Common Sense From A Rangers Fan - Shockaroonie

SCANDINAVIAN forests have been felled for the newsprint required, websites have crashed under the load of on-line content posted, meanwhile, the seemingly eternal soap opera 'Edmiston Drive' continues to grip.

 

Just this week, on his 'Merlin' blog, Bill McMurdo posted a contribution from a Rangers fan, known only as 'The Kilty', which offered, unusually for this long-running debate, a modicum of common sense.

 

Bill has  agreed to my request that I be allowed to re-post Kilty's piece, which follows: the prelude piece is how Bill headed it on his blog.

 

Every now and then we get a belter post that simply has to be given a wider platform. Here is one from The Kilty – a regular poster who always has something constructive to say. If it were me, I’d get 30,000 leaflets printed with this on it for the next home game:-

For some ungodly reason Rangers fans all see themselves as corporate business men and tax experts. Rangers fans, unless they are shareholders, have no inherent right to be given any transparency.  The business dealings of the club have nothing whatsoever to do with any season ticket holder or ticket buying fan unless they have, as I said,  become a shareholder in Rangers International Football Club plc and that is the bottom line.

The Board only need answer to the shareholders. For some reason this notion of fan power and a false importance have been placed on the rank and file, along with their lust for knowledge that quite frankly many could not understand, including myself. This may spring from bad business conducted by the club in the past but it still does not give any fan the right to have any commercially sensitive information divulged to them. I am sick hearing phrases like “Who are BPH?“ and “We want transparency” as well as “Where did the money go?” We also hear “The Rangers performance was rubbish – we need better players” which then leads to “These players are getting paid too much”  and the old favourite of “The board are spivs” with moans that they took bonuses.

Unless you are a shareholder, none of that is any of your business. I have heard the standard excuse: “Well ah paid ma season ticket money so am entitled” but sorry, thats not the case. There are a vast multitude of Rangers fans that spend more per week from their wages in Tescos and Asda and some  on beers and spirits so by the same argument if I spend £50 a week on Tennents lager I should say who is on the board of the company. My Mrs spends easy £80 a week in Tescos – do you think they would tell me who their investors are ?? Or that I could get a group of my pals together and stand outside with blue cards waving them so that they would listen?

As for King, what he is doing is nothing short of trying to muscle his way in using blackmail. Is that what the norm is now? Get off to a great start, take control by default but when he doesn’t do as the fans want, is he a spiv or does he have to go too?

It has been said often and ignored just as much that you can take a whale out of the pool and put it in a bowl; it’s still a whale with all the needs of that whale. Rangers are that whale, stuck in a fish bowl. Did it cost any less to run Ibrox last year compared to the year before? Did Murray Park suddenly become a free enterprise zone ? We are in the same position as many companies are in and that is experiencing temporary cash flow problems. Many forget with all the transparency gurgling and spivs out pish that these men on the board have ensured we are debt free. All that on the back of reduced season ticket prices due to the division that was being played in.

Rangers don’t need transparency, they need STABILITY. That’s what makes teams win by good margins and that’s what makes the share price rise. It’s what gets sponsors, it’s what makes individuals and corporate investors want to part with their investment cash. At the present time no one wants to put money in just to get told what to do by delusional fans or have pathetic displays of disloyalty to men who put their hands in their own pockets to buy into our Club.

Im sorry but at the end of the day your ticket gets you in to be entertained at a football match – that’s where it stops unless, as I said, you are a shareholder in the management company. If you are not entertained, don’t go back; that’s your choice. I know that emotions etc complicate things but that is the bottom line.