div-s- Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 Oh but rangers fans were only too happy to rip the p*ss ouuta celtic for it even though it wasn't even that much debt, not as bad as rangers anyhow. I asked my geordie cousin(a rangers c*** as well) on facebook if he could recall it and he admitted there was some stick for celtic because of it and he can remember chanting "shall we pay your bills for you". They also branded us "you poor fenian bastards" too which they still do today but not for football reason and lets not get into that. Anyway to be perfectly honest even though I'm a Celtic fan I really do feel sorry for the boys in blue going into administration. They are a massive club with a wonderful history full of great players, managers and fans alike. I would hate to see them fold. So lets all get behind them! C'mon Portsmouth!!! What you thought I was on about rangers? Bahahahaha, f*ck them. If you're not getting the exposure that Sky offers, do you think you'll be getting the same amount of cash from shirt sponsors, billboard advertisers and the like? The celtic board are telling the fans what they want them to hear when really its not reality at all and the fans are lapping it up because they think all the board are doing are having a dig at Rangers. The way some of your posts are its no wonder people see old firm fans as bigoted arseholes, well done. Look Celtic are in no trouble sky deal or no sky deal they're in the best financial position in the league. And Celtic are still a massive club with huge fan base so it would still be good to advertise with them because you'll be reaching that big fan base. Without Rangers, no tele revenue, reduced sponorship from companies due to no tele revenue then where does all the moeny come from? The good all celtic fans and the green brigade? With cuts like them then the club will start having to get rid of the top earners, what kind of team would they be without "broony" "super hooper" and "stokesy"? where would the fans go when the team become alot worse all through repercusions of Rangers not being there? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
madras Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 Oh but rangers fans were only too happy to rip the p*ss ouuta celtic for it even though it wasn't even that much debt, not as bad as rangers anyhow. I asked my geordie cousin(a rangers c*** as well) on facebook if he could recall it and he admitted there was some stick for celtic because of it and he can remember chanting "shall we pay your bills for you". They also branded us "you poor fenian bastards" too which they still do today but not for football reason and lets not get into that. Anyway to be perfectly honest even though I'm a Celtic fan I really do feel sorry for the boys in blue going into administration. They are a massive club with a wonderful history full of great players, managers and fans alike. I would hate to see them fold. So lets all get behind them! C'mon Portsmouth!!! What you thought I was on about rangers? Bahahahaha, f*ck them. If you're not getting the exposure that Sky offers, do you think you'll be getting the same amount of cash from shirt sponsors, billboard advertisers and the like? The celtic board are telling the fans what they want them to hear when really its not reality at all and the fans are lapping it up because they think all the board are doing are having a dig at Rangers. The way some of your posts are its no wonder people see old firm fans as bigoted arseholes, well done. Look Celtic are in no trouble sky deal or no sky deal they're in the best financial position in the league. And Celtic are still a massive club with huge fan base so it would still be good to advertise with them because you'll be reaching that big fan base. Without Rangers, no tele revenue, reduced sponorship from companies due to no tele revenue then where does all the moeny come from? The good all celtic fans and the green brigade? With cuts like them then the club will start having to get rid of the top earners, what kind of team would they be without "broony" "super hooper" and "stokesy"? where would the fans go when the team become alot worse all through repercusions of Rangers not being there? would be hilarious if more jocks took up subscriptions due to it being a more open competition. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
div-s- Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 Oh but rangers fans were only too happy to rip the p*ss ouuta celtic for it even though it wasn't even that much debt, not as bad as rangers anyhow. I asked my geordie cousin(a rangers c*** as well) on facebook if he could recall it and he admitted there was some stick for celtic because of it and he can remember chanting "shall we pay your bills for you". They also branded us "you poor fenian bastards" too which they still do today but not for football reason and lets not get into that. Anyway to be perfectly honest even though I'm a Celtic fan I really do feel sorry for the boys in blue going into administration. They are a massive club with a wonderful history full of great players, managers and fans alike. I would hate to see them fold. So lets all get behind them! C'mon Portsmouth!!! What you thought I was on about rangers? Bahahahaha, f*ck them. If you're not getting the exposure that Sky offers, do you think you'll be getting the same amount of cash from shirt sponsors, billboard advertisers and the like? The celtic board are telling the fans what they want them to hear when really its not reality at all and the fans are lapping it up because they think all the board are doing are having a dig at Rangers. The way some of your posts are its no wonder people see old firm fans as bigoted arseholes, well done. Look Celtic are in no trouble sky deal or no sky deal they're in the best financial position in the league. And Celtic are still a massive club with huge fan base so it would still be good to advertise with them because you'll be reaching that big fan base. Without Rangers, no tele revenue, reduced sponorship from companies due to no tele revenue then where does all the moeny come from? The good all celtic fans and the green brigade? With cuts like them then the club will start having to get rid of the top earners, what kind of team would they be without "broony" "super hooper" and "stokesy"? where would the fans go when the team become alot worse all through repercusions of Rangers not being there? would be hilarious if more jocks took up subscriptions due to it being a more open competition. Sky and Espn both have clauses saying they will only invest if both old firm teams are in the SPL Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
madras Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 Oh but rangers fans were only too happy to rip the p*ss ouuta celtic for it even though it wasn't even that much debt, not as bad as rangers anyhow. I asked my geordie cousin(a rangers c*** as well) on facebook if he could recall it and he admitted there was some stick for celtic because of it and he can remember chanting "shall we pay your bills for you". They also branded us "you poor fenian bastards" too which they still do today but not for football reason and lets not get into that. Anyway to be perfectly honest even though I'm a Celtic fan I really do feel sorry for the boys in blue going into administration. They are a massive club with a wonderful history full of great players, managers and fans alike. I would hate to see them fold. So lets all get behind them! C'mon Portsmouth!!! What you thought I was on about rangers? Bahahahaha, f*ck them. If you're not getting the exposure that Sky offers, do you think you'll be getting the same amount of cash from shirt sponsors, billboard advertisers and the like? The celtic board are telling the fans what they want them to hear when really its not reality at all and the fans are lapping it up because they think all the board are doing are having a dig at Rangers. The way some of your posts are its no wonder people see old firm fans as bigoted arseholes, well done. Look Celtic are in no trouble sky deal or no sky deal they're in the best financial position in the league. And Celtic are still a massive club with huge fan base so it would still be good to advertise with them because you'll be reaching that big fan base. Without Rangers, no tele revenue, reduced sponorship from companies due to no tele revenue then where does all the moeny come from? The good all celtic fans and the green brigade? With cuts like them then the club will start having to get rid of the top earners, what kind of team would they be without "broony" "super hooper" and "stokesy"? where would the fans go when the team become alot worse all through repercusions of Rangers not being there? would be hilarious if more jocks took up subscriptions due to it being a more open competition. Sky and Espn both have clauses saying they will only invest if both old firm teams are in the SPL i know, but if the shortfall was taken up by other clubs fans who thought it would now be worth watching ? (i know it won't happen) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Roy the Irish Magpie Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 anyway rangers aren't going bust. They'll stay in spl but unless some rich dude takes over and answers their prayers then they'll find life more difficult from here on in. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdckelly Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 same difference really, celtic without a competitive rival are totally pointless as is the entirety of scottish football Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest gggg Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 Scottish football would survive just like the Scandinavian leagues survive, it's pretty much like that already but with two giant tits stuck on it. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Roy the Irish Magpie Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 we'll still have the famous derby though and rangers will eventually get back on their feet like celtic did in the 90s. I hear there are parties interested in buying rangers already so thats a small hope for the prodies. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toonpack Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 An interesting perspective, long mind, but a good read: Firstly, let’s look at some of the myths. We’re told that the smaller clubs need the influx of cash generated by home games against the Old Firm every year. But how much is that really worth? Under the current SPL structure, there’s no guaranteed number of such fixtures each season. Aberdeen, for example, got just three last year (two against Rangers, one against Celtic), because they were in the bottom six of the league at the time of the “split”. In season 2010/11, the Dons had an average attendance at Pittodrie of just under 9,000. For the three Old Firm games, the average attendance was 13,378. That’s 4,504 extra punters through the gates per match, or a total for the season of 13,512. In other words, having Rangers and Celtic come to visit was effectively worth the equivalent of about 1.5 extra home games a year. (1.52, if you want to be picky.) Now, for a club on a tight budget like Aberdeen, 1.5 extra home games a season is a handy bit of cash. If we assume that the average spectator spends £40 on their ticket, programme, refreshments and whatnot, it’s over half a million quid in (gross) revenue. But it’s not the difference between life and death. It could be achieved just as easily by an extended cup run or qualification for Europe – things which are significantly more likely to happen if you take one or both of the Old Firm out of the picture. Indeed, just a modest amount of progress in Europe can effortlessly eclipse a season’s worth of Rangers and Celtic ties. In season 2007/08 Aberdeen reached the last 32 of the Europa League, which is very much the poor relation of UEFA’s club competitions compared to the cash cow of the Champions’ League. Getting to the last 32 of it isn’t exactly spectacular success, but it nevertheless brought the Dons four extra home games that season, which drew a total of 74,767 paying customers. Alert viewers will have noticed that even this humble adventure was therefore worth almost SIX TIMES as much to the Pittodrie club as an entire season of Old Firm fixtures, and that’s before you factor in the not-inconsiderable matter of extra TV money and participation bonuses, which would surely boost that multiplier to 10 or more. (It’s perhaps also worth noting that even the first-round first-leg tie against the unglamorous FC Dnipro of Ukraine attracted a larger crowd than any of 2010/11′s games against Rangers or Celtic, despite having thousands fewer away fans.) From this we can see that if a team like Aberdeen qualified for Europe just fractionally more often, as as result of the demise of one or both of the Old Firm making places more easily attainable – maybe once every five or six years – the rewards could easily eclipse the losses. But there’s more to it than that, because the Europa League jaunt had a knock-on effect on domestic attendances too. When Hearts came to Pittodrie in the middle of the Europa run, the gate was 14,000. The corresponding fixture in 2010/11, at roughly the same time of year, saw just 9,100 show up. In other words, a tiny glimpse of success saw attendance over 50% higher – exactly the same sort of boost delivered in a normal season by the visits of the Old Firm. Even two months after the Dons were knocked out of the tournament by Bayern Munich, a home game against Falkirk could pull a crowd of 11,484 – a comparable late-season match (vs Hibernian) in 2010/11 managed just 7,400. Of course, you could argue that the higher attendances in 2007/08 were a result of a better season in general (Aberdeen finished 4th that year, compared to 9th in 2011). But then, that’s the point – fans are much more likely to turn up to watch games in a competition where their team has a fighting chance of achieving something than in a league where they’re just making up the numbers. Take one or both of the Old Firm out of the league and you instantly make it far more competitive, which makes it far more exciting, which makes it far more attractive for people to come and watch. This isn’t just an idle theory. Within living memory, Scottish football has actually experienced an extended period where one or other of the Old Firm was in dire straits, and the result was a far more competitive league with substantially bigger attendances for the non-OF clubs. While this era is often dismissed as a brief Alex-Ferguson-inspired flicker in the mid-80s, it in fact lasted for almost 20 years. The first phase was around the creation of the old Scottish Premier Division, running from the tail end of the 1970s and right through the 1980s, before David Murray and his bottomless wallet turned up at Ibrox around the turn of the decade. Rangers were in a woeful state at the time, winning the league just once in a 10-season spell between 1979 and 1988, and with home crowds at Ibrox regularly dropping below 10,000. (One 1979 league game against Partick Thistle brought fewer than 2,000 loyal Gers fans to the stadium, and no, that’s not a typo – we really mean TWO thousand.) But it wasn’t just Celtic who took advantage – in four of the other nine seasons of that decade the league title went to the smaller clubs (Aberdeen three times, Dundee Utd once), and it would have been five if not for the most infamous last-day implosion in Scottish football history robbing Hearts of the 1985/86 flag. In other words, in a 10-team division fully 50% of the participants were mounting realistic challenges for the title – a feat probably never replicated anywhere else in the world in the history of football. The Scottish Premier Division was almost certainly the most competitive club league on the face of the planet, and such a healthy state of affairs was reflected on the broader stage. Aberdeen won the European Cup-Winners’ Cup (with an all-Scottish team) in 1983, defeating Bayern Munich and Real Madrid to secure the trophy, and also beat that year’s European Cup champions SV Hamburg to join the illustrious list of winners of the Super Cup. The next season Dundee United got to the semi-final of the European Cup (with the Dons making the Cup-Winners’ Cup semis), and three years later Jim McLean’s men reached the final of the UEFA Cup, knocking out Barcelona along the way but losing the final 2-1 to IFK Goteborg. The nature of Old Firm weakness changed between the late 1980s and the mid-1990s. David Murray had arrived at Rangers and was pouring money into the club, attracting big-name England internationals with the promise of European competition after English clubs were banned in the aftermath of Heysel. But while Rangers grew stronger Celtic weakened, and the Parkhead side hovered on the brink of bankruptcy for several years before being rescued by Fergus McCann in 1994. As a result, the Scottish Premier Division remained competitive. Although that sounds a daft assertion in the wake of Rangers’ nine-in-a-row of league triumphs (1989-97), the fact remains that four different teams finished in second place over the period, with Celtic not managing to do it until 1996. Rangers’ average margin of victory in the league race during the nine-season run was under 7 points, which contrasts sharply with the typical modern-day gap between the Old Firm and the rest of 30+ points. Indeed, over the entire 22-season lifespan of the old Premier Division, the Old Firm (in either order) took the top two spots just seven times, and five of those comprised the first two and last three seasons of the competition. Over a 17-year stretch in between, the Old Firm secured the 1 and 2 positions just twice. (Celtic-Rangers in 1978/79, and Rangers/Celtic in 1986/87.) In nine of the 22 seasons, the Old Firm couldn’t even both get into the top 3. The SPL era, on the other hand, has seen Tweedlehun and Tweedlydee cosily slice up first and second place in 12 of its 13 seasons (the only blip being Hearts pipping Rangers to the runner-up spot by a single point in 2005/06). Where the Scottish Premier Division was the most competitive league in the world, the SPL is now the least competitive, and therefore one of the least healthy. (During the life of the old SPD the Scotland international side qualified for World Cups in 1978, 1982, 1986 and 1998, and for European Championships in 1992 and 1996. Since the advent of the SPL in 1999, with the Old Firm hurling most of their money at foreign players, the national side hasn’t reached a single tournament finals.) Of course, the game has changed since the Premier Division. The SPL, Sky TV, Champions League and Bosman have all conspired – entirely by design – to make life harder for the smaller teams and cement the dominance of the bigger ones who can command higher TV audiences. Even this, though, is a slightly misleading picture. Media pundits are fond of pointing out that Sky’s interest in the SPL would plummet if it no longer had Old Firm games to offer its subscribers, and this is undoubtedly true. What nobody points out, however, is that the OF hog so much of the Sky money for themselves that even a massively-reduced deal from terrestrial broadcasters would be more evenly distributed in a notional post-Rangers world, and so would likely end up with the smaller teams seeing fairly similar amounts of money to what they get now. By way of illustration of the sort of sums involved, we examined the 2010 public accounts of Motherwell, who finished 6th in the SPL in 2010/11. Their total income from TV and radio was just over £1.2m. We’d imagine the bulk of that came from the Sky deal, but some will also be from elsewhere, eg the BBC rights to highlights packages and radio coverage. Arbitrarily, then, let’s say Sky is worth £1m a year to Motherwell, out of the total £16m that Sky pay the SPL every year. A typical home game at the average 2010/11 Fir Park attendance of 5,660 will generate something very roughly in the region of £225,000. If Sky disappeared and nobody took up the live-TV rights at all, the club would need to either play four extra home games OR attract an extra 1300 fans to each game to compensate, OR reduce its annual wage bill of a startling £3.3m, or some combination of the three. In a more competitive league with more chance of European football, that’s hardly an impossible dream – for reference, in 2007/08 when Motherwell finished 3rd their average attendance was around 1000 higher, at 6,600. The further 300 extra was achieved as recently as 2004/05. But even beyond that, the data in the early part of this feature (which is broadly reflected for all other Scottish sides, not just Aberdeen, but we’d be here all day if we were to list every one) proves that the crucial core principle remains the same – a team with a better chance of even the mildest definition of success, eg qualifying for Europe or reaching a domestic cup final, will see a large upshoot in its attendance figures, and more than enough to compensate for the less-frequent visits of Rangers/Celtic fans or a drop in TV money. And the prime driver of that increased prospect of success is the weakness (or absence) of at least one of the Old Firm. For all the commentators asserting that Scottish football would collapse – either in footballing terms or economic ones – should Rangers FC not make it out of season 2011/12 alive, the numbers simply don’t add up. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Icke - Son of God Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 I'm sure he's a clever man but he looks mental Put it this way, he doesn't photograph well http://images.mirror.co.uk/upl/dailyrecord3/nov2010/6/6/craig-whyte-image-1-836769892.jpg http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Football/Pix/pictures/2011/3/30/1301491427539/craig-whyte-007.jpg http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/polopoly_fs/whyte-1.1069305!image/1680048055.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_300/1680048055.jpg http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02010/Craig_Whyte_2010851c.jpg http://images.dailyexpress.co.uk/img/dynamic/67/285x214/238036_1.jpg http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/12/05/article-1335969-0C564031000005DC-156_306x423.jpg http://www.shropshirestar.com/wp-content/uploads/xmlImages/PA/2012/02/N0524531329231875237A.jpg http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/SPORT/Pix/pictures/2012/2/1/1328102093507/Craig-Whyte-007.jpg http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Football/Pix/pictures/2012/2/13/1329169293043/Rangers-owner-Craig-Whyte-007.jpg You could park a bus in the gap between his eyes. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 Last one has forum smiley/meme potential, but I'm not sure what to represent. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MW Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 Last one has forum smiley/meme potential, but I'm not sure what to represent. "eeeeh what is he on about" Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
S.S.R. Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 Looks like he's on the surface of Mars without a space helmet. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
colinmk Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 Holy shit, that last pic is a cracker! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
colinmk Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 Good read that Toonpack. Scottish football has been in need of a shakeup for a long, long time. When football became almost entirely about money the football up here was never going to survive. Make the league fairer and more competitive and it will get better, higher attendances and better players coming through. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Icke - Son of God Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 I can't believe I forgot my favourite one! http://www2.2space.net/images/upl_news/120213/1329165603.jpg Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dokko Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 Kasper needs to get to work. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest gggg Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 Octopus press statement on Ticketus 17 February 2012 Octopus Investments would like to clarify the position of Ticketus with regard to the current Glasgow Rangers coverage. Ticketus is one of the many entities into which Octopus Protected EIS invests. Ticketus has purchased tickets for Glasgow Rangers games for a number of seasons in advance, as it has done for a number of years previously with the club. Ticketus does not lend money; Ticketus is the owner of assets - the tickets. Octopus is continuing to work with the administrators and Glasgow Rangers on this matter. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
GM Posted February 18, 2012 Share Posted February 18, 2012 An interesting perspective, long mind, but a good read: Firstly, let’s look at some of the myths. We’re told that the smaller clubs need the influx of cash generated by home games against the Old Firm every year. But how much is that really worth? Under the current SPL structure, there’s no guaranteed number of such fixtures each season. Aberdeen, for example, got just three last year (two against Rangers, one against Celtic), because they were in the bottom six of the league at the time of the “split”. In season 2010/11, the Dons had an average attendance at Pittodrie of just under 9,000. For the three Old Firm games, the average attendance was 13,378. That’s 4,504 extra punters through the gates per match, or a total for the season of 13,512. In other words, having Rangers and Celtic come to visit was effectively worth the equivalent of about 1.5 extra home games a year. (1.52, if you want to be picky.) Now, for a club on a tight budget like Aberdeen, 1.5 extra home games a season is a handy bit of cash. If we assume that the average spectator spends £40 on their ticket, programme, refreshments and whatnot, it’s over half a million quid in (gross) revenue. But it’s not the difference between life and death. It could be achieved just as easily by an extended cup run or qualification for Europe – things which are significantly more likely to happen if you take one or both of the Old Firm out of the picture. Indeed, just a modest amount of progress in Europe can effortlessly eclipse a season’s worth of Rangers and Celtic ties. In season 2007/08 Aberdeen reached the last 32 of the Europa League, which is very much the poor relation of UEFA’s club competitions compared to the cash cow of the Champions’ League. Getting to the last 32 of it isn’t exactly spectacular success, but it nevertheless brought the Dons four extra home games that season, which drew a total of 74,767 paying customers. Alert viewers will have noticed that even this humble adventure was therefore worth almost SIX TIMES as much to the Pittodrie club as an entire season of Old Firm fixtures, and that’s before you factor in the not-inconsiderable matter of extra TV money and participation bonuses, which would surely boost that multiplier to 10 or more. (It’s perhaps also worth noting that even the first-round first-leg tie against the unglamorous FC Dnipro of Ukraine attracted a larger crowd than any of 2010/11′s games against Rangers or Celtic, despite having thousands fewer away fans.) From this we can see that if a team like Aberdeen qualified for Europe just fractionally more often, as as result of the demise of one or both of the Old Firm making places more easily attainable – maybe once every five or six years – the rewards could easily eclipse the losses. But there’s more to it than that, because the Europa League jaunt had a knock-on effect on domestic attendances too. When Hearts came to Pittodrie in the middle of the Europa run, the gate was 14,000. The corresponding fixture in 2010/11, at roughly the same time of year, saw just 9,100 show up. In other words, a tiny glimpse of success saw attendance over 50% higher – exactly the same sort of boost delivered in a normal season by the visits of the Old Firm. Even two months after the Dons were knocked out of the tournament by Bayern Munich, a home game against Falkirk could pull a crowd of 11,484 – a comparable late-season match (vs Hibernian) in 2010/11 managed just 7,400. Of course, you could argue that the higher attendances in 2007/08 were a result of a better season in general (Aberdeen finished 4th that year, compared to 9th in 2011). But then, that’s the point – fans are much more likely to turn up to watch games in a competition where their team has a fighting chance of achieving something than in a league where they’re just making up the numbers. Take one or both of the Old Firm out of the league and you instantly make it far more competitive, which makes it far more exciting, which makes it far more attractive for people to come and watch. This isn’t just an idle theory. Within living memory, Scottish football has actually experienced an extended period where one or other of the Old Firm was in dire straits, and the result was a far more competitive league with substantially bigger attendances for the non-OF clubs. While this era is often dismissed as a brief Alex-Ferguson-inspired flicker in the mid-80s, it in fact lasted for almost 20 years. The first phase was around the creation of the old Scottish Premier Division, running from the tail end of the 1970s and right through the 1980s, before David Murray and his bottomless wallet turned up at Ibrox around the turn of the decade. Rangers were in a woeful state at the time, winning the league just once in a 10-season spell between 1979 and 1988, and with home crowds at Ibrox regularly dropping below 10,000. (One 1979 league game against Partick Thistle brought fewer than 2,000 loyal Gers fans to the stadium, and no, that’s not a typo – we really mean TWO thousand.) But it wasn’t just Celtic who took advantage – in four of the other nine seasons of that decade the league title went to the smaller clubs (Aberdeen three times, Dundee Utd once), and it would have been five if not for the most infamous last-day implosion in Scottish football history robbing Hearts of the 1985/86 flag. In other words, in a 10-team division fully 50% of the participants were mounting realistic challenges for the title – a feat probably never replicated anywhere else in the world in the history of football. The Scottish Premier Division was almost certainly the most competitive club league on the face of the planet, and such a healthy state of affairs was reflected on the broader stage. Aberdeen won the European Cup-Winners’ Cup (with an all-Scottish team) in 1983, defeating Bayern Munich and Real Madrid to secure the trophy, and also beat that year’s European Cup champions SV Hamburg to join the illustrious list of winners of the Super Cup. The next season Dundee United got to the semi-final of the European Cup (with the Dons making the Cup-Winners’ Cup semis), and three years later Jim McLean’s men reached the final of the UEFA Cup, knocking out Barcelona along the way but losing the final 2-1 to IFK Goteborg. The nature of Old Firm weakness changed between the late 1980s and the mid-1990s. David Murray had arrived at Rangers and was pouring money into the club, attracting big-name England internationals with the promise of European competition after English clubs were banned in the aftermath of Heysel. But while Rangers grew stronger Celtic weakened, and the Parkhead side hovered on the brink of bankruptcy for several years before being rescued by Fergus McCann in 1994. As a result, the Scottish Premier Division remained competitive. Although that sounds a daft assertion in the wake of Rangers’ nine-in-a-row of league triumphs (1989-97), the fact remains that four different teams finished in second place over the period, with Celtic not managing to do it until 1996. Rangers’ average margin of victory in the league race during the nine-season run was under 7 points, which contrasts sharply with the typical modern-day gap between the Old Firm and the rest of 30+ points. Indeed, over the entire 22-season lifespan of the old Premier Division, the Old Firm (in either order) took the top two spots just seven times, and five of those comprised the first two and last three seasons of the competition. Over a 17-year stretch in between, the Old Firm secured the 1 and 2 positions just twice. (Celtic-Rangers in 1978/79, and Rangers/Celtic in 1986/87.) In nine of the 22 seasons, the Old Firm couldn’t even both get into the top 3. The SPL era, on the other hand, has seen Tweedlehun and Tweedlydee cosily slice up first and second place in 12 of its 13 seasons (the only blip being Hearts pipping Rangers to the runner-up spot by a single point in 2005/06). Where the Scottish Premier Division was the most competitive league in the world, the SPL is now the least competitive, and therefore one of the least healthy. (During the life of the old SPD the Scotland international side qualified for World Cups in 1978, 1982, 1986 and 1998, and for European Championships in 1992 and 1996. Since the advent of the SPL in 1999, with the Old Firm hurling most of their money at foreign players, the national side hasn’t reached a single tournament finals.) Of course, the game has changed since the Premier Division. The SPL, Sky TV, Champions League and Bosman have all conspired – entirely by design – to make life harder for the smaller teams and cement the dominance of the bigger ones who can command higher TV audiences. Even this, though, is a slightly misleading picture. Media pundits are fond of pointing out that Sky’s interest in the SPL would plummet if it no longer had Old Firm games to offer its subscribers, and this is undoubtedly true. What nobody points out, however, is that the OF hog so much of the Sky money for themselves that even a massively-reduced deal from terrestrial broadcasters would be more evenly distributed in a notional post-Rangers world, and so would likely end up with the smaller teams seeing fairly similar amounts of money to what they get now. By way of illustration of the sort of sums involved, we examined the 2010 public accounts of Motherwell, who finished 6th in the SPL in 2010/11. Their total income from TV and radio was just over £1.2m. We’d imagine the bulk of that came from the Sky deal, but some will also be from elsewhere, eg the BBC rights to highlights packages and radio coverage. Arbitrarily, then, let’s say Sky is worth £1m a year to Motherwell, out of the total £16m that Sky pay the SPL every year. A typical home game at the average 2010/11 Fir Park attendance of 5,660 will generate something very roughly in the region of £225,000. If Sky disappeared and nobody took up the live-TV rights at all, the club would need to either play four extra home games OR attract an extra 1300 fans to each game to compensate, OR reduce its annual wage bill of a startling £3.3m, or some combination of the three. In a more competitive league with more chance of European football, that’s hardly an impossible dream – for reference, in 2007/08 when Motherwell finished 3rd their average attendance was around 1000 higher, at 6,600. The further 300 extra was achieved as recently as 2004/05. But even beyond that, the data in the early part of this feature (which is broadly reflected for all other Scottish sides, not just Aberdeen, but we’d be here all day if we were to list every one) proves that the crucial core principle remains the same – a team with a better chance of even the mildest definition of success, eg qualifying for Europe or reaching a domestic cup final, will see a large upshoot in its attendance figures, and more than enough to compensate for the less-frequent visits of Rangers/Celtic fans or a drop in TV money. And the prime driver of that increased prospect of success is the weakness (or absence) of at least one of the Old Firm. For all the commentators asserting that Scottish football would collapse – either in footballing terms or economic ones – should Rangers FC not make it out of season 2011/12 alive, the numbers simply don’t add up. The preceding 7 paragraphs of that article are also worth a read: http://wingsland.podgamer.com/why-scotland-doesnt-need-rangers/ Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fenham Mag Posted February 18, 2012 Share Posted February 18, 2012 Losing to Kilmarnock at home, things going from bad to worse Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fugazi Posted February 18, 2012 Share Posted February 18, 2012 http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/polopoly_fs/whyte-1.1069305!image/1680048055.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_300/1680048055.jpg Did Del Boy turn up the home solarium whilst he was asleep under it? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoU Posted February 18, 2012 Share Posted February 18, 2012 Last one has forum smiley/meme potential, but I'm not sure what to represent. Most of them doesn't represent anything anyway. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
midds Posted February 18, 2012 Share Posted February 18, 2012 http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/403030_10150676691103428_572648427_11276451_648204044_n.jpg Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlito Posted February 18, 2012 Share Posted February 18, 2012 I'm sure he's a clever man but he looks mental Put it this way, he doesn't photograph well http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Football/Pix/pictures/2011/3/30/1301491427539/craig-whyte-007.jpg :lol: Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
S.S.R. Posted February 18, 2012 Share Posted February 18, 2012 In quite a few of those photos, he looks like he's going to start an awkward conversation with Ted about the drainage in the lower field. Tomato - Rangers - aubergine - your - potato - club's - turnip - fucked.' Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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