makepeace

ive always been pro pyramid football. i still am. but i think if a newco rangers were to get formed taht commanded the authority in the minds of a significant enough of rangers fans as being the legit one then i think there would be a pyramid system put in tommorrow. that would not be cool. the best case scenario will be for 3 or 4 post rangers clubs to join the juniors which would divide the big hoose and put far less pressure to reform the league system. once they languish in their for long enough, and the appropriate cultural shifts take place in our society then i think the rangers meme will be put to bed. then we can have a pyramid system, in a scottish league with no old firm anymore. it will be the football new jerusalem.

f**k INTEGRITY LETS JUST KILL THE b*****dS

it all depends on how you define fan. if it is in terms of someone who goes to the football match then that argument makes sense. if its in terms of a more loose sense of someone who claims affinity to support a club, watches them on the tv, buys their merchandise etc, then i think one could probably justify that 40% ish figure easier.... what is interseting though if one goes by that definition is that celtic and rangers market has been penetrated a helluva lot over the years by the priemiership teams bara etc. the biggest drop in celtics income cited in last annual report was their merchandising sales - a huge proporition of their overall income. now imagine how much more that is goign to dwindle in teh context of your avergage punter no longer having teh rangers 'other' to define themselves by? especially in the context of havign high wages tied to long contracts

But these teams tend to get big cup games fairly regularly and to be fair they do get the numbers for those occasions. The way i think it could go is like this - in the vein of for every 5 pounds celtic had to spend, rangers spent 10... probably during that period the nearest to celtic were paying £1.50. Yet despite the disparity between rangers of celtic of 2:1 celtic got a fair distrubution of titles and what not, but the only thing that caused them to spend that level of 5 was in order to keep pegged to rangers. With rangers gone, that context of arms race driving up the wages of scottish football will disapate and celtic will not need to spend taht much to be just that wee bit better than the rest... Also, given the fact that the rivarly will cease to be, celtic crowds will dwindle, probably still dwarfiing the rest mind you. Nevertheless, this gives the other clubs opportunity to compete with celtic, they only need to win one or two trophies here and there, and/or get into european football which doesn't require even finishing first. another factor leading to more competativness could be that there is chance for the diddy clubs to change the balance of power in the football setup and could maybe from that push for a greater share of teh resources of whatever comes up in terms of tv money. who knows though, but interesting times ahead..

I think to be fair 40% wouldnt be that off an assesment for percentafe of populace who are into football who lean to rangers. id say probably for celtic likewise. I also think though once rangers go bust then the market for new loyalties to be created will become far more open and therefore there will for the first time since the 80s be something to play for all the other teams in existence. for me the final nail in the coffin for attending football was the henry mcleish report which was all about further accentuating all that is wrong in scottish football. Ive maybe been to 2 or 3 games in the last two seasons or so. In the event of rangers going proper bust then i would seriously consider attending regularly again because there would be some point to football again.. Im sure lots of people who no longer go to the football feel similiar and are watching this unfolding of events as much as i am.

come on now... its only scottish football we are talking about here

agreed

heres a question. if in the event that the rumours are true, that doncaster has been sitting on the judgement of the 2 contracts thing, and that the bbc documentary is going to force them to show their hand on wednesday, does this not compromise doncasters position to be part of an organisation that is for the governance of football and will consequently have some kind of standards to be accountable to? if that is the case, then will it be possible to put pressure on doncaster to resign??

you don't get it do you? You are a member of the OF contingent. Consequently, you have nothing in common with teams that have real adversity to deal with. The idea that celtic face massive obsticles by all the forces that scottish society can muster together in the attainment of their rightful destiny is a clever marketing ploy designed for gullible people like yourself. Please refrain from pretending to know what it is like for those of us who support teams in the context of a stiching up of scottish football.

when celtic go to the wall after all this will there be ex rangers fans on this thread showing diddy solidarity with the diddys as celtic fans are now?

a laudable point. so now in that vein can you give us a nuanced account of the going ons in the rangers support base without recourse to negative essentialist stereotypes of loyalism/bigoty etc? thank you

its the reframing themselves as "fellow diddy team fans" by celtic fans that particularly irks me...

whats odious creep and leggat got to say about all these rumours?

i missed this thread for approximately a week for the same reason and now im passed the point of being able to read it all. kinda annoyed cause i pretty much managed to read it all the way from page 1 to 1000

who knows?? but isnt allan cowan just FUCKING AWESOME?

fair enough. in order to fit in ill say this: ARRRGHHH WERE FUCKED!!!!

ive not been on this for a couple of days. The last time i was on the consensus was that rangers are fucked, greene is an asset stripper. but now it seems the consensus is that rangers are gonna get away with all this. whats changed??

that said, if rangers fans constitute say 1/3 of the population you are likely to get a cross section of a variety of political opinions going on. i dare say there are many people who would call themselves socialists that are rangers supporters like any club. indeed, some few hundred pages ago, there was a rangers fan getting all romantic about some scottish woman that fought against franco in the spanish civil war. but i think the crucial thing to analyse when making a broad judgement about where a supports sentiments lies is in the type of political organising that centres around a football support. and within rangers the only organised politically leaning stuff seems to be around unionism, loyalism, and a little bit of british nationalism. in a simliar way to how i think diddy clubs will be culpable if they let a newco back in, one could accuse the rangers support in general of being complicit in allowing that kind of organisation to evolve. at the very least its a case of evil arising when good men do nothing, or at the most, tacit acceptance of religious bigotry and far right ideology. In the 80s, when facsists tried to target football fans, there were a number of clubs that became associated with an acceptance of that kinda thing. this also promoted football fan organisations opposed to fascism that tried to confront the spread of such a discourse within their ranks. what is interesting is that teams such as millwall, and chelsea even had their own anti fascist organisations, although i dont think they were that successfull! nevertheless, i have never heard of any organised anti fascist or anti loyalist, or anti sectarian even activity by the rangers support organised at a grassroots level. Indeed the very names of their 'ultras' organisations eg union bears, and blue order at least supports the tacit acceptance thesis advanced earlier in this post...

cheers! celtic were one of the teams actually. and hearts. what was interesting was i heard about hearts not paying their bills for their players dental plans long before there were news reports about defaults and players wages coming out of tyncastle a couple of years back. wonder if leggat was the first to bring out that news haha.. apparently hes got a very creepy voice too..

being devils advocate, if a football club has say 1/3 of the total scottish football support, thats quite a market to justify putting out right wing literature (or left wing) out there. maybe not as worth it outside a smaller ground. Also, as far as i am aware, the sdl are pretty much a football casual mob that use right wing anti muslim rhetoric in order to find new forums where they can have a punch up because football is so heavily policed that theres no longer a space for that kinda thing within football. So i dont think they really have concrete enough political aims to motivate members to write, print, and disseminate literature. However, organisations like the BNP who do have definite political aims will of course print literature. Ok being less charitable towards the rangers fans now, i do think there is a bit of a market for some elements of far right discourse to prevail, not least because of the links between loyalism and far right stuff - not to mention both types of groups are very into the union flag and all that...

haha ok. Someone i know used to work for a dental insurance firm which dealt with the dental plans of a number of football clubs including some spl clubs. i hasten to add - rangers were not one of them. anyhow the bold leggat used to call into said persons manager by phoning the main line asking for him. when my friend passed on phone to their boss, the boss would hang up and go outside and leggat would call him on his mobile. THAT is just how rigourous an investigative journalist leggat was - he wanted to know ALL THE GOING ONS in scottish football clubs right down to THE PLAYERS TEETH!! probably not worth a greeny to be fair...

i found an interesting fact about david leggat yesterday. but ill save it for the thread tommorrow during the day when theres more traffic.

see the problem with this idea is that surely the whole point of diddy fans threatening their respective clubs is to put pressure on them not to capitulate in letting the newco in. I would think at the very least that clubs who vote in favour of letting newco in, if in the event that the sufficient number of votes go through to get newco in, should be boycotted by those who do not wish to see their club tarnished with the cheating nature of scottish level football. i understand why people may feel that they do not want to punish their clubs, but doesn't the basic problem of scottish football arise out of bad decisions by ALL the clubs to get to where we are now. If a line can't be drawn in the sand with this one, then we deserve what we get imo

thanks no8 and the others who provided information on the political landscape of rangers. i must say i find the factionalism rather suprising given that you would think the Trust democratic one person one vote structure, would ensure that conflicting opinions could be resolved within the structures of the organisation rather than all out war between different groups.

thats probably how it will turn out.