Thoroughly enjoying yesterday’s coordinated effort by Newco fans who have rushed to the coattails of Dave King. To be fair to the fans, the time for them to act was years ago, before Sir David Murray set Oldco on a path to destruction, there is little positive that can be done now. Still, that’s no reason to dive headlong into destruction.
After the debacle of 2012, when Oldco were liquidated, the assets were scooped up by people who wanted to make a lot of money. The moment Charles Green and his consortium owned the assets, this reality should have been acknowledged. No amount of 13th hour Blue Knight revisionism was going to change things.
Green made off with his money a year ago, but as a consequence of that, there are newer investors, with exactly the same objectives. There are also local investors in the form of the Easdale brothers. Neither of these groups will be bullied into submission.
King’s escrow plan, which hopes to gain security of the stadium and Murray Park, cannot be accommodated by the club. How many fans do you think they will convince to hand their season ticket money over, 1000? As many as 3000? Whatever your guess figure, this does not have the look of a high participation endeavour.
With many more fans likely to renew, and more still likely to be completely turned off by the nonsense, the The Rangers Football Club Ltd have a legal duty to their shareholders (Rangers International PLC) and creditors (coincidentally, also Rangers International PLC) to retain security of company assets. Placing them beyond the reach of creditors would be a remarkably brave and self-defeating act.
It now suits the club for King’s plan to appear to be effective, or at the very least, reduce season ticket renewals to a trickle. They can cite this as the action which tips The Rangers Football Club Ltd into administration. As the overwhelmingly major creditor, Rangers International would control this administration and their agents will set about reducing costs.
I would expect to see Newco to continue trading as a youth team for the foreseeable future, with Rangers International taking security of Ibrox and Murray Park, to satisfy their unresolved debt. This will be sold to the masses as ‘securing the stadium’, but it would be the key separation of club and stadium which King as sought to prevent.
Going forward, The Rangers Football Club Ltd will have no significant assets, no playing assets to speak of, and a substantial rental to pay to Rangers International, whose shareholders will still require their financial return. Don’t lose sight of this, the Piper Always Needs to be Paid. Always.
I haven’t revisited the RIPLC accounts which drew comment last week (might be worth an update later), but the important information to glean from them is the cost of running a football operation at a stadium which can occasionally host >40,000 people. You’re looking at circa £19m annually, before you employ a footballer.
I don’t see a way forward. This is a dead multi-club football franchise, killed by 1,000 reckless acts. Even the youth team scenario is unaffordable.
The hedge funds will know this already. Remember what John Brown claims Charles Green told him he would do to Ibrox if he was messed with? Raze it to the ground, apparently. After Newco Youth Team has spent a year-or-so bouncing around, we’ll hear that Ibrox is unsustainable as a football stadium (which I could believe). It will be razed and re-designated as an industrial area.
Celtic better have their plans in place now, as should the rest of Scottish football. There was a notion that there would be a three year hiatus before it was business as usual. This will not be the case.
We need to stand together, as a club, and with other clubs, wherever possible. We need to support the game, primarily through season ticket purchases, but we must find common ground with other clubs and fans.
Leppings Lane
Everything was wrong about football back then. Stadiums were not so much designed, they were built to fit the space and available materials. The lower Leppings Lane end of Hillsborough will be remembered as the worst terracing in football but, in truth, it was just where the next big disaster happened. It could have been anywhere.
After a decade or so of football hooliganism in England, fans were penned in, 8’ fences blocked entrance to the field, some topped with barbed wire. If you were at the fence, you were staying there until the thousands behind you headed home. Hampden Park had these fences, a legacy of the 1980 Cup Final, but they were absent from other grounds in Scotland. The Jungle had some high fencing but with regular breaks. If you wanted to get onto the field, you could do so.
Leppings Lane had further chronic safety violations. As well as a fence at the front the terrace was divided into four pens with fences running back to front. Once through the turnstile, fans were free to choose which pens to join; most would choose the central two. Of course they would.
The central two pens were accessed via a tunnel running under the upper stand. On That Day, fans entering at the rear of the tunnel had no inclination of the crush ahead. By the time they were part of the crush, others had gathered behind them. Space to retreat was quickly lost.
The outer pens were empty, the central two, death-traps. Fans piling into the tunnel knew nothing of the crisis ahead.
For some minutes it was possible for the police to burst open the pens and allow fans to flood free onto the pitch but they were still in crowd control mode. By the time they realised there was a disaster underway, it was too late.
There were lies and cover-ups. Fans were blamed, and accused of atrocious acts, all untrue. The government were complicit. The Sun were the worst media offenders but by no means the only one.
Two weeks ago a fresh inquiry into the events of that day opened in Warrington. At long last, the truth, which we’ve all known for years, will out. Too late for many campaigners and bereaved, who died fighting the combined weight of the establishment, but welcome nonetheless.
Tomorrow, CQN’er, Iain McGovern, sets off on a 232 mile walk from Celtic Park to Anfield, where he hopes to arrive 11 days later, in aid of the Lola Commons Fund for SiMBA. It’s his way of commemorating Hillsborough. Supporting him could be yours.
I’m delighted (actually excited) to confirm John Hughes will be on the blog on Thursday morning. John is Celtic’s seventh highest goal scorer in our 126 year history. He has remarkable insights into some of the great times and characters of our history. Tune in and ask him questions online.
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CELTIC
CPb….
bobby murdoch’s curled-up winklepickers ………praying for our wee hero!
12:15 on 15 April, 2014
SIPSINI
You should have drunk more,and woke up in the morning. Makes sense to me!
96 YNWA
Hail! Hail!
Back again!
Whilst we wind down to a summer dreaming of more glory nights and loot from the CL it’s also shaping up to be a close season of fun and laughter.
There is no way they can make their season book scam work.
I’m certain AIM will be stepping into this pretty soon, the SFA should be in there already after the published comments from Delloite that there was serious worries over them being a going concern. That was WITH 100% of the season book money
winning captains
12:01 on 15 April, 2014
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Will yogi’s book be on the kindle ? When the seville book available on it ?
Sorry but its just alot easier for me than collecting hard copies.. Have too many here already and hoping to move home next year.
Thanks
BMCUW.
HaHaHa, lucky I wasn’t mugged or worse, queens park is well named.
PAUL67
The first part of your article has really cheered me up-thanks,bud.
The second part started on a real downer,but finished with the prospect of JUSTICE FOR THE 96.
After so many years,perhaps some closure and aye,some retribution on those who blamed the innocent who could not speak for themselves.
SIPSINI
That’s fine,bud.
You were lying down on the bench,not sitting on it!
Thanks to all who wished me luck with work medical last week… Fly out tomorrow to Newman for 4weeks.
Wont be a picnic but it will help greatly, least the season is more or less over so i wont miss too many of the games.
Paul, terrific leader, particularly the reference to the enduring Hillsborough profanity.
On matters elsewhere, I noticed that while almost all income and costs associated with the football operation are booked to TRFC Ltd, with the huge deficit booked back to RIFC plc via debt, curiously Merchandising income is booked to RIFC plc.
I can’t explain that one…
Die Another Day!
RIP the 96
YNWA
look at these geniuses
rangers fans views on scottish independence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmGjiokfQ2A
quality individuals
BOBBY MURDOCH’S, let’s hope.
Battered Bunnet, curious, indeed.
I will never forget the Celtic v Hibernian cup semi final in 1989 the day after the Hillsborough disaster. In hindsight I’m not sure that game should have went ahead. It was a good victory for Celtic and we would go on to win the cup but it was the first time I had experienced a minutes silence at a football match and it was beyond eerie.
It was spine tingling. I stood in the north terracing with my dad that day and listened to the turnstyles clicking as people still entered the ground and as an 11 year old probably didn’t understand how this would change our game going forward.
There have been many football disasters but none have invoked the search for justice that the people of Liverpool created. The people knew that it was a cover up and never gave up in their fight for justice. It wasn’t just Liverpool fans, Everton supporters have stood shoulder to shoulder with the Liverpool supporters in a way that probably only Liverpool could. Families are sometimes split supporting the two clubs and they all pulled together to support one another through a very very tough time.
I’m not sure the city of Liverpool has ever really recovered from it. 96 souls lost at a football match. Even now it is heart breaking to think about. I hope the families get their justice in the case which will be heard over the next year.
I attended the match at Celtic Park strangely enough in the Liverpool end with my father when they played their first match after the disaster. Such was the clamour for tickets it was the only place we could get them. It hit home slightly then how it affected the supporters and people of Liverpool. It was a very emotional day.
I just hope that football never has to go through this type of pain again. People go to a football game for a release from their working week. They go to enjoy the spectacle or cheer on their local team or the club which holds their affections through family ties or the style of play the adopt. It is a sport and a form of entertainment.
People should not die at a place of enjoyment or entertainment. Today I will think of the 96 and pray for them.
I hope Liverpool go on and win the league and Everton reach the Champions League. I think the city of Liverpool deserves the success.
LB
Bobby,
This whitewater challenge??
Just another quick post to follow up some previous twitter comments.
Ally McCoist has embarked upon a £10k fundraising campaign for the Rangers Charity Foundation. Good stuff!
He is aiming to achieve this by navigating some white water rapids in Idaho (the River Salmon) with a team of Rangers Charity Foundation supporters.
My interest in this was piqued a couple of weeks ago when I noticed that he had only raised £219. I therefore raised awareness of the event in my blog and subsequently on twitter (I am not claiming credit here for now getting him to the £8,000 he has currently raised).
And this is what he eventually raised, looks like the usual beano paid for through charity monies, or really poor forecast on returns, I’ll let you choose :))
https://www.justgiving.com/AllysIdahoChallenge/
Hail! Hail!
Sorry just back on and in answer re: the Centenary shirt to one of the lhads who posted earlier there is indeed the 4-leaf clover at the bottom of the cross. And of course the cross was once again used on the white 125 years shirt. One thing different the CRSmith logo it is nice, small and flattish, not like the later Carling etc. The wee diamonds throughout, the neck proper fitting al round good shirt.
Good luck to St Martin’s Bhoy, a fine CQNer, on his walk from Paradise to Anfield. I hope you raise a lorry load of cash and have plenty of plasters for those blisters. Think you need 96 mind otherwise you will not be trying.
Justice for the 96.
HH
CRC
Justice for the 96
Y.N.W.A
Paul67.
Just for some clarity, is anyone aware who owns the stadium and the training ground?
There’s so many stories abound.
Paul67 – Very salient points.
By their own admission they require an INCREASE in season ticket holders at the increased rate to meet their financial forecasts.
That is not going to happen by any stretch of the imagination. The delicious irony now is their last death was caused by inaction, now when they do try and mobilise to attone for the previous mistake, that is what will kill them again.
All you have pointed out has the feeling of “when” rather than “if” to me.
Was talking to a friend this morning who I had the dubious honour of attending Fir Park with on the last game of the season in 2003. He said to me if somebody told us what was going to happen to them in the next 10 years we would have thought them crazy.
We have seen some sights……..and it isn’t finished yet
Apols, this is the full version.
Bobby,
This whitewater challenge??
Just another quick post to follow up some previous twitter comments.
Ally McCoist has embarked upon a £10k fundraising campaign for the Rangers Charity Foundation. Good stuff!
He is aiming to achieve this by navigating some white water rapids in Idaho (the River Salmon) with a team of Rangers Charity Foundation supporters.
My interest in this was piqued a couple of weeks ago when I noticed that he had only raised £219. I therefore raised awareness of the event in my blog and subsequently on twitter (I am not claiming credit here for now getting him to the £8,000 he has currently raised).
What I found particularly strange was that the target seemed so low. Mr McCoist is a wealthy man through his footballing and media endeavours as are many of his associates, friends and colleagues. Indeed, I would have anticipated a target of £100,000 to be more appropriate especially when one considers the costs involved in this sort of thing. I decided therefore to keep an eye on this.
My curiosity was further raised by a tweet from Ally McCoist’s son on Thursday, 22 May in which he stated that the airline had given away their business class seats because they were late. Business class seats on a fundraising trip? Hmmm…
So I have followed the redoubtable Mr McCoist junior and it transpires that he spent 3 days in New York City in a hotel overlooking Times Square. Then he flew out to Denver before catching a connecting flight to Boise, Idaho and then another connection to Salmon, Idaho. Following the rafting, Mr McCoist junior has helpfully informed us that he will be in San Francisco afterwards although it is unclear for how long or if this is part of the charity programme or, em, personal business.
A wee friend in the travel agency business did a bit of research for me and priced the flights only package at £4,500 (based on business class). A hotel in New York overlooking Times Square would set you back about £300 per night. So that’s at least £5,000.
On top of this, of course, one has to add the cost of the white water rafting. I am reliably informed that the RCF party are participating in a five day experience costing £1,500. So we’ve now got a running total of £6,500 per head.
Yes folks, Ally McCoist has gone all the way to America to raise £1,500. If Mr McCoist is indeed employed on an annual salary of £750,000 as rumoured that 1/500 of his annual salary or about half-a-day; not quite a tithe, eh?
Anyway, I digress. Eagle-eyed readers will have spotted that I mention both Ally McCoist and his son. They may also have spotted that I mentioned that Mr McCoist is leading a team.
Now, I could be mistaken here but I’ve trawled (yes, it is an obsession) Just Giving and I cannot find a single entry for Ally’s Idaho Challenge other than that under Ally’s own name. There is no account in his son’s name and there is no other account specific to Idaho.
That’s very strange…I mean where are the funds being raised by other rafters? You don’t think they could all be in one Just Giving account, do you? But, but, but, but that would mean that the charity is now paying everyone to take a holiday at its expense! Surely not?
Maybe those nice, responsive people at the Rangers Press Office or the Rangers Charity Foundation itself can reply and let me know (they’ve got the email address)?
And this is what he eventually raised, looks like the usual beano paid for through charity monies, or really poor forecast on returns, I’ll let you choose :))
https://www.justgiving.com/AllysIdahoChallenge/
Hail! Hail!
proudbhoy – Seville is on Kindle now and I’ll check re Yogi’s book.
I’m Neil Lennon (tamrabam)
12:38 on
15 April, 2014
whatabout a song, a single, a record, for you young uns made of plastic
brought out by the celtic players (circa 1970) the words were something like
weekdays you re working earning your pay
waiting to see the celtic at play
saturday saturday the best days of you lives
dont forget to be in on time
on monday, Tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday,
saturday saturday the best days of you lives
Now that is going back and i bet damn few on here have heard that one!!
A double A side by the way
or howabout the punk rockers 4B2s from around 1980
why dont rangers sign a catholic
you all are a shower of fancy B,,,,,,,s
we dont care about yer orange sash
you can take it and shove it up yer ass
another double A side if ever there was one
I wonder if they are available on i tunes?
Someone on here MUST have these
One more point once sevco go bust will it be okay for the BBC to call them the new newco?
Paul 67 –
Karma.
Wee Jinky doing a solo, Passing Time think it was called. Man could sing also.
The first part of your Article makes great reading Paul. If it comes to pass then I would say it was worth it living through 9 in a row, Gazza and all. It does read a bit like all our birthdays and Christmases rolled into one tho, I mean surely it can’t get that good???
God Bless the 96. Justice for the families will surely prevail.
I was at the game in Glasgow after Hillsborough. Fabulous tribute although Liverpool were rusty they were a great team then. Hammered us.
The Huns are going bust again!
estorilbhoy
12:36 on 15 April, 2014,
So only 13% of monies raised is going to charity…sad and should be highlighted with smsm…as if.
Dear Paul…
Unusually specific on matters Newclub. You are always strident (in the best way) when discussing Them also informative and thought provoking but you seem on this occasion to be telling us rather than suggesting to us. I wonder….should I tell everyone I know?
Thrilled John Hughes will be here on Thursday. Can honestly say he with Henke is my all time favourite player. Over the last decade under my several guises in this blog I have extolled the virtues of Yogi. Those of my generation were so lucky to see him (tho some might disagree lol) and to those of a younger generation….you have no idea what you missed!
One thing does disappoint…where is the film footage of JH? Obviously there wasn’t the same media coverage at the time and sadly John was pushed out of Celtic Park just as TV quality and colour was about to become more mainstream but it must be possible to build a montage of Bear action. Maybe someone out there with the appropriate skills could get it together? I offer myself as film editor-in-chief though. I have a memory of him charging forward and scoring at Tannadice with at the same time ex Ranger Jimmy Miller virtually hanging off his back…now if we could find that!
FEED THE BEAR
PROUDBHOY 1222
Big bucks I hope? Nice one….
Btw,I nearly left the ‘u’ out of your moniker. Must be more careful.
RogueLeader
Good to see you again yiv been missed :))
winning captains
12:39 on 15 April, 2014
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Great, i’ll download 2nyt.
Sounds like a great book.
Robinbhoy…
Your thoughts of the 96 shared by everyone on here.
Re the game itself…
I understand Big Billy was far from pleased by the attitude of the players during the match. And was a bit embarrassed that the national TV audience were not shown the real Celtic.
Mild Colonial Bhoy
12:13 on
15 April, 2014
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~##
The cup replay you speak of……….
Was working at Longannet. Finished at 4.30pm……….bus left much earlier…………so found an alternative……
Tony Corvi then travelled to all games by car…….Top of the range Jaguar. My mate had arranged for a lift for both of us…………
He had to pick up his daughter who was a teacher at St Mingo’s in Falkirk……..picked me up enroute.
Made the game on time…..in fact we were a bit early……..as you say Big Billy scored the winner……..we had the Beach End…
Casual drive hame efter ……………cruising at 90………
Paddy T
How about the game against Morton at Cappielow —-Bertie Auld had just returned……
Game sitting at 3-3 when with in last minute Morton get awarded free kick….from which they scored 4-3… head straight out the ground as soon as ball hits net
Got hame thinking we had lost & told my faither about the game………….he then told me that it did finish at 3-3…………..