MARK Hateley thinks (ok, far-fetched, but, live with it) Rangers should be fast-tracked back into the SPL, for the good of Scottish football. P - l - e - a - s - e: gie us peace Mark.
He goes on: "Rangers have done their time".
Mark son - yer avin a larff.
It's the continuing sense of entitlement from the great and good of the Rangers "family" which gets me. A combination of an unsustainable management method and downright crooked swindling brought down the institution which had been Scotland's most-successful team since professionalism was introduced in 1890. In any properly-run sphere of commercial enterprise, any new start-up following administration or liquidation would have had to start again at the bottom and work up.
The bottom in (semi-) professional football in Scotland is the juniors. The "Rangers" entity which Charles Green formed following administration should, at best, have started life in Central Division Two of the West of Scotland Regional Leagues of the Scottish Junior Football Association - NOT the Third Division of the Scottish Football League.
Yet, that league having been won, Hateley wants the club immediately promoted to the SPL - you couldn't make it up.
Yes, there are reasons - non-football ones - why the Rangers "brand" should be allowed to flourish - we have to have somewhere to be a focus of pro-Protestant bigotry in this country apparently. The fact that pandering to that bigotry makes money is a stain on Scotland, so, let's do it.
Aye right - not for me thank you.
HAD the SFA done the right thing post-Whyte, they would have told Green & Co to start in the juniors and used the other clubs' fear of losing the tainted money they make out of Rangers to force through real and sustainable change.
We'd have had our pyramid; they might well have brought in caps on the size of squads, salary caps, forced through legislation demanding that a high percentage of each squad should be Scottish-qualified.
They could have tried-out ideas which might make for a more fan-friendly and exciting league. But, that would have demanded men of ideas and vision and there are damned few, some might say no examples of such men around Hampden.
Scottish football has been failing for years. The Souness "revolution" which brought Hateley to Scotland in the first place merely helped hasten the failure rate.
We NEED change, but, it has to be sustainable change and fast-tracking the present incarnation of Rangergs into the SPL is most definitely NOT the type of change we need.
I HAVE to admit, reading wee Davie Leggat's daily rants in his blog LeggoLand is one of my secret guilty pleasures.
I have shared some laughs with the wee man in various press boxes and have long been aware that Davie is indeed the Lap Top Loyal's chief loyalist. Compared to Davie's love of Rangers, the late Malky Munro's love affair with Partick Thistle was as sham as Chick Young's St Mirren marriage.
Right now Davie has a new pet hate. For long enough he wasted no opportunity to vent his spleen at 'Odious Creep', as he has dubbed Graham 'Britney' Spiers. But, of late he has found a new target - Keith Jackson of what Leggo dubs 'The Daily Rhebel'.
Keith is, it has to be admitted, an easy target. He perhaps ought to have quit after his exclusive revelation that Craig Whyte's wealth was "off the radar", when the Carfin Con Man first surfaced in Scottish football. (Apologies to the good people of Carfin by the way, alliteration in play there, but, you've got the crematorium and Rangers were well-burned by him).
I have never rated Jackson, he is not a patch on his predecessors as the Record's top football man, such as 'Waverley', Hughie Taylor, the great 'Chiefie' Cameron and even - until he began to believe his own publicity, the very able James Traynor. His presence at the head of a pretty below average Record writing team merely helps illustrate how that paper has fallen.
I recall, some years ago, Jackson was pontificating pre-match on Radio Clyde, a bunch of assembled hacks were listening in the Firhill press box, when one of our number, a certain Paisley Buddie named William Leckie erupted and wondered aloud what kind of shite that useless c*** Jackson would come up with next.
"Well Bill, whatever it is, it's your fault", I suggested.
"How come?" replied Mr Leckie.
"Well, you're the silly bar steward who gave him a job with the Record.
At which point Mr Leckie went awfully quiet.
Never mind Bill, we all make mistakes.
SPEAKING of mistakes, apparently the English Players Union made one when they hired Reginald D Hunter to speak at their Player of the Year bash.
I could ask what were they thinking - but thinking is not something we generally associate with footballers.
Mr Hunter's brand of humour is an acquired taste and I would venture that, for an audience of footballers - who let us never forget wear their IQs on their backs - his patter would, like the Wimbledon "Crazy Gang's" forward passes, fly over most of their heads.
Done their time? Is he really that stupid that he believes that the hun were unjustly punished and can be pardoned? Mark Hateley is a brainless, untalented prick. I can think of no other term that sums him up as my choice of words above. He wasn't even a good player back in the day. His constant clamour for attention would put the balk up even the most ardent of Jackeens. Time to shut up Mark, your room temperature IQ has just turned Baltic. I just googled the word bigot and popped Hateleys ugly coupon. No surprise there, eh?
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