flyingrodent

Only two more sleeps with the fishes until they're back where they belong...

How many more sleeps until it's the Big Sleep for The Rangers?

As best I can tell, King taking over would mean they'd need a new NOMAD. On the other hand, I think the old one traditionally stays in place to manage a handover, so I think this is the NewCo once again pursuing a bold and inventive financial strategy.

London Stock Exchange confirms Rangers NOMAD has resigned and their shares suspended. 30 days to sort it out. Cue further FT articles by astonished business journos.

18 months if they're doing reasonably well. A fraction of that, if they continue to stink the place up.

Thinking about this, Ashley's continued presence may work out quite well for King & his buddies, in the short term at least. Obviously the team are going to continue to play shyte and lose for quite some time and, barring the sudden injection of bajillions in free money, the dominant theme at Ibrox is going to be threadbare austerity rather than the spend-spend-spend for immediate success policies that most of the fans tend to demand. Given that the twin horrors of a) not winning and b) not spending ridiculous sums of cash and f*ck the consequences ...are the very things likely to bring hordes of angry Bears to bang on the doors of the Big Hoose demanding change, I imagine that King et al will find an intransigent minor investor who also happens to hold some of the club's major revenue streams very useful, as a scapegoat for any of their own failings. It's no oor fault, it's that Ashley...

:lol: Only one of us is staking our club's very existence on a criminal shyster for, what, the third time in three years? The fourth? Okay then, if it'll make you feel good - I'm every bit as frightened by Dave King's football financing wizardry as I was by Craig Whyte's, Charlie Green's and the Easdales'. I'm also very confident that under King's leadership, you'll be back where you belong presently, and sooner rather than later.

Number one :lol: Teams like e.g. Aberdeen and Dundee United are well-run, well-managed and well-coached and are still struggling to keep up with Celtic. Your club is a debt-laden walking catastrophe. Even if you were taken over by Richard Branson tomorrow, it'd take a decade to fix everything that's fvcked-up and hilarious on and off the pitch, before you could even think about mounting a title challenge. And that's if you were taken over by a business guru with a proven record of unbroken success. The only proven record Dave King has is for tax fraud and the only thing unbroken about Ibrox is the windows, and there's plenty of time for your fans to pan them in when you're still getting horsed out of the Ramsdens and losing games in the Championship this time next year.

Only a few days until they're back where they belong i.e. square one.

So long as the NewCo are winning at least 50% of their games, I'm firmly convinced that it might last as late as November 2015. At that point, they'll be breaking down the doors again.

Sorry, I know I'm a bit slow, but do you mean Whyte, Green or the Easdales, here?

Or that it's possible to deliberately undermine the existing board in a manner that isn't aimed at lowering the share price for a cheaper purchase. I feel for the SFA, I really do. They don't know which arse to kiss - they're not the Sun or the Daily Record, they can't just turn on a sixpence and claim that they always backed whoever eventually wins. If they pick the wrong one, they might end up facing the consequences of that for years.

I think I must've done, what with you nearly filling the stadium for your first fixture. For the record though, let's note for now that it wasn't evil or dishonesty that led Ashley to seek security on Ibrox - it was the fact that the club needed another massive loan on top of the last large one, because the fans were Walking Away/boycotting, because the team were consistently losing. That is, the chronology goes: Owners inherit shyte team they can't sack >> Shyte team finally reaches level where it consistently loses >> Fans walk away/boycott because they can't stomach following a team that consistently loses >> Owners are forced to seek additional funding to cover expenses of cream-puff taking fans' refusal to watch losing team >> Scare stories in the press planted by rival bidders >> Fans start pretending to be more upset about financial mismanagement than they are by team's shyte performance >> Fans throw their weight behind rival bidders' all-or-nothing, death-or-glory takeover bid. I said this before, and your response was "Blah, blah, official statistics" followed by " :1eye what kind of zoomer thinks official statistics are real". Nonetheless, that timeline is exactly what's happened.

Yes, I know that, but thanks for clarifying for everyone. The point I'm making is that the actual attendance for games long preceding the stadium announcement were well down also, in a steady trend beginning with your first defeat of the season and taking a real big drop-off when regular bad results started to roll in. Which was, of course, well in advance of the stadium issue, and long before any kind of organised boycott took off. (This is standard for most teams, obviously - losing streaks put no bums on seats. Just noting that the new narrative, about how the fans suddenly took umbrage at the stadium situation, is incorrect).

To be fair, the official statistics do seem to support that - 43,000 at the opening game against Hearts and 30,000 at the game against Dumbarton that immediately preceded the news about the stadium deal. Although I do note that the official statistics for the 2-0 loss to Hibs, played one month after the stadium news, also report 30,000 at that game too. Which would suggest that either a) We're both wrong or b) One of us is wrong, and the official statistics are actively misleading.

Assuming that you're talking about Ashley's bid to secure his massive loan against the stadium*, that isn't what you said the last time that the attendence drop-off issue came up. So now, you're saying it was the stadium issue that caused the big Walk-Away. But the last time we discussed it, you told us that the unofficial boycott due to fan antipathy began last season, with the implication that the drop-off in attendance that almost precisely coincided with your bad results was a continuance of an already-established trend. So which is it? 1) Long-term fan dissatisfaction due to poor governance; 2) Sudden displeasure over the stadium issue, or 3) The rather more blatantly obvious taking the cream-puff and refusing to go to games which you might reasonably be expected to lose? And if you can pick one of these, do you think you'll be able to stick with that reasoning for more than a month or two? *I'm not certain that this is an unreasonable move, if you're lending money to a famously incontinent business.

Looks to me a lot more like the fans stomped off in the cream-puff the very second that your team started consistently losing games and then, when the club had to turn to Ashley for money to keep the lights on in the absence of paying customers, you all decided that one of your former execs was a far better bet. Basically, it's stick-or-twist: hang on to a live club that isn't winning, or bet everything on one more card. Massive all-or-nothing bets on success or death are kind of written into the club's DNA, and I'm about as confident of and worried about your imminent success as I was back when Whyte, Green or the Easdales came in. It looks to me like you've collectively refused to attend most games that you might be expected lose; got rid of your owners because they inherited a shyte football team that they couldn't fire, and are now betting everything on Someone Else for no other reason than that he claims to support the team. I predict this will prove to be a false dawn, just like all the others over the past few years. (Bookmark this one if you like - I'll be happy to concede I was wrong if New Rangers are up challenging for major trophies within three years. Not happy that I was wrong, but happy to concede that I was).

And woah, Somers' resignation letter is a bit of a peach. Full text: "When I was approached about the chairmanship of Rangers, friends warned me that the world of football has different rules and codes of behaviour. I now know that is a gross understatement. "I am a non-confrontational man and have always tried to bring harmony to boardrooms and with stakeholders. "At the risk of antagonising my army of critics I would point out that Rangers managed to pay its bills and avoid going under during my tenure. These critics might not agree with how we achieved this. "I look forward to alternative solutions from whoever is running the club in the future. "Despite the personal attacks on me from various sources I genuinely wish the club the very best in the future and I am confident that with such a passionate and vociferous fan base they will be restored to their former glories." http://sport.stv.tv/football/clubs/rangers/312239-rangers-chairman-david-somers-resigns-as-dave-king-prepares-for-control/ --- To translate that, from polite businessese: "friends warned me that the world of football has different rules and codes of behaviour. I now know that is a gross understatement": Thank Christ I won't have to look at these godawful plebs any more. "I am a non-confrontational man and have always tried to bring harmony to boardrooms and with stakeholders": I'm pretending it wasn't me who put in that hilarious giving-everyone-the-finger AGM performance. "my army of critics": Shower of absolute zoomers. "I would point out that Rangers managed to pay its bills and avoid going under during my tenure": If Rangers fans want to be angrier with the men who kept the doors on the Big Hoose open than they are at the men who wound up getting them padlocked, then Hell mend them. "I look forward to alternative solutions from whoever is running the club in the future": The club's finances are hopelessly fvcked and I will laugh and fondle myself watching Dave King trying to milk this particular dead cat. The biggest FU of the lot, this one. "I genuinely wish the club the very best in the future and I am confident that with such a passionate and vociferous fan base they will be restored to their former glories": I hope the club folds and you're all miserable, you shower of absolute zoomers.

I can't make many predictions on the finance side, although I will note that this particular club's record of bright new futures isn't exactly spectacular. What I can confidently predict is this - whatever happens in the boardroom, King & his buddies better get that team winning on the park, and fast, or they'll soon suffer the same boycott/protest fate as the current occupants. If the last few years show one fact clearer than an Ibrox new dawn, it's that the fans will tolerate almost infinite looting, scandal and corruption, but absolutely won't ever accept a team that doesn't win week-in, week-out. They can be scraped wins or lucky wins or dodgy wins, but they'd better be wins, or else. This season will be accepted as a write-off, for longer-term gain, you'd imagine. Any repeat of this season's repeated scuddings will see the fans back rattling the front doors in record time.

Well, you're almost certainly wrong about "three long years", "5 short days", "we", "our club", "back", "people who have Rangers' best interest at heart", "the right road" and "we can trust", but credit where it's due on the fan-uniting thing.

Good God, that looks like the cast of Labyrinth on David Bowie's day off.

Hearts fans on Twitter all laughing and slapping each other on the back because their team scored more goals in one game than Rangers have in 2015. Can't say I grudge them it TBH, it is quite funny. Edit: And now they've noticed that at +57, Hearts' goal difference is 12 more than Rangers' total goals scored for the season. Given they're 20 points ahead of second-placed Hibs, I think we have to acknowledge that the utter lack of competition means that this is a tainted title, a ridiculous one-horse race, unlike the highly competitive top tier.

No doubt it's really boring for most people but, when you've got a supporters' group actively petitioning the First Minister to prosecute other football fans for taking the piss out of them, it becomes a more pressing issue for everyone else than it was.

So you think fans of all other football teams should be banned or arrested if they use a term that none of them believe to be sectarian, just because you and a wee gaggle of other zoomers have suddenly decided that it is. It's good to get that clarified, because it'll make it easier for folk to decide whether they agree or not.