None of you will be surprised at today’s opinion from the Court of Session in Edinburgh that Rangers’ deal with Ticketus cannot be set aside, despite some absolutely pitiful reporting to the contrary. It’s fine to get things wrong every now and then, we all get Duff information on occasion, but please….
It’s worth recording, Ticketus may only have paid £20m + vat but the tickets they own are worth in the region of £40m. High risk investments require a high return.
Rangers’ administrators argued that the deal inhibited their ability to rescue the company but the heroic Blue Knights submitted a bid accommodating Ticketus, undermining the administrators’ argument. If only the Blue Knights were in a position to strike a deal with Craig Whyte they could be regarded as helping the situation instead of being hapless fools.
Next up is HMRC, who have not capitulated and agreed to accept a few pennies in the pound. They have not agreed to accept anything less than all monies owed. Soon after that we will hear that no court has been able to set aside Craig Whyte’s security over Ibrox. The most underappreciated man no longer in Scotland remains the only person with a reasonable chance of phoenix-ing Rangers.
The first 26,000 (approx.) tickets sold to each Rangers game for the next three years are owned by Ticketus. In the event a phoenix occurs, Rangers will have to revert back to budgets from their glory days of the 1950s – we will soon be told this is a great omen.
If you are going to Ibrox on Sunday, take care and enjoy your visit. Take photographs of the occasion and send them in, we’ll perhaps use them on a future edition of CQN Magazine. It may prove to be the end of an era.
If you’ve not read the article below, about one of Jinky’s great performances, do so now.
Issue 7 of CQN Magazine is out now! Go to the dedicated magazine site here to read it properly (which you’ll not be able to do below).
Thanks to everyone who has bought a hard copies of the magazine, it looks like the sold out sign will go up again. Order your copy for delivery by clicking on the link below for news and views from Celtic supporters.
Pay by card or Paypal.
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This is a war-hardened journalist who has been in every conflict zone you can think of but has never experienced anything like the intimmidation of Glasgow.
Welcome to the Masonic Municipality Mr Thomson.
GL2
Would be magical but sadly I can’t see it happening.
Optometrist
Thanks for that. It may go some way to explaining the difference in character and attitude between him and the likes of Laffatme.
2010 Never Again
Alex Thomson learning first hand the way of things in the Scottish MSM
Read On:
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http://blogs.channel4.com/alex-thomsons-view/succulent-lamb-menu-questions/1010
When Succulent Lamb Is On The Menu – Serious Questions Are Off
Saturday 24 March 2012
1:35 pm
Alex Thomson
120Rate this
Right – let me make two things absolutely clear at the outset.
First, I am writing this imagining that one or two people outside Glasgow use the internet, so I might make some observations familiar to Clydeside surfers.
Second, this arises from my continuing investigation into Rangers which is still in early stages. That is to say, I am not investigating Celtic. If I were, rest assured RFC Bears – they’d get just the same treatment.
I’d expected the paranoia, insults, spin etc – hey – this is “fitba” after all and I welcome it good, bad and ugly, from fans within and without Glasgow. Indeed I’ve gone out and asked for it.
What I didn’t expect were the insults (and in at least one case a direct physical threat) not from fans but from Scottish journalists.
Sarajevo, Mogadishu, Kabul, Islamabad, Tripoli, Baghdad…I could bore you with more – in none of these places have I ever got this interesting reaction from local journalists.
Only in Glasgow.
So something’s up. Something’s different.
Something about asking questions about RFC clearly angers some in the Glasgow media in a way I’ve never seen in 25 years of global reporting.
Equally, a number of fine Glasgow journalists have been incredibly helpful, encouraging and agree there has been something deeply wrong for far too long in the culture of reporting RFC.
They know who they are, male and female, working in papers, radio and broadcasting and every single one has encouraged me to dig around in an area many cannot, will not or are prevented from, exploring.
I refer of course to “succulent lamb”. Graham Spiers, seasoned football writer in Glasgow was there the day it happened.
He and other reporters dined with Sir David Murray – then RFC owner, in the Channel Islands. Murray – as ever – was talking big on the Rangers dream-theme, laying out plans for the club that seemed to go well beyond the mere limit of the sky.
There duly appeared copy praising the “succulent lamb” that was eaten – the “fine red” that was drunk.
The food and drink were taken – so was this man’s dream of Rangers – all without much question in some quarters.
I make and imply no criticism at all of the reporters present – what intrigues as an outsider is how many people years later around Glasgow happily talk about “succulent lamb” journalism.
Let Graham explain – he was actually there, after all: “Succulent lamb journalism means a culture – and I hold my hand up here too – a culture of sycophantic, unquestioning, puff journalism that went on around Rangers generally and Sir David Murray particularly.”
Of course you’ll see it to some degree across sport, across football. But it was, many Glasgow journalists say, more damaging here.
“Look,” says Graham Spiers, “you are making a pact with the devil if you like. You get thrown the best scraps. You get something for the back page or whatever. But there’s a tacit deal. You don’t dig too deep. You don’t cause any trouble.”
So Big Dave’s dream was shouted across Glasgow. Fans loved it. It shifted papers. Everyone (in blue) wanted in, needed to believe.
So it went on – year after year. On one side the directors at Scotland’s football “governing” bodies didn’t ask much. On the other, large sections of Glasgow football journalism declined to delve.
How else to explain Ibrox’s boom to spectacular bust?
How else to deal with the fact that when Craig Whyte took over it was stories of a “billionaire” with “off the scale riches” that were pumped out?
Ten minutes on Google or in Companies House could’ve ended that. But no. It was dreamland the fans wanted, dreamland much of the media bought into and a club already financially crippled was about to be further injured.
Legions of fans sold out again, as it would turn out.
Succulent lamb culture has permeated to a degree that, as one prominent Glasgow tabloid journalist put it: “The press -a really critical check and balance in the normal way of things, had been more or less destroyed in Glasgow.”
So are things any better today? Is succulent lamb off the menu – replaced with humble pie?
I leave it to others to judge if that succulent lamb cozy Glasgow football culture has really gone away.
I wonder, even now when they are at deaths door, if they would be receptive to an Irish Catholic billionaire rescuing them.
My guess is they would rather die and that really does say it all.
Jude
Quite right in planning ahead – I wish I had the foresight, but my “timing” is merely luck! Me and the good lady had already booked our holiday by about a month, then it suddenly dawned on me I hadn’t considered the SC Final. Very lucky Bhoy – also, the Champions League Final is the same day as the SC Final – kicking off, around 2hrs afterwards. That could be a fantastic day.
HH
Giggs
Looking at Thomos report, I guess that even if the huns are liquidated and a newco starts up, he will be still hunting the sordid truth behind the closed shop behind everything to do with the huns.
Brilliant. Many, many years overdue….
http://blogs.channel4.com/alex-thomsons-view/succulent-lamb-menu-questions/1010
Alex Thomson joins the Paranoid Brigade…
Neil Alexander’s children goto a catholic school.
Doesn’t bother me in the slightest but it seems it still bothers the huns.
From a poster on RTC
Kilmarnock chairman on sportsound hinting that if Rangers agree to change the SPL voting system it will be easier for a Rangers newco to get back into the SPL
I sincerely hope we win the league tomorrow or next Sunday so the Celtic support stay away from Rugby Park on the 7th
Sniggering at the talksport RM-Rangers thing, thanks to whoever it was posted the link.
20 Old Firm facts (from today’s Hootsman)
11) Celtic’s top scorer in an Old Firm clash is Jimmy McGrory, who netted 27.
I know Jimmy was good but…
;o)
TMWTL
Plenty tickets have already been bought for the Celtic areas of the ground.
If there is to be a boycott it won’t be that game mate.
Chicko puts ogilvies EBT as a good night. £95 grand?? Whit no ice scream and jelly???
Ten Men Won The League on 24 March, 2012 at 14:30 said:
”I sincerely hope we win the league tomorrow or next Sunday so the Celtic support stay away from Rugby Park on the 7th”
We go to Ibrox in our droves.
Then we boycott Rugby Park.
Whilst maintaining that we, and the SPL, don’t need the huns.
??????????????????????
jude2005 is Neil Lennon \o/ on 24 March, 2012 at 14:39 said:
what did Chick say? I’ve seen people refering to it but I can’t find any links.
ernie
Are you boycotting ibrox?
ernie lynch@14:40
We go to Ibrox in our droves
Not me i’m afraid. I would rather have my teeth pulled out with no anasthetic than walk into that place
hamiltontim on 24 March, 2012 at 14:42 said:
‘ernie
Are you boycotting ibrox?’
I’m not going. I haven’t been to enough away games this season to get a ticket. I wouldn’t have gone anyway. If I wanted to give money to keep the huns going I’d buy a union jack.
lostinbonnybridge Kano 1000 on 24 March, 2012 at 13:47
Superb stuff thanks for putting up the link
HH
Listening to SSB , Gordon Dalziel really is an A***
What is it about members of the laptop loyal called Gordon ?
Ernie, if there was a boycott of Ibrox rangers would easily sell 7500 tickets. A boycott of rugby park and no extra tickets would be sold as they can’t sell out their own end.
SffS
ernie
Would you have preferred that we hadn’t taken any tickets for tomorrow?
ftsfa on 24 March, 2012 at 13:58 said:
From Alex Thomson’s latest blog
“What I didn’t expect were the insults (and in at least one case a direct physical threat) not from fans but from Scottish journalists.”
Names please?
~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now,why does that not surprise me.
Hopefully,he has reported the incident to the NUJ.
Having said that,he most certainly knows what he is up against now.
Who’s the mib at rugger park today ?
hamiltontim on 24 March, 2012 at 14:47 said:
”ernie
Would you have preferred that we hadn’t taken any tickets for tomorrow?”
That was never going to happen. It’s a personal choice. But we’ve got to be honest that buying a ticket helps the huns survive. And the demand for tickets contradicts our claims that we and the SPL don’t need the huns.
My abiding memory of the Seville season was that the huns games lost their importance.
Only a Fool or a Fellow wi’ a Death Wish..wid hiv the Audacious
Temerity tae mak a Pilgrimage tae the Stadium of Hate.
Ra Morra!
There wull be Trouble.. My friends.. Trouble and Strife.
Ah am gled that Ah wullnae be there!
Kojo
Still Laughin’.. Though!
The laptop are always telling us Scottish football needs Celtic and the huns and they also think we need them to an extent too so I cannot fathom why the huns would make a rod for their own backs by agreeing with the ten on a new voting structure.
If they had any sense they would take 3 seasons of pain and come back stronger.
gallagher on 24 March, 2012 at 14:50:
Referee is Crawfors Allen.
Here is where the sfA ‘lodge’ the referee appointments
http://www.scottishfa.co.uk/football_document_libraries.cfm?page=715
Kojo
Or a Celtic supporter…not a fool nor a masochist.
I am sure Alex Thompson has,cut and paste from CQN.
It’s not ‘succulent lamb’
It’s important to state that it was ‘… the most succulent lamb’
It’s the level of description, the considered level setting, the hook, the line, the sinker…
James Traynor…
No shame.
I just recently heard him still defending Sir David Murray – along the lines of his biggest crime was caring too much or wanting too much for Rangers.
Excuse me? Sorry?
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Couple this to Chico prattling on about ‘Sir David’ having a masterplan regarding In Administration FC and you really have the confederacy of dunces in forum.
A bidding war in The Herald – Oh for mercy’s sake…
Oh, and let’s not forget the Motherwell Born Billionaire.
… the most succulent square slice…
U
ernie
I would excuse any Tim who would make the personal choice to attend tomorrow especially baring in mind their impending demise coupled with the possibility of winning the title.
I do think you’re accurate about 2002/03 season. Blackburn, Liverpool, Celta Vigo et al were more attractive scalps than theirs.
I was truly astonished to read Alex Thomson’s blog. Talk about not missing the target!
Amazing what a truly objective journalist can find about our nation’s sports “journalists” in only a matter of days.
Be careful, Alex; soon they’ll be calling you paranoid.
Alex Thomson a la mode.
Sweet.
i heard the kilmarnock chairman and he was most certainly saying to rangers
if you play ball we will pass it back ,no doubts at all what he was hinting at
rangers new co getting back in to spl, disgusting
20 Old Firm facts (from today’s Hootsman, continued)
18) In recent years, Rangers have twice destroyed Celtic by 5-1 at Ibrox in 1989 and 2000.
19) But Celtic have also twice ran up big scores in the SPL – 6-2 in 2000 and 5-1 in 1998.
Subtle…
loopylenders
I think that idiot of the sale sharks brian Kennedy
is a catholic hes definetly a ex Hibernian fc
supporter if he was brought up in glasgow
he woudnt be so helpfull , another sean connery
turncoat type
Hopefully Izaguiere is fit for tomorrow, get him at left back, Chico Muldini back in the middle with Rogne. I like Wilson but he seems to have got nervous in big games so far so should sit this one out. Id like to see Stokes and Hooper up front but think Samaras will take a place and Hooper will keep his as he is due a goal….
Forster
Mathews, Rogne, Muldini, Izaguirre
Broon, Wanyama Victor Wanyama ooh oohh, Ledley, Forrest
Samaras
Hooper
Id settle for 0-9 right now.