Regular readers of this site will not have to be coloured surprised that Rangers Lite received yet another home tie against inferior opposition in the Scottish Cup. A cynic might contend that keeping the lights on at Ibrox and the tills ringing at William Hill are the two most important Key Performance Indicators in Stewart Regan’s remit. As he was one of the architects of the phoenix club, was he appointed godfather to Charles Green’s sibling? With eleven home ties in their last twelve draws, the penny is beginning to drop that two frozen balls, one for Celtic and one for Rangers Lite, have become a regular feature of the draw. The sponsors want a Glasgow derby bang for their buck, and a deep run for Rangers, and it behoves the SFA to deliver their commercial imperatives.
I confidently predict that Rangers will be in the home dressing room to face Celtic at Hampden in the semi-finals. Is Scotland ready for a Glasgow derby final? The circa two hundred who entered the field with the sole intention of attacking the Hibs supporters would suggest otherwise. Should Rangers proceed to the final there is always the distinct possibility that their recidivist supporters will spoil the party. The old club was notorious for doing so, win or lose, with The Battle of Barcelona and The Blitzkrieg of Manchester among the nadirs of Scotland’s shame. Rangers Lite, via their bloated mouthpiece Jim Traynor, gave the worst elements in the support free licence to run riot ‘to protect the players.’ Traynor’s tame journalist, Keith Jackson, ran with the lie that all the Rangers players were being attacked and that this was the least the Rangers support could do. The Vanguard Bears offered to pay any fines incurred in ‘defending the players’ including those using the corner flags as weapons long after the players had left the field. What did the Hampden beaks do about the rioting Rangers Lite criminals? The square root of SFA!
I anticipate that Aberdeen, Celtic and Rangers Lite will be in the foregone conclusion of the draw, with the Dons facing either Hearts or Hibs in the less prestigious semi-final. This tie will be broadcast by the BBC ‘Huns R Us’ of Wilson & Macintyre as it can be picked up for a song.
Kenny Mac will inevitably invite fellow bellends Bazza & Jackass to preview the game, and in a subsequent programme add a follow follow postscript and their predictions apropos the Glasgow derby semi-final. Does Jim Traynor provide the panel for Kenny Mac’s show or does his producer just call round all the former Rangers players in his roster?. Kenny Mac tries hard to conceal his erection in his radio blue do, but he fawns so obsequiously to the former Rangers players that a cynic might suggest that he would fellate them given half a chance.
I respectfully request that my readers exercise patience as I have an exclusive at the end of this article.
The weekend’s narrative was dominated by Rangers Lite for all the wrong reasons. Big Fat Derek Johnstone, who recently celebrated his silver anniversary of being out of the loop, picked up his pom-poms and squeezed into his panty girdle to cheer lead the rogue board’s decision to sack their senior management team by e-mail. Johnstone, who has the gravitas of a blue helium balloon, was not fooling anyone as he engaged in the Can-Can up Edmiston Drive. I suggest that Hugh Keevins does the decent thing by turning up BFDJ’s hearing aid to point out that Rangers Lite are not the Billy Big Baws that he formerly played for. He may have accepted having his contract terminated by carrier pigeon but the actions of the rogue board drove a coach and horses through employment legislation.
The decision to write to Warburton, Weir & McParland accepting their non-extant resignations by e-mail, was crass in the extreme. Sky News had been briefed prior to the e-mails being sent.
Now all three may be as useless as tits on a bull, but this does not excuse King, who showed all the class of someone who was dragged up in Castlemilk. He probably feels quite chuffed with himself as he and Robertson played Lockwood for a fool and duped his clients out of circa £2m. Did anyone expect anything less from the convicted criminal chairman of RIFC? This is a guy who solicits investment from orphanages while masquerading as an accountant, and then leaves the orphans on the street as he siphons off their investment prior to the equity going into free fall. King does not give a flying fuck for anyone except himself. He is so paranoid about his daughters losing money to unscrupulous suitors that he arranged for pre-nup templates to be drawn up.
The sacking of Warburton, Weir and McParland was the culmination of a successful strategy to extricate them from their responsibilities at Auchenhoiwie. Jim Traynor, who knows where the adulterous Glasgow hacks buy their condoms, has been using his tame journalist to brief against Warburton and McParland since the end of the January transfer window. King was appalled that there was not one inquiry about anyone in Warburton’s charge. Keith Jackson tried to salt the mine with a £6m Barrie McKay lie, but there were no takers.
Having summarily disposed of his senior coaching staff with prejudice, King then went on the offensive to be at the front and centre of the narrative with the following:
Hanging Warburton Out To Dry Statement
” I have issued a select number of statements to give supporters a reliable update on the progression that your Board committed to almost two years ago. Some of the content relates to a subject matter that the Club would normally only deal with at our AGM or results announcements. However, under the circumstances, I feel that inclusion is appropriate to ensure that supporters are properly informed and don’t have to rely on uninformed media speculation.
For the avoidance of doubt, I repeat the key elements:
1. We would invest sufficient resources to ensure immediate promotion to the SPFL.
2. In season two we would further invest to be competitive in the SPFL and qualify for Europe at the end of the season. Our realistic expectation was to come second. This was to be achieved by signing five or six players of a quality that improved the squad that won the Championship.
3. In season three we would again invest in five or six players that further improved the squad to compete for the title and progress in Europe.
4. I personally estimated that we would require an investment of £30 million over that period to achieve our stated objectives.
I now comment on each of these elements:
1. We hired, at short notice, a relatively untested management team that recruited a number of players and introduced a style of play that was pleasing to our supporters. Significant investment was made on and off the park and the Championship was ultimately won in some style. The season was an unqualified success and the management team was rewarded with a vastly improved contract.
2. This season we did not stick to our plan of signing five or six players because the manager appealed to the Board for additional signings. Despite the concern about departing from our plan of prudent phased investment, the Board backed the manager’s request for accelerated investment. This placed us significantly above the football resources available to our competitors (other than Celtic) and was expected to ensure that we finished a strong second in the league and had a squad that could be added to, close season, to make a strong impact in the Europa League qualifiers. While I still believe that we can finish a strong second, I am stating the obvious to admit that we are not where we anticipated we would be at this stage of the season and we have not repeated the success that we had with our signings from the previous season.
3. Following from the above it is clear that we are behind our target for next season but, given that we recognise this, it is the duty of the Board to take steps to get things back on track. That is what our supporters trust us to do and rightly demand that we do. We remain 100% committed to the plan we commenced with and that the supporters continue to endorse resoundingly.
4. £18 million of the originally estimated £30 million investment has already been made. Ultimately, the overall investment in any football team is driven by the net player spend and, given that we are behind target with our squad, there may be a further need to accelerate investment at the end of this season. It is my present personal view that we will, in all likelihood, invest more than £30 million before we are where we want to be but this will be revisited once we have a new permanent management team in place.
The vagaries of running a football club are not new to your Board. It is our job to react to and manage these as they arise during any season – and from season to season. Despite the relative disappointment of this season so far, the bigger project remains firmly on track and we will take whatever corrective measures are necessary. On this point, I want to deal with one issue that has recently received wide coverage in the media.
It is a vital obligation and fiduciary responsibility for any Board to continually monitor the progress of the company’s financial and operating performance against its budgets and plans. This is done at regular Board meetings where all aspects of the company’s business is reviewed and evaluated. What is stated and dealt with during those meetings is confidential and governed by a number of rules, regulations, laws and ethics. Put simply, what is said in Board meetings stays in Board meetings.
Ahead of the Board meeting at the end of January, I advised the manager that the Board wished to review our recruitment plan and performance over the previous two windows. This was a routine request and was timely given the concerns that everyone at the Club has with regard to the high level of wages we were paying relative to the performance on the pitch. In particular, a large portion of our wage bill was not even seeing regular playing time.
Under normal circumstances such a review would remain confidential. However, in this instance, your Board’s routine questioning of management was leaked to the media and conveyed as being a negative reflection of the Board’s attitude to the manager and the recruitment department. It was confirmed to me that the leak did not come from a Board member.
Irrespective of who leaked confidential information, it is clear from subsequent media comments that the manager did not respond well to the Board reviewing his recruitment activity. This is a strange position to adopt and, in my personal experience, is not a position that a more experienced manager would adopt. No manager in the world can reasonably expect to be beyond scrutiny.
Things moved quickly from that point. There were rumours that the management team (presumably their agent) was negotiating with English clubs and, in one instance, I was informally approached to ask if the Club would waive compensation if the management team was to leave. While this was unsubstantiated by direct confirmation from the Club in question, I was alert to a conversation that Mark Warburton had with me after joining the Club in which he advised me that his long-term ambition was to manage in the EPL and he viewed Rangers as a stepping-stone to achieve this. His comments to the media simultaneously reinforced his present unhappiness at the Club.
I was therefore not surprised when the management team’s agent approached the Club’s Managing Director Stewart Robertson to request a meeting which was held in Glasgow on Monday this week. The outcome of this meeting was that the agent subsequently offered that Mark, David and Frank would resign with immediate effect without compensation as long as the Club, in turn, agreed to waive compensation from any new Club that they signed for. After discussion the Board accepted this offer and employment was immediately terminated. In order for us to achieve our ambitions we need employees that, like your Board members, will always put Rangers first.
While we were dealing with the admin and press releases relating to the resignation the agent again contacted us and asked to defer the resignation until the management had secured a new club. I assume that the new deal had somehow collapsed at the last minute. The Board met to consider this request but resolved to hold them to the original agreement.
We are now in the process of reviewing the best interim and long-term solution for ensuring that a modern and robust footballing structure is put in place that will continue with and entrench the footballing philosophy that we have in place. We also must protect and support the marvellous work that has been achieved by the Academy over the last two years.”
The award-winning Phil Macgiollabhain, who provides the minutes of RIFC board meetings verbatim, and includes the body language of attendees, might well beg to differ in regard to the confidentiality of these conclaves. It’s also important to stress that the £18m that King refers to includes the purchase of equity from Laxey and other third parties. This quantum was not invested in the squad. Only six players have been purchased in three transfer windows for a grand total of £2.38m. To conceive that Rangers Lite could go toe-to-toe with Celtic by spending so little, complemented by Heath Robinson loans, is for the birds.
The bent entrepreneur is fooling no-one.
Where is his ‘going for 55’ chutzpah now? He and his rogue board have been exposed as the crass charlatans that we always knew them to be. If King found a fiver in the streets he could parlay this into 500 positive words from Traynor’s stable of performing hacks. Was it any wonder that Traynor contacted Charles Green to solicit an employment offer by stating that he had the power to make or break his regime? This is a direct quote to me from Charles. The hacks are in thrall of Traynor as he knows where their mistresses, and the lovers of the BBC ‘ladies’, are stashed. Traynor knows that a Jacky Bird in the hand is worth two of the Constant Gardener tending her bush.
With Dave King’s pants permanently alight, is he safe to enter the Blue Room? Are his innate arsonous proclivities the reason for his absence at Ibrox? Are the insurance premiums too rich for the rogue board’s blood, precluding any possibility of an insurance fraud? If Ibrox was a local Indian takeaway it would have been torched a long time ago.
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I can exclusively reveal that Mike Ashley was about to give Sandy Easdale and Derek Llambias up to £50 million to restore the fortunes of Rangers Lite. This quantum was just seed capital. The total spend could have quickly escalated to north of £100m
Ashley trusted them and was convinced that they would spend his money prudently and deliver the desired result of taking his brands into Europe. Champions League nights would have provided the perfect platform for Ashley’s retail putsch against Adidas. Would it surprise anyone if he planned an audacious takeover of the German sportswear juggernaut to create a company that could go head to head with Nike?
Ashley is a Chelsea fan and loved the link with RFC and the part he could play in the future European games. Derrick wanted to build a team for Europe, not the piss ant SPFL, and with his contacts in football at top clubs it could have happened.
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However Halloween Houston and his baying mob, and the brain-dead compliant media, got what they agitated for. Ashley and the Easdales were ‘rhats’ who had to be exterminated. Bomber Brown was not happy that he was not getting a free skin full and nose bag on match days. £100m was lost so that Brown could play billy big baws in the directors box. You could not make it up.
I don’t put much store by the scribblings of former players, but it would seem that Davie Provan has the same source as I have. However he was not entrusted with the precise details as at the end of the day he was always heavy of perm and light of substance.
Rangers Lite will always be in Celtic’s shadow with career criminal Dave King as their godfather.Ashley could have given Desmond a run for his money and then some.
The vipers’ nest at Ibrox is now so toxic that the rats wear boiler suits.
