YOU have to admire Craig Whyte's chutzpa - banned for life from Scottish football by the SFA, fined £200,000 into the bargain, so he sticks-up two metaphorical fingers to the Hampden blazers and wishes them good luck in collecting.
Why should he bother? He still owns Rangers, he is (until HMRC rules on the Big Tax Case) the biggest secured creditor - barring liquidation, he's the only single guy who will make anything out of Duff & Phelps, the single corporate entity who will make anything out of the club being "rescued" as a going concern.
Even if HMRC wins the BTC and liquidation becomes inevitable, I somehow think we will discover that Craig Whyte and not Rangers FC, owns Ibrox Park, those office blocks behind the stands and Murray Park, so he will still have to be dealt with by whoever starts the "newco" to keep some kind of Rangers playing in Scotland.
Should my scenario of the purchaser of what's left after liquidation also buying an in-trouble English club and moving them to Glasgow, come about, CW will still have tobe dealt with I presume - the guy can hardly lose.
The SFA sanctions of a one-year ban on signing players, plus fines, might well sound the death knell on the Blue Knights interest in the club. From the start, Paul Murray & Co have only been interested in carrying-on the old, discredited ways. They are still "Ra Peepl", in mind-set. I don't see them being interested in Rangers becoming just another club, trundling along with a mainly young squad and losing as often as they win.
In many ways, taking the hit, going down to the Third Division of the SFL with a team of boys could be the making of Rangers. Sure, they would lose the glory hunters among their fans; they might even (though I doubt it) lose the Protestant supremacists; but the fourth and fifth generation real Bears would still be there - the guys who live and breath Rangers, and in sufficient numbers to make Rangers' progress through the divisions and back to the SPL a glorious and happy journey for them.
I would like to think that come August 2015, as the First Division Championship flag is unfurled in front of 50,000-plus fans at Ibrox, the Rangers newco had earned the respect of everyone in Scottish football (apart from the Celtic Family) their non-respect is a given. Although, the decent Celtic fans will be pleased to see them back.
Who knows, maybe along the way, the club's sectarian baggage will finally be jettisoned.
But, what kind of SPL will Rangers return to? Well, a fairer one for a start. Shorn of Rangers mutual support, Celtic will have been out-voted 1-11 and there will be a fairer distribution of what little wealth there is. Sure, without four OF games a year, the TV deal will be less-lucrative, but, with a better chance of European participation, we might well have a clutch of good, young, Scottish players spread around the SPL and better-quality football on display.
Ach, I'm just an old dreamer - it will probably still be mince.
RANGERS' on-going travails have brought-about a glorious period of schadenfreude from the Celtic Family and nobody has enjoyed this more than Phil Mac Giolla Bhain, the self-styled "Rebel" blogger.
To be fair to PMGB, he has broken a few good stories and has been way abead of the MSM in Scotland in his coverage of events. Sure, he has over-dosed on schadenfreude and has been a wee-bit over-triumphalist, but, generally he has been good.
Last week, he managed to cut the moral high ground out from under himself with a gratuitously-offensive wee piece about "Professor Struth" and his great plan. He thought it was funny, as did his adoring public. Aye, there were some amusing wee jokes in there, but, you know something - it was nothing like as funny as "The Famine Song" - and that is apparently banned in Scotland.
It wasn't as funny either as my old mate Davie Leggat's out-pourings on his blog: Leggoland 2.
Davie, Davie, you're still in denial - time to move on now.
While I'm name-checking fellow hacks - surely the least-impressive piece of journalism printed in Scotland this week was Andrew Smith's lament in Scotland on Sunday about his not qualifying for and therefore being unlikely to receive a single one of Hibs' allocation of tickets for the Scottish Cup final.
Andrew outlined his many long years of following the Hibbees, but wailed that this counted for nothing: he wasn't a season ticket holder at Easter Road, so he couldn't get a ticket.
There, there, never mind Andrew, I am sure Sports Editor Graham Bean will make certain you are on the match-day coverage team somewhere; just as I expect Hearts fan Beano to put himself down for one of the precious press box briefs on the big day.
I will not be there. Some years ago, the paper for which I then worked won a sponsors' competition - we were judged to have produced the best Scottish Cup coverage of any local paper in Scotland; in spite of the fact "our" team fell at the first hurdle.
This earned us a couple of 24-can cases of the product, plus invitations to the final for myself, the Editor, my sub-editor and the snapper. We enjoyed pre-match drinks and a meal, had seats in the "posh" area of Hampden (padded and comfortable too), half-time pie and Bovril, and drinks, canapes and a wee going-away present after the match.
I resolved there and then, having sampled life among the prawn sandwich brigade in corporate hostility, no way was I EVER going back to front-line operations in the press box for the big games - although it has to be said: conditions there are far above those experienced by the pbi of the Tartan Army.
AND FINALLY - well said big Shuggie MacDonald of the Herald, on Saturday. Shuggie's Saturday musings are always good value, but this week, he hit the nail bang on the head with a well-timed attack on the modern fans' habit of clapping whenever a five-yard square pass in an SPL match reaches the intended recipient. It's about time somebody had a go at this, for too-long we have rewarded and revered mediocrity in Scottish football. We're shite and its long past time we admitted it.
No comments:
Post a Comment