R.E.S.P.E.C.T

One of the most irritating aspects of Rangers troubles in the last 2 years has been a culture within the club, and of people who should know better, to fail to communicate the truth to the Rangers support.

I’m sure most Rangers fans will join me in asking that senior officials at the club embrace a new dawn, and endeavour to tell us the truth at all times. That should also apply to footballing management, and friends of the footballing management.

With the recent departure of Brian Stockbridge from the club, there at least is hope within the Rangers support that the business end of the club is being cleansed with a new transparency on its way under the leadership of Graham Wallace.

Is it too much to ask that the footballing side apply the same approach?

As Rangers players trundled off the field on Saturday, lucky to have secured three points against part time Arbroath, I’m told that Manager Ally McCoist welcomed the players back in to the tunnel with words of congratulation for a great performance.

Bear in mind please that his friends in the media have for the last week been telling us how good he is, how good the coaching staff are, and how good their preparation is among many superlatives.

Are they delusional, or are they knowingly lying to us, to support their friend?

Loyalty is an admirable trait, and something sadly lacking in modern day football, however, is loyalty to Ally McCoist more important than loyalty to the Rangers support? Is loyalty to an agenda to attack the board more important than telling the truth?

This Rangers side is an expensively assembled one, and is in fact the second most expensive in Scottish Football

Therefor we should expect that the football be of comparable or superior quality to all Premiership sides and far superior to anything in our division

Can any Rangers fan put their hand on their heart and state they believe this is the case?

I know the events of the last three years have been distressing and that they can cloud the memory somewhat, but can any of us really look at this expensive side, and see any of these players controlling matches in the Premiership as Rangers trounce Celtic to the title?

After all, haven’t we been told that the reason the squad is so expensive is so that we can compete on our return to the top table, and compete for the cups?

If this current squad is only a transitional one that has to be bolstered by significant investment once again on return to the top flight, it begs the question – Will Ally McCoist need to spend multiple amounts more than Celtic just to compete with them?

I’m sorry I’m just not buying any of the superlatives, or even the seemingly reluctant approval of Richard Wilson in the Herald, or the loyalty to McCoist on Follow Follow from those who just happen to be part of the “Spivs Out” movement.

Rangers have missed a golden opportunity to shape a young (and inexpensive) exciting side who could have had a wealth of experience on Rangers return to the top. Much of that is attributable to Ally McCoist, who has chosen to fill his squad with numbers, “experience”, and dodgy foreigners, then leave the supporters under no illusion about what his footballing outlook is by picking sides full of the same. Every week.

Of course, he will point to Rangers scouting being cut, and blame Charles Green or Craig Mather, but ignore the fact that perhaps they could have allocated more resource to it if he demonstrated a real desire and ability to build his squad using youth, and spent less money on “experience”.

As Graham Wallace works his way through the legacy of decades of mismanagement throughout the whole Rangers business, he would be foolish to ignore the beating heart of the business that drives everything else, ie the football side.

If he doesn’t then he’s firefighting and missing a golden opportunity to make changes while we still can.

Bill

The Fog Reappears

Just when you think there is light at the end of the tunnel in this Rangers saga, the fog has once more enveloped the club, as much needed cost cutting measures within Ibrox have been resisted by Ally McCoist and his squad, and yet another propaganda war started between the current board, and prominent Rangers shareholders including Alex Wilson and Dave King.

It’s now the world’s worst secret that one of the ideas mooted by CEO Graham Wallace to Ally McCoist and Lee McCulloch at a meeting was that the 1st team squad accept a 15% cut in wages.

Unsurprisingly, “the players” , who were represented at the meeting by McCulloch, are believed to have rejected the idea out of hand

Sadly, in this circus we call Ibrox, that confidential discussion was reported in the Daily Record the next day, triggering a new wave of leaks from the club clearly released to undermine McCoist, including a copy of the training schedule for this week, which I won’t reproduce here but showed that there is a fine line in football between “professional” and “part time”, if time on the training field is anything to do with it

Next up was the embarrassing revelation that the players were lording it up in a hotel as preparation for the Forfar match.

With McCoist defending the decision shortly after, it was clear he was at loggerheads with the board

This board, or at least someone connected to it, obviously has little respect for McCoist, and the next leak, if true, detailed what appeared to be an internal Rangers email from in 2012 discussing McCoist’s salary demands, suggesting some rather distasteful manouvering over a suggested cut from former CEO Charles Green and current FD Brian Stockbridge, where McCoist is described as accepting a pay cut to 600k, then asking for a shortfall to be paid back to him.

It certainly didn’t show McCoist in the best light, and I’m sure that many other Rangers fans hoped that McCoist’s media offensive against the board this week would include a denial of the suggestions in the email, or an apology if the contents were true. To date we’ve had neither.

With the board’s offensive done, it is now the turn of defenders of McCoist, and attackers of the board to return with two different angles.

Defeated board nominee Alex Wilson has attacked the board for not leading by example and cutting the inflated executive salaries, while addressing the financial outgoings of the non- footballing side of the business. While I may have had issues with some of the vague statements from the nominees in the lead up to the AGM, this statement is incisive and fully justified.

Graham Wallace was asked the question by Tom English why the Executives weren’t leading by example, and Wilson asks the question again, because Wallace’s answer to English was disingenuous. He suggested that the salary review was across the business, however it is noted that there is no detail of any suggested cuts in other areas

Wallace, and the board, if embarking on a business wide cost cutting exercise have been cack handed and naïve in their approach, and are at this point, looking distinctly blindsided in their decision to discuss players’ salaries before concluding (or embarking on) the review of the non-playing business.

They should have been aware that with players and media friendly staff still friendly with those viewed as Anti board, it would not have been kept secret
They have not been helped that their own leaks, particularly about McCoist’s alleged salary manouvering, or the players’ training schedule have been confined to blogs and Rangers fan sites, rather than mainstream media.

Jack Irvine may be vindictive and “not to be messed with”, but if he is charged with blackening Ally McCoist’s name and turning the support against him in this latest propaganda war, then he is failing miserably.

As Dave King steps in with his own view this morning that the club should not be cutting costs, but should be investing in the team to compete in the Premiership when we get there, you begin to wonder if the credibility he has, given his genuine financial capability, is in danger of collapsing as he fails to recognise the deficit the club is facing with no additional revenue or investment to fill that gap,

Wallace has spoken previously about establishing sustainability before seeking investment, while King believes the investment is more urgent.

The issue of King’s investment proposal relying on existing shareholders diluting their shareholding if not investing more cash, while someone else invests in to the club is a sticking point, as my understanding is that current major shareholders are not keen to have their shareholding diluted. To those who paid 70p a share, or market value, rather than 1p per share, this and share value matters.

I’m no expert, but having the board at loggerheads with King, and having the manager conspiring against the board, and them conspiring against the manager is not a good place to be.

Meanwhile the club is still in deficit, with reserves dwindling, and no immediate signs of investment

My view is that this is the time for compromise between King and the current board, to ensure that there is a hybrid approach that suits everyone.

Perhaps the only reservation I have is that the size of the Rangers squad, and the size of our players budget to turnover ratio may be in the region of 30% as widely reported in McCoist’s defence, but that does not include a not insignificant sum for approximately 30 other registered players at Ibrox. 56 players is too much, and there is evidence of quantity over quality, so McCoist has to accept that his forays into the transfer market on behalf of the club are not returning best value for money, and he must show that there is both an acknowledgement of that, and a willingness to remedy it, or he is not the man to take the club forward

There is talking to be done at Ibrox, and some of it needs to be done privately, but if there is no “hands up I made an error” moment from any of the parties involved, then I fear for the future.

Bill.

The Wonderful World of Propaganda

As Rangers fan David Limond contemplates his actions in prison, he will no doubt regret pissing so many Rangers fans off over the last couple of years with his antics.
With a mouth bigger than the Clyde tunnel, and a bizarre idea that the laws of the land didn’t apply to him it was inevitable that he would land himself in trouble with the law.

So, as Rangers fans have decided against taking on various journalists and their hangers on due to his toxicity, the great shame is that his stupidity has allowed the Rangers support to be tarnished by his actions.

While I have little sympathy for “Limmy”, I have to take issue with some of the nonsense written in the last couple of days, in the Scottish media, and also the Press Gazette in London about Angela Haggerty, Phil MacGiollabhain, and Alex Thomson of Channel 4. I also have to take issue with the Scottish media’s ignorance of abuse on social media of Rangers players, and the apparently different sentencing used in social media abuse cases.

In the Daily Record’s first report of Limond’s indiscretions, it quotes both Haggerty and Phil Mac Giollabhain, with absolutely no recognition of Mac Giollabhain’s bigoted past mentioned.
It should be noted that the book Haggerty edited was not an objective analysis of Rangers financial troubles, but a hate filled book written in a vile tone.

Did Limond overstep the mark with his sectarian comments? Absolutely.
Was his target an innocent shrinking violet without a sectarian bone in her body?

With Haggerty yesterday promoting Sectarian IRA publication An Poblacht I’d suggest that you can draw your own conclusions

http://i43.tinypic.com/5m0o6s.jpg

This blog highlights why the IRA were and are sectarian

http://truthonsectarianism.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/ira-are-sectarian.html

MacGiollabhain of course was a writer for said IRA publication, and also co founder of another IRA publication the talfanzine. Unforgettably MacGiollabhain’s book serialisation was pulled from the Sun after some Rangers fans sent copies of some of his previous blogs to the newspaper. A shocked Editor pulled his serialisation and ran an editorial stating that MacGiollabhain was “tarred with a sectarian brush”

As Haggerty and co line up to have a kick at the whole Rangers support for the behaviour of Limond, it is noticeable that Macgiollabhain’s friends Thomson, De Long of the NUJ, and Roy Greenslade are all actively promoting the tired old Rangers are Racist line, despite Haggerty being as Scottish as Limond. It certainly raises questions as to how the judge could decide calling Haggerty a “taig” was Racist. Sectarian? Yes. Racist? How?

MacgiollaBhain has unsurprisingly got in on the act of attacking the wider Rangers support, calling in some quotes and favours from long time collaborators Alex Thomson and Roy Greenslade

Greenslade, is not an objective voice on anything Rangers related

http://williampoole.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/wp-archives-mar-12-2012-roy-greenslade.html


Alex Toxic Thomson is hardly the most reliable “journalist” to comment, given his constant support for MacGiollabhain. How far removed from Phil do you need to be to not be tarred with a sectarian brush?

http://williampoole.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/wp-archives-14-oct-2012-toxic-thomson.html

http://williampoole.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/wp-archives-april-12-useful-idiots.html

http://williampoole.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/wp-archives-april-12-glasgow-toughest.html

http://williampoole.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/wp-archives-14-aug-2012-alex-thomson.html

http://williampoole.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/wp-archives-05-oct-2012-toxic-tomos.html

The Press Gazette report is being widely touted as a voice of reason on the subject, and presumably Dublin born writer and news editor Darren Boyle is another friend of the toxic network of Rangers haters.

The simple fact is that Limond has been punished, and while the sentence is harsh, he can have no complaints about the verdict.

What is most interesting is that the type of provocative language and prose written by MacGiollabhain goes unpunished, while Limond finds himself in the clink.

The same week that Limond was sentenced to 6 months for some online abuse, former Celtic player Paul McGowan was sentenced to 130 hours community service for assaulting a police officer, despite it being his second conviction for such an offence. It seems that calling people names is now worse in Scotland than assaulting people.

Fact is, the mainstream media in Scotland wouldn’t touch MacGiollabhain or Haggerty with a bargepole, despite the sympathetic tone of the reports attacking Limond. They know only too well that employing either of them would significantly damage their circulation, and damage their already fragile reputations.

Darren Boyle also finds himself on the fringes of meaningful employment working for the Press Gazette, although journalists who read the publication should be made aware of the type of company he is keeping

Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me if Roy Greenslade of the Guardian website found himself in a Brian McNally redundancy situation. McNally displayed all the same traits with an added cockiness of thinking he had a mainstream platform for his agenda. He didn’t. Maybe Republican Roy will learn the same lesson. The people of Britain don’t want to be force fed extremist propaganda, no matter what “side” it comes from.

The People of Scotland should not tolerate that Limond can get 6 months in prison, while vile filth like Ciaran Wallace walks free, or Paul McGowan punches police officers without jail time, and they shouldn’t tolerate that the press won’t point out that imbalance, but will instead be part of it. Either they should all get jailed, or none of them should.

The only people who can affect change are you and me. Make your feelings known and write to your MSPs, MPs and newspapers.
If you think that is futile, then you underestimate the power you have.

Bill.

The Double Whammy

Today the Nominee Directors have stepped up their communication with the support through interviews with blogger Chris Graham, of the CRo and TRS websites.

While there are lots of similarities between the interviews, it has to be seen as a step change that both Wilson and Murdoch are stepping out of the shadows and a number of secret meetings with a small number of supporters, and answering questions publicly.

What is a tad unfortunate is the stage managed propaganda evident from both interviews and the distinct lack of detail from either nominee.

Murdoch’s interview is very negative indeed, and the subject matter is most definitely everyone else associated to Rangers apart from him. Now that could be down to Graham, or some CRo editing, but there is absolutely nothing in terms of substance as to what he feels he personally can bring to the board, or what the plans of the nominees are to stabilise financial performance of the PLC business that runs Rangers.

Instead, what we see is oft repeated negative accusations about Brian Stockbridge and Jack Irvine.

My issue with this is that I already distrust these two and wish them out. What I am now looking for is the nominees to give it a rest on telling us what we already know, and start telling us in detail how they will recover the business

Wilson’s interview is marginally better than Murdoch’s, with an interesting question that graham asks him (but not Murdoch)

Assuming you are successful in being appointed to the board, is there more you can say on specific plans for funding or how the club would be run? Is it possible to be more specific?

AW - We know how we want to operate but what we find when we get in there is impossible to say. When we lift the lid on it we have no idea what is going to come out. What worries us is that there is a cash outflow which has not been explained, so we need to look at what we have and then start to address it urgently. We can't say specifically who will invest. We have 3-4 people who are wealthy individuals who have approached us and said they will put money into the club if the board is trustworthy and clean. We've also had some of the institutions, who we can't name for reasons of confidentiality; tell us they will put more money in. We just can't put names into the public domain at this time as frustrating as that might be for people



Of course it’s a bit vague and unclear, given that we know that the nominees have been receiving detailed information on various transactions and contracts that Rangers have placed.
What that means is that either there is no business plan to recover the RIFC company, or that the nominees don’t wish to share their plans

The simplistic view is that, after excluding the “one off costs” published in the accounts, that RIFC are still trading at a loss.
Therefor there are limited options outside of fundraising to address that ongoing deficit.

These limited options are to either increase revenue, decrease expenditure, or both.

Without specific reference to these limited options , and how this would be tackled, it is difficult to get any confidence that the nominees would be able to make RIFC a break even business without investment or share issues.

I sincerely hope that the nominees will soon start to move their focus from voting off the current board to voting the nominees on.

For me that is what is required for any lingering doubters in the fan base to make their minds up

Bill

Smoke and Mirrors

As the Nominee directors posed for a photo shoot to sign a “Rangers Constitution” piece of propaganda yesterday it all seemed a little contrived, and desperate.

It’s worth recalling just what these pledges these nominated Directors make in detail

“1. We will never sell Ibrox Stadium. We will ring fence the asset to ensure this can never happen. This is our home and will always remain our home.”

This is a pledge we should all welcome, and pressure should be put on the current board to make a similar promise in print.

2. We are committed to fan representation on the board.

One can only hope that this process is fair and democratic and the whole Rangers support can openly vote for candidates. One also hopes that any Rangers supporter lucky enough to be elected is genuinely objective and inclusive.

3. No director including his/her family members
or close business associates should have
any financial interest in any contract involving
the club.

This should be a given

4. We will undertake to ensure that all executive director salaries and bonuses are approved by a Remuneration Committee and subject to market benchmarking.

This should also be a given

5. We will undertake to ensure that all shareholders are treated equally.

At this point it just looks like they are trying to pad out this “constitution” as it would look far too light with 5 points on it. What exactly do they mean here? Do they seriously wish us to believe that Joe Bloggs with one share will be treated the same as Jimmy Smith with 2M shares? Really? How?

6. We will undertake to ensure that there is total transparency in all the club’s affairs.

This seems like a very vague statement that cannot be quantified. Rangers are a PLC company who have to adhere to strict LSE Guidelines. How the requisitioners intend to fulfil that promise without breaching these guidelines should be explained in laymans language. Of course this should be in the interests of transparency

7. There will be no long term debt.

While all Rangers fans would agree that the club should never be exposed by its corporate shell’s banking activities, it would be silly to dismiss any opportunity to utilise any debt facility. This statement raises more questions than answers.

It assumes that the club will have to be operated at break even level immediately.

Therefor, given that the club is operating at a loss at the moment, even discounting the IPO transactions, what business plan do the nominees have to increase revenue and decrease expenditure in order to achieve that break even position?

While this “constitution” is largely a vision based series of pledges, what would be far more effective in convincing shareholders to vote them on to the board would be some tangible plans for how to firstly return the club to a sound financial footing, and how to build on that footing to grow the club.

Without such a solid plan, how can anyone have any confidence that there is any substance behind such vague statements?

8. All non executive directors fees are to be waived unless the club is in Europe.

What exactly do they mean by fees? Bonuses? Surely bonuses should be decided on appropriate performance targets? Some Rangers fans would question whether bonuses should ever be appropriate. I’d be wary that such a statement doesn’t stop the gravy train rolling in to the station when Rangers return to Europe at the precise time the team will need more investment.

What I would ask these nominees to do is cut the crap and start telling us how they will save the club.

They could start by telling fans’ groups intent on starving the club of its primary source of income that boycotting Rangers is counter-productive and will only damage the club.

I won’t hold my breath on any of the above happening.

Bill.

Celtic player jailed for 5 years…

…could have been a headline in today’s newspapers, following the guilty verdict on Celtic player Ryan Caird, but it isn’t.


http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/celtic-youth-star-caught-with-knife.22718299


“CELTIC youth player Ryan Caird has been given a year to show he can be well behaved after pleading guilty to carrying a knife. The 16-year-old was caught with a four-inch knife in his pocket by police officers in February. Yesterday Glasgow Sheriff Court deferred the case until November 2014.”


http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/celtic-youth-star-admits-knife-charge-142917n.22735415


“Celtic youth star admits knife charge


CELTIC youth player Ryan Caird has been given a year to show he can be of good behaviour after pleading guilty to carrying a knife.

The 16-year-old was caught in February this year by officers on patrol who searched him in the street.

He had a four-inch knife in the pocket of his tracksuit top and was arrested and taken into police custody before appearing in court two days later.

The teenager, from Cambuslang, pled guilty at Glasgow Sheriff Court to having the blade on him, on February 23.

And yesterday at the court sheriff Charles McFarlane QC deferred the case for 12 months for Caird to be of good behaviour.”

Strangely this “sentence” flies in the face of the SNP Scottish Government’s proclamations on how they are addressing knife crime in Scotland.

http://www.snp.org/media-centre/news/2012/dec/msp-pledges-help-clear-knife-crime-streets

“MSP pledges to help clear knife crime from streets Sun, 02/12/2012 - 09:34

The success rate of the Scottish Government’s joined-up approach to combating knife crime in Scotland – and in particular South Lanarkshire – is being hailed by Christina McKelvie MSP.

This comes at the end of a week which saw Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill announce that the maximum penalty for carrying a knife is to increase from four to five years imprisonment, which is part of the strategic battle against knife crime.

Ms McKelvie, SNP MSP for Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, said:

“The joined up approach involving the Scottish Government, the police, Scottish Courts, Crimestoppers UK and people of all ages and backgrounds in our communities – nowhere more so than here in South Lanarkshire – will overcome the scourge of knife crime.

“There is now a record number of police on our streets which has helped drive violent crime down to a 30 year low; there are 44 per cent fewer weapons on our streets since 2006/7, but there are some who still persist in thinking it is OK to carry a knife.

“It is not OK - and together we will drive that message home.”

One has to wonder about this anomaly between these proclamations on knife crime, and allowing Caird to walk free without so much as a rap on the knuckles.

One also has to wonder at the same Sheriff sentencing someone to 6 months community service for abusing Celtic manager Neil Lennon via the internet.

Isn’t the Scottish Legal system odd?

Bill

The Most Shameless Support in Football

The Celtic support can count themselves lucky that Rangers civil war and a compliant media have ensured that the Amsterdam riots have largely been kept off the front page of Scotland’s newspapers. In the cases were reports have been published, they are completely at odds with the reports from the Dutch press, and also at odds with the shameful scenes filmed and broadcast on Youtube of Celtic supporters attacking trams and undercover police

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SbVLYzcWNA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpF1IyeegIo

As 8 undercover police officers were attacked in Dam square with one knocked unconscious the scenes, 44 Celtic fans were arrested on the night, with most simply cautioned, but 6 were detained in Amsterdam, 4 of whom have been released.

The scenes were reminiscent of the ugly scenes in Manchester 2008, however, the response in the media and amongst the support involved couldn’t be more different

While Manchester City Council and the GMP did everything to antagonise the Rangers support, the vast majority of the 200,000 present in Manchester did their club and their country proud. Those involved in the trouble amounted to 0.02% of the support present that day.

Of course there is no excuse for the behaviour of a miniscule percentage of the Rangers support that day, and the response across the UK was one of disgust.

The many cases of police brutality that night were glossed over in favour of that that shameful attack on Mick Regan of GMP. What followed was a hatchet job on the Rangers support by Scotland’s tabloids, broadsheets and broadcasters, with CCTV stills on the front page of every single alleged participant of the riot.

The BBC in Scotland ran dedicated radio programmes to discuss the riots, and Real Radio had Phil MacGiollabhain guesting on their show claiming to have “broke the story”. He never did admit if he was in Manchester to watch Rangers, or why. BBC also ran a Panorama programme across the UK, with an appeal for witnesses being the cover for as high a profile hatchet job on the Rangers support ever seen.

Given that there are cases of football violence in England on a similar scale almost every week that decision to broadcast this “appeal” seemed very strange

The Rangers support itself condemned the behaviour of that small minority.

Fast forward to 2013 and Celtic’s riot in Amsterdam is being spun by those same media outlets to portray the rioters and those responsible for knocking a policeman unconscious as victims. There is little in the way of condemnation and lots in the way of lies and spin in the media with some of the defending of the indefensible quite disgusting.

Even worse, those at the thick of it, rather than be condemned by their fan chiefs and fellow fans for shaming their club are being supported.

The Celtic Trust have now started a campaign to “free the Amsterdam 2”

http://www.celtictrust.net/index.php?func=d_home_article&id=449

The brass neck takes some beating, to pardon a pun

Bear in mind that the two in custody are charged with seriously assaulting a police officer

This must be the most shameless support on the planet



Bill