An amazing article (2 parts)...

i dont know who this author is but i thought it was brilliant....a real nail on the head!

THIS GUYS ARTICLE PUT A SMILE AS WIDE AS THE CLYDE ACROSS MA COUPON.... <!--emo&:celt2:--><!--endemo-->
People who know me well know I have two passions in life; Celtic Football Club and politics. Occasionally, one distracts me more than the other, and with the US Primaries getting underway I thought this would be one of the times when the running for votes might triumph over running for goals in the bid for my attention.


I was wrong. The Scottish sporting press has, again, focussed my attention back on the Beautiful Game, instead of on the One That Never Ends. In the last few days, I’ve seen some of the best spin of my life, and it makes the politicians look amateurish.

The Scottish sports media is both too stupid, and lazy, to spot it, or, worse, they are actively colluding in it, actually doing it themselves, on behalf of Murray and the Forces of Darkness.


It’s the best smokescreen I’ve seen in year. One political comparison comes to mind more than most, and in an election year I think it’s very fitting I should use it. It’s from the States.



A few months before the 1984 US Presidential race got underway, a small group of men gathered to plan the dawning battle to re-elect Ronald Reagan. They were the elite of the Republican Party campaign team, all with vast experience, both at state and national levels. Nevertheless, they were grievously concerned, because when they looked at what plans the administration had for a second term they found ……… nothing at all.



The Reagan government was running on empty.



What they finally put together was an absolute triumph, and all the more astounding because of the despondency of that meeting. It won their candidate a second landslide, with a staggering 49 states voting for him, giving him the fourth largest majority in the nation’s history. It is still considered to be the perfect model for how a good campaign should be run in the modern age.



Its apogee was a TV ad entitled Morning in America.



Those who examine Reagan’s second term, however, all come to the overwhelming conclusion that the initial fears of the campaigners were utterly justified. Indeed, those fears never went away and the entirety of the campaign strategy they finally devised was built to hide that fact. It was a soaring triumph, yes, but only of style over substance, because when the cosmetics are stripped off the Reagan re-elect what one finds is the lack of concrete policies, substituted for a focus on the character and image of Reagan himself.



The result was a mandate without a manifesto, and it had appalling consequences.



During the second term his administration was run not from the top but at a lower, individual level, with various agencies and cabinet secretaries making up policy as they went along ………… culminating in the scandals of Iran-gate and Contra.



Over at Rangers, the administration has been making it up as they go along for quite a while. The press would have us believe that behind the madness of recent years lies a method, but it’s difficult to take that seriously. Much of what’s happened has been window dressing, and not even effective window dressing at that. I would call it, instead, style over substance, except there’s no style either.



I think it worth pointing out, that style over substance is the strategy of the scoundrel. It’s often the last desperate throw of the dice for desperate men who have nothing else to offer. The political media has become adept at sniffing it out.



The sports media in Scotland either never learned to do the same, or have sold out and becoming a willing participant in it. As such, they remain dependant on briefings from the Blue Room, where Chairman Dave rules the roost like a latter day Third World dictator.



The press reliance on word from Ibrox has gotten them into hot water at times, or should have, such as when Chick Young announced Smith as the new Rangers manager before the SFA knew. That was small fry compared to the madness of the last few days.



Picking up the Sunday Mail on January 6th, and reading the front page, I couldn’t help but think about the Morning in America ad and the chaos it eventually brought. The ad seemed so high-brow, so full of hope and optimism. Yet it was designed to distract the electorate from the very real failures of Reaganomics, and said nothing about the future. Behind the rosy picture of life in the Land of the Free were a soaring deficit and an uncertain future.



The Sunday Mail article fulfilled a similar role, and it did so in a very similar way. It was designed to be taken at face value. The last thing the author wanted was for people to think it through. If one part of it veered away from Morning in America, it did so only in that it cited numbers. They make good headlines, but Reagan’s advisors were too smart to make that mistake.



In everything else, style over substance was the underlying tone. It spoke in broad context and was ignorant as to details. It promised to regenerate the whole south side of Glasgow. It spoke of rejuvenating Rangers, and, as a selling point far better than any of that, it spoke of how they would finally trump Celtic on an issue that has rankled David Murray for ten years, that of the respective capacities at Parkhead and Ibrox.



The story grew wings, of course. It was designed to. For months to come it will be touted as the ultimate proof of Murray’s genius, as many previous bold claims were. And like many others, as memories of the article fade with the passage of time, we will come to hear less and less about it until finally there is silence.



The purpose of the smokescreen, here as in political campaigns, is to provide temporary cover. It is the absence of decisive action, for if the capacity for decisive action existed then the smokescreen wouldn’t be needed in the first place.



In the end, on those few occasions when the matter is raised again, it will all be explained away as a bold vision which somehow just never got off the ground. Murray has already laid the groundwork, in citing it as just one of three plans under consideration. I daresay neither of the others is anywhere near as spectacular, and anyway, no firm time line has been laid out for revealing them, other than the vague notion that all will be made clear “when the time is right.”






The reasons why this particular plan won’t be adopted will never be adequately given, but we will be assured that it was all possible, that it was all so close, that it slipped through their fingers through no real fault of their own, or it will be touted as the redevelopment equivalent of why they failed to sign Scott Brown ………… it was all within their reach but not deemed to be good value for money.



We have seen it too many times to be surprised by it.



I have no faith in the Scottish sports media’s ability or willingness to investigate the claims properly, not that it would take much. Indeed, a bare five minutes with a calculator, as well as a very short perusal of Murray’s public comments in the past year, should have halted the front page and blown this out in the first place. The transparency is so obvious as to require no real scrutiny. Yet the story was there, and it reads like Holy Writ, when, actually, it’s the stuff of Peter Pan.



For those who missed it, here are the bare bones. Rangers have plans to redevelop Ibrox, says the journalist (whose name, Russell Findlay, does not hint at Celtic sympathies). This regeneration of the stadium will increase the capacity to over 70,000 (making it bigger than Celtic Park, he says, clearly breathless and orgasmic with joy). It will utterly revitalise Rangers finances and set them up for the next century. The “top secret” plans will cost £700 million, and will involve a top sponsor being given license to rename the new stadium.



There are cosmetics involved too, of course, what Stephen King once called the “little touch that means so much” in a good work of fiction, like the pitch-on-wheels we saw at the magnificent Sapporo Dome in Japan during the 2002 World Cup, as well as the creation of the Rangers Village, modelled on Chelsea’s. Ibrox Primary School, we are told, will remain untouched by these grandiose plans, as though this was a major concern to us.



To say the story is unbelievable is a vast understatement. Indeed, it is laughable at best. Having examined the matter in a thorough fashion, I am convinced there is about as much truth in it as there is in the average OJ Simpson statement to police.



A bold claim? Actually, no. The story bears all the hallmarks of a red herring. It stinks to blue heaven. Let’s start with the first and most obvious sign which accompanies a story being intended as mere pubic relations: the fact it was leaked.



The plans were labelled a secret, presumably on Murray’s orders. Yet he gave a briefing when the journalist called. Usually, “Top Secret” plans are just that, and remain so until they come to fruition and are ready to be announced. This one was given to the press by a high-level source inside Ibrox itself, and the journalist felt able to go to Murray for a quote. Murray, instead of giving the “no comment” which would have accompanied any such leak in, say, the City of London, had it been credible to begin with, decided to go on record and confirm the plans were under consideration.



The plans themselves are as vague as Reagan’s 1984 manifesto, which is to say they are big on grand ideas but low on details. The journalist, if such he can be called, described them as stemming from Rangers’ previous plans to redevelop the area in the wake of the now defunct super-casino scheme. When that scheme was announced in the first place it was clear some work had gone into it. It came with artists impressions, investment groups allowed their names to be linked with it and planning applications were submitted in lieu of the decision on where the casino would be.



The article in the Mail had no such attachments. Instead, it had a picture of the present stadium and its surrounding area with little arrows indicating where the new developments would be built. To put that in its proper context, consider that even the Kelly/White board of directors had an artists drawing for Cambuslang.



These days, with government’s frequent lying about spending levels on health and education, few people trust blue-sky numbers. There is a healthy cynicism about such things.



In 1984, Reaganomics, like Daveanomics, Murray’s previous strategy for running Rangers, involved running up huge deficits, so it was an easy decision to leave any talk of figures out of the election plans, as any political hack worth a button would have blown them out of the water without breaking a sweat.



Indeed, knowing how people distrust numbers and often distort them, Celtic almost never comments on financial matters except when the annual figures come out. They are essentially concrete, so they can’t be re-interpreted or scaled up or down as is the tendency with the media, who are often cynical or outright biased when giving figures when it comes to Celtic. That said, it’s clear the age of innocence is not dead in journalism, as the numbers in this particular case are accepted seemingly without question.



And those numbers are just too large, and thereby too suspect, to be entirely correct. Consider this, for example. Between Westminster and the Scottish Executive, some £1.6 billion will be spent in the East End over the next five or so years, for the Commonwealth Games in 2014. This money is primarily coming from the public purse, that source of funds so deep as to term it almost bottomless, and yet it will take five years to complete the project and the bean-counters will be having heart attacks long before it’s done.


Rangers will spend almost half that, in half the time, as a private entity, and, if we are to believe what we read, with no palpitations at all. They will do this at a time when an alleged offer for Alan Hutton was grabbed with such speed as to make any right-thinking person wonder what size the present hole in the balance sheet is. The Hutton situation does not hint at them having their own unlimited funds, but rather at a club hovering near skint.



When the serious questions begin, and they must in this case because of the sheer weight of that huge figure, we will doubtless hear much about Arsenal and the Emirates Stadium. A number of fantasies persist about that, including the oft-repeated one that the stadium cost Arsenal nothing because Emirates themselves built it, and got to name it as their repayment for doing so.



A mere three hours after reading the Mail’s story, and in anticipation of what is sure to come from mouthpieces like Derek Johnstone, I was able to run down some of the figures involved in that project, and the ease with which I have demonstrated the lack of viability in what Murray has proposed appears to fully justify the decision Reagan’s own advisors took when they refused to quote numbers in their own notorious smokescreen.



It’s just too easy to pick holes in blue-sky spending plans.



The Emirates Stadium, which is smaller than the proposed New Ibrox, of course, cost £430 million pounds, which falls far below the £700 million figure quoted in the Mail. It is true Arsenal didn’t pay all of this. In fact, £100 million did come from the Emirates group, in exchange for the stadium name.



This is an enormous figure, and in examining it we must remember that it reflects the profile of the Premiership more than Arsenal’s. It is difficult to believe such an astronomical sum would be paid out for the rights to a team in the SPL, but let’s say on the side of Rangers that this figure was indicative of what they could get. That would leave them needing a further £600 million.



In the case of Arsenal, a further £15 million was obtained in exchange for 20 years income from their catering operations, another figure which seems high. Not that it matters here, as the catering operation at Ibrox is run by one of Murray’s companies, not Rangers, and so any deal of this sort would affect only him. The money would not go to the club itself. That door, then, is closed

 

A further £260 million came in the form of a direct loan from the Royal Bank of Scotland, and when you examine it, even the interest on that is enough to give you a nosebleed. Let’s assume, for example, that they get a good rate, say 3% annually. The interest on a 3% loan for that astronomical figure is, itself, nearly £8 million. To cover even this, let alone repaying the debt itself, which would see annual repayments of millions more, the exact figure depending on the length of the loan, which one would imagine they’d want to be short, they would need to sell every available seat, and every new season ticket sold would need to cost more than £400.


Arsenal offset much of this loan with a bond scheme.



From what I can make of it, the venture is a high-risk one, involving the club issuing these bonds at a much lower rate than the commercial banks. They are the first football club ever to try this kind of thing, and if it goes wrong the implications are all too easy to imagine. That kind of disaster, of course, is much easier to recover from if you have a Russian billionaire at the helm. Without one, and with no other means to repay such a mountainous debt, it is hard to imagine a commercial bank loaning Rangers this kind of cash. The risks are breathtakingly high.



How high? When Arsenal Chief Executive Keith Edelman briefed the press in May 2006 the club’s debts were already standing at some £260 million, and were expected to grow to some £385 million during the following year. Only Premiership TV money, and virtually assured Champions League football, year on year, makes sustaining even the interest payments on such an appalling debt even near viable.



As I said, a billionaire owner also helps, but Rangers don’t have one of those. Instead they have a steel tycoon whose other companies appear to be swimming in enough red ink as it is.



The rest of Arsenal’s money came from a more obvious source, and it is closed off to Rangers entirely. They obtained the rest from the sale of the Highbury site, and some surrounding land. Rangers have no such capability, as the frontage of the ground itself is Listed, which is why the talk is of a redevelopment rather than relocation. In short, the land can’t be sold to a commercial bidder.



This too is being spun, of course. Rangers won’t “break with tradition” by demolishing the stand on Edmiston Drive.



Taking all this into account, even the Emirates figure, of £460 million, seems to be far beyond Rangers fundraising capabilities and New Ibrox would cost £240 million more than that.



The RBS loan to Arsenal covered over half the overall cost. For this to be the case with Rangers the loan would have to be £90 million higher than the one the London club received ………… and at even the most conservative, at £350 million, would leave them in a red zone out of Scottish football club territory and into Third World proportions.



The next time Gordon Brown held talks on debt cancellation he’d have to include Rangers in the relief package.



In short, this scheme would involve Murray himself having to mortgage almost every other business he owned, or the fans would need to buy an awful lot of new bricks.



According to the wisdom of the journalist there is another way, of course. All of this could be paid for in the inevitable increase in the capacity of the stadium. The very idea is lunacy. Let’s, for just a moment, give them the benefit of the doubt. Lets say they raised £500 million of the cash from other sources ………… which, if they managed it, would put them up there with Lourdes as a source of miracles. (A comparison I have made just to wind them up.)



£200 million, from increased season ticket sales. That number can be attained in a mere 10 years ……………if the price of the average ticket for the new seats was in the £1000 bracket. More conservatively, giving them the benefit of the doubt again, if we use the number I did earlier, the one needed to repay the annual bank interest, £400, it would take almost a quarter of a century. During that whole time the attendance would need to stay steady throughout.



Think about that. 70,000 highly priced season tickets. In the SPL. At a time when they would barely have a transfer fund.



This scenario, which one would presume would be nearer the best case than the worst case in terms of overall funding, seems impossible when one crunches the numbers.



Which brings me to another point; the present financial state of the club, as evidenced by Murray’s failure to hand the last three coaches decent money for transfer fees. Had Rangers been in possession of the kind of financial might this project would suggest, surely some of it would have been spent on their playing squad? Would they really have spent the last two seasons without a trophy when they could have been putting together their own Galacticos?



David Murray has allowed Smith to spend money, of course, but by his own admission, in the man’s own words, this is a one-off. Last year they made a huge loss. This year, with Smith’s spending having failed to get them to the knockout stages in the Champions League, and with direct entry to that competition going to the league winners next year, and we all know that’s us, the figures in the future will be enough to turn anyone pale.



If we conclude from this that Rangers can’t make any of this happen, and I don’t see how we can draw any other conclusion, we need to ask what the purpose of all this spinning is.



Firstly, let me say something about the paper itself. It took me a mere three hours to put this together, or to pull the story apart if you like. This, frankly, should embarrass the Sunday Mail’s editor, as well as the journalist involved, who obviously made no effort to verify a word of this nonsense. Again we must draw our own conclusions, but I can see only two possible explanations, and neither seem good: this bunch either swallow, verbatim, every single word Murray says to them, without question, which makes you glad he’s not a government spokesman at the Home Office (a wee dig there at Mr Reid, in case you missed it!) or they are lazy incompetents, unworthy of either their pay cheques or the profession they discredit.



In politics, spin happens either to hide an unpalatable series of events or facts, or it is used when things in the public domain need gloss to make them look good. Reagan’s guys knew it well. When they found themselves with no concrete plans to build on, they instead used the public’s perception of their candidate to make the election about him, rather than a set of policies to lead the nation forward.


So it is here. In the absence of a concrete plan for Rangers the spin is creating the appearance of one. Again, the man’s own words bear this out. For the last few years he’s been looking for a way to get rid of the club. Would he be doing so if these plans were viable, if there was any sort of long term vision left in him?



Besides this, the very notion that Murray is a man with a long-term vision was smashed last year when he sacked Paul Le Guen, an event which has, itself, been spun into a victory of sorts. When Le Guen was hired it was to be the beginning of a new plan for the club, but a year on they have replaced him with a coach they fired a decade ago. The dressing room culture of the eighties has taken over, as revealed by Daniel Cousin. The board has not grown, and the man at the helm has retained his iron grip.


Celtic, in the meantime, have hired Gregory DuPont, one of Europe’s premier league coaches, with the results already evident in the play of young Aiden McGeady. The very idea such a man would permit, for a second, fast food in the dressing room is laughable, and yet two of our tabloids smashed Cousin’s claims, one actually going as far as to say his comments show a total lack of “present coaching techniques” where, it seems, there is a growing understanding as to the benefits of players eating pizza to regain energy levels. These techniques must be peculiar to the south side of Glasgow, as I have found no evidence that they are used anywhere else in Europe.



Our boardroom experience continues to grow. Like him or loathe him, there can be few more well known, more experienced, people in the land than John Reid. Another recent event of interest is the story of The Man From G.A.P., which adds a further layer to this tale.



Just before Christmas, the papers ran stories about John Fisher’s investment in Celtic. As the fourth richest man in America, it seemed like an unusual step for him to take. However, the stories made it clear that he’d long been seeking an investment opportunity in British football. What was surprising, and not a little hilarious, was that he had considered Rangers first …………… and decided against it.



The Sunday Mail, in another example where they clearly took the word of Murray as gospel, ran the story like all the other papers, but with one difference. They claimed Murray had turned him down, but gave no reasons why. If such a thing were true, not that it is, we would be forgiven for remembering a time when Celtic’s board did the very same thing, to a wee Canadian guy in a bunnet, and a year or so on were almost closed down by the bank.



It appears suicidal for a cash-strapped club to turn down cash on the hip. Should we now surmise, based on the latest stories, that Murray and Rangers do not need the money? Are they minted? Do they have £700 million sitting in the bank?



The fact is, Fisher chose to invest in Celtic instead of Rangers, in spite of Murray’s best efforts to secure his cash, and every paper bar the Mail took the position that one would logically assume; in choosing to invest in our club rather than theirs, he was making a clear statement as to who he views as the best long term bet. His position as a multi-billionaire lends enormous weight to that view, and his credibility is unimpeachable. His decision would certainly have been very different had Rangers been on the verge of such a mammoth fiscal moonbeam as has been suggested here.



The Man from G.A.P. is part of the reason this story has surfaced when it has. It is a major humiliation for Murray and Rangers that such a man has publicly snubbed his club in favour of Celtic. Their obvious briefing to the Mail to the tune Murray rejected the cash is a gesture equivalent to throwing the toys out the pram. They are not the actions of a strong man, but the childish acting out of a deeply hurt, deeply embarrassed, ego-maniac, thwarted in his aims, whose rivals have reaped the benefit of his hubris.



Two other reasons scream out at us from the self same paper, one of them on the very front page which announces the whole charade. Underneath the headline is another, stating that we have just secured the long term future of Artur Boruc.



At a time when they appear to be accepting bids on their good players, we are nailing ours down, in a statement of intent which even Murray cannot ignore.



On the back page is the first Scottish media interview with Andreas Hinkel, our first new signing in the transfer window.



Rangers have yet to spend, and despite much media hype that they will, Walter Smith himself has said very little business will be done. Indeed, as we know, their one big story so far is that they accepted an alleged bid for Scotland’s own White Cafu. If such a bid has, indeed, been made, and they accepted it, only for the player to knock back the move, it is hard to imagine them being happy at his decision, one which in fiduciary terms makes the impact of Bobo Balde’s decision to stay at Celtic last year look like small change.



(Of course, Hutton’s decision is being touted as egalitarian, and love of the jersey, whilst Bobo’s has been condemned as the act of a player lacking ambition, and contact to leech money from us.)



That story, incidentally, has been spun so much we might never know the truth, certainly not whilst the Scottish press ignores much of it to focus on the benefits to Rangers of either outcome.


And what are the facts, as we know them?



First, we have Rangers accepting a bid, and Smith confirming this. Then we have Hutton rejecting the move, and Rangers expressing joy, and saying they never wanted to lose him. Then the Spurs manager flatly denies making a move, and a day later Smith himself appears to confirm this when in total contradiction of everything he has said prior, he declares no moves have been made for any of his first team players. Who’s telling the truth? Is this policy on the hoof, in true Reagan government style, where each department is pursuing a little agenda of its own? Are the two club chairman doing this deal on their own, without consulting the coaches, or is it simply more smoke?



What we can say with certainty is that Rangers fans, who know the club has immediate issues needing resolved, are unlikely to accept the closure of this transfer window if it leaves their squad unchanged or weakened, as appears entirely possible.



The one thing which might appease them is if there are big things happening to ensure a better future. A £700 million project to finally resolve their inferiority complex over our stadium’s larger capacity is just the tonic most Rangers fans need, and when it comes with the ringing endorsement of the press, who could dig and demolish it all, but won’t, some will swallow it.






The smoke will blow, their attention will be diverted, their eyes will look forward …………… and the window will slam shut. New Ibrox, and hanging onto a player they accepted a transfer bid for, will be offered as evidence of a bright future, of how forward thinking they are and of how everything will work out for the best.



Will their fans fall for it? I don’t know, but I never underestimate the gullibility of the Rangers supporters. Some of them seem determined to prove that Catholic Schools Are Better. The Peepel, who sing royalist and loyalist anthems, celebrate the Great in Britain and yet make * salutes, are not going to swell the numbers of Scottish MENSA, and so enough of them may just buy into this nonsense to give Murray a little bit of breathing space.



Murray is hurting right now. His club has not won a trophy for two years, and soon we will be taking our rightful place with the elite of European football in the Champions League whilst his own club settles for the consolation of being knocked out of the UEFA Cup. The plans for the Commonwealth Games will revitalise the East End, all of it on the public slate, increasing Celtic’s position in the process. Our long term strategy continues to bear fruit. Over at Ibrox they continue to make policy on the hoof.



When Reagan’s second term ended, Walter Mondale, the Democrat he had roundly thrashed in 1984, might have allowed himself a wry smile at the scandal swirling around his one-time rival. He would have been foolish to give in to the urge.



In the end, what beat Mondale was not so much the smokescreen designed by Reagan’s brilliant campaign team as it was Mondale’s own weaknesses in exploiting the gaping holes which were nevertheless on display. Either he never saw those holes or did not know to use them to good effect. It makes no difference to the outcome.



The Sunday Mail has played its own role brilliantly. Dazzled by the lights, distracted by the smoke, or perhaps just toeing the party line, what they’ve done is printed transparent fiction as fact. This is what you do when the truth is too terrible to face.



The fact is, friends, that our future is secure whilst theirs by no means is as certain. Spin hides the truth and diverts your eyes, but only if you let it. Look past the smoke at the facts.



Fight the media’s fiction with the truth.



Things are not what they’d like us to believe, fellow Troops in the Hoops. We must do what the press has failed to do in this case, and expose the lies for what they are. Based on the facts we have at hand. Judging by those, Morning in Govan it certainly is not.



In truth, it’s closer to midnight.



Keep the Faith.


The Future’s Bright. It’s Still Green & White.

 

fantastic read, completly agree with every word.

whos the author of this? the man deserves a meddel!

 

A great read. Very enjoyale reading just how precarious the huns financial state is especially when contrasted with how healthy ours is.

 

excellent article,kudos to the man who wrote this,he checked the facts and realised the plight of the sinking ship that is the scurge of the spl.HAIL HAIL

 

excellent.

 

Great read really dispells this new ibrox joke. So many of my hun friends truely believe that this new ibrox would happen, shows how deluded they are of their clubs finances and future.

Makes me smile to read something like this and realise the good job celtic are doing and the desperate tactics rangers have slumped too.

Hail Hail

 

haha - thats just made my day

 

This is an artical writen by Che Timvara and taken from e-tims an online celtic fanzine.

 

what an amazing post , give that man a huge pat on the back ,well done that man

 

Absolutely amazing article. Every word makes so much sense. Someone ought to send that to the daily papers. Let's have some debate and get them to find some answers to that one

Murray and co must be so sick at the plans for the East End......a bit like a drowning man who's up the creek without a paddle :bbpd:

 

Spot on to the writer of that.. good read, tells it like it is...
Also good on you mate for finding it and posting it here

 

Awesome.

 

Brilliant. Another example of Mr Murrays jealousy and desperation and"anything you can do i can do better" fakeness involves celtics recent interest in the "hero" of scottish football James McFadden. As soon as the rumours have died down on celtics bid for him(which may not be over yet). Mr Murrays puppet Walter Smith has come out sayin rangers want young mcfadden. Perfect example. Great article.

 

That has to be one of the best things I've read for a while, very insightful and a great read.

 

* myself when I read that comment.

I also * myself laughing when I saw the "no real plans" plan in the papers.

An excellent article and analysis/critique of the media's love for everything coming out of Murrays *.

It just confirmed what I already knew. Rangers have this view that they are bigger and better than everyone else, they confirmed this when we saw the arrival of Souness and the blank cheque book in a failed attempt to buy European success and the financial rewards that would bring. What this did in effect was to nearly bankrupt Scottish football by driving up transfer fees and wages. Had it not been for Murray pouring money into the hole paying off the interest, Ibrox would have gone the same way as Airdrie. Any investor or bank who are approached to finance such a scheme would after checking out Murrays books run a mile only after telling Murray to seek Psychiatric help.

I have printed the article for framing and will keep for posterity.

 

brilliant can anybody tell if i can e mail this to a friend and how i go about doing it

 

Highlight it then copy and paste

 

Did any of you her someone on Real Radio last nite talking about every point in the article. It was someone who has read it or the guy who actually wrote it.

Shot the Plans down in flames and everyone agreed with the article.

Get it rite up them....

 

class lad, an excellant read