I’ve seen a bit of chat on where Dave King’s promised overinvestment is, since Celtic humbled his team on Saturday. Let’s be clear, Newco are overinvesting.
Senderos, Barton, Hill, Kranjcar are all earning over £750k, Barton significantly so. They signed a further seven during the transfer window. Running costs are eye-wateringly high for a club without significant income streams from Europe, television or merchandising.
The £30m PR bluster, which the new board used while trying to unseat the Easdales, can now be seen for what it was, but this level of expenditure is pretty much as high as is practically possible without a lunatic Sugar Daddy. In fact, if we were running with similar numbers, I would screaming at you that we need to cut back for fear of insolvency.
Four years ago someone in the game suggested to me the Rangers group of clubs were fatally wounded, despite selling over 30,000 season tickets for the Third Division. The reasoning being that the brand depends on an air of success, and would crumble under sustained, unrelenting, mediocrity.
I’ve been saying for four years, most people haven’t began to realise the far reaching consequence of what happened in 2012. “Getting back” (sic.) isn’t about reaching top flight football, it’s about having the budget to be able to compete with Celtic, who could turnover around £50m more than Newco this season.
Where do you even begin to tackle a problem like that?
No Sugar Daddy will make the multi-season investment required. Insolvency remains a real danger for any club running a deficit in double-digit percentages of its turnover, without robust borrowing in place (or a genuine billionaire acting as backstop, if required).
The non-football costs of running a club at Ibrox and Murray Park (an albatross) are significant and comparable to costs at Celtic Park and Lennoxtown. This leaves income available for football comparable with Hearts, Aberdeen Hibs and Dundee United.
The real conundrum is, do you accept your place and live within your means, or risk insolvency trying to catch Celtic? I don’t think either scenario is a viable option. You can make your own mind up about the viability of the football club.
I’ve not mentioned the toilets on Saturday, which is no more than you expect, but I did expect better than the dummies (which have been shamefully exploited to represent something they were not). Could the Seville experience happen now? Nope. This should concern us all.
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DBBIA
May I be the first to say…
Modren ersatz sense of otherness which is only a mask for an underlying uniformity and sameness is rubbish.
Canman
I said some time ago that NI money would be flooding into the bigot dome, thing is, they can do what they like as nobody has the will or the balls to challenge them.
HH
…………………………
Auldheid
We had a wee respite at the weekend gone, it went down to the high 30s, it’s back to normal today, mid 40s, has been this for weeks now.
Yip they have to be getting cash from somewhere.
HH
I’ve just read a post on FB that Russell Atkinson has died.
“That’s a typical Nazi trick”
Captain Mainwaring
MM- I think we are sometimes too reluctant to condemn the unsavoury actions of our own supporters, while being only too happy to look for any opportunity to be offended by the behaviour of others.
War- not funny.
Lynching- not funny.
Not even an ErnestoLynching is funny.
My apologies. Rowan Atkinson. Very sad.
JF,
It’s a fcuking football game no a church service, and its sanctimonious claptrap like this that’s manna to the OBA supporters. You have now made it more important than the match itself, well done.
THEORIGINALSADIESBHOY on 12TH SEPTEMBER 2016 4:12 PM
Twitter suggesting it’s not true. Nothing on BBC.
My sincere apologies to everyone. After further investigation this appears to be a sick hoax.
Unbelievable.
Decent team, Hot Smoked, I would have nothing against it however I don’t see that streak in Brendan. I think there will be a few rested OK but Brendan will want to make absolutely certain of the win. I think there will be a fair share of our first choice players starting. We are on a roll, there are obviously 2 big games to play before Alloa so there are still things to happen that might influence the “Alloa” selection but the team you picked looks good enough for me.
TBB
Does being first give you the sense that you are different from others?
CANAMALAR IT LOOKS LIKE OCD OBSESSION:
I did nothing of the sort.
The game and the ghouls who did that are two separate issues entirely, and that you would tie them together and make one depend on the other … words fail me.
But there is something WRONG with you if that picture doesn’t make you sick.
Deeply, deeply, wrong.
JAMES FORREST on 12TH SEPTEMBER 2016 3:37 PM
http://thecelticblog.com/2016/09/blogs/a-disgraceful-stunt-and-a-repulsive-response/
________________________________________
James, like many others, I think this piece is a wee bit of an overreaction; I posted this earlier today and I think it applies to the article:
Regarding the hanging dolls and “This is War” banner, just a couple of points.
Firstly, it was in poor, poor taste and shouldn’t be condoned; that’s my starting point.
However, the faux/mock outrage at this being some jibe around suicide is wrong; suicide victims don’t tend to have their hands tied behind their back, so we can rule that one out; we can also rule out the notion that it was some thinly veiled reference to the tragic suicide of Kris Boyd’s brother.
My interpretation was that it was a feeble allusion to the death of Rangers Football Club in 2012, nothing more.
Before I moved to the North Curve this season, I had seats just round from the wee singing crew who I assume (rightly or wrongly) pulled this stunt; they are, in their own way, trying to emulate/outdo the Green Brigade and don’t seem to have the same level of ingenuity, wit or humour to pull it off.
So we can, IMHO, safely move on. It was crass, stupid, ill-advised, tasteless and any other number of adjectives you want to throw at it. It wasn’t as offensive as the paedophile banner displayed at Hampden last season or the image of the entire Rangers playing squad and management team consorting with UVF supporting musicians last week.
AS BMCUWP said earlier, we’ve all done stupid things in the past; hopefully they learn from it and we don’t see the same bawbaggery again!
FAC the Act
KTF
TOSB, What are you saying is a Hoax?,
WeeMinger
The post said that he committed suicide. There are some really sick people in the world. So glad it’s untrue.
Pabloh.
Well said that man! And I have Carly Simon to thank for the moniker.
HH
The sex dolls are far too attractive to be mistaken for Huns. Your arguments are invalid.
DBBIA
Or in other words, ‘Thoughts on the relationships between crash test dummies and inflatable rubber dolls’. No?
Tony..,
We often have fall outs but still going strong, sorry to disappoint.
I see your handler is getting ready to resign and already handed over his power to his Hun counterpart, what was it, they are working in the back ground and know what they are doing ?
Meanwhile the SFA hierarchy is back to normal, Huns running the show because your master knows his place.
Corkcelt
Well, I`ll be at the Alloa gam and if Brendan doesn`t field my selection I am off !
Have you discovered yet if you are going to make it over for a CL game?
JJ
The inventor of the chickpea dip only achieved fame posthumously.
cameron’s stepping down as an mp – what a bougherra ?
Corkcelt
The `hoax ` referred to was that Rowan Atkinson had died. He hasn`t.
Cheerio for now.
JJ
VFR800A8:
I wholly respect your opinion mate, and you’ve argued the point well.
I despair at this stuff, I really do, and that was the very last subject I wanted to be writing about today, but I would have done it anyway, without the media reaction.
I have no doubt that the “suicide” angle is nothing more than an evil attempt to make this look far worse than it actually was. But that’s not much of a defence, really, is it? Not when it looks appalling no matter which justification you attempt to use.
How long does it take someone to try and imagine the visual image of that? To actually take a step outside your own wee bubble and consider how it might look to other people? Whatever the reason, the rationale, the mentality behind it, to have paid NO heed at all to how others might view it … and I’m not talking about the media or the other lot, not at all, some of whom will twist anything.
This has disgusted our own supporters, many, many thousands of them. It’s damaged, perhaps fatally, a campaign to repeal OBAF. it’s cast a negative light on – although not, as some here appear to believe, overshadowed – a day which should have been about what happened on the park.
And my anger is partly – but not wholly; that image makes my skin crawl – about that, the sheer utter ignorance it requires not to have foreseen these things, or simply not to care.
I’m just scunnered by it man, absolutely scunnered.
Could someone enlighten me as to what the banner `They hung out the flag of war` meant? Genuine question
Sex dolls have morphed in a giant inflatable squirrel:)
Poor taste indeed, however, hardly crime of the century.
The Huns ripping off 180 million or thereabouts,…now that is a crime.
HH
Billybear
a) The Foggy Dew
‘Twas down the glen one Easter morn
To a city fair rode I
When Ireland’s lines of marching men
In squadrons passed me by
No pipe did hum and no battle drum
Was sounded straight and true
But the Angelus bell o’er the Liffey’s swell
Rang out in the foggy dew
Right proudly high over Dublin town
They hung out the flag of war
‘Twas better to die ‘neath an Irish sky
Than at Suvla or Sud-el-bar
And from the plains of Royal Meath
Strong men came hurrying through
While Britannia’s sons with their long-range guns
Sailed in from the foggy dew
‘Twas England bade our wild geese go
That small nations might be free
Their lonely graves are by Suvla’s waves
Or the fringe of the great North Sea
But had they died by Pearse’s side
Or fought with Valera true
Their graves we’d would keep where the Fenians sleep
‘Neath the hills of the foggy dew
The bravest fell, and the solemn bell
Rang mournfully and clear
For those who died that Easter tide
In the springing of the year
And the world did gaze in deep amaze
At those fearless men and true
Who bore the fight that freedom’s light
Might shine through the foggy dew
THE GREEN MAN SAYS SACK THE BOARD
David Murray should have gone in to the rubber doll business with money he robbed:))
He’d be minted noo:))
Gorralaughsometimes:))
AS BMCUWP said earlier, we’ve all done stupid things in the past; hopefully they learn from it and we don’t see the same bawbaggery again!
FAC the Act
KTF
Aye that’s fine if it’s yourself that’s copping the payment for it, but it drags us into it? Then that’s a different story.
Starry Plough
Minty should be in court, in handcuffs.
If you or i tried a stunt like the Huns….They would have chained us to Devil’s Island for 30 years, withoot any wi-fi, can you imagine:)
HH
THEORIGINALSADIESBHOY on 12TH SEPTEMBER 2016 4:15 PM
‘My sincere apologies to everyone. After further investigation this appears to be a sick hoax.’
###
Yeah, but what about Russel Atkinson, who appears to be one of Scunthorpe’s leading secondhand car dealers?
Is he OK?
CANAMALAR IT LOOKS LIKE OCD OBSESSION on 12TH SEPTEMBER 2016 4:18 PM
Tony..,
We often have fall outs but still going
That’s nice, only saying what’s on the street, true? Who knows, the rest of your post?
BILLYBEAR on 12TH SEPTEMBER 2016 4:25 PM
Could someone enlighten me as to what the banner `They hung out the flag of war` meant? Genuine question
##
It’s a Catholic thing.
Lucky Cody
Interesting note at 3.28
Get yourself a wee biz trip to Sud France – am in Biarritz/Bordeaux for next two weeks…come on down!
Bumped into your lads after a recent Wed night game ….,what top fellas they are Sir!!
Saw McGill few weeks back on top form….
Will get in touch when back in the Weej and have very interesting news for you….
Do Sevco not have to satisfy the SFA that they are a going concern and able to fulfill their fixtures this season? Reading a lot of what’s been said in various articles over the past few weeks, the general opinion is that they will need further loans or other means of income to see the season out. Is this not something the SFA should be all over? Seeking assurances/answers as to how they are going to achieve this?
JF,
Here’s the point, few will remember your match write up, more and most likely there is a chance that your sanctimonious laptop will be referenced in the meeja to support their claims about ones as bad as the other and the OBA is needed.
Because a couple of clowns made an error of judgement on what they thought might be funny, as for your mock pity poke it I don’t need self righteous hypocrites Attacking me in pretence of concent for my well being.
THE GREEN MAN SAYS SACK THE BOARD
I’ve been on Devils Island mate no too bad in the winter…
Imagine you walk round the island and you see another man, you think ya beauty and then as ye get closer you see it’s, it’s, it’s Derek Johnstone:))
HH
Concern even