Cobardon

Nah, much more likely that the signings being made today of all days are season ticket related. Guess they haven't been shifting as many as they'd hoped.

You know what semiotics are, right? Anyway, not just St Andrews, but three of the four old Scots universities pre-date the reformation. The other (Edinburgh) was said to have been founded by a legacy left by a bishop. But you carry on there. Let's not let history get in the way of your argument. To get back on topic, I was very disappointed to hear the local Tayside police thought that, bar a small few, Rangers fans were exceptionally well behaved yesterday. That camera they were using must not have sound facilities. Still, once the novelty factor wears off almost no one will be hearing those songs for a wee while, so that's something. It'll be interesting to see if any disrepute charges are levelled at Charles Green though. That one can't have gone unnoticed. On the pitch, Rangers were minging though, weren't they? If the idea of playing guys like Bocanegra and Goian was to advertise them, that may have backfired as both looked very much at home at Division 2 level in Scotland. And the young guys making up the numbers were not as good as Brechin either.

And what, I may ask, are we meant to make of this insane broadside by Green? Is it ok to rip the shit out of every other club now that you've got some sort of membership Charles, eh?

Well, it was in direct response to a poster claiming that without this site Rangers would still be in the SPL. But I agree with most of what you are saying. The net has been very important and I have never disputed fan power as the prime motivator in the decision. This particular site - read widely though it is - less so. A small fraction of fans read it. Certainly not the many thousands who withheld their money at clubs across the country. Still, the high level of debate and informed opinion has brought in and kept interested onlookers like me, so you've got to have played a part, if only via word of mouth from those who do come here to those who don't.

-Rangers and their fans' own shameful conduct - before, during and after administration. Arrogance, lack of apologies, not paying debts to those who would be voting on their future, threats of boycotts, that ridiculous presentation at the final meeting etc. -Implied threats from FIFA/UEFA. (And possible banning of Europe/national team). I don't think this would ever have happened, but it couldn't be entirely discounted. -Chance to change things - voting rights, league reconstruction and possibility for some of challenging for 2nd. -Last - and probably least - sporting integrity. As I say, the fan power was crucial to the pressure on chairmen, but it wasn't the only show in town.

Wow. And some above were slagging Celtic for 'taking credit' for Rangers' demise...talk about delusions of grandeur... I'm not saying that the groundswell of opinion - when based on concrete evidence I may add (i.e. statements from Doncaster/Regan and representatives of almost every SPL club) - wasn't crucial in the decision to banish Sevco from the top leagues, but it was hardly the only factor. And this site is hardly the reason that many thousands of season ticket holders chose not to buy their tickets this year before decisions were made. Come on, be realistic here.

The argument that usually gets given - that football already has the world cup - may hold more water were it not for the fact that every sport at the olympics has its own major championships or finals as it is. In terms of picking sporting champions the whole Olympics is basically redundant. (Though your rant may have held more water if you had noticed that two Scottish women were playing for Team GB's football team this week.) As for people slagging the authorities for caving in/negotiating a pish tv deal, perhaps we should wait for what actually gets revealed later today before working on sheer speculation? (Still, that would be rather unusual for this thread, I understand).

As time goes by I tend less and less to believe elaborate conspiracies. I think if the last few years have taught us anything it's that most people who are proclaimed captains of industry, award winning businessmen and even supposedly brilliantly advised governments are making it up as they go along. There are no long term plans in place for most things, and certainly not ventures are risky as fly-by-night football ones. The reason Southampton seem to have paid up to Rangers is probably that they were very badly advised. Much like Ticketus, Whyte, Murray, the SFL/SPL/SFA and Green have been. There were no clever get-out schemes to work huge profits by malfeasance, no cunning stratagems devised to expertly bypass legislation and no geniuses pulling the strings behind the scenes: all there ever were were small befuddled men behind curtains masked by smoke and loudspeakers. Only without the wisdom of the wizard. More like the brainlessness of the scarecrow. This is continuing as Green, backed by Rangers fans, seems too dumb to know that while he continues to attempt to bluff he has his cards held the wrong way round showing nothing but a pair of twos.

It's not as simple as that in this current discussion anyway...we've been talking about the recent past, so calling them Rangers is correct. When D & P sold them to Green they were Rangers. Now, they may or may not be. But what they most definitely are -regardless of name- is shafted.

No argument that's why they stood up to Rangers, but since when has fan power been remotely listened to by our chairmen? That's why no one saw this coming.

You're right. It's easy to look back with hindsight and think that things are heading toward a land sale that will net Green and co a fortune (which, given running costs and lack of enthusiasm for the assets, they probably aren't anyway), but almost no one here in Scotland saw this coming. EVen when Green was buying most assumed that rangers would, at very worst, be playing in SFL1 next year with relatively light sanctions dished up by a scared SFA. His plan was always to buy on the cheap and flog off the biggest name players but still get Rangers back to challenging in next to no time. Then, flog the club back to the punters and walk away with a tidy profit over the piece. It worked across the city for Fergus McCann after all. If almost no pundit, chairman or fan in Scotland could see SFL3 with hard sanctions for Rangers, how could outsiders? Who expected our authorities and those running the game to grow a pair after all these years?

They should have, but the whole bet by Green/Sevco etc. was that they would, at worst, be in the 1st for a season and then pop right back up with minimal casualties. Hence, the fudge to avoid any staff, playing or otherwise, going. And that's clearly a position that has been held up until today. It's finally hitting home to them that this is happening. Green must be wondering how he can make any cash out of this now.

It wasn't the headline I was talking about but this bit: 'While the playing staff has already been reduced drastically, it would seem that there will have to be further cuts. "There will be jobs going - the implications are huge," explained Green.' This is the first time that anyone at the club has spoken about job losses with the implication not just of playing staff going.

Seems no one here yet has caught this latest instalment on the BBC....finally, the massive redundancy programme will start at Rangers. The only chance a 3rd division 'Rangers' have is to fire away. If only they'd done this four months back maybe they could have survived this...now, it's a last desperate gamble.

The other thing people tend to forget when calculating season ticket and ticket income is that a substantial percentage of football crowds are concessions. The widely reported three-years-worth of season tickets that Ticketus bought up was usually mentioned as £24. In the SPL. Hard to see ticket income increasing in Division 3.