Outrageous results, and a 4-5 win is an outrageous result, could be seen as reason for encouragement by future opponents, but Barcelona played the majority of the game against Deportivo with 10 men, scored an own goal, conceded from a penalty and their keeper made a mistake for another, yet they still scored five goals and won the game.
That is formidable form.
On Tuesday evening Celtic face one of the greatest teams in history but there is reason for confidence. We have been to the Camp Nou three times in the last decade, a 0-0 draw in 2004 was enough to eliminate the Catalans from Europe. Later in 2004 we recorded our only away point in the Champions League, prior to beating Spartak Moscow in the last game, and we lost there to a single goal four years later.
Each Barcelona side was vastly more talented but they found each Celtic team a handful.
Any team which takes a point or more from Barca this season will have to man the barricades for long stretches of each game, will have to show enormous concentration and discipline, and take whatever luck is going. If Celtic do this, they will have one inherent advantage over the home team on Tuesday.
There will be changes in the starting 11 for both teams but a cursory look at yesterday’s starting line ups is educational. Eight out of Barca’s 10 outfield players were under six foot, six of them (Jordi Alba, Iniesta, Mascherano, Messi, Montoya and Villa) three or four inches below. Celtic’s smallest player, Gary Hooper, is only two inches below.
Seven Celts were six foot or higher. Ambrose, Wilson and Mulgrew are all 6’3”, taller than anyone in the Barca team, while non-starters, Lustig and Samaras, are 6’3” and 6’4” respectively. Celtic’s outfield players were, on average, more than three inches taller than their Barcelona counterparts.
Even the Barcelona keeper, Valdes, at 6’0”, is a bit on the short side, seven inches below Fraser Forster.
Height doesn’t make you a better player, or collectively, a better team, but it does instil an enormous advantage at set pieces. Celtic must defend when necessary but any free kick inside the Barcelona half is an opportunity to drop a ball onto an elevated Celtic head inside the box.
Play to your strengths, Celtic. Keep strategy simple, and your probability of taking something on Tuesday will increase significantly. You have everything to play for.
Fancy writing an article for the ever-popular CQN Magazine or maybe advertising therein? If so get in touch, celticquicknews@gmail.com.
Click here to read the fabulous CQN Magazine for free, or strain your eyes squinting below. You can also buy a hard copy of the magazine here from Magcloud.
[calameo code=000390171a36dad35d58c lang=en page=44 hidelinks=1 width=100% height=500]
514 Comments- Pages:
- «
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- ...
- 14
- »
SOAL
I agree.
thanks for the concern xx
Hail Hail
If you want to back Moonbeams Mad bet then you can get 100/1 at betfair. Only condition is that half of your winnings have to be spent at the Race & Auction night on the 17th November.
35/1 now on offer for any Celtic victory over 90 mins. Was 41/1 yesterday. I managed to get 37/1 just in the off chance.
HH
CRC
I have a good feeling about Tuesday……. Barca 1 Celtic 2
Wet in Barcelona today and tomorrow but forecast is for warm and sunny on Tuesday.
boozer for those in the algarve
http://mullens-lagos.com/
Celticbhoy-wdh
If you saw what they gave you as tapas in the bars here, anything with a taste is good food.
Maybe cos it’s free, I don’t know, but even their menus are as bland as anything, but just a hour down the road in Granada, the food is night and day compared to here.
I’m sure BT and Oldtim will keep me fed and watered to an ample sufficiency :>)))
TET
I suspect you’ll be more “watered” than fed! Can’t recall ever seeing oldtim eating.
THE EXILED TIM
16:49 on 21 October, 2012
whitedoghunch
I will, looking forward to some decent food, it’s really bland down here, no sence of adventure.
*****
Don’t let your wife read that post.
I’m sure she has other home making skills that compensate for her cooking ability! :>)
That was a penalty for QPR…….
ElDiegoBhoy
I saw him eating once, washed down with copious amounts of alcohol mind you :>)
………………………………………………..
ttt
Aye, if she read it she might no be best pleased…..
She is a wonderfull cook btw, makes the best curry I have ever tasted.
EDB
he eats the cucumber from his Hendricks
TET
I’m decidedly concerned for your welfare if the suggestion is BT will be your nutritional advisor.
Zero. Nil. None. Nada – just a variation on the correct answer to the question below.
How many games have Sevco sold out at home this season?
It would be easy to think the answer was different. Dirt-cheap prices in the fourth-tier of Scottish football, but still no full houses at Ibrox.
TET
l always wanted to go to Granada …now you have given me one more reason to go.
steinreignedsupreme
And that’s with thousands of free tickets handed out at every home game
Yet more 90mins of dross from the EPL.This time at QPR/Everton
Che
I told ot last night to take care of bt ……
Totally obscene.
eBay pays £1.2m in tax on sales of £800m.
Starbucks pay around £.5m per year.
Obscene.
There’s a tremendous post on TSFM at 16:46 from Humble Pie.
Well worth a read if anyone can copy it over.
I think their is some dreadful character assassination going on in here.
OldTim and BT are not here to defend themselves. I have it on good authority that they are on a tour of Gaudis Sagrada Familia.
EDB
What is TSFM?
MWD
Forster
Matthews, Efe, Wilson, Izzy
Forrest, Ledley, Victor, Brown, Sammy
Hooper
Almost my team Dubaibhoy – but I’d play Mikael Lustig instead of Adam Matthews. More experienced at this level and more of a goal threat – SHOULD we get the chances!
MWD
The Scottish Football Monitor which began when RTC hung up his/her pen.
Barrowbhoy
15:23 on
21 October, 2012
exiled_bhoy
Where do you live in Denmark ?
————————————————-
Sorry for late reply, a town called Ringsted, about 30 mins from Copenhagen. Moved away from CPH a few years ago, so now I’m close enough for a good night out and far away enough to stop me getting into bother ;-)))))
Jinky
With OT BT and TET you can rest assured their main concern will be to ensure they individually get the required 5 a day.
Probably eat something as well.
Getting to stadium – Metro Green Line 3 from Catalunya station (at main square top of Las Ramblas) to Maria Cristina (Camp Nou)
LuckyTims CSC
EDB
Cheers. I’ve never had a look on there. Is it any good in comparison to RTC?
MWD
theweegreenman
17:55 on
21 October, 2012
Tax is paid on “taxable profits” not “sales”.
HH
CRC
EDB
I dont expect any revelations above Sir David Murray to be revealed until after the independence referendum possibly the next election.
He will be given a hard time until then and then he will be let off the hook as long as he promises to keep his mouth shut.
When the Scottish people and even some of the peepul see what Scotland is really about….. They wont vote for it.
I fully expect the veil never to be lifted and I reckon Humble Pie is extremely naieve if he thinks that it ever will be.
HH
MWD
It is of all clubs in Scotland good. New person at the helm but many of the same posters as under RTC.
Lots of great stuff to be found there that we don’t see here hence me asking for that particular post to be copied over.
The site continues to try to be open to supporters of all clubs but one record breaking club tends to take a hammering on a regular basis from all sides:o)
Highlights from yesterday on the BBC website. Looks a 50-50 game!
MWD
Wow. I didn’t type the first part of that post!
Just for EDB from TSFM
Apocalypse – The End of History
As the inevitable death of the once mighty Rangers Football Club, founded in 1872, draws ever closer with the announcement of the end of the administration process, their impending liquidation and the imminent verdict of the FTTT (more commonly referred to as the Big Tax Case), what are the likely consequences and impacts of these events on the history of Rangers, the key ‘players’ and of Scottish football as a whole?
History teaches us that, as with the collapse of every previous endeavour towards imperialism, Rangers, in their ruinous and misconceived desire for absolute supremacy over their rivals, simply overreached themselves while simultaneously failing to tend to their essential resources closer to home. Much like the primeval serpent ‘Ouroboros’ they all, each and every one, bit off more than they could comfortably chew until eventually they wound up by eating themselves. In the end, in the manner of all the preceding empire builders, Rangers went out, not with a bang but with a whimper ,like Attila the Hun on his wedding night.
During the lead up to the SFL vote on whether Sevco’s new team (yet to be called The Rangers FC Ltd) should be allowed to join the Scottish Football League and in which division, Stewart Regan (SFA) and Neil Doncaster (SPL) were accused of ‘focusing on and exaggerating the possibility of Armageddon’ (a term first mooted by our old friends Jabba and his jabworths) if the new club was not granted a place in the top tier of the SFL. Many took this to be no more than a metaphorical idiom pertaining to purely financial considerations, however Mr Regan’s prophesies of potential ‘public disorder’ and ‘civil unrest’ soon put that notion to bed. Perhaps ‘Apocalypse’ would have been a better word to use.
Apocalypse is one of those words which is almost always universally misinterpreted. One would be forgiven for thinking that the word meant something akin to ‘disaster’ or ‘catastrophe’ or, in the extreme ‘ the end of the world’. ‘Judgment Day’ would probably be a more accurate definition though perhaps not for the reasons imagined. Apocalypse, literally translated from the Greek actually means ‘a lifting of the veil’ and refers to an uncovering or revelation of something hidden.
The term ‘lifting the veil’ has also entered modern parlance specifically in relation to companies otherwise known as corporations. One of the main purposes of incorporation is to separate an individual from the legal liability of a company. This ‘veil of incorporation’ ensures that a company remains a separate legal entity from its directors and shareholders, thus protecting the personal assets of owners and investors from potential lawsuits should it all go horribly wrong.
Lifting the corporate veil is a legal decision to treat the rights or duties of a corporation as the rights or liabilities of its directors and shareholders. Ordinarily a corporation is treated as a separate legal ‘person’, which is solely responsible for the debts it incurs and the sole beneficiary of the credit it is owed. However, in very few cases, a court may decide to look beyond this legal fiction to the reality of the situation. In practice, the only true “veil lifting” may take place when a company is believed to have been set up for fraudulent purposes, or established in order to avoid any existing obligations.
It is no accident that HMRC’s (the largest of the former Rangers’ unsecured creditors, potentially owed a colossal £95M) preferred liquidator in this case is BDO. Malcolm Cohen of BDO, who has been appointed to head up the Liquidation Team, is an man of renown, a specialist in what is known as ‘contentious insolvency’. Contentious Insolvency experts specialise in dealing with high profile, criminal and controversial insolvencies involving fraud, litigation and international asset tracing.
These cases can typically involve obtaining initial freezing injunctions in the case of suspected fraud, investigation of contractual claims and negligence and, by using the extensive powers provided by the insolvency legislation, to pursue misfeasance, preference and undervalued transaction claims.
In the context of history, BDO will play the role of the Scottish equivalent of the Ancient Egyptian jackal-headed god Anubis who, according to the Book of the Dead, was responsible for weighing the, as yet, undead’s heart against the feather of Ma’at (truth, order and justice). If it was heavy with the weight of wrongdoings, the scales would sink and the heart would be grabbed and devoured by a terrifying beast that sat ready and waiting by the scales. That beast was named Ammut, “the gobbler”, a composite animal with the head of a crocodile, the front legs and body of lion or leopard, and the back legs of a hippopotamus (a sort of reverse Jabba, if you will).
As previous owner (with a reported 92% stake) and chairman of the club/company for all of 23 years, the ‘revelations’ (from Mark Daly’s BBC documentary ‘The Men Who Sold The Jerseys’) that Sir David Murray appears to have taken more money out of Rangers than he ever invested, that he acquired knowingly unsustainable levels of debt in the club’s name (albeit with the likely connivance of Gavin Masterson and his minions at BoS) and that he was responsible for implementing those devastating offshore tax avoidance vehicles known as the Murray Group Management Ltd Remuneration Trust and the Rangers Employee Benefit Trust before subsequently selling the club for a solitary ‘knicker’, should, one would expect, make him the first port of call for the team.
However, those insatiable devourers of the undead will certainly not stop there.
The Companies Act 2006 codifies the duties of company directors into a statutory statement of seven general duties, as follows:
1) Duty to act within your powers as a company director
2) Duty to promote the success of your company
3) Duty to exercise independent judgement
4) Duty to exercise reasonable care, skill and diligence
5) Duty to avoid conflicts of interest
6. Duty not to accept benefits from third parties
7) Duty to declare interest in proposed transaction or arrangement with the company
By allowing an acknowledged covetous egomaniac with, in my humble opinion, borderline Narcissistic Personality Disorder (or a control freak, if you like) free reign to make these calamitous decisions without the requisite due diligence nor recourse to any rules or conventions, ALL former directors of Rangers FC will be held eminently culpable of abrogating their responsibilities, not only to the club and its shareholders but, more significantly, to their tax-paying fans. Unfortunately, for some of the directors less well-versed in company law, the infantile defence of “never knowing nothing about nothing” or ‘a big boy done it then ran away’ will not be deemed legitimate justification nor mitigation for their actions (or inaction, as the case may be).
And yet, the voracious hounds of hell won’t stop there either.
Craig ‘Casey Jones’ Whyte, whilst certainly being guilty of being an out and out chancer (and, evidently, a googly-eyed fud) was right in one respect at least. He was, after all, only the driver of the Rangers train wreck, parachuted in at the last minute as the wayward carriages sped towards the Duat with no means of applying the brakes. Within months of his takeover, the journey of the irresistible force of history toward the immoveable object of liquidation, which had, until that point, been merely unavoidable, became unstoppable. Due, in no small part, to Ally McCoist’s apparent inexperience or ineptitude as a football manager, the steam train accelerated exponentially towards the terminus .
Mr Whyte’s disastrous decision to stop paying statutory PAYE and NI contributions in favour of inflated wages and operating costs added yet another large shovelful of coke into the locomotive’s infernal engine before the vehicle inevitably reached its final destination. The BDO ‘Crash Investigation Team’ will, no doubt, undertake a deep forensic examination of this ‘accident’ working out the initial trajectory, final speed on impact etc. before turning their investigative might towards uncovering the Cassius maxim ‘Cui Bono ?’ or ‘To whose benefit ?’. Motive, in other words, or perhaps more appropriately ‘loco’ motive, given the insanity involved in setting the train on its perilous path to oblivion.
With the unrelenting scrutiny of Thoth, the ibis-headed god and great scribe of Kemet, BDO will meticulously record their judgment before heeding the command of Anubis to ‘dig yet deeper’.
The administrators of Rangers, representatives of the world renowned Duff and Phelps Corporation, were recommended for the job by Mr Whyte himself, although finally appointed by the Court of Session. By appearing not to know the difference between a club/company and a business these high-priced agents of fiscal rectitude managed to orchestrate the utter unattainability of any CVA which, as a consequence, disenfranchised Rangers’ many creditors to the tune of tens of millions of pounds. (Gratuitous Alienation anyone ?)
Many hundreds of thousands of quid later, as appears to have been planned, they eventually sold the mangled assets of the old Rangers tank engine for a mere pittance. That these same assets now appear to have risen in value by over 1000% in little more than 5 months. Against a backdrop of economic stagnation and falling property values, this defies both logic and belief. The well publicised potential conflict of interest of these agents and one of their colleagues, in their previous incarnation as MCR (specifically one Mr David Grier) was deemed so serious that they were invited by a High Court judge to provide documentation to prove their lack of complicity. This aspect of this sorry chronicle will, no doubt, also warrant further reasoned analysis and weighing of hearts.
By using some cowboy-mechanics or some other, as yet undetermined, skullduggery, Sevco’s new club (apparently allowed to call itself The Rangers) managed to acquire the distorted and corrupted engine parts of the Rangers wreckage and hastily screwed the rusted bits together, added a lick of paint and employed a Yorkshire used-car salesman to sell this ‘half-cut’ to the brand-loyal supporters and compliant football authorities. Make no mistake about it, as Ally or Walter might say, this jalopy is not Rangers, this is a golem, an animated anthropomorphic being, created entirely from inanimate matter otherwise known as a zombie.
Whilst D&P may claim that Sevco bought the ‘history’ of the old club along with the assets, as per their report to creditors, as we all should know by now, ‘history is written by the victors over the vanquished’. The SFA and the SPL, as the governing bodies who awarded those titles, have a solemn duty to uphold the integrity of their competitions. If, as I strongly suspect, Rangers are found to have fielded a large number of ineligible players in these same competitions, these ruling bodies, as per the rules of the game (3-0 defeat applied to any games where a ‘single’ player was improperly registered) will be obligated to strike these victories from their record books. However, as we have seen, both of these organisations have so far spectacularly failed to apply their rules in relation to Rangers and it’s parasitic offspring The Rangers. That is all about to change, as the all-seeing eye of Horus fixes his gaze towards the lofty towers of Hampden.
Sure, no-one is going to or be able to turn up at any former players or managers doors and attempt to forcibly remove their ‘hard-earned’ trinkets from their cold, dead hands, nor is it possible (barring a full frontal lobotomy) to surgically extract the memories of the players and fans apparent success, but the gobbler does not hold with such earthly convention. He is Ammut – Great of Death, Eater of Hearts, The Devourer. Titles will be consumed and history will be changed forever.
At this stage, it looks likely that Charles Green’s Sevco and Ross Bryan’s Ticketus will be shown to be mere vignettes in this ‘Book of the Undead’, little more than Special Purpose Investment Vehicles (or spivs for short), corporate entities designed purely to generate profits for unscrupulous investors. Many investors in these spivs will undoubtedly have lost significant amounts of money during this fiasco yet some more now seek new profits by using their charismatic frontmen to encourage the incorrigible, the gullible and the wilfully ignorant to invest in their shiny new fiction. It may well be immoral but that’s just business, however, come their ‘day of reckoning’ they will doubtless be the subject of future investigation(s) and their heavy hearts too will be evaluated against the weightless plume of Ma’at.
The bad news is that this journey into the afterlife will not be a short one. Unpicking the tangled web of deceit is a time-consuming process. In the end though, the veil will be lifted and that which had been hidden will be uncovered. Links will be established, corruption will be unearthed and treachery will be revealed. All that will be left is an almighty indelible stain on the history and character of this once proud club and those responsible for its eventual demise. The Scottish football authorities will be exposed to the disinfectant of sunlight, heads will roll and the demons will be cast out by righteous men.
As Jim Morrison sang in Roadhouse Blues, ‘the future’s uncertain and the end is always near’. I anticipate a rough ride but I, for one am looking forward to it. After all, one man’s Armageddon is another man’s Apocalypse.
Che
I might just fill up with a hearty meal afore I go :>)
……………………………………..
Celticbhoy
Beautifull city.
Coming into the orange season soon, litter in Granada is streets strewn with oranges.
Took daughter and weans there last week, had a meal near to the Alhambra, just a normal bar, 3 x 3 course meals and something for the weans, a bottle of wine, 2 beers 4 cokes, 28 euros.
The food was sublime, the desert was fried milk, it was to die for.
Eldiagobhoy
Is this the one…..
Those who like to read the techno-thrillers of Tom Clancy will remember well the scene in The Sum of all Fears, when the nuclear bomb explodes in Denver, outside the stadium where the Super Bowl is being played. Clancy handles the moment in two very distinct chapters. The second is a vivid and frightening examination of the explosion’s terrible effects as they are felt, firstly in Denver and then experienced around the world.
Before that, he devotes an entire chapter to the mechanics of the explosion itself. Chapters like this are either what attract readers to Clancy in the first place or turn them off entirely. It is technical, it is complex, and the layman who reads it and fully understands it is indeed a massive geek. Of all the times he has loaded the reader with technical detail, this is probably when he risked most in terms of keeping you interested in the story. Yet it works. The chapter is not long, but nor is it short. And the events in it span not seconds but fractions of a second
It was in that chapter I first learned the term “shake”, so named for the old aphorism “a shake of a lamb’s tail”. A “shake” is a term used in nuclear physics. It represents ten nanoseconds. To grasp fully the size of that, consider that there are a billion nanoseconds in a second. The chemical process involved in a nuclear detonation involves a number of “shakes”, with a chain reaction usually completed in 50.
Clancy’s decision to devote an entire chapter of the book to a few nanoseconds came back to me over and over again during the weeks and months of the Rangers crisis. It became clear to me that, drawn out though the events following administration were, what we were seeing was not the effect of the explosion but the explosion itself. Those months were our nanoseconds. Every day, every revelation, every moment we thought was a separate event, was merely a peek inside the bomb case, at the chemical process of a chain reaction.
I would say the chain reaction was completed on the day HMRC announced they were refusing the CVA proposal. That was the detonation. It’s only now we’re witnessing the explosion, and its effects, and in my view we are still a long way from the end of that process. We have had the initial double flash thermal pulse and we’ve seen some EMP effects, but the real damage is still to come. The shock wave and the fireball have yet to spread, and their cumulative effects could yet annihilate Ibrox and extend as far as Hampden.
Am I making claims of “financial Armageddon”? No, I’m not. I never believed the collapse of Rangers would devastate Scottish football. I thought then, and now, that it was scaremongering nonsense to even suggest it. It didn’t matter to me whether the authorities were spreading those stories because of a deep-seated love of the Ibrox club, or because they had bonuses at stake, or out of their own internal, personal weaknesses. Those stories were inconsistent, based on worst case scenarios which were never likely to materialise, and insulting. The notion that the game in this country amounts to no more than one or two teams is offensive.
I love football. I always have. I’m a Celtic supporter, but my interests in the game extend far beyond my own club. At its best, football is a tremendous unifier of people, from those wonderful stories about Christmas Day in the trenches of World War I to the matches organised every year between Palestinian and Israeli children. The game has the potential for tremendous good. I am proud that my own club’s supporters have honoured the dead of Hillsborough and Ibrox. I am proud they unfurled a banner to the Benfica player Miklos Feher, and invaded Seville and showed that city how to party. I am proud of every moment when the supporters of a club applauded an injured player, or staged a silence to honour an official or competitor at another team. Although there are some who would use this sport in a divisive way, who would hijack it for their own ends, I believe this game can still be an inspiration, and find the best in all of us.
I think what happened during this summer, as the fans of every club in the land made their voices heard, was one of the greatest moments in Scottish football’s recent history. I believe it will have an impact far beyond one season. I think it was special.
My concern, as I’ve said, is that the appalling effects of the detonation at Ibrox are still to be fully realised. I am worried about the impact they could yet have on all of us.
Let me be quite specific about the two things that worry me most. They are to do with the decision to grant Sevco/Rangers a license to play in the Scottish Football League this year.
First, I believe the license was granted without sufficient guarantees being given by Charles Green and others that they would respect the decisions taken by the independent judiciary panel of the SPL in relation to EBTs, and secondly, I am concerned that not enough is known about Green and his financial backers, or plans for Rangers, for the authorities to be satisfied that the club is in good financial health. I don’t believe for one second anyone can allay my fears in these two areas. It is obvious to all that due diligence has not been done, and the entire situation at Rangers/Sevco is still shrouded in doubt, and that anything may yet happen.
The independent panel investigating dual contracts is going to have to make the most momentous decision in the history of the game in the UK. I do not believe what Rangers are accused of has any precedent. We are talking about a decade or more in which the results of every single match might be in doubt. Every single game. The rules were not written to envision such an appalling breach of faith. It would seem almost inevitable that stripping of titles will be the smallest of Charles Green and Ally McCoist’s concerns if this verdict goes against them.
Frankly, I don’t see an alternative to suspending Rangers membership of football in this country for at least two years, with points deductions and monetary fines to follow when the suspension period is done. This is not harsh; in fact it falls far short of the maximum penalty, which is expulsion from the game altogether, and as it is the authorities are going to have to do a damned good job of setting out the reasons why that ultimate sanction is not applied. It will not be enough to say it would damage the game in Scotland to wipe the club away. To allow a decade of malfeasance to pass without that ultimate sanction would create the perception that Rangers is above the law, and I cannot think of anything that would do the game more harm than for any club to be considered too big, or too important, to be subject to the regulations.
With their money on the table, I don’t see any way Charles Green and his cohorts will accept the judgement of the independent panel if it has an impact on their plans to recoup their investments. With the way he’s rallied the Rangers fans behind him recently, by essentially talking about a conspiracy against them, I don’t see how he convinces them to accept sanctions, even if he personally was inclined to do so. He has painted himself into a corner where now, if he wants his money at all, he has to fight, and keep on fighting. Without the written guarantee that the club would accept whatever the panel decides, without recourse to the law, I will be shocked if this matter doesn’t end up in the courts somewhere down the line, because I don’t think for one second he signed up to that particular demand.
I think the SFA backed down on this, the most fundamental matter of them all.
Which isn’t to say the due diligence matter isn’t worrying, because, of course, it is. Again, no-one is going to convince me that the SFA has conducted proper due diligence on Charles Green and his backers. No-one will convince me they are satisfied that this club is in safe hands, and that the game in this country will not be rocked by a further implosion at Ibrox. They failed to properly investigate Craig Whyte, because of lax regulations requiring disclosure from the club itself, regulations which are just a joke, but they can be forgiven for that as the press was talking sheer nonsense about him having billions at his disposal, and a lot of people (but not everyone!) were either convinced or wanted to be convinced by him.
To have witnessed what Whyte did, to have witnessed the Duff & Phelps “process” of finding a buyer, and having Green essentially emerge from nowhere, with a hundred unanswered questions as to his background and financing, for the SFA to have given this guy the go ahead, only for it to blow up in their faces later, would annihilate the credibility of the governing body and necessitate resignations at every level. There would be no hiding place.
At an early stage in the Rangers crisis, a couple of people told me they thought the club would not play football for at least a year. I told them of all the possible scenarios that was the most unlikely, because I honestly could see no way back for them once they had gone. There is no precedent I am aware of, anywhere, for a football club taking a “year out” only to return. Certainly, in the context of the Scottish game I didn’t see how it could be done without creating one almighty shambles, or by bending the rules until the elastic snapped.
Yet I’ve since become convinced that it was the correct course of action. The club calling itself Rangers FC is still in a state of flux. The issues still surrounding it are enormous and potentially devastating. There are any number of ways in which the entire edifice could utterly collapse. The liquidators and HMRC could yet challenge the takeover, or the coming share issue. Craig Whyte may yet emerge and take a claim to the courts. The share issue itself could be an utter failure, leaving the club unable to meet annual running costs. All of this, even without the vast effects of the EBT case, which has the potential to wash the whole club away.
Had Rangers been out of the game for a year, these issues could have been properly explored, dealt with and put behind them, and the game as whole.
Of course, it’s just possible that the worst is over. It’s possible that this particular nuclear detonation, like the one is The Sum of All Fears, is an enormous “fizzle”, that the appalling destruction unleashed will not be on the thermonuclear level which could obliterate our hopes of a fresh start, of forward motion for the whole game. It might be that everything at Ibrox is hunky-dory, that this, all I’ve written, is the product of a febrile imagination, on the same level as the financial Armageddon nonsense we spent the summer hearing about.
It may well be, but only if the people who’ve been right all along have suddenly gotten it wrong. The evidence all points to something big, and bad, coming this way.
The smart folks will be hunkering down in their shelters for a while yet.
James is a co-editor of the Famous Tartan Army Magazine, latest issue out 17th October (digital, and free), featuring women’s football
crc
Many thanks.
Hi everyone!
Just pouncing on a rare opportunity to catch up on CQN!
I brought the laptop into Oscar’s room so he could skype his granny and aunties back home.
He’s now getting stuck into ANOTHER cheeseburger with extra cheese!!! Great to see him enjoying his food again.
As im sure most of you know things looked pretty grim for him last week. The doctors prepared us for the worst, thinking he might not make it through the night.
Thankfully the experimental machine/procedure they used on him (which had only been done once before apparently) worked and his collapsed lung reinflated and he hasnt looked back!
Thank you all for your kind messages of support on the blog, the tweets, and all the prayers and positive energy directed his way. Im not a religious person but im very thankful he’s still with us, whatever the reason. The Childrens Hospital of Philidelphia (CHOP) is one of the best childrens hospitals in the world, and although all the treatment he has received out here has probably sucked his fund dry, it is money well spent as we dont think he would still be here if this had happened at home.
So another thank you to everyone who has donated to Oscar’s appeal over the last few months- every penny of it has contributed to saving his life out here!!
It has been a rollercoaster of a time and we’re just looking forward to getting him home now.
MWD, i like your confidence. I might put a small bet on Celtic myself. You never know what can happen!! Looking forward to the game. Will probably be watching it at the local CSC out here in Philly- an Irish bar called Fado’s.
I also hope to make race night now that we’re probably going to be at home. Keep me a ticket Marc!! ;-)
Hail Hail!
Knoxy & Oscar
eldiegobhoy
18:23 on
21 October, 2012
LOL…….HOPE YOU ENJOY MINE TOO….!!!
Ten Men Won The League 17:53 on 21 October, 2012
English football stinks the place out. I really have trouble understanding what all the fuss is about.
I avoid it as much as possible. When a product has to be hyped to the extent the Premier League is then it clearly has flaws.