I winced slightly reading that Deliotte’s suggested Celtic were a ‘top 40’ club in terms of turnover. The days we featured in their annual Top 20 report are long gone, lost in the raft of TV deals which flooded into England, France and elsewhere.
This is a problem for Celtic but at least we have a decent shot at Champions League income each year. Others in Scottish football have been left to wither on the vine (phrase of the week), as the likes of AFC Bournemouth cherry-pick their talent.
Celtic need a solution to help them compete with their peer-group of European heavy-weights but the solution has to accommodate the other top Premiership clubs. Dundee United have the ability to produce remarkable talent, if only they had the TV deal to allow them to retain it long enough to build a team. The same could be said for Hibs, Hearts, Aberdeen, Motherwell, Inverness and Ross County.
Scottish football would benefit enormously by federating with a neighbour.
You would think after administration and liquidation those who look to Ibrox for their football fix would, to adopt a popular phrase around those parts, have suffered enough from financial ‘ambition’. Not a bit of it, it seems. Not when the spectre of “being battered” by Celtic looms like an enormous green and white tidal wave.
For the last 12 years of its existence, Dave King was one of the non-executive directors of Rangers, paid to ensure that financial controls and risk management [role of non-execs defined by government 2003 Higgs Report]were in place. I am not being glib or shameless when I say he did a remarkable job.
With Newco appearing to be in some financial distress, King told the Daily Mail he opposes planned cutbacks: ‘If we cut the club back to a level that’s just enough to win the League One or the Championship then that’s fine. But the gap between ourselves and Celtic when we get to the Premiership will be obvious.
“But I don’t feel the club should respond by cutting the costs to the point of saying ‘we only have to do what is necessary to beat East Fife or whoever.
“Because if you do that Celtic will build up to 10-in-a-row and we could be so far behind them that even when we are back in the Premiership we are not in a position to catch up.
“We cannot risk going to Celtic Park and being battered 6-0.”
Those trying to keep Newco Rangers afloat will not welcome suggestions that current shareholders don’t have the “appetite or willingness to invest”, a few months before they will ask fans to buy season tickets.
Learn your lesson, there is no shame in losing 6-0 to Celtic, this is sport, bad results can happen, but there is enormous shame in failing to live within your means.
I’m off to contemplate 10-in-a-row for a while. To hyphenate or not?
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yorkbhoy
The other knock on effect is to be able to look on at whats going on at Sevco and laugh.
I was in my 20″s during their tax dodging 9IAR and the amount of nights out I went to being laughed at by overweight blow-hards make my contented smiles mean even more now.
I will never forget the week leading up to the Stkohnstone game taht stopped the 10. I was like a man waiting for the results of a life or death bloodtest
Do you remember the glasgow hospitals heart attack/high BP went up 25% that week,,it was front page headlines in the times if I remember
The nightshift becoming a bit of a slog these days . Too many personal fights. Too much anti celtic . I try not to take sides on the personal stuff but tom you need to pull your head in mate bang out of order way lower than I expected from you! I am a real simple Celtic supporter win lose or draw, hope we beat the hibs and keep a very good run going. Every club wants a celeb striker hope that we get one in the transfer market or one of our prospects do well second part of the season.
Too many people getting a bit precious about our striker hunt.”Griffiths not good enough”.Says who?.He banged in goals galore with a bad Hibs team,he has gone to a bad Wolves team and is banging them in.Hooper came from the lower leagues,Mc Donald from Motherwell.If I recall both did very well for us.Most people will know my choice was always Finbogasson,for the simple reason,he scores goals.Surely that is the criteria we should be judging our new striker.If we cannot get another one in ,in this window,then at the money being spoken he has to be worth a chance.
At least he will break the recent mould of buying strikers who have no history of scoring.
Fridjohnsen will also get a chance to show us what he can do.
Monaghan1900
10:21 on 25 January, 2014
Ha ha. Their brass necks could not be destroyed by a nuclear device! The absolute gall to mention tax-payers money. They just don’t do irony.
HellmendthelotofthemCSC
Getting near that time again.
The time when if even if money comes in, there simply won’t be time to spend it.
All sounds tiresomely familiar.
Morning bhoys,
Finally scraped enough pennies together to pay for my CQ10 tickets, really looking forward to what should be a great night.
HailHail
Why are the huns looking for money to buy better players to challenge us when they get into the SPL,when Mc Culloch says their is no difference in class?.
Why is our manager sitting at an interview answering this ridiculous charge?.
A quick”I wont comment on nonsense”would have been enough.
For all the supposed baggage surrounding Leigh Griffiths it’s worth bearing in mind that Hibs wanted to keep him and Wolves don’t want to let him go. Personally he wouldn’t be my first choice, but I suspect there’s player in there who still has an opportunity to bring all aspects of his play and lifestyle into successful alignment.
I’ve stated my preference before as Adam le Fondre, a player seldom used by Reading but when he is, generally to spectacular effect. However the landscape may have changed, as he was given a rare start last week and promptly scored a hat trick.
Haven’t read back so apologies if already posted….
Glen Gibbons proving he is the best journalist in Scotland,by a mile…..
EVEN the most fervent of Ally McCoist’s apologists might be persuaded to agree that the Rangers manager was the subject this week of the most ironic headline of this 13-year-old century.
“Football Is Keeping Me Sane – Ally” sat above an article that proved to be simply the latest in a seemingly endless series that has consistently reinforced the view that the job at Ibrox has long since disabled his capacity for rational thought.
This most recent rumination on the trials and tribulations of Scotland’s most aberrant football club focused on his worry that off-field shenanigans would interfere with his players’ effectiveness against part-time, semi-pro opponents in Scottish League 1. He opened with the baffling observation that “the boys have been terrific with the way they have gone about their business. It’s to their eternal credit that they are getting criticised for only winning 1-0 or 2-0. That’s how far they have come”.
But, more strikingly, McCoist’s crediting his players with a sensitivity to Rangers’ reputedly waning financial robustness confounds a truth with which managers and directors have been familiar almost since the introduction of professionalism to Scottish football in 1892.
It is that players basically could not give a hoot how a club is run, who is in charge (from boardroom to manager’s office) or the state of their economic affairs as long as their wages are in the bank on the due date every month. This is an eternal verity of which McCoist himself gained first-hand experience just days before, when his squad delivered a unanimous and unconditional rejection of the very suggestion of accepting a wage cut in order to reduce the crippling expenditure of a business on the slide.
Moreover, the manager adhered to his recently-acquired readiness to undermine and embarrass his own employers in public by declaring that, in rebuffing the overtures of chief executive Graham Wallace, the players had his full support. This followed his actions of just a few weeks earlier, when he handed the voting rights of his substantial tranche of shares in Rangers to a supporters’ club in advance of an annual meeting at which the sitting directors – that is, his own paymasters – faced a potentially troublesome election to remain in power.
Given McCoist’s almost relentless exhibitions of unfathomable outbursts, as a consequence of which he has been almost invariably exposed as guilty of unsound judgment (if not outright mischief-making), it is hardly surprising that he should be the most divisive figure at Ibrox.
His unparalleled success as a striker ensures an imperishable esteem in one area, while his eccentricities since succeeding Walter Smith as manager have raised serious concerns among many of the club’s followers over his suitability for the job. Some of his most ill-advised utterances and actions clearly sprang from an urge to play the populist card, but were so flimsily-based and hastily-executed that they backfired.
His notorious demand for the publication of the names of the members of the SFA judicial panel that reviewed Rangers’ case in the early days of administration and liquidation (“we want to know the names of these people, Rangers fans want to know the names of these people”) became deeply embarrassing when it was revealed that he knew their identities from the start.
His inflammatory language was widely thought to have been a factor when committee members were threatened by agitated Rangers fans. Similarly, when he demanded to know why Rangers had been fined over their financial irregularities, while Hearts and Dunfermline (comparable cases) were not, the SFA sighed and let it be known what McCoist already knew: Rangers were fined because they asked for a financial penalty to avoid the alternative.
But, on legal grounds, McCoist’s most prejudicial reaction to press probing was his denouncement of the torching of the garage that housed Rangers’ new £500,000 luxury coach, his unambiguous implication that the arson had been deliberately carried out by fans of a rival club. It was a speculation that was revealed by police investigators to be utterly without foundation.
McCoist, of course, is not the first football manager to have demonstrated a penchant for idiosyncratic behaviour. Players in the charge of the late Brian Clough, for instance, would testify that he was “daft as a brush”, but knew how to get results.
For anyone attempting to assess McCoist’s capabilities as a manger, however, there is the unavoidable impression of fickleness, a willingness seemingly to indulge in whimsy without a moment’s thought and, probably least promising of all, a consistent failure to apply proper appraisal and consideration to the most momentous issues to come within his scope.
This inability to recognise imperatives and take appropriate steps to accommodate them may prove to be most damaging to himself and his club in the area of manager/board relationships. Innumerable members of McCoist’s profession have discovered (or been advised of) an ancient maxim: the first thing any new manager should do is make the owner, chairman, chief executive or controller of the corporate purse his best friend.
The late Tommy Burns, an extraordinary man in every other way, failed lamentably to heed the counsel, even though his was whispered by none other than that giant of Celtic lore, Billy McNeill. The former captain and manager told Burns on his first day in the job that he should ensure a sound and productive relationship with Fergus McCann.
McNeill recognised that the old dictum was even more important in the case of McCann, since he was one of a new breed of boss, the owner/managing director, a hands-on executive who was looking after his own money. Inevitably, the collision of personalities was irretrievable and there could be only one winner. In such an event at Ibrox, it won’t be Ally McCoist ascending the podium.
Monaghan1900
” We are fast becoming a satellite of the Vatican”
I’m packing my bags and getting ready for my triumph return to Scotland, The Unsee fenian Hand has the Power!!
SonsOfErin
LeFondre, yip we missed a good un when he was at Rotherham. The guy is a goalscorer and his resilience in bouncing back is a very worthwhile strength.
Good Morning Bhoys, Thanks for the read Ryecatcher.
KLV
Brilliant reading the old extracts from NTV.
Remember as a drunken 18 yr old bhoy getting my hands on the first issue on the day Billy Stark scored against the hunnite in our centenary year.Absolutely devoured it, thought it so revolutionary and it probably was back then.
An old song from NTV , remember bits of it from back then……to the tune of Letter from America…
When u go will u send back Souness to Sampdoria, take a look at your full backs , 2 million for absolute crap…..
Cannae mind any mair, can anybody help?
starry plough forza oscar
10:43 on
25 January, 2014
There’s a good number of positions in high-ranking public office to be filled as the non-Catholics are weeded out. The Holy Father hasn’t decided if we should be a monarchy or a republic. Will we put you down for King/President and see how it pans out? King Starry the First?
Would love le Fondre
Howevah…Griffiths may not be a mensch but he is a good football player. In the Cup Final he was half fit and still caused us some problems. He didn’t dive when he could have when touched by Fraser Forster. He also has some left peg on him. Coming in off the right he can unleash an unstoppable shot.
He may be one ugly bugger but if he became our ugly bugger then he should get our support.
Big Cup Winners….
If Bouncebackability is the main attribute required in our new striker,can I suggest ………….
Alan Partridge?
maleys bhoy
10:01 on 25 January,
Everyone knows that Players capable of scoring Champions League Goals against one of the best clubs in the world are loaned out to Lierse
As for strikers capable of seeing us maintain domestic domination,no need to sign anyone in that department as I suspect that Bangura Balde Pukki and Stokes are well able between them to match Kris Commons strike rate
If griffiths scores goals he’ll do for me, Neil will manage him off and on the park, He is better than what we have by a mile. No brianer.
KLV
Morning,
BMCUW circa. 2am,
Loved that top, one of my favourites. Showed it to my son, whos just walked in the door,because I knew he had one at the time. He informed me yes and you gave yours away.I asked him who to?, was it on holiday?or what?
None of the above, to a wee boy, in Manchester when we were down for a testimonial. In return I got a navy blue v neck pullover,with a North Wales Man U supporters motif.
Maybe another reason why I hate Man U!! haha
lilys
Lol, they talk about integrity and us cheating, and this trumpet comes away with this Hutchie Grammar (brammar)
“FFS, where are these documents kept, and how much would it cost to grease someones palm to get hold of them.
Its what has been going on against us for the last cpl of years. (hmrc etc)
We need to learn to fight dirty.”
——
”
tim tanium
I’m quite sure that if Griffith is indeed a target and was to sign he would get the full backing of the support.
I’m old fashioned in my thinking however, and the standards of the fella as a man (regardless of football talent) concern me.
BCW – Totally agree. Remember le Fondre’s also played in the EPL and didn’t look out of place. He was mainly used as an impact sub, as McDermott seemed to feel he had to play the ineffective but expensive Pogrebnyak. He still scored a fair few decent goals from the bench that year.
This guy’s been tested through the divisions and adapted easily to each step up in level. it’s a crying shame to see him wasted on the Reading bench.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, hahahahahahaha
“We are fast becoming a satellite of the Vatican.”
Burghbhoy….
I enjoyed buying and reading NTV too,but they got some things very wrong as well.
The section they had for ‘They Embarrassed The Hoops’ was reserved for their subjective opinion on who had not performed very well in a Hooped shirt in the course of their Celtic careers.
They didn’t seem to care that some of these players and their families were actually in our fanbase attending the games at the time some of the writers weren’t,as they were boycotting.
I remember a few players who weren’t as bad as they suggested,such as Danny Craney,but then most of the writers had never actually played football in their lives.
Glenn Gibbons delivered the long awaited msm hatchet job, or as close to it as he’s allowed, on McCoist.
Its my view that cheeky chappy has come out worst of all in the Great Rangers Scandal. More and more huns are starting to agree with that.
His insinuation that rival fans must have torched the team bus was a cheap, nasty, irresponsible and dangerous dig at us. Lawwell failed to take the millionaire ned to task. Can you imagine Lennon getting away with that snipe at Murray? Neil would’ve been drummed out of Scotland for the ‘who are these people’ comment.
But dont worry Alistair, for every Glenn Gibbons there’s a Jackson, Young or Keevins to suck up to you.
Meantime McCoist
Monaghan1900
As a deep cover plant of the Holy Father here in the Cavinist Republic of Switzerland I prefer to remain low key who knows where he will send me next, my reward will be the laughter of my children as they see him splutter over his screen once more at the Orcs!!
Ryecatcher.
Temperament, mental strength is (nearly) up there with ability in my book.
quonno
10:35 on 25 January, 2014
Getting near that time again.
The time when if even if money comes in, there simply won’t be time to spend it.
All sounds tiresomely familiar.
And so do you.
Reading some of the FF stuff really does show how stupid and rabid the Huns are.
Having said that there are quite a few on this site who appear just as madly loyal. Step forward tonydonnely. I’m afraid our club just won’t go the extra mile to sign a decent striker (surely there must be more midfielders we can sign??). But good ole tonydonnely continues to be happy with the board. Tony aren’t you paying attention when Paul tells you Neil has no say in our transfer targets?
Reading the mtv stuff reminds me of how celtic supporters can be at their best. Questioning, demanding and being active. Not abandoning their fellow supporters to injustice.
Gibbons nails McCoist as the sleekit chancer he is
However …McCoist must stay !!!
Rye
Agree 100% about that series “they embarrassed the Hoops”. Like you I felt DC did well for us, particularly when we had an unprecedented list of injured strikers in the build up to a Rangers game. We played Crainie and McAdam up front and both scored in the first 20 minutes.
Cliftonville shirt hanging up on soccer am
You reds you reds you reds !!!!!!!!!
Marakesh express?
Lawwell failed to take the millionaire ned to task.
You just can’t get enough, can you? ;))
Big Cup Winners….
Alan Partridge has a slightly quirky temperament,particularly when someone draws a c##k on his back in the petrol station.
He might have bouncebackability but his short fuse might let him down in big games.
Will strike him off my list then.
Rye catcher, they embarrassed the hoops was a completely daft and humerous view that certainly didn’t demand that anyone took it seriously or claimed it was serious analysis. Think you took it a bit too seriously. I think most players subjected to it would have laughed and loved it.
The moment I wake up, before I put on my makeup,
I have a little read of you.
Ryecatcher @ 10.54
I was passing Ross Hall this morning and I think I noticed an ageing Lexus and a big pile of toblerone wrappers.
So you may well be right. Partridge to Celtic. Still he did well at Norwich….
HH jamesgang
How come ole Sevco signed more players during the period of the transfer embargo, than when the window was open?
Downfall CSC