One more…
How much above LOI standard is the SPL at present anyway? Rovers and Bohs would comfortably survive I imagine. Cork on the rise again
rangers financial trouble really started when the dalymount land deal fell through. it seems clear that once the secret stream of money from Bohs dried up they were always going to go bust. chop the head off the snake and it was a matter of time before the rest of it died.
http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/blogs/desmond-kane/scotland-miss-rangers-173834275.html
Of all the quotes that can be regurgitated relating to the darker side of Rangers and a helping of the imbeciles that have clamped themselves to the Glasgow club seemingly since time began, Ian Archer’s musings remain perhaps the most pertinent. It was penned over 30 years ago. “This has to be said about Rangers, as a Scottish football club they are a permanent embarrassment and an occasional disgrace. This country would be a better place if Rangers did not exist,” wrote Archer, who latterly worked on the now departed television programme Scotsport, in a Glasgow newspaper.
What was exceptional about Archer’s heartfelt words is that they were scribbled down during some of the finer moments in Rangers’ history, specifically alluding to a night when they snagged the old European Cup Winners’ Cup in Barcelona in 1972 with a 3-2 victory over Dynamo Moscow. As a piece of newspaper prose, it was ahead of its time.
Inspired by beers and cheap wine while being firmly planted in Spain, a Roman Catholic country at odds with the anti-Catholic signing policy once employed by Rangers and endorsed by its supporters, a furious rump of followers battled with riot police in the Camp Nou amid their team’s rise to clasp the only European trophy in the club’s history.
It will be argued that the heavy-handedness of local police made the riots in Barcelona eminently preventable, but then Rangers seem to have spent large swathes of their past defending the extremist behaviour of those who masquerade as football fans. The blame always seems to fall on others.
In a taxing period when a case with HMRC threatens to capsize the club with over £50 million of debt, it is perhaps Karma as much as unpaid taxes and gross financial mismanagement that has left Rangers facing the trap door. Rangers may well be left to pay the price for the sins of the father, with or without his sash, and their inability to drive out the rancid element that has tailed them.
They range from their highly inflammatory position in shying away from signing Catholics, the racist and sectarian songs sung by some followers of the club, the orange shirts wheeled out a decade ago as a "Dutch tribute " marketing ploy and the wretched riots in Manchester when a big screen television went on the blink. These are just some of the episodes that have tarnished not only the Rangers brand, but the image of Scotland as a tolerant country.
Scottish football may be left impoverished by a league without Rangers, but will society? Should society feel a certain sadness towards the plight of Rangers?
While the Scottish Premier League, satellite television and perhaps even twitchy Celtic directors would lament the loss of the income that Rangers generate, a progressive Scotland may feel differently.
At a time when Scotland’s first minister Alex Salmond is trying to drive forward the idea of an independent, progressive, multicultural, multi-faith Scotland - a rainbow nation of Scots - the country’s national sport is perhaps the last public haunt for the miserably uneducated. This was seen and heard when Hearts and Celtic exchanged lamentable ditties on Wednesday evening that continues to illustrate the deep-seated anti-Catholic sentiment that exists in pockets of Scotland. The strained old IRA choruses were heard from the visiting end amid the pestilence. Tramps behave better.
Celtic supporters are plagued by their own unsavoury band, but have always been uncomfortable with the Old Firm tagline that they continue to share with Rangers. The racists who mingle among the football fans in using the club to further their warped ideology will remain intact, even if Ibrox does not after the tax hearing has been played out. This would be a tragedy for a club with so much potential.
For the decent Rangers fans, progressive people, who follow their club only as a football team, there is a genuine sympathy at how departed owner Sir David Murray allowed the club to fall into such a state, but there are too many who have been allowed to hijack the good name of Rangers to further their own ideals away from a sporting context. For them, there will be no sympathy.
Rangers may well survive in some form if they fall into administration, which would be heartening for the national sport, but would clubs outwith Glasgow such as Aberdeen, Hearts, Hibernian, Dundee United or Dundee be sorry to see them go?
To the ones who sing songs about child abuse and the Irish Potato Famine, it is difficult to argue that the air would not be cleaner if their club stops. “And because some people are so sick, I have to put six words at the end of this column,” wrote Archer. “I am not a Roman Catholic.”
Decent enough read that but there’s a bit of a myth developing about “financial mismanagement” and “allowing the club to fall into such a state” in much of the media since yesterday’s announcement.
Rangers have been in a poor financial state since Lloyds closed the net on David Murray and the debt he accumulated in various companies, including Rangers. That was gross mismanagement alright. But the tax issue is effectively cheating. There was a reason Rangers were able to attract certain players to the club and that was because they were using a tax evasion scheme to pay them over the odds with no outlay from the club. That’s cheating. Soccer clubs don’t compete on a very level playing field unfortunately, but they do need to operate within the rules. When a club goes out of its way to deliberately circumvent tax laws in an illegal manner, and when that brings results on the pitch, then that’s not just financial mismanagement. It’s fraud and cheating and would never have been called mismanagement if HMRC hadn’t pursued them.
Celtic were presented with an opportunity to do the same and refused to do so. That the past has caught up on Rangers is very welcome, but it was more than recklessness that got them to where they are today.
essentially what you are saying rocko is that it is a double victory for you -
- rangers go to the wall, a result for a celtic fan
- prudent book-keeping and proper accounting governance triumphs over cooking the books, a victory for all who subscribe to the charter of accountants
congratulations on the double whammy
Will any individuals be charged in relation to this? Surely Murray should be up to his neck in shit?
I hadn’t even thought of the first point to be honest with you. That’s quite the icing on the cake but the real substance is the victory for prudent, accurate and compliant financial reporting.
Strathclyde Police are seeking assurances from the huns that they can meet the policing cost of their SPL fixture at Ibrox on Saturday. :lol:
The huns still owe Hearts two instalments from the Lee Wallace transfer.
They also owe Dundee United their share of the crowd proceeds from the recent Scottis Cup game at Ibrox.
They also owe Dunfermline for ticket sales from last Saturday’s SPL fixture.
The Guardian getting some decent jibes in today:
Rangers are a quintessentially British institution. This is the Queen’s XI. Their fans sing Rule Britannia and God Save the Queen – but they are in deep trouble, and may well fold completely before it’s time to launch the Jubilee barge. Football writer and Rangers fan Graham Spiers has called this the club’s “bitter harvest”, and railed against the club’s inability to cope with its own sectarian songsheet, which has been the source of grief and resentment for years.
But this is a story about financial stupidity more than cultural insolvency. The emerging collapse of Rangers football club is an allegory for a different game that’s not so beautiful anymore, where we can’t run failed institutions just because it’s what we’ve always done. Rangers may go bust owing the tax man almost £50m.
How did this happen? After the loyalty she has been shown over the years, how can Her Majesty allow her Revenue & Customs to behave in this manner? The reality dawning on the Scottish sports press and supporters of Rangers FC (two groups that are not always entirely distinct) is that the Scottish champions are perilously close to administration and, potentially, liquidation.
Rangers chairman Craig Whyte (himself currently under investigation by the government’s intelligence and enforcement directorate for his acquisition of the Ibrox club) said there is no “realistic or practical” alternative to getting ready for administration. The problem relates to a claim by HMRC for unpaid taxes over a period of several years dating back to 2001, which could result in massive liabilities.
The collapse of such a footballing giant after decades of mismanagement tells us a story not just about football as a bloated dysfunctional cultural spectacle, but of feral businessmen, media collusion, and a society witnessing key institutions collapse and teeter while desperately denying that such a thing is happening.
As bitter reality dawns, other certain truths are clung to amid the wreckage. Two of these stand out. One is that Craig Whyte is a shrewd guardian with a secret plan. Rumours swirl that Graeme Souness waits in the wings like a moustachioed Sauron. A Blue Knight to replace Craig Whyte. The second is that Rangers will emerge from the ordeal stronger, and, er, leaner.
Establishment voices mutter confidently of the club’s fanbase and that the "“club will never die”. Such macho posturing is a default setting from the club’s supporters (who numbered 17,822 at the recent home defeat to Dundee United), but the full extent of the club’s debts are unknown. Closely tied to this belief that RFC will re-emerge is the notion (repeated like a mantra on all broadcast frequencies) that “the Scottish Premier League without Rangers is unthinkable”, and “Scottish football couldn’t survive without the Old Firm”. But this idea was quashed by Celtic’s chief executive Peter Lawwell only this week, when he stated plainly that his club “don’t need Rangers” to flourish financially. Lawwell said the eventuality of their Old Firm rivals going bust “would have no material effect on Celtic”.
The idea that the two clubs are mutually dependent persists only because the idea of Rangers and Celtic is so deeply embedded not just in Scottish culture, but also in Scottish press circulation. The Old Firm flog papers. But, in reality, the idea that splitting the Old Firm would be a travesty for Scottish football is upheld only by people who have vested interests in our (already) hopelessly failing game. Scotland’s Sky TV deal is already pitiful, and BBC Scotland’s coverage is reduced to a poorly produced highlights package.
Michael Grant of the Herald wrote: “Celtic and Scottish football could live without Rangers but, boy, it would be as dull as dishwater.” For the absent-minded and unobservant, Scottish football has been in dire terminal decline for some time now. The idea that it would be worse in a league that would immediately present more opportunities for success is patently absurd. It’s the sort of logic that could only be expressed by members of a closed group.
Life After Rangers Football (Larf) would mean for every other club a chance that the thousands who migrate towards Ibrox from towns across Scotland every other Saturday might show an interest in their local team. They would have realistic hope of winning trophies. But the positive reality of a Scottish game without Rangers is not primarily about a sport rid of a substantial element of ritualised bigotry and sustained intergenerational hatred, but the prospect of top-quality football being played by young Scotsmen in an atmosphere of optimism. That’s something worth aspiring to.
The mainstream press have been fatally blindsided on the impending crisis at Ibrox despite excellent blog coverage. But let’s not blame the clubbable journos. The real culprits are the management and board of the club who piled profligacy upon spending spree, from Dick Advocaat’s dubious £12m Tore Andre Flo to David Murray’s gigantic vanity project. But who’d blame them? Our culture lauds these dodgy geezers. Murray, the club’s previous owner, was quoted as saying: “For every £5 Celtic spends I’ll spend £10.” That doesn’t seem so clever now.
That’s a wonderful article. 
The big tax case is now almost a smokescreen for the fact they can’t pay their operating costs at the moment.
The Court is in session in Edinburgh at the moment. The huns want to appoint their own administrator but HMRC have lodged an application for a court appointed administrator. Not sure how that’ll play out.
Rangers in administration.Celtic SPL champions.SPL 11/12 ALL OVER RED ROVER
Championees Championees are we are we are we
A 29-point turnaround in barely over 3 months.
Turns out the huns haven’t been paying PAYE or VAT in the 9 months since Fenian hero Craig Whyte took over and owe a further GBP£10m for this.
HMRC confirmed they were going to make their own application to put them into administration separate to the ongoing case they have against them for the potentially much bigger bill until the huns did it themselves.
TDB with a shit-eating grin
This time the diaspora are on the other side of a valentines day massacre!
A joyous occasion for all Irish men and women world wide.
[quote=“CarlCarlson, post: 36192”]This time the diaspora are on the other side of a valentines day massacre!
A joyous occasion for all Irish men and women world wide.[/quote]