There are so many plot lines in the epic story that Scottish football has become it’s easy to lose track, especially when the chief executive of the SPL insists that he still doesn’t know if Rangers have a case to answer in connection with improperly registered football players – a completely untenable position on week 11 of the inquiry.
He should know. If he doesn’t, he should resign and allow someone else to pick up the baton.
While this drama has dominated headlines the important storyline happened off-stage. 11 days ago the Blue Knights consortium, fully aware of how time-critical events were, said their accountants needed to be place at 9am on Saturday 12 May for Rangers to achieve a CVA. Even more importantly, they also said that a Newco would not work.
If the Blue Knights men were in place on 12 May creditors could have voted on a CVA this time next week. As it is, creditors still have nothing to vote on, the prospective buyer has not been able to put a deal to them.
Green’s failure to produce an offer since being appointed nine days ago, alongside missing his own deadline to announce a creditor’s meeting on 6 June, are the most important acts in this month’s play, so far. He has to find funders who are able to see a return on investment which Paul Murray and Brian Kennedy tell us does not exist. It’s worth noting that both of these men will be far closer to the financial realities of running Rangers than anyone Green will find in Bangalore.
Unless a consortium can be pulled together that will offer money for the assets of Rangers FC, the company will expire next week when it runs out of money. No CVA, no Newco, no matter what Neil Doncaster does.
Don’t be surprised if Mr Green walks away soon.
You can buy a hard copy of the new issue of CQN Magazine via Magcloud here.
The graphic below is just for a flick through, to read the magazine go here to it’s dedicated site.
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Bobby
We all wait and see.
The focus from is deliberately placed on Rangers going bust not newclub. That´s about to happen and that´s without the FTT or Ticketus.
HAil HAil
ASonOfDan on 22 May, 2012 at 15:19 said:
scotlands shame
Your post sums up what every Celtic supporter I know feels. It only seems to be on-line that you get the bhoycott Celtic mob, who probably dont go to games anyway.
I think you are absolutely correct.
I still don’t get the “rangers cheat so let’s punish” Celtic mentality, weird, and sinister.
Awe_Naw..,
its the same strategy as ever, get the support panicing,
uptake better than lastyear, ha ha ha, remind me was last year a record year :o)
People are easily coaxed, even at the thought of not getting the seat they’ve sat in for years, its enough to spook them into changing their mind.
Remember there’s also the threat of cancelling which can be used if they are not hapy with the boards response.
from is = from us
Just got a reply from The Scottish Government after I complained about The 1st Meenster sticking his beak into football and HMRC affairs. I’m at work so can’t post my original e-mail. Anyhoo here it is –
Dear Correspondent
Thank you for your correspondence to Scottish Ministers about statements made on
developments at Rangers Football Club. I have been asked to reply.
The Scottish Government fully recognise that it is vital that both individuals and organisations
pay their taxes in a timely manner as taxation is essential to the economic and social
development of Scotland. I would like to reassure you that any comments made by members
of this Government have always stressed the fact that we expect Rangers FC, or any other
football club or business for that matter, to meet its obligations to the taxpayer. We have
also recognised the importance of an agreement being reached between the club and HM
Revenue & Customs which ensures that tax liabilities and debts are met.
Duff and Phelps are the appointed administrators and we want to see an outcome in the best
interests of the staff at Rangers, their supporters and the game of football in Scotland as a
whole. We have offered the administrators the support of our national programme for
responding to redundancy situations, Partnership Action For Continuing Employment
(PACE) to assist any employees who may be facing redundancy and PACE representatives
are maintaining close contact with the administrators. PACE support is always available and
is always offered to anyone and everyone facing redundancy, PACE have offered this type
of assistance to Scottish football clubs in the past and stand ready to assist any football
clubs and other companies in the future.
You will appreciate that the administrators are taking forward the process of assessing the
business and securing an outcome in the best interests of all the creditors. It is therefore too
early to comment on potential outcomes however I want to be clear that no public money
would be offered to bail out any football club and this remains the case with Rangers.
Yours sincerely
DEREK GRIEVE
Head Of Sport and Physical Activity Policy
—–
HH
With every passin’ day [98 and countin’] it looks more and more like the only way you’ll be able to see the Horribles playin’ their horrible brand of horrible football is in the Museum at Hampden.
Aw Naw
I stand by my words. Ernie might mean clean or dirty, but I’ll leave that to him to clarify.
Awe_Naw_No_Annoni_Oan_Anaw_Noo on 22 May, 2012 at 15:06
Sums it up for me.
Phil Mac Giolla Bhain reckons that an interim report on the contracts issue was submitted to the SPL Board by Harper MacLeod yesterday.
Sadly,a pre-nightshift kip beckons.
Just when it was getting interesting.
Have fun,folks,and nae fa’in’ oot!
On FF and other Rangers sites the huns attack Celtic on the figures quoted for season ticket sales and the ole board for false attendance figures at paradise, they have friends
DownForSam-EK based,West of Scotland mate.
DOWN FOR SAM 1447
I hope BADA BING gets in touch with you,mate!
To those supporters who have renewed their tickets can I ask a few questions.
I fully understand the “don’t cripple Celtic financially argument”, and also the likelyhood that Rangers are finished anyway so all of this could be a moot point, but if you wake up on the first day of next season and there is a Newclub sitting in Rangers position in the SPL can anyone tell me what will your reaction be?
Will you boycott the SPL clubs who voted for Newclub to be allowed into the SPL? Will you protest outside and inside Parkhead whenever Flatpack Rangers come to visit?
Will you ask for a refund on your ticket?
Will you shrug your shoulders and just accept that this is a bent league (always was always will be)?
Other suggestion?
Personally I had to give up my season ticket two years ago (domestic financial issues not sporting) so therefore this is more curiosity then anything else but if Rangers are allowed to get away with what they have done (and Doncaster is now talking about no penalties as well), then I cannot see me ever attending another SPL game.
If the league is bent, the refs are bent and the SPL board and CEO are bent and I was still willing to go watch the games then I think I’d have finally understood the link between pleasure and masochism.
Algarvian, I dont get why people not wanting to pay to watch a corrupt competition are setting out to hurt Celtic, people are allowed to choose how they spend their money, being told your motive is to hurt Celtic is emotional blackmail.
Scotland’s Shame
If Rangers are such a total irrelevance to you , why is your blog name a reference to them?
(:-)
TT
Haha,right on cue!
Beddiebyes…….
In Neil Doncaster’s Newco SPL, support is redundant.
You don’t support your team by attending a Newco SPL match any more than you support Tom Hanks by watching Forrest Gump at the cinema.
You attend. You watch. You go home again. Beyond that you are passive.
Newco SPL is not about support. It’s about occupancy. Visitors. Viewers. Commercial partner visibility. It’s just a commercial Pantomime.
We know in the end that Rangers will not be imperiled by the fickleness of fortune or the talent of the opposition, in the very same way that we know the Babes in the Wood will be fine in the end too.
Provided that’s your kinda thing, the Newco SPL is the place for you.
I’ll kindly decline their production, and look forward to supporting Celtic in Sporting Competitions instead.
BOBBY MURDOCH’S CURLED-UP WINKLEPICKERS on 22 May, 2012 at 15:19 said:
AWE NAW 1506
I’m not quite as old as you,and HT is younger still.
I turned 37 this year but look much younger
How old are you Bobby ?
Hail Hail
According to today’s Herald Donald Trump was thinking of buying THEM but walked away when he saw the figures. Who was the luckiest? HIM or THEM.
How many times will we hear about ex-hun players going on about the players they’ll have next season or fans saying they’ll win the league if they keep this or that player or that “investor” in the Green Consortium, Ronald McDonald banging on about what players he was going to sign…shouldn’t their main priority be plain & simple, nut & bolts survival?
BMCUW-Ta mate.
AWE NAW 1528
Younger than your portrait,mate!
Jesting,bud. The point I made deferred to your well-earned right to be cynical,and no nastiness was intended.
Thirty-seven……
You’ve got shoes older than that,ffs!
Ping- pong thrashin’ highway bashin’ shrimp magnate Forrest Gump revealed on Twitter as [yet] another Green Knight
quonno
Trump was gonna buy them until he seen the plans for the wind farm on Administration Drive ;o)
Awe Naw
The increase in season ticket sales has nout to do with me, I haven’t renewed yet :-))
However, I will be doing so this evening when I get in from work. I’m doing so for a number of reasons but primarily because I simply love going to watch Celtic and every time I see our supporters gathered in support of the team and what our club stands for I can’t help but feel immense pride.
I take great exception to your description of me, and those like me, as ‘Old Firm fans’. Nothing could be further from the truth if truth be told.
My renewal does not make me a ‘better’ supporter of Celtic than anyone else and that includes those who will chose not to renew and it doesn’t give me the moral high ground as ernie would have us believe.
I completely disagree with your viewpoint regarding this but will continue to debate with you in a decent and cordial manner as I understand that your passion for Celtic is what leads you to hold them.
With this in mind I would politely ask you to refrain from using the term ‘Old Firm fans’ when referring to those who opt to renew, we are Celtic supporters the same as you, we simply see things differently.
Hail Hail
On the subject of wind farms- ‘Countryfile’ on Sunday came from the bonnie braes and glens of ole D and G, and showed vast herds of wildebeest and antelope grazin’ the high veldt, yet didn’t show a single wind turbine, despite the fact we’re completely infested with the b###dy things.
Must have used an ole air brush.
dbbia,
I’m hoping your right, and theres not enough left to be playing football ever again.
hail hail
Whilst it was not very pleasing, Doncaster’s take on a newco was not unexpected.
Those who are criticising him would do well to remember that he is merely a mouthpiece for his masters. And until they very publicly distance themselves from his newco statement, DD and PL are very much part of the above masters.
DBBIA
Many moons ago I went to a college in ole D&G.
BOBBY MURDOCH’S CURLED-UP WINKLEPICKERS
SHhhhhhhhsshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh………………………………..
The Token is so jealous of my lithe muscular frame and young complexion.
I do have shoes that are 26 years old and still in use
I once dogged R.I class to go and see The Who in the playhouse .. great gig with Nine below Zero supporting.. I got second row tickets due to queuing up all night to get them.
Upon returning to School the R.I teacher made such a song and dance about me sacrificing Jesus for “a pop group” I didn´t bite I just laughed at her … she then threatened to send me to the Academy (i.e the proddy school) I laughed even more at her and she said to me
“it is very sad to see someone so young so cynical”
To which I replied … “well what makes you sad makes me happy”
so we should blame Kenny Jones for being a tenth the drummer Keith Moon
was :-)
Hail HAil
Hail Hail
Canalamar- I can’t see them getting out of this,even a Newclub seems a pretty long shot.
The whole rotten structure is about to come tumblin’ down.
Awe Naw ……. I don’expect new club to be in the SPL next season……. They have gone too far with their cheating / intimidation ……. The SFA / SPL are also sick to the back teeth with them…….and there is MUCH MORE to come
HT- which one? Not THE College, as in Bro Walfrid’s last restin’ place?
and now for something completely different.
One for Saltires in Seville.
McGrory stands tall among game’s giants(FIFA.com) Wednesday 20 October 2010 Print Email my friend Share
Pele, Puskas, McGrory, Muller. For the majority of readers, and certainly those outside Scotland, one name in this quartet might be considered a little less illustrious than the others. As it is, and while Jimmy McGrory is undoubtedly the least-known of these goalscoring greats, the Celtic legend nonetheless stands proudly alongside Pele et al in the list of football’s ten most prolific marksmen.
A staggering tally of 550 goals from just 547 competitive appearances ensures his place amid such legendary company and, when it comes to league goals, only six players in the history of the game have managed more. Muller isn’t among them, nor indeed are any of his fellow countrymen, with McGrory’s colossal haul still a record in the United Kingdom, 171 higher than that of England’s all-time leading scorer, the Everton great Dixie Dean.
It’s a benchmark that will now surely stand forever, as indeed will two other McGrory milestones: 63 goals in one season (1927/28) and eight in a single game, Celtic’s 9-1 win over Dunfermline Athletic in January 1928. The ball with which he achieved the latter feat is now on display at the Scottish Football Museum at Hampden Park, while the great man himself has a well-deserved place in the Scottish Football Association’s Hall of Fame.
Snubbing Arsenal, snubbed by Scotland
Though he measured in at just 5ft 6ins, no more than average for the time, this supreme predator’s great strength was his unrivalled ability in the air. Broad-shouldered and brave, McGrory – who passed away 28 years ago today – was also blessed with an extraordinary leap, earning him the nickname ‘The Mermaid’. Indeed, headers accounted for almost a third of his goals, with journalist Hughie Taylor writing of the “tingling feeling” of watching the striker “hover hawk-like, then twist that powerful neck, and flick the ball as fiercely as most players could kick it.”
Team-mate Johnny Paton also had vivid memories of these impressive physical attributes. “Jimmy was all strength and muscle, and he had a great bull neck,” said the former Celtic and Chelsea forward. “If he had been a boxer, you couldn’t have knocked him out. He was the hardest header of a ball I ever saw – along with Tommy Lawton at Chelsea – and had a great shot in his right boot.”
Yet, for all these attributes, McGrory started out his career playing at inside-right and inside-left before Celtic, in this third season with the club, finally decided to experiment with him as their central spearhead. The results were the stuff of legend, with McGrory’s final tally over double those of his closest rivals in the club’s all-time scoring list, Bobby Lennox and Henrik Larsson.
If he had been a boxer, you couldn’t have knocked him out. He was the hardest header of a ball I ever saw.Team-mate Johnny Paton on Jimmy McGrory
“My mind was set on scoring goals,” the great man himself told The Observer in 1971. “I got into positions from which I could head or shoot. When the ball did come, I did not have to waste any time. I hit it. I see players trying to control and manoeuvre the ball when it comes to them, then looking up to see what they are going to do with it. They waste so much time.”
Despite their talisman’s Herculean efforts, Celtic somehow contrived to remain in Rangers’ shadow throughout the 1920s and ‘30s, winning the league just twice during McGrory’s goal-laden 15-year career. In hindsight, perhaps this lack of success can be attributed to the same dearth of ambition that led to the Bhoys attempting to offload their prize asset to Arsenal when he was at the peak of his powers.
So devoted was McGrory to Celtic that the club’s board even went to the extreme of luring him under false pretences to London, where a meeting had been arranged with the Gunners’ renowned manager, Herbert Chapman. However, despite the prospect of becoming Britain’s highest-paid player, and his own unhappiness at the conduct of the Celtic board, McGrory snubbed Arsenal to continue a love affair that would endure for many years and decades to come. “McGrory of Arsenal just never sounded as good as McGrory of Celtic,” he would later remark.
His mother and father had been poor Irish immigrants, specifically the kind of people Celtic had been founded to help, and his love for, and loyalty to, the club – his club – remained absolute. Many believe that it cost him greater recognition at international level, with a paltry haul of seven caps attributed to perceived anti-Celtic sentiments among the Scotland selectors of that era. Nonetheless, on the few occasions he did pull on the dark blue jersey, McGrory succeeded in replicating his club form, famously scoring twice in a 2-1 win over England in front of over 134,000 fans at Hampden.
Moving into management
That was in 1933, and within four years he had moved into the dugout, learning his trade at Kilmarnock before inevitably returning to Celtic in 1945 to begin a 20-year reign. However, McGrory the manager was very different to McGrory the player, with his dynamic, forceful style on the park belying an affable and gentlemanly demeanour off it.
As Billy McNeill, the club’s European Cup-winning skipper, recalled: “He was always Mr. McGrory to me – and to all the other players. A lovely man with a pipe. Always smartly dressed in a collar and tie, it was hard to tell he was such a dynamo of a player in his day. But then a player changes as soon as he runs on to the park. He didn’t just love Celtic – he was Celtic.”
With team selection controlled by the club’s then chairman, he struggled to revive Celtic’s fortunes and contemplated resigning within three years of taking charge as the team narrowly avoided relegation. There were triumphs though, most notably victory in the 1953 Coronation Cup – a competition contested by four English and four Scottish sides – and in a famous 7-1 trouncing of Old Firm rivals Rangers in the 1957 League Cup final.
In 1964, McGrory also led an audacious, if ultimately unsuccessful, bid to bring Alfredo Di Stefano to Celtic Park, and he went on to work as the club’s public relations officer until his retirement. When he died, on this day in 1982, it prompted an outpouring of genuine sadness as Scotland mourned one of football’s true gentlemen, and the beautiful game lost one of its greatest-ever strikers.
Awe_Naw…,
see they shoes, are they like triggers broom
Spoke to quite a few friends and family in Norwich for the game tonight and already the place is absolutely jumping…………
‘The Celtic (away) Support, (at times) beyond compare’
Regards & Hail Hail
TBM
Bhoy67:
Any one think Grant Holt is the battering ram centre forward Neil has been searching for.
I think he is in the Hartson mold and would do a good turn for us up here.
Have no doubt he would score goals for us- plenty at that- he would also be a natural foil for guys like Stokes, Hooper & Bangura.
Only concern I would have is a big fee aligned to his age- thirty one? He has no sell on value, hence no interest to Celtic- falling outside our present “recruitment profile”.