attendances plummet or soar?
Will there be a workable merger in time for the new season?
The truth is no-one knows – but here’s two things I do know.
1) No league should be so heavily dependant on TV money.
2) Every fan of every club brave enough to make this decisions despite the money they will lose MUST give support like never before.
It’s not Sky’s fault Scottish clubs spent sky-high wages on bang-average players in the past. So anyone that says TV ruined the game is wrong.
The people who ruined the game were the ones in charge of it. The SPL has only ever been about trying to generate cash, not improve the product.
Through the most inconceivable of circumstances though, we now have a chance to change that.
How that happens still isn’t clear – but it’s not rocket science either.
A change to the 11-1 voting structure that currently allows crucial decisions to be side-swiped – historically by Celtic and Rangers.
A more even split of TV money. It takes two to tango remember.
A return of the play-offs. They work everywhere else and would go down a storm in the SPL.
Most importantly, clubs need to do everything they can to make sure their fans come through the turnstiles in a way they haven’t done for years.
The first step towards that is a cut in ticket prices.
I’ve never understood why clubs up here charge MORE than some Premier League teams in England.
If you live in Glasgow you could be at the Reebok Stadium to watch Bolton v Manchester United quicker than you could be to watch Aberdeen v Celtic. So let’s give ourselves a chance.
I don’t doubt there will be some pain involved in all of this. Clubs WILL have to cut their cloth in the short term. This is about the long-term though.
That’s why I refuse to buy into the scare-mongering that Scottish football is about to whither and die.
If we fix the things that are in need of repair and the fans buy into it (the crucial part), I genuinely believe the game will flourish.
It’s Year Zero, the chance to begin again.
Start the clock…
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At least one - Lee McCulloch. He has already said he weill and is being lauded as a legend by the *** for it!
The cynic in me might suggest that it could be because he's on £16k a week and no other club anywhere is going to pay him even 10% of that .
I'd assume the same of Clubfoot, there can't be anywhere else stupid enough to pay him what he is getting at Newco.
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Sorry, my fellow Bud, but you've got the terminology wrong. They are not in, therefore we can't vote them out, so "back in" doesn't work either. The vote is to allow New Rangers IN. In your scenario, another club would be admitted to the SPL, and New Rangers, when they start to play in 2013/14 would have to apply to SFL as there would be no place in SPL, unless it went up to 14 or 16 teams. (btw, is your nose slightly blue?)
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?
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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!
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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.
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Sorry, my fellow Bud, but you've got the terminology wrong. They are not in, therefore we can't vote them out, so "back in" doesn't work either. The vote is to allow New Rangers IN. In your scenario, another club would be admitted to the SPL, and New Rangers, when they start to play in 2013/14 would have to apply to SFL as there would be no place in SPL, unless it went up to 14 or 16 teams. (btw, is your nose slightly blue?)
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.
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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?)
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Immediately realised I'd misread your post just after saying that.
Also FWIW, giving Rangers a vote in this is like giving a murderer a place in the jury. I'm assuming this is the reason why 8/12 for Newco is required.
6/11 would make a lot more sense, would it not?
It would need to be 7/11. The vote requires 66% according to SPL rule book.
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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.
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St Mirren v Hamilton (Sat 24th)
in Scottish Premiership General Chatter
Posted
On the positive side, we may be the first club to achieve herd immunity [emoji23][emoji23] (if it exists)