Robbed of the ability to accept credit cards, or roll-over Standing Order fans’ payments, by all accounts season ticket renewals at Newco Rangers has been considerably less than those of fellow lower league club Hearts.
Notwithstanding all of this, the Ibrox club’s remarkable PR people this morning published an article titled “Season ticket waiting list”! Waiting list!! Every word is priceless.
I’ve long maintained that anyone looking for a strategy in any of this was misguided but one thing you can be sure of, the lawyers will be giving advice on when to flush the club down the lavvy (ven.).
Newco have banked season ticket cash from a few thousand people, giving them a liability to stage football games until May next year. If they are unable to stage those games, they cannot spend, or continue to accept, that money. None of this was relevant before deadline day, but the extended deadline passed yesterday, so the club now have their primary indicator of how much income they will receive this financial year.
If the board believe they do not have enough income to finish the season, they must stop spending – and accepting – season ticket money, and ask the court to appoint an administrator. Despite the apparent inevitability of this, the board can roll the dice for a while yet.
They can reasonably claim to have an expectation thousands of more tickets will go before the season starts, or that the club can embark on another share issue, but in the meantime, they must continue to pay wages and other costs. Cash is king when you don’t have bank support and hundreds of staff will continue to earn wages over the summer months.
Wages and other costs will need to be met for May, June and July, before Newco’s biggest vat bill of the year becomes payable in the first week in August. Ticket sales would need to pick up incredibly in the coming weeks to see them through this.
I don’t expect administration this week. The club has cash in the bank, has a theoretical chance of turning things around and, as far as we know, is meeting all liabilities when due. The more likely time administrators would be required is when creditors cannot be paid on time.
There’s an interesting media angle on all of this. Graham Wallace is a hired professional, there to deliver a future for a football club in distress, no more and no less. Sections of the media compliant with ‘the rebels’ (cough) are now telling readers he has made several sackable offences.
It suits King & co if anyone with a modicum of competence to leaves the premises. This campaign is brutal, but remember, don’t go looking for a coherent strategy, there isn’t one.
Speaking to season ticket renewals
Saturday’s magnificent Scottish Cup Final had a fitting home at Celtic Park but the Celtic show only rolls on if you, me and tens of thousands of our close friends want Celtic succeed as much as Newco’s fans want their club to fail, by buying our season ticket.
The most important ticket deadline in football is THIS FRIDAY, 23rd May. Be there, or be less shamrock shaped. When it comes to supporters, faithfulness trumps loyalty any day.
After watching St Johnstone win the Scottish Cup, in what was a genuinely thrilling final on Saturday, you could not come to any other conclusion that this was a fantastic season for Scottish football. Celtic were irresistible in the league, Aberdeen and Dundee United resurged, Motherwell were again Best of the Rest, which is not quit the league title it could be, but still an achievement. I’m loving the game this way.
Congratulations to Atletico Madrid for achieving what seemed impossible only a few months ago. Congratulations also to Barcelona fans, who applauded the league winners in recognition of that achievement. There are some good guys in the game.
[calameo code=000390171873c910154bd lang=en page=106 hidelinks=1 width=100% height=500]
705 Comments- Pages:
- «
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- ...
- 19
- »
‘ The low point of the club’s history came in the 1999–2000 season, when they finished last in the Premier division. As the SPL was being expanded to 12 teams, there was then a three team play-off. However, as Falkirk’s stadium did not meet SPL requirements, Aberdeen retained their status in the top flight’
-lifted from Wiki/EWTB/EWLM.
-do zombies dream of sevconian sheep?
Someone on the last thread posted this:))
They sure dont do irony over in deluded land.
———
Chris Graham@ChrisGraham76·14h
@Bryce9A @_aldo93 I think he’s been rightly criticised for making public statements which have been proven to be nonsense.
Don’t think Everton have been relegated
So add Aberdeen to the list then.
HH
LUNCHTIME QUIZ
Bada
I think they were in the 30s, without googeling, so could be wrong
HH
That’s twice in a row I’ve done that…
Anyhho, to the nearest ‘1’, how many games in all competitions did Wayne Biggens play for Celtic?
Rules of the game are always the same…
No search engines please, you’re only cheating yourself!
Off oot, things to do.
HH
If this Newco cannot guarantee that they can fulfill their commitments this season, they should not be allowed to begin it. That has to be in the rules and should be implemented.
Richie #TeamOscarForever @ 10:56
‘Skip to 23 mins 35sec..not for the easily offended!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Djveu2ilaRk‘
I’m not sure what is weirder. That or that you discovered it.
the bould bhoys @ 03:52 on 19 May
– I agree.
jeez_i_thought_blinker_was_pants
13:12 on 19 May, 2014
Bilbao?
That’s the one,mate.
Some going since they only play Basques.
I’m sure there’s a risqué joke in there.
But lazy journalism isnae allowed on here!
On Aberdeen [possibly] never having been relegated: in the first season of the ol’ Premier League (’75-’76), I think Aberdeen and Dundee Utd stayed up on goal diff.
FF
Enjoyed kojo’s posts yday about the young players to watch out for.
Nothing better than seeing young guy step up into the first team and be successful. Hopefully the next year or 2 we have a good backbone of players who made the step up.
The Debate on Youth Academies and their worth reminds me of Churchill’s quote on Democracy, in that, “It is the worst possible system, apart from all the rest.”
If your expectation is that your own club’s Youth Academy is going to produce two or three first team players every year, then you will deem it a failure.
If you crank your expectations up higher, and demand two or three superstars, since you discount the likes of Charlie Mulgrew, Stephen McManus and James Forrest as successes, then you will not be satisfied by the much vaunted academies of Ajax, Barcelona, Man United or Southampton.
I have seen an estimate (not sure of its accuracy) that there are around 327,000 professional football clubs worldwide and over 38 million registered pro players (there are 270 million people worldwide- 4% of the population involved in football). When you have that many to choose from, it is unlikely that each will produce a player far less a superstar from each club. However, even comparing Celtic with reasonable comparators, other Europa and CL league competitors, do we have a poor record in player development?
It really is too complicated to tell. We may look back at the Quality Street gang and the Young Lions of the early 60s and say clearly we have not re-produced those standards. Both those groups belonged to our golden generation and Scotland has not produced a comparable group since, not from Celtic or Rangers or United or Aberdeen. You can blame any contemporaneous development- The Largs Academy, the Rangers buying foreigners argument, The Nintendo generation, or the School Teachers strike and you will still only have a partial explanation. The most telling indictment you can have is that Barry Ferguson was the best product of his generation in Scotland; that is what Bertie Vogts had to work with, a Ratners generation.
None of the solutions to our Youth dilemma bear much scrutiny.
Close the academies and just buy the best Dundee United players- Well how long will it be until United say they cannot afford to run an academy for Celtic’s benefit and they decide to close it down and live off Cowdenbeath’s player development? What will Cowdenbeath learn from the example of the larger clubs?
It is much easier for a United player to break into their first 11 than Celtic’s. Marcus Fraser would already be a first team regular there. United would love to get their hands on Denny Johnstone too. However, when we decry the impact of Lennoxtown graduates in football, where are their contemporaries from Ibrox, Tannadice and Pittodrie playing? Goodwillie’s at Blackpool on loan, Russell’s at derby, Ryan Fraser’s at Bournemouth and Rhys McCabe, Jamie Ness and John Fleck have hit no heights either.
We can agree that the Youth Leagues, at some point will not give these lads the player development experience they need. The Greg Dyke solution of B teams in the lower leagues would help but will be greatly resisted by entrenched clubs. Use of loans and feeder clubs to develop players offers a partial solution but , as the wise old CQNr, GG, stated, if you loan out your player, you have limited influence on how he will be trained and developed during that period. You are sub-contracting the player to clubs that cannot provide the coaching experience, dietary input and medical support that the Celtic set up provides. The loan system, which is the best option we currently have, is a crude sink-or-swim approach.
One approach from the world of UK Volleyball has not been tried, probably because UEFA would block it , is the wholesale use of a feeder club. In the run up to the 2012 Olympics, GB Volleyball placed a dozen or so players with a 2nd Division Dutch club to give them a taste of a higher competitive environment to hone them for the challenges of playing at a much higher standard than domestic competition could provide. The experiment would be judged a failure because they had under 2 years to improve to the level of the Dutch 2nd division and then they had to face a standard three times higher. What was needed was the Andy Murray route of going as a 12 to 14 year old to a country where the sport does have high standards and develop there. However, few players have the maturity of an Andy Murray to cope with this and we can, thankfully, delay this process in football as we do have a “reasonable” competitive environment for football as our club and national youth grade teams showed, including the group that lost 5:0 last night (it was a semi-final level after all though the tactics were strange).
Anyway, as Churchill noted- there are no easy solutions to replace the current flawed approach. We need to keep asking hard questions but, perhaps, avoid simplistic solutions to them. Every club in the world is looking for the cheaper option of Youth Development but most of them, like us, are struggling to feed through and establish youth players. Man U have not replicated the Beckham/Scholes/ Giggs group in the past 25 years, Barca have not replicated the Iniesta/Xavi group, Ajax have not produced the streams of the past and we have not seen the return of the Quality Street Gang either.
TOSB. Totally agree never forgive them or forget. The wee man’s picture on the back page of the Record said it all. TURKEY b h o y I’m in Dalyan you anywhere close?
jack regan
13:43 on 19 May, 2014
TOSB. Totally agree never forgive them or forget. The wee man’s picture on the back page of the Record said it all. TURKEY b h o y I’m in Dalyan you anywhere close?
………………………………
Cheers Jack. It was Celtic they did it to. I can’t get my head round Celtic supporters wanting to forgive them and move on. NEVER.
LUNCHTIME QUIZ…
Answer in 10 minutes
IGC 13:34
Anyhho, to the nearest ’1′, how many games in all competitions did Wayne Biggens play for Celtic?
——————————————————————–
Can you not make it a bit easier – how many GOOD games? :-)
Googybhoy-you around mate?
Aff oot to play fitba with my grandson!
I think we should all stop holding a grudge against rangers. People going on about them being bigots and not signing catholics. They signed Maurice Johnstone ages ago and we still bang on about them being bigots.
As a token of good faith we should ask the board to offer them financial assistance to show no grudges are held.
Let’s move on and before you know it we will be like Everton and Liverpool and just sit next to each other for the games.
IGC
14?
IGC
Two
Sorry, meant TOO( many)
Biggins-about 18 appearances
Of the first draft of players Neil Lennon signed Jaurez was one that excited me the most. What happened to that Bhoy?
He really looked the part in the first couple of games and then went off to play for Mexico and got into trouble for going to a party in Columbia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efra%C3%ADn_Ju%C3%A1rez
Never the same again and shipped out. He may have been involved in more than just bevvy at the party but probably the biggest waste of talent in the last few years we have had at Celtic Park.
Wonder what really went on there?
LB
Re Syndey Tim’s ludicrous idea of scrapping the club youth system as it’s clearly not working !!
The St Ninians project is still in its infancy…the oldest recruits are currently our U17s…still a bit young for first team duties on a regular basis and well short of being written off as a bad idea surely.
Looking back over 40 years for some reason and only citing such as Nicholas, McStay & McGeady is also very poor reflection to ignore talents like Aitken – Burns – McCluskey while more recently Mulgrew, Forrest, Miller, Bonner and a host of others who have made a career for themselves at lower levels Moyes, Caddis, Crainey, Wallace, beattie, Burchill, Gardyne, Quinn,Goodwin, Sheridan, Donnelly, Smith are but a few.
Does he suggest we scour the world for talent and bring in cream like Tom Rogic who has the skill but clearly lacking any pace to make it in European football.
Nothing is perfect by any means, but I’d rather be where we are at the moment than any other club in Scotland…while many an English side are totally reliant on TV revenue.
Give it a chance to fail before proclaiming the inadequency of the system. Rome apparently wasn’t built in a day. It is also worth bearing in mind the improvement in McGeady when we brought the French coach in though….long held the view of who coaches the coaches and that we SHOULD have a succession of Dutch / German / French / Portugese / Spanish whatever youth coaches bringing the kids through and teaching our own youth coaches as opposed to following the SFA mantra.
So the spivs have a liability to play football matches until May next year, does this mean they are more than confident they will be able to do so, by hook or by crook(leaseback)?
Also, Phil(I know I know throw enough darts etc) has said some juicy contracts(catering etc) are in existence and a lot of people are making money from the ‘venture’-talk of 20 year contracts and so on. Does this mean it is in the interests of the spivs to keep this going or will they be able to call a halt and flog Ibrox etc if that will net them more £’s,even when they have a liability to provide football matches?!
Or do they not care if they’re lying on a big maison in the South of France…
Confused but happy:)
HH
LUNCHTIME QUIZ
Answer: 10
Of the 9 league and 1 Scottish Cup games Wayne Biggins played in, he only started 4.
‘Bertie’ gets a bad rap but he did help us offload Andy Payton to Barnsley (albiet with a sweetener of £100k)
Aff the tap of ma heid, fitba teams i haud a grudge against include (but not limited to)
Them (obviously)
Them two (obviously too)
Atletico Madrid (fur kicking)
Rapid vienna (fur diving)
Hamburg (furra union jack display)
and although Jose Mourinho isnae a team, i dont like him either
disnae make me a bad person though :-)
Originalsadiesbhoy sums it up at 12.58.
A Celtic site should not be congratulating that mob for anything.
An observation on what they achieved perhaps but congratulations, not for me.
TheOriginalSadiesBhoy – I am not comparing the crimes of Nazi Germany to the cheating of a football club, get a grip. I am questioning the mindset of people who cannot differentiate between what happened decades ago and what exists now.
There are many people in this world who continue to hate Germans because of what previous generations of Germans did deciding they are all guilty by association.
There are people on here, like you, who hate a football team for what players of that club did over 40 years ago. DId anyone in the present AM team play a part in that game? DId their current coaching staff devise to cheat us out of a European final? Are their fans today scum because their fathers and grandfathers abused Jinky?
Life is too short to harbour life-long grudges – especially over something that happened on a football park.
Van Gaal to Man Ure official.
Andy Payton scored 15 goals in 36 games for Celtic; I think he unfairly gets lumped in with the likes of hoopslegend Wayne Biggins when the Club’s fortunes were at a nadir, on and off the pitch.
Been announced Aloyius Van Ghaal is new Man Utd manager.
I’m Neil Lennon (tamrabam) …
Wit! no Racing Club?
So admit it, who has had a wee play with the Rubix cube on Google today?