McCann, for every tenner, WH Ireland

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I know many of us are annoyed that a Celtic player, who didn’t appeal for a foul, is not being charged for inappropriately looking for one, is headline news today.  This is all a consequence of Sky Sports pundit Neil McCann’s insistence that John Guidetti cheated, while he simultaneously acknowledged Guidetti didn’t actually claim for a penalty.

TV analysis can enrich viewers’ appreciation of the game, but it has to carry a degree of responsibility too.

Those of us from Scotland will be familiar with the summertime noise of a scramble – pennies dropping all around you.  It’s a wedding-day tradition, when the father of the bride throws coins into the street for kids to collect as he and the bride leave for the ceremony.

Today’s story in the Record, lifted from a fans’ group, that newco Rangers receive approximately 75p for every £10 spent with Rangers Retail, the joint-venture between the football club and Mike Ashley, must have had pennies dropping everywhere.

These figures are for last season, so predate whatever new arrangement Ashley was able to negotiate for the return of stadium naming rights.  We’ve covered this point before, but it’s worth reiterating:

Football clubs are in fact a series of business units.  Few make a profit over any business cycle but there are profitable business units inside every club, including retail, trackside advertising, media rights and kit deals.

Football operations almost always lose money.  The considerable cost of operating a stadium, recruiting and employing footballers (and occasionally a manager on an onerous contract) isn’t met by ticket sales, even at community football level.

The club accounts detail how much financial control Ashley has over newco’s profitable revenue streams, from retail, to kit supply to trackside advertising.  The true consequences of forming the with investors looking for a financial return, as newco did in 2012, should now be apparent.

If the club has a future it will have to survive pretty much on ticket sales alone.  As we’ve covered before, when you need to pay circa £17m p.a. to open the doors at a club which will occasionally house 50,000 spectators, and your gate receipts and hospitality sales totalled £12.3m last season, you have a chronic problem.

Even if ticket sales doubled in value, there would still leave only around £7m to pay for football operations, a figure the likes of Kilmarnock can survive on, but you have to wonder if a ‘Rangers’ brand is viable at that level?

Does this sound like a viable football club to you? If so, let’s see how it looks after Ashley has his pound of flesh for financing the second half of the season. No wonder fans are so keen to stop him.

I see newco have appointed WH Ireland as their nominated advisers, a name you may be familiar with.  Back in May 2012, Kitalba, with an astonishing degree of understatement (“It couldn’t be clearer”), noted here in the comments section the breadcrumb trail between Craig Whyte, a whole series of his companies and associates, and the aforementioned WH Ireland.  It’s worth a 15 minute read.

It’s the big Glasgow derby tomorrow and Celtic sponsor Magners have offered us two premium seats in the Jock Stein Stand.  All you need to do to win the seats is to email me the name of our opponents, at celticquicknews@gmail.com

Competition closes at 22:00 tonight, so check your email thereafter.  Tickets can be collected from the ticket office before the game.

Planning is underway for Mary’s Meals to build a kitchen Chibwata Primary School, Dowa, Malawi, which we in the CQN community have committed to paying for.  We have already built three school kitchens in Malawi this year, so I am sure we will complete this one sometime over the coming months.

If at the same time you entered the Magners’ competition, you wanted to donate £1 (or more) to the Mary’s Meals appeal, you can do so here.

Sorry, the MyDonate page is now open for business!!

Many thanks.

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629 Comments

  1. BOBBY MURDOCH’S CURLED-UP WINKLEPICKERS

     

    11:28 on

     

    3 December, 2014

     

    DENA29

     

     

    I won’t but the family will. Hopefully they’ll get to CQN corner and say hi.

     

     

    (Maybe not a diplomatic form of greeting with you and Weefra)

     

     

    definitely not I’ll give them a hug as always , don’t do handshakes Dad put me off them long long time ago something to do with masons

     

     

    HH

  2. BOBBY MURDOCH'S CURLED-UP WINKLEPICKERS on

    CONNAIRE12

     

     

    How you feeling yourself,if you don’t mind the question?

  3. BIG-CUP-WINNERS on

    Che Guevara

     

     

    your forgetting that before all that stuff, The Club were put in an incubator/time portal/ casket, then transferred over to the same club.

     

     

    Thus all that was good and magical about Rangers was manically embalmed.

     

     

    Incidentally “manically” was a typo, but seemed more apt than magically.

  4. BOBBY MURDOCH'S CURLED-UP WINKLEPICKERS on

    DENA29

     

     

    And personal hygiene!

     

     

    Really,erm,pisses me off when I use the toilets in a supermarket and see people leaving without washing their hands.

     

     

    Next stop,no doubt,rummaging through the fruit and veg.

     

     

    At least masons usually wear gloves!

  5. They key question from my last post can Ashley control where top brands such as Puma,Adidas etc manufacture there stock.His approach to acheiving this is i believe is to try and tye up the brand ie Rangers then get involved with negotiations to secure sponsorship linked to the manufacturing process.More money to be made.

  6. BOBBY MURDOCH’S CURLED-UP WINKLEPICKERS

     

     

    Really,erm,pisses me off when I use the toilets in a supermarket and see people leaving without washing their hands.

     

     

    absolutely , not that any cqn’s would be in that category but its to formal for me friends should always get a hug………. and an odd kiss xooooooooxooooooox

     

     

     

    HH

  7. tonyg,

     

     

    Thanks to the Tories he can manufacture on the cheap here, employing a few sevco hairies in an Ibrox sweatshop on 0 to minus 20 hours contracts (as they’re good at arithmetic) and using recycled NASA weather ballon synthetics to produce the XXXXL tops in bulk.

     

     

    His employees will then owe him money as they spend more than they earn every year on sevco reincarnation strips.

  8. BMCUW, Your post above reminded me of a wee incident where a guy was leaving a toilet after a pee without washing his hands. This other guy chides him with a snooty, “My Mother always taught me to wash my hands after a pee”, whereupon the delinquent replied, ” My Mother always taught me not to pee on my hands”.

  9. Jungle Jim Hot Smoked on

    Embramike

     

    Thanks for the article. Interesting that there was no mention of the ` Old Firm`. Are the hacks beginning to accept reality? Mind you, I have seen some articles from Ronnie Cully which were not even insidiously anti-Celtic ( and some that were).

     

    Cheerio,

     

     

    JJ

  10. dena29

     

     

    11:42 on 3 December, 2014

     

     

    I used to know a wumman up Mountblow Road who delivered extremely odd kisses.

  11. IMO

     

    It was never a sending off – for the tackle on Brown. But i dont think Brown did anything to exaggerate the effects of the tackle

     

     

    Nor was it a penalty either, and i dont Guidetti did anything to exaggerate the effects of the tackle or even attempt t claim a penalty

     

     

    Sometimes refs are not bigotted or biased, sometimes refs are just pure garbage.

     

     

    The ref when we played against Juve was garbage with all the penalty box jousting whenever we got a set piece.

     

    The ref who gave Man Utd a penalty against us at Old Trafford was pure garbage

     

     

    And many more like it

     

     

    Sometimes its not only scottish refs who are pure garbage by the way.

     

     

    Video is the way forward!!

  12. BOBBY MURDOCH'S CURLED-UP WINKLEPICKERS on

    MWD

     

     

    Still a nice GIRUY to them,bud.

     

     

    They peddle a lie for their own profit.

     

     

    You pedal to profit others.

     

     

    HH

  13. Always great to beat a team who are under the auspices (!) of a new club based in Govan.

     

     

    Under 17, under 20…

     

     

    Who cares!

     

     

    Up thum!

     

     

    HH!!

  14. One of the ways to improve attendance at football matches is to make such attendance family friendly. That is the future.

     

     

    In that respect the Hearts owner has made the following statement re behaviour of both sets of supporters at Tynecastle on Sunday.

     

     

    http://www.heartsfc.co.uk/news/4010

     

     

    Be the change you want to see in the world.

  15. foghorn leghorn on

    Tamrabam

     

    12:19 on

     

    3 December, 2014

     

     

    IMO

     

     

    It was never a sending off – for the tackle on Brown.

     

    ————————————

     

     

    According to the rules of which sport?

     

     

    Does the rule book you are referencing mention anything about football or soccer on the front cover?

     

     

    I suspect you are reading about some other sport