Big Rangers Administration/Liquidation Thread - All chat here!

[Burma]

Confirmed Leggat has even taken to court by Sevco

http://scotslawthoughts.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/guess-which-blogger-has-been-taken-to-court-by-rangers/

Perhaps its some kind of reprisal for his comments being the sole inspiration for the (giggle) SONS OF STRUUUUUTH!!!!

[hellbhoy]

Ok, the one time then. You lot love to over exaggerate things on here.

Aren't you a member over on here posting at a rate that would place you in the top 3 just behind Tedi & Standfree ?,also exaggerating your obvious lack of superiority with epic meltdowns and the like ? .

[Burma]

Ok, the one time then. You lot love to over exaggerate things on here.

This is the millionth time BP/AWRA has made a fool of himself.

[hellbhoy]

Confirmed Leggat has even taken to court by Sevco

http://scotslawthoughts.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/guess-which-blogger-has-been-taken-to-court-by-rangers/

Ilike the bit where he states Leggo likes to say "I'll see you in court" .

No doubt Leggo will take it all the way costing The Clone Rangers a pretty penny or two or three or four or five figures and above .

[hellbhoy]

This is the millionth time BP/AWRA has made a fool of himself.

.

[hellbhoy]

He'll be attention seeking online soon about Morton putting Celtic out the cup.

No doubt at the end of his contract the fud will say "It was great being a part of a Morton team that put Celtic out the league cup" as if he played in the game to appease the orcs .

[~British Patriot~]

Aren't you a member over on here posting at a rate that would place you in the top 3 just behind Tedi & Standfree ?,also exaggerating your obvious lack of superiority with epic meltdowns and the like ? .

Of course I am, but I'm not a Plastic nor a Diddy fan.

[~~~]

Of course I am, but I'm not a Plastic nor a Diddy fan.

You play in League 1 against part time teams

Hate to break it to you, but you are very much so a Diddy fan

[Ned Nederlander]

Confirmed Leggat has even taken to court by Sevco

http://scotslawthoughts.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/guess-which-blogger-has-been-taken-to-court-by-rangers/

OMFG

You couldn't make it up

Seriously

[AberdeenBud]

" over exaggerate"

Another one for the scrapbook.

Did he ever give us his positives from the accounts?

[AberdeenBud]

Leggo

As if any c**t takes that pish stained jakey seriously anyway.

His auld Presbyterian Granny will be spinning in her grave.

[Apache Don]

Ok, the one time then. You lot love to over exaggerate things on here.

Aye show us 'the positives'

[Fotbawmad]

Confirmed Leggat has even taken to court by Sevco

http://scotslawthoughts.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/guess-which-blogger-has-been-taken-to-court-by-rangers/

No idea why they would want to take one of their own, the village idiot of all people to court. You only have to look at the way Masterton was behaving late last year to learn that this is all classic signs of the ship sinking, with no one to save them.

[wunfellaff]

The English article today in the Scotsman.

If you were constructing a gallery of guilty men at Rangers then you’d want to make sure your walls are supported by reinforced steel, such is the weight of numbers you’d be hanging up there.

Walter Smith has pretty much stood alone as the good guy in all of this. ‘In Walter We Trust’ as some Rangers supporters might put it. It’s hard not to respect and like the former Ibrox manager given all that he has done in the game, but it’s possible to hold him in high esteem while at the same time pointing out the fallacy that he is blameless in the spectacular mess that his club has become.

In the deconstruction of the Rangers story you’d point the finger at plenty of guys *before you’d have Smith in your sights, but the fact is that he has played his own part in the *malaise. He possesses none of the spiv-ish nature of some of the chancers who have come and gone at Ibrox, but he still warrants criticism.

It didn’t come across in his interviews on Tuesday, but Smith is no innocent bystander in all of this. We go back to last summer and a tabloid headline that read ‘Walter’s Heartbreak’ above a story that told of Smith’s failed bid to take control of Rangers in June 2012. To talk of his heartbreak was a little kind given that the bid failed partly because, as Malcolm Murray subsequently pointed out, there was actually no formal bid – he called it empty posturing – and partly because even if there was a bid it was too little, too late. By the time Smith, Jim McColl and Douglas Park mounted their white steeds and galloped over the horizon in Govan, calling on Charles Green to “step aside” in the interests of Rangers, Green had already secured the business and assets for a song.

What took them so long? Where had they been? They made no secret of their concern about the motivation of Green and his group. They were spot-on there. So why wait until Green had done the deal before appearing on the scene? On these pages in the past I equated their action to somebody busting in on a funeral with a defibrillator.

Smith asked Green to step aside in the interests of Rangers. Appealing to his sense of fair play wasn’t going to change the course of events. The one thing that Green would have listened to was an offer. Money doesn’t talk to Green, it hollers like a banshee. Smith’s group had the financial clout to get the Yorkshireman off the scene and they didn’t deliver. They spoke openly of their serious reservations about Green’s mysterious group but didn’t do what needed to be done.

We could talk about Smith’s axis of excess with David Murray back in the day when Rangers thought they had money when in actual fact what they had was credit and iffy tax schemes, which eventually came back to trouble them and helped cause the spectacular implosion. More recent events show that the hubris of the 1990s and early 2000s hasn’t been fully purged.

Smith was right to be anxious about Green. For months, Green attempted to get him on board and was getting nowhere. Getting Ally McCoist’s imprimatur was incredibly valuable to Green and the chances are that his regime would not have got off the ground had McCoist stayed true to his own initial feelings about the Yorkshireman, but he didn’t.

The endorsement of McCoist helped shift season tickets and helped endear Green to the Ibrox faithful after an early and bitter stand-off with the supporters, featuring a death threat. Getting McCoist on side – publicly at any rate – was good, but getting Smith to join him was equally important given the IPO last December. In November, Walter jumped into bed with Green. They shook hands and smiled for the cameras. One big happy *family again. Smith became a non-*executive director.

The veneer of calmness was what Green was looking for and thanks to two Rangers icons, he got it. Both men would have been better advised to stick to their original positions on Green and his cohorts. By changing their minds, they played their own part in facilitating the embarrassment that followed. It can’t have been that much of a surprise, given how dubious they were about Green in the first place.

Smith became chairman last June, not because he wanted to but because he felt he had to in the wake of the in-fighting at Ibrox, the dysfunctionality of the board as he later described it. It was to his credit that he moved into a position that he had no experience of. He knew he lacked the tools but, equally, he vowed that he would be as hands-on as he could possibly be. “No-one should believe that I see my role as a passive one,” he said. “That hasn’t been my way in the past and it won’t be my way in the future.”

Encouraging words for the Rangers fans who craved authority and order at the top of the club, but it’s easy to see how Smith was virtually powerless in that bonkers regime of Green’s. You can’t blame him for walking away from the civil war. But some of the things he said on Tuesday jar a little all the same. His comments on the financial waste at Ibrox, under his watch in part, demanded explanation. “I knew they [Rangers] would make a loss [for the financial year ended 30 June] but I wasn’t sure exactly what it would be. It was quite a surprise when it came out to be such a large figure.”

Quite a surprise? Smith was chairman for the end of that period. Did he ask questions about the financial state of the club while he was there? Did he get answers? Were the answers truthful? If yes, why was he then surprised when the accounts revealed such a massive cash-burn? If no, then did he feel people inside the club had lied to him? Smith was chairman. He should have known, shouldn’t he? Having the business savvy to be able to do something about the obscene bonuses being dished out would have been a different matter entirely, but as chairman he should have known. Unless he was a passive chairman, which he said he wouldn’t be.

On the football side of it, it’s pretty clear that Smith had no issue with McCoist earning £825,000 a year. Also, he has said that giving a player a wage of £7,500 a week (Ian Black, for one) while in the Third Division was not such a big deal. Presumably he had no truck with other deals, like the one given to Fran Sandaza that would have seen the Spaniard’s salary rise to £10,000 a week in the final year of his contract.

The overall wage bill in the Third Division was £7.8 million. Smith said: “People come out and say ‘Ah, it’s not necessary for them to have those players in that division’. But it’s not just the division that matters at Rangers, it’s the fact that you have 45,000 people coming to watch something on a football pitch…They are still losing money. But when you make a decision to be involved at Rangers, there is no common sense to it. The financial bit of Rangers Football Club and common sense don’t often go together.”

That’s a remarkable statement when you think about it. What is wrong with Rangers attempting some common sense in their spending? Why be so accepting of a lack of common sense? It didn’t have to be that way. There is no law – apart from the law of hubris – that says Rangers have to lack common sense in their finances. This is the 2013 version of David Murray’s freakonomics. ‘We are Rangers and we’ll spend what we like’. Either through arrogance or stupidity – or both – that mindset hasn’t changed all that much despite the torment.

What would have been so wrong with offering Black £3,000 a week instead of £7,500? What would have been the problem had McCoist been put on £400,000 from the point of administration instead of continuing on £825,000? Why is the wage bill so eye-wateringly high for a club in the Third Division? Because there is no common sense at Rangers, says Smith. Instead of just accepting it, how about doing something about it? Incredibly, it wouldn’t appear that the penny has dropped yet.

The former manager deserves all the respect for what he achieved in the game, but in the on-going crisis at Ibrox, he is not blame-free. Rangers are still stuck in a financial time-warp. And many people have allowed it to happen

eta the link for the bitchfest between English and chic. http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/scotland/scotfoot/scotfoot_20131009-1923a.mp3

Edited October 10, 2013 by wunfellaff

[wunfellaff]

also from the hootsman, fat al would bend over for King

ALLY McCOIST has welcomed moves to bring former director Dave King back to Rangers, insisting it would be to the benefit of everyone connected with the club.

Rangers chief executive Craig Mather travelled to South Africa earlier this week for talks with King over a potential fresh investment in the club and a return to the boardroom.

The current board of directors, still without a chairman following Walter Smith’s resignation at the start of August, are embroiled in a power struggle with rival shareholders, led by former director Paul Murray and millionaire businessman Jim McColl, who are seeking their removal at Rangers’ annual general meeting later this month.

Against that backdrop of ongoing turmoil at the club, which has seen supporters’ protest against the board and a loss of over £14 million revealed in Rangers’ first audited annual accounts since the slide into administration and liquidation last year, McCoist believes King’s involvement would be a significant boost.

The Rangers manager, who has a good personal relationship with King, last week confirmed he has agreed a cut of around 50 per cent to his own annual salary of £825,000 which was published in the club’s yearly figures. McCoist accepts Rangers will require fresh income streams as he tries to lead them back to the top flight of Scottish football.

“The recent accounts have been well documented and the fact of the matter is we will need re-investment at some stage in the future,” said McCoist.

“If we are going to get re-investment then it would be good to get it from someone who has definitely got the best interests of the club at heart. Dave King has got Rangers’ best interests at heart and clearly the board also believe that to be the case.

“From my point of view, the fact that a member of the current board has flown to South Africa for talks would indicate they also feel it would be hugely beneficial to have Dave back on board. It can only be a good thing for Rangers.

“The board have a difficult and important job to do and it is encouraging to think we are talking to someone who could help move the club forward. I think it would be a great thing for us all.

“I believe the board deserve credit for making such an effort to attract someone like Dave King back to the club. I think this is a clear message that they are trying to do their best for Rangers.

“Someone like Dave King has already invested vast sums of his own money into Rangers and that tells me he’s the kind of investor we need at this club again.”

King, from Castlemilk in Glasgow, has lived and worked in South Africa since 1976 where he has amassed a significant personal fortune. A boyhood Rangers supporter, he became a non-executive director of the club in March 2000 and invested £20 million of his own money into the club under former owner Sir David Murray’s stewardship.

After Rangers were placed into administration by Murray’s successor Craig Whyte last year, King travelled to Glasgow where he held talks with administrators Duff and Phelps. McCoist accompanied him at that meeting.

King subsequently called on the club’s creditors to reject the company voluntary arrangement (CVA) proposal put to them by Duff and Phelps in June 2012. He raised doubts at the time over the Charles Green-led consortium which had purchased Rangers’ business and assets from the administrators for £5.5 million.

It remains unclear whether King would be prepared to work in tandem with the current board of Rangers or whether he would be more likely to back the Paul Murray-Jim McColl group of investors. They are due back in the Court of Session in Edinburgh on Monday when they will attempt to have the removal of current directors and the

– appointment of four new directors – including former chairman Malcolm Murray – added to the formal business of the AGM at Ibrox on 24 October.

Any return of King to the Rangers board would also need the approval of the SFA. The 57-year-old was among the old board who were criticised by the SFA’s inquiry into Rangers’ financial collapse for not acting on Whyte’s failure to make payments of £9 million in PAYE and VAT during his ruinous tenure.

King’s long-standing legal dispute with the South African tax authorities had also cast doubt over his ability to meet the necessary criteria to become a Rangers director once more. He reached a settlement of £45 million over the case two months ago which saw all charges against him dropped.

“I regard the sum agreed as being very acceptable,” said King at the time. “It has no impact on my ability to invest in Rangers. In fact, the opposite is true. It means that there are now no restrictions on me whatsoever – plus the ‘fit and proper’ issue disappears as all fraud allegations were finally withdrawn by the state.”

[Bookies Love Me]

Confirmed Leggat has even taken to court by Sevco

http://scotslawthoughts.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/guess-which-blogger-has-been-taken-to-court-by-rangers/

Free the Leggat one.

P&B needs a strong smelling, pissed-up, vomit stained Leggo.

[Bookies Love Me]

also from the hootsman, fat al would bend over for King

ALLY McCOIST has welcomed moves to bring former director Dave King back to Rangers, insisting it would be to the benefit of everyone connected with the club. Rangers chief executive Craig Mather travelled to South Africa earlier this week for talks with King over a potential fresh investment in the club and a return to the boardroom. The current board of directors, still without a chairman following Walter Smith’s resignation at the start of August, are embroiled in a power struggle with rival shareholders, led by former director Paul Murray and millionaire businessman Jim McColl, who are seeking their removal at Rangers’ annual general meeting later this month. Against that backdrop of ongoing turmoil at the club, which has seen supporters’ protest against the board and a loss of over £14 million revealed in Rangers’ first audited annual accounts since the slide into administration and liquidation last year, McCoist believes King’s involvement would be a significant boost. The Rangers manager, who has a good personal relationship with King, last week confirmed he has agreed a cut of around 50 per cent to his own annual salary of £825,000 which was published in the club’s yearly figures. McCoist accepts Rangers will require fresh income streams as he tries to lead them back to the top flight of Scottish football. “The recent accounts have been well documented and the fact of the matter is we will need re-investment at some stage in the future,” said McCoist. “If we are going to get re-investment then it would be good to get it from someone who has definitely got the best interests of the club at heart. Dave King has got Rangers’ best interests at heart and clearly the board also believe that to be the case. “From my point of view, the fact that a member of the current board has flown to South Africa for talks would indicate they also feel it would be hugely beneficial to have Dave back on board. It can only be a good thing for Rangers. “The board have a difficult and important job to do and it is encouraging to think we are talking to someone who could help move the club forward. I think it would be a great thing for us all. “I believe the board deserve credit for making such an effort to attract someone like Dave King back to the club. I think this is a clear message that they are trying to do their best for Rangers. “Someone like Dave King has already invested vast sums of his own money into Rangers and that tells me he’s the kind of investor we need at this club again.” King, from Castlemilk in Glasgow, has lived and worked in South Africa since 1976 where he has amassed a significant personal fortune. A boyhood Rangers supporter, he became a non-executive director of the club in March 2000 and invested £20 million of his own money into the club under former owner Sir David Murray’s stewardship. After Rangers were placed into administration by Murray’s successor Craig Whyte last year, King travelled to Glasgow where he held talks with administrators Duff and Phelps. McCoist accompanied him at that meeting. King subsequently called on the club’s creditors to reject the company voluntary arrangement (CVA) proposal put to them by Duff and Phelps in June 2012. He raised doubts at the time over the Charles Green-led consortium which had purchased Rangers’ business and assets from the administrators for £5.5 million. It remains unclear whether King would be prepared to work in tandem with the current board of Rangers or whether he would be more likely to back the Paul Murray-Jim McColl group of investors. They are due back in the Court of Session in Edinburgh on Monday when they will attempt to have the removal of current directors and the – appointment of four new directors – including former chairman Malcolm Murray – added to the formal business of the AGM at Ibrox on 24 October. Any return of King to the Rangers board would also need the approval of the SFA. The 57-year-old was among the old board who were criticised by the SFA’s inquiry into Rangers’ financial collapse for not acting on Whyte’s failure to make payments of £9 million in PAYE and VAT during his ruinous tenure. King’s long-standing legal dispute with the South African tax authorities had also cast doubt over his ability to meet the necessary criteria to become a Rangers director once more. He reached a settlement of £45 million over the case two months ago which saw all charges against him dropped. “I regard the sum agreed as being very acceptable,” said King at the time. “It has no impact on my ability to invest in Rangers. In fact, the opposite is true. It means that there are now no restrictions on me whatsoever – plus the ‘fit and proper’ issue disappears as all fraud allegations were finally withdrawn by the state.”

Getting his nose right up King's arse before he "takes over".

Sees a chance to get his wages pumped "back to the level they should be at" (© Bendarroch).

[wunfellaff]

Today's Sun was right.....

Directorate Change The Company today announces that Ian Hart, Non-Executive Director, has resigned from the board in order to pursue the charitable work in which he is involved more actively.Craig Mather, Chief Executive Officer, commented: "it is with sadness that we see Ian depart from the board and we would like to thank him for his valuable contribution over the past year. Ian remains a huge fan of the Club and we wish him the best of success in future."

[flyingrodent]

The English article today in the Scotsman.

If you were constructing a gallery of guilty men at Rangers then youd want to make sure your walls are supported by reinforced steel, such is the weight of numbers youd be hanging up there.

Walter Smith has pretty much stood alone as the good guy in all of this. In Walter We Trust as some Rangers supporters might put it. Its hard not to respect and like the former Ibrox manager given all that he has done in the game, but its possible to hold him in high esteem while at the same time pointing out the fallacy that he is blameless in the spectacular mess that his club has become.

In the deconstruction of the Rangers story youd point the finger at plenty of guys *before youd have Smith in your sights, but the fact is that he has played his own part in the *malaise. He possesses none of the spiv-ish nature of some of the chancers who have come and gone at Ibrox, but he still warrants criticism.

It didnt come across in his interviews on Tuesday, but Smith is no innocent bystander in all of this. We go back to last summer and a tabloid headline that read Walters Heartbreak above a story that told of Smiths failed bid to take control of Rangers in June 2012. To talk of his heartbreak was a little kind given that the bid failed partly because, as Malcolm Murray subsequently pointed out, there was actually no formal bid he called it empty posturing and partly because even if there was a bid it was too little, too late. By the time Smith, Jim McColl and Douglas Park mounted their white steeds and galloped over the horizon in Govan, calling on Charles Green to step aside in the interests of Rangers, Green had already secured the business and assets for a song.

What took them so long? Where had they been? They made no secret of their concern about the motivation of Green and his group. They were spot-on there. So why wait until Green had done the deal before appearing on the scene? On these pages in the past I equated their action to somebody busting in on a funeral with a defibrillator.

Smith asked Green to step aside in the interests of Rangers. Appealing to his sense of fair play wasnt going to change the course of events. The one thing that Green would have listened to was an offer. Money doesnt talk to Green, it hollers like a banshee. Smiths group had the financial clout to get the Yorkshireman off the scene and they didnt deliver. They spoke openly of their serious reservations about Greens mysterious group but didnt do what needed to be done.

We could talk about Smiths axis of excess with David Murray back in the day when Rangers thought they had money when in actual fact what they had was credit and iffy tax schemes, which eventually came back to trouble them and helped cause the spectacular implosion. More recent events show that the hubris of the 1990s and early 2000s hasnt been fully purged.

Smith was right to be anxious about Green. For months, Green attempted to get him on board and was getting nowhere. Getting Ally McCoists imprimatur was incredibly valuable to Green and the chances are that his regime would not have got off the ground had McCoist stayed true to his own initial feelings about the Yorkshireman, but he didnt.

The endorsement of McCoist helped shift season tickets and helped endear Green to the Ibrox faithful after an early and bitter stand-off with the supporters, featuring a death threat. Getting McCoist on side publicly at any rate was good, but getting Smith to join him was equally important given the IPO last December. In November, Walter jumped into bed with Green. They shook hands and smiled for the cameras. One big happy *family again. Smith became a non-*executive director.

The veneer of calmness was what Green was looking for and thanks to two Rangers icons, he got it. Both men would have been better advised to stick to their original positions on Green and his cohorts. By changing their minds, they played their own part in facilitating the embarrassment that followed. It cant have been that much of a surprise, given how dubious they were about Green in the first place.

Smith became chairman last June, not because he wanted to but because he felt he had to in the wake of the in-fighting at Ibrox, the dysfunctionality of the board as he later described it. It was to his credit that he moved into a position that he had no experience of. He knew he lacked the tools but, equally, he vowed that he would be as hands-on as he could possibly be. No-one should believe that I see my role as a passive one, he said. That hasnt been my way in the past and it wont be my way in the future.

Encouraging words for the Rangers fans who craved authority and order at the top of the club, but its easy to see how Smith was virtually powerless in that bonkers regime of Greens. You cant blame him for walking away from the civil war. But some of the things he said on Tuesday jar a little all the same. His comments on the financial waste at Ibrox, under his watch in part, demanded explanation. I knew they [Rangers] would make a loss [for the financial year ended 30 June] but I wasnt sure exactly what it would be. It was quite a surprise when it came out to be such a large figure.

Quite a surprise? Smith was chairman for the end of that period. Did he ask questions about the financial state of the club while he was there? Did he get answers? Were the answers truthful? If yes, why was he then surprised when the accounts revealed such a massive cash-burn? If no, then did he feel people inside the club had lied to him? Smith was chairman. He should have known, shouldnt he? Having the business savvy to be able to do something about the obscene bonuses being dished out would have been a different matter entirely, but as chairman he should have known. Unless he was a passive chairman, which he said he wouldnt be.

On the football side of it, its pretty clear that Smith had no issue with McCoist earning £825,000 a year. Also, he has said that giving a player a wage of £7,500 a week (Ian Black, for one) while in the Third Division was not such a big deal. Presumably he had no truck with other deals, like the one given to Fran Sandaza that would have seen the Spaniards salary rise to £10,000 a week in the final year of his contract.

The overall wage bill in the Third Division was £7.8 million. Smith said: People come out and say Ah, its not necessary for them to have those players in that division. But its not just the division that matters at Rangers, its the fact that you have 45,000 people coming to watch something on a football pitchThey are still losing money. But when you make a decision to be involved at Rangers, there is no common sense to it. The financial bit of Rangers Football Club and common sense dont often go together.

Thats a remarkable statement when you think about it. What is wrong with Rangers attempting some common sense in their spending? Why be so accepting of a lack of common sense? It didnt have to be that way. There is no law apart from the law of hubris that says Rangers have to lack common sense in their finances. This is the 2013 version of David Murrays freakonomics. We are Rangers and well spend what we like. Either through arrogance or stupidity or both that mindset hasnt changed all that much despite the torment.

What would have been so wrong with offering Black £3,000 a week instead of £7,500? What would have been the problem had McCoist been put on £400,000 from the point of administration instead of continuing on £825,000? Why is the wage bill so eye-wateringly high for a club in the Third Division? Because there is no common sense at Rangers, says Smith. Instead of just accepting it, how about doing something about it? Incredibly, it wouldnt appear that the penny has dropped yet.

The former manager deserves all the respect for what he achieved in the game, but in the on-going crisis at Ibrox, he is not blame-free. Rangers are still stuck in a financial time-warp. And many people have allowed it to happen

eta the link for the bitchfest between English and chic.

Tom is, if anything, too gentle with Smith and McCoist there. Both have been right at the heart of both the Old and New Rangers catastrophes; both have profited greatly throughout, and both have come out and claimed they have no clue what happened to all the money. Twice.

Hacks could maybe forgive them filling their pockets while the whole infrastructure collapsed around their ears once, but to do it twice and then shrug their shoulders and say, dunno mate?

You get the feeling that many hacks wouldn't smell a rat on this pair even if they were drenched in half a bottle of Eau Du Rat each.

Edited October 10, 2013 by flyingrodent

[Bendarroch]

honestly? You've had months of "back?" taunting you, and this is the best you have come up with as a retort?

It's more than enough for the plastic.