I hear legendary Sevconian statement issuer, Jim “Rangers are dead” Traynor, is now firmly established in the Dave King camp. You may have found recent statements familiar, including last night’s, which focusses more on interrupting Celtic’s period of domination than building a well-run and sustainable football club.
Or it could be that Dave King is in Traynor’s camp, it’s hard to tell who is the monkey and who is the organ grinder when it comes to that lot and their long and dysfunctional relationships with PR masters.
My suspicions were raised when the Sunday Mail ran a complete non-story on their front page. Someone submitted a frivolous complaint to police – this is your news, Scotland. This was the kind of article which would be found in the same publication when Fergus McCann was in charge at Celtic; an unadulterated attack on the club. Now poor (not actually poor) Graham Wallace has to deal with them.
What price ‘loyalty’ after Traynor had his snout in the trough to a spectacular level too. We actually have a recipient of some of that enormous over-spend criticising the enormous over-spend. After his money was banked, of course. For the life of me I can never understand why the other lot put up with these types.
King’s eight point statement was an absolute hoot and completely inspired by Celtic’s position. There seems to be a pattern here: do wrong, then criticise others for doing as you did.
Point One:
King first addressed the liability for blame, and possible criminal investigations, which he believed should be heading towards the Rangers International board in the wake of comments made by chief executive, Graham Waddell, five months ago. He wrote:
….“It is beyond doubt that the CEO (and other board members) was aware last December that there was insufficient cash to last until the end of the season and the board failed to respond to my previous question in that regard. The CEO is now subject to a criminal complaint on this very issue but I believe that his comments were made with the full knowledge of the board. Certainly no one came out to contradict him. We should therefore expect any criminal investigation to extend to other board members.”
Dave King was a director of now-liquidated Rangers throughout the entire Craig Whyte era, when the club borrowed money from Ticketus to fund the payment of Lloyds debt, failed to pay social taxes and came crashing down. Whyte lied about the Ticketus deal but his non-execs kept their eyes, ears and mouths shut.
King was also a director of Rangers for over a decade, including the period of the David Murray-Campbell Ogilvie EBT shambles, which was proven to be illegal on five counts, the other counts are currently subject to an Upper Tier Tribunal.
Point 2:
“If cash was wasted as a result of mismanagement (presumably Charles Green etc.) then what steps are being taken to hold management accountable for this?”
As a non-executive director of failed Rangers FC PLC King was employed to ensure interests of stakeholders were being looked after. He failed singularly in this regard and has yet to be held to account.
Point Three:
“The board has conceded that it does not plan to effectively compete with Celtic in our first season back in the Premier League.”
This is sanity, not vanity. To suggest Newco throw so much money at the team that the instantly become competitive to Celtic is a sure-fire way of guaranteeing yet another insolvency event. These. People. Never. Learn.
Point Four:
“This is a great review for Celtic fans. It is stated that the board might only raise 20 million over the next 3 years. This paltry amount will guarantee that Celtic will be in a league of its own for the next few years- and possibly permanently thereafter. Celtic will continue to enjoy exclusive access to the Champions League windfalls and will go from financial strength to strength. The gap could become financially irreversible.”
Agree that Celtic will go from strength to strength and be remain a league of their own. Disagree that the review was great for Celtic fans. The review is little more than a laugh for Celtic fans, it changes nothing for us. I like the “permanently thereafter” line, though. It carries a bit more weight than “Generation of Domination”, which sounded ridiculous to some 9 years ago when it was first mooted but now sounds a tad understated.
Point Five:
“The board still does not have a clear plan for raising capital despite knowing for some months that a financial crisis was looming.”
Correct. On a related matter, Mr King has offered unspecified notions that he would encourage other people to buy tens of millions of pounds of shares, no clear plan has been identified, exactly what he accused Newco’s board of.
Point Six:
“It is interesting that the credit card companies agree with me that the season tickets should not be released to the club. However, it is genuinely shocking that this board has, for several months, withheld the knowledge that fans would not have access to credit card facilities when renewing season ticket purchases. The board preferred to blame “external parties” in an attempt to hide this serious non-disclosure. How can this board ask fans to ever trust them again?”
I think Mr King may have composed this comment ‘after a long lunch’. Credit card companies have not suggested season tickets should not be released to (sic.) the club, they simply don’t want anything to do with these transactions.
It is not shocking at all that the decision by credit card companies was not shared by fans for a number of months. Wallace would have spent much of this time looking for an alternative. It would have been inappropriate for a PLC to disclose sensitive financial negotiations to the general public months before that information becomes relevant.
Point Seven:
“The board continues the blame game and takes no responsibility for the current debacle. In truth, it is this board’s stubborn refusal to secure fresh equity that is the cause of the present fragile state of the club’s finances. The board clearly hoped to muddle along by using the season ticket advances from fans. This review should reinforce to fans that this board cannot serve as an appropriate custodian for their season ticket money.”
If fans want to know who to blame for the death of Rangers and the undignified mess Newco are in, they need look no further than the boards headed by Sir David Murray and Craig Whyte, both of which Dave King served on. Blaming Wallace instead is nonsense.
Point Eight:
“The board has admitted that Rangers is not presently a “going concern” and yet offers no plan on how this will be dealt with in the short term. Fans could once again lose their season ticket advances if given to the club at this time. It is unconscionable that this board has done nothing to bolster the finances since the last AGM.”
Fans of Oldco or Newco have never lost their season ticket advances. What is he thinking of? Does he know what club he’s talking about?
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Just an ordinary man. Just an ordinary man whom the state saw fit to stich up to death, and beyond….
BBC – Death of Giuseppe Conlon, an innocent man.
FAC
Jonny,
That’s a bugger mate.
I thought as much though. I had to get one pronto for the wee man last year and although I got the one day option I had to book it about a week in advance.
I suppose this will vary at different times of the year.
HH
I have not bought a newspaper for years. I rely on the internet and CQN for my news.
Reviewing my decision as I ran out of toilet paper this morning.
The IPhone is not all it is cracked up to be,
This is from of all places The Telegraph:
Patrick is 48 and a grandfather. Beneath the grey hair, he has the air of an oversized child. He is powerfully built and hardened by years of brutality, but he bounces into the room with a puppy-like enthusiasm.
“I loved being a child, the innocence of it all. At 13 I was very much a little kid. I didn’t even learn to tell the time til I was sat in the Old Bailey.”
Patrick grew up in north-west London, the son of parents Paddy and Anne, childhood sweethearts from Belfast.
Anne Maguire’s nephew, Gerry Conlon, had been wrongly accused of carrying out the 1974 IRA bombing of a pub in Guildford that left five people dead. He and three others, who became known as the Guildford Four, were later imprisoned in one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in English legal history.
The four were all convicted on the basis of false confessions extracted after physical abuse and threats by Surrey police while detained under anti-terrorism laws. Among the coerced confessions was the assertion that the Maguire household was a bomb factory.
Police found no evidence of bomb-making, but they took swabs from under the fingernails of the family. Using later discredited forensic tests they said the family had handled the explosive nitroglycerine.
Seven people were jailed: Patrick, by then aged 14; his brother Vincent, 17; both their parents; Anne Maguire’s brother William Smyth; her brother in law Guiseppe Conlon (Gerry’s father) and a family friend, Patrick O’Neill. Patrick and Vincent were given sentences of four and five years respectively; their parents 14 years; their uncles and Patrick O’Neill 12 years.
The Maguire Seven all served their sentences apart from Guiseppe Conlon, who died in prison in 1980. In 1991 the Court of Appeal quashed their convictions after it ruled the evidence was unsafe.
When Patrick was arrested, a policeman turned to him and whispered: “By the time you get out of prison, you’ll be an old man. And you’ll not see your mum and dad again.”
“That was the moment my childhood ended,” Patrick says.
He was told over and over that he was guilty and that it would be better if he just admitted it. He was bewildered and barely understood the charges against him.
After his arrest he was out on bail for over a year, while his parents were remanded in custody until the trial. During this time, presumed to be guilty, he was under the constant attention of the police.
“If they beat me up three times a week, I considered it a good week.
“I was getting told: ‘—- off back to Belfast, you IRA bastard.’ But I’m from here. I’ve lived all my life in London.”
Patrick served most of his time in adult prisons, a frightened boy locked up with dangerous men. But he proved remarkably resilient, refusing to bow to the system.
“When my parole came up they gave me a form and told me to write down that I was sorry and I wouldn’t do it again.
“‘But I haven’t done anything’, I told them. ‘And I’m not going to say I have just to get out of here quicker.'”
So he served his full sentence. And that’s when his resolve started to break.
“I wish I was guilty, it would’ve been a lot —-ing easier. If you’re guilty you deal with it and move on.
“The worst sentence I got was when I was released,” he says. “In prison, you know where you are.”
He was still pursued by the police, who were angry he hadn’t got a longer sentence. He tried to bury the seething anger and resentment and get on with his life. But he kept getting in trouble for things he hadn’t done, and increasingly for things he had done.
“[The police] slaughtered me, to the point where I was so messed up that I became a bank robber – a getaway driver. I had access to guns, and every time I passed that police station I wanted to go in and shoot them all.”
He managed to resist the killing spree but over the years became increasingly isolated from those around him and reliant on drink and drugs.
“I just couldn’t take it any more so I just hit the cocaine. Used to take it with brandy. Just tore the arse out of it. One morning I woke up – line of coke, brandy, and I just hit the floor.
“I ended up in the Priory. They told me I had about a month to live.”
In the six months he spent in rehab, the frustration surged out of him in a way he had never expected. Hidden away in his room he began furiously drawing sketch after sketch as ideas tumbled onto the page. He would do the charcoal drawings so quickly that he wouldn’t think what they were about, he just felt he had to get them onto paper.
Now, six years since Patrick left the Priory, he describes himself as an artist. He has produced critically acclaimed work and has sold a number of pieces, some for charity to help other victims of miscarriages of justice. He is currently supporting Sam Hallam, a Londoner whose murder sentence is under review after several witnesses put him elsewhere at the time of the crime.
He has also written a book, My Father’s Watch, named after the gift handed over as he was taken away to prison. He found a great outlet for his emotions in this wonderfully frank and tenderly told story of a lost childhood.
But he is still having therapy and taking a lot of prescription drugs to cope with the flashbacks and the panic attacks. During our interview, he has to leave the room several times to sit and alone before he can come back out and face talking to me.
“It’s taken me a long time to be able to control this,” he says. “Living with that prison madness all around in Brixton and the Scrubs doesn’t just go away. I’ll be on the medication for the rest of my life.”
FAC
When super sally asks wer all the money went ask him to take a wee look at his bank account he will find about 2 million of it in there?
I’d love us to get Liverpool in Europe next season.
Been too long since we knocked our blood brothers out.
So who’s winning tonight and who’s going through to the mushrooms league final??
Dbia,
I’m not sure I fancy drawing them.
Wipe the floor with this seasons cl semifinalists so they would.
Paul, can’t stop laughing at ‘a long lunch’, very funny. I have now run out of heros, there’s too many of them making a borrocks of a shambles of a pox merchants pish. I don’t know which one makes me feel warmer inside oldco or newco ?
Can you imagine being wrongfully arrested for something you didn’t do. I doubt most of you can.
If you were, you’d hope your family would come close and support you, especially if you pleaded and repeated your innocence. Innocent before proven guilty and all that human rights crap.
But what if your family didn’t want to listen to your pleas of innocence, regardless how time would prove you and honest man, instead of supporting you, your family shuns you, ostracises you, disowns you, bars you, stigmatises you and shames you in public.
And then it is proved you were innocent all the time.
Hey Bro… welcome home.
Feck off!
Good to see that ol’ Davey King managed to expand his vocabulary during those years of legal shennanigans in Suid Afrika.
Evening Timland from a very warm hun free mountain valley.
Much more harmonious blog this afternoon….I wonder why !!!
So, who will win tonight ?
Hoping Bayern win the CL, Real win La Liga and City the EPL, if that happens, this Tim will be over 7K richer, all the others are up in an acca, hoping and praying.
HH
B.R.T.H. 12.01
Ewing Grahame? The Telegraph is surely plumbing the depths these days if this is the same Ewing Grahame who was sacked by The Herald a few years ago. His reported offence was failure to post report his report on the defeat of his ‘beloved’ Rangers in a European tie in Cologne. Apparently he fell among ‘thieves’ in the shape of some Rangers cronies and was accused of failing to meet his deadline. Poor soul ! It is good that he is not lost to the famed Scottish Football Press.
hamiltontim
Was at Bryan Robson’s testimonial also , had a soft spot for Man Utd ever since .
Tony Mowbray’s testimonial 92 at Middlesbrough that was a different story “proper naughty ” as Danny Dyer would say .
I thought Ewing Grahame frequented Heraghty’s and was a good guy ? No ?
Tet,
Real tonight for me but it could easily go the other way.
J.R.Ewing Grahame is not a good guy.
DBBIA/SueEllenCSC
aiden bhoy
17:11 on 29 April, 2014
Robson’s testimonial was rather scary at the end when the Utd supporters invaded the park and ran towards the end containing the Celtic support. Thankfully, their intentions were peaceful and they were only looking to swap colours!!
Aye Mowbray’s game was a different ball game. Eventful to say the least :-)
!!bada bing!! 17:12 on 29 April, 2014
Don’t know about Grahame.
But gerry mcnee used to drink in there and he is a platinum grade, five star arsehole.
So ” journalist drinks in Heraghty’s” really proves very little.
The problem they have isn’t financial, it is not the board or the mhedia or season tickets. The problem they have is when they look at the heart of the organisation, what is in them is not a love for the club, not a love for football but a hatred for us and when you base what you are about on others it doesn’t matter what you appoint, who you appoint, how you run things, you will always be a shadow of something else.
Sadly, Hate cannot be liquidated.
Hamiltontin
The same thing happened at Paul Davis testimonial against Arsenal at Highbury.
Both sets of fans ran onto the field to meet in the middle. The polis bottled it but were astonished to see both sets of fans shake hands, hug and exchange scarves etc.
There with both sons, elder one ran on as part of this scene but the brave Metpol wouldn’t let him back in to where we were and he had been. Sign language to tell him to see us outside.
HH
starry plough
21:38 on 28 April, 2014
I too was at Robson’s, Gigg’s, Keane’s and Macari’s. The latter’s was an excellent day out, scorching day and all round good day out.
Keep the Faith!
Hail Hail!
From BBC Sport:
Dani Alves says the pie muncher should be publicly shamed.
Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero was one of a number of players to support Alves, posting a photo of him with Brazilian female player Marta munching pies.
Said Alves, “He does it without thinking. But the world has evolved and we must evolve with it.”
The Pie Muncher was unavailable for comment.
jackie mac:
Is that hatred a two-way street?
‘They’ love their club just as much as we love ours.
rwe
17:21 on 29 April, 2014
I was there too but I was staying in London at the time and had to leave right on the final whistle to catch the tube so sadly missed that.
Ok I’ll give ye that one :-)
hamiltontim is praying for oscar
17:16 on 29 April, 2014
My last post was for you, cut and paste from last night…:)
Keep the Faith!
Hail Hail!
hamiltontim is praying for oscar
17:16 on 29 April, 2014
aiden bhoy
17:11 on 29 April, 2014
Robson’s testimonial was rather scary at the end when the Utd supporters invaded the park and ran towards the end containing the Celtic support. Thankfully, their intentions were peaceful and they were only looking to swap colours!!
I was at that game in with Utd fans with my Celtic scarf and there was never and malevolence.
I remember both fans singing “if you hate the ……. rangers/Scousers” alternately.
hamiltontim:
I too was at Robson’s, Gigg’s, Keane’s and Macari’s. The latter’s was an excellent day out, scorching day and all round good day out.
Keep the Faith!
Hail Hail!
GM
I put the bet on a while ago, and am not too hopeful if the truth be known.
Real are deadly on the break, they will sit in and soak up the Bayern pressure, and with the pace they have, I can see them scoring.
Should be a decent game.
Can’t see past Chelsea the morra, Jose has that winning habit when it matters.
HH
Googy
Only saying that it was quite scary with hundreds running towards us, especially as we were right at the very front!! :-)
Ye that was a good trip. Ha just remembered I went on the James Stokes that left from The Brazen Head!!!!
Have attended every Celtic match in Manchester including Rapid Vienna over the past 28 years.
All have been played in good humour.
All I have had no fears wearing my colours and usually in with Utd fans.
Best Keane. Got ticket in with the Bhoys.
I recall from Macari’s game fan runs on waving what appeared to me a Man. Utd. flag of red, white and black, initially he was booed until he got near the Celtic end and as flew the flag there was a Tricolour on the reverse side.
Keep the Faith!
Hail Hail!
Just after hearing McOist on SSN, telling blatant lies, are they all scared to pull him up ?
Envy of most clubs in the world re their % of wages for their playing staff was a fraction of their turnover, and this is a couple of weeks after their books showed wages accounted for 99% of their turnover, hunbelievable.
HH
hamiltontim is praying for oscar
17:29 on 29 April, 2014
You went from the Brazen Head.
You have been unmasked my mhan.
You are Tony Donnelly67.
:>{}
googybhoy ♥ we are all neil lennon
17:30 on 29 April, 2014
I was down at the Rapid game, remember very little due to being intoxicated. Do remember Aitken hitting the Post and them running up the other end and scoring, Pacult if memory serves me.
Quiz question who and where did we play the following Saturday?
Keep the Faith!
Hail Hail!
Googy
Drat, I’m unmasked :-)
kitalba @ 16:20
“My love for Celtic is unequivocal and unconditional, my respect for the corrupt game in Scotland is zero.”
Ditto.