Whyte Crossing The Line Is Going Through Their Minds

Picture for a moment a fantasy world which was, a long time ago, promised to the Scottish press as a complete reality. Outside Ibrox Park stands a gleaming skyscraper with moon beams shining high into the Govan sky. The individual letters on a neon sign flash C-A-S-I-N-O on repeat.  Inside the ornate halls lie a series of crap tables and there the looming figure of Craig Whyte slipping his hand into his suit jacket bears into view.

He puts down onto the table a pound note. A crisp, Scottish pound note. The pressmen from the Daily Record and the Herald stop dead in their tracks as their heads are turned. Chick Young grunts a noise of disbelief as he drops his fifteenth dachary of the afternoon. “This guy’s a serious player”, he thinks to himself. The croupier, Jim White, can hardly believe his luck. “Come to Daddy,” he drools into his bow tie. Behind the security cameras, high up on the sixty sixth floor the congregated Orangemen and Scottish Freemasons who run the club turn to each other and the penny drops: “We’ve got our man, gentleman.”

Nobody needs to be reminded of the complete rush to the head today has brought to us in the ongoing saga that dogs Rangers Football Club. Around the television studios the Rangers apologists are stalking the sets to vent their disbelief of what a large number of supporters – non-deluded supporters – were seeing as a truth a long while ago. Craig Whyte managed to buy “a big, world football club” for £1.

The Ticketus deal is the smoking gun in what has been a long stand-off recently. Even on the Rangers FC forums – home to what can politely be called a set of intransigents – they’re accepting the fate of things to come.

But what is to come? We know now, following on from Whyte’s statement today, there will be no chairman after the Administrators have done their adjudication. And this is not to mention of course the whopping tax bill that will surely – given the absolute facts associated with the club presently – pot their blackball. David Murray – himself to blame for a fair proportion of the club’s worries – sold this team knowingly to a man not worth any business credentials.

What is for certain is a suspicion that with the politicians sniffing around a club in the latter stages of rigor mortis, there could be an intervention from the state. This of course would mean that an institution that has got away with £75 million in tax avoidance will now ask you – yes YOU – to foot the bill. It was blatantly clear where the feather in Alex Salmond’s cap blew last week. It was pretty hefty and expensive rhetoric, a similar rhetoric that was seen at Ibrox where, according to the media, the world and its dog turned out to buoy up their team last Saturday. The team lost to Kilmarnock. So much for the brave leading the brave.

After tonight the men with the power we don’t see will be working in overdrive to save Rangers. If the club is bailed out by the public purse – let’s face it, what businessman would want to be lumbered with such a travesty of an enterprise – then there’d be uproar in Scotland. Today libraries are facing their death because of petty public cuts. If they can shut libraries and save a football team which promotes bigotry almost publicly then is there not a better time to announce a breaking point in society?

Perhaps a cocaine addiction on masse every Saturday would be a more sensible option. For Rangers supporters and for us. 

Does One Damned Single Freemason Hold A Clue For The Long-Term Future Of Their Interests?

Rangers are sharpening the creases that could see them fold quicker than any football supporter throughout the world would have imagined possible on a realistic scale. 

On the playing field side of events the manager Ally McCoist is seeing positives. Former managers of the club aren't. Gallingly it was Souness who steered Rangers's success domestically in the Scottish league but allowed the club to arrive to the point of this week's ever-daily detritus. 

Normally with the case of football clubs entering into the misery of administration the process has been based on a short-term period of terrible takeovers and financial shortsightedness. However, this is Scottish football, and in particular the stakes with the Murray Revolution were high.

Unsurprisingly David Murray released a press statement today to fudge the gap between the merry hell Craig Whyte foisted upon the Rangers support yesterday and what Murray himself bore him last year when he gave up the club for one pound. Murray and Souness were, when they began this misadventure in April 1986, two thieves thick in their intent to steal a charge to domestic and European dominance. Fair play to the two: they did bring in star names (having on their books England internationals who played a large part in the Italia 90 campaign); and obviously rankled Celtic psychologically for five years by signing Maurice Johnston from under their noses. 

Souness left in 1991 but he obviously set a standard that emboldened later managers of Walter Smith and Dick Advocaat to slap into submission big signings using Murray's dubious cheque book. Rangers were rampant. No one in the Scottish league could touch them as they didn't live up to the myth coming out of Ibrox Park. During this time sides like Airdrie and Gretna went under. The media was more distracted by the idea of Gascoigne knocking them in for fun on the park and knocking out his wife off it. They saw how sleek the skills of Brian Laudrup would crank up the numbers. Andy Gray, a former Rangers man himself, would be the first to have made a commentary. 

In terms of statistics Rangers equaled and very nearly bettered the record of league titles in a row. To date they've amassed 54 league flags under their belts. In 2008 they reached the final of the Uefa Cup but lost. If they'd won then they would have added another star to their club badge.

With success a reputation of greatness joins hands. It emotes itself so much that the society of supporters surrounding the club gates start to feel it. It's heartfelt in work relationships, in how a supporter conducts themselves abroad, how a supporter sees someone across the street from you, what a supporters does in a household season after season. Football has this intrinsic knack of ruining or making your life the way it is. But, for twenty three years Rangers Football Club  have spun a woeful, devious, cowardly and arrogant lie to the greater footballing public. And now is the time they've let everyone down.

The supporters who ferry themselves from the sectarian corners of Ulster every Rangers home game must now have serious doubts about a different religion they hold dear: the sovereign Queen of England. Her tax collectors have dealt this facade a crippling blow. 

The Curious Need of Want

At speeds only witnessed since Maradona stripped the entire English defence of their dignity at the '86 World Cup, a nation of sports hacks will today be quick to install Harry "Safe" Redknapp as the new manager of the English team. Redknapp experienced what must have been a spectacularly safe bet on his fortunes yesterday when six hours previously to Capello's resignation a judge decided upon a speculative tax case in his favour. 

Redknapp is of course the forerunner for the position now. In terms of one crucial acid test in being England manager is how he seems to be a totem for the perceived "white man van" that The Sun, a paper which he writes for, likes to pretend to promote. A swift comparison in this mould of England manager would be another high court ally: Terry Venables. This type of "geezer" mentality sells papers and wraps the St George in the flag of lager drinkers from the south of Wembley's gory arch. 

It appears that the job of England manager is toxic in many, curious ways. But has it ever struck the normal football supporter that the job is Southern England and beyond-centric? This list of recent managers is telling - since 1966 it has read: 

• Alf Ramsey (manager 1963-1974) - born in Dagenham
• Terry Venables (manager 1994-1996) - born in Dagenham
• Glen Hoddle (manager 1996-1999) - born in Hayes
• Sven Göran Erikkson (manager 2000-2006) - born in Sweden
• Fabio Capello (manager 2007-2012) - born in Italy

The managers who filled the positions in-between the ones in the list were deemed complete failures and were to large degrees put out in the tabloid stocks for public ridicule. Curiously it was these ones who were from and  plied their trade in the north of England. Revie was "an overblown flop"; Robson should never have been allowed to take the national squad to Italia '90; Taylor was the infamous allotment vegetable; Keegan was too media-wet (quite literally on the day he resigned at the old Wembley); and McClaren was "the wally with the brolly".

With consistent failure darkening the national team's doorstep in every effort to win a tournament since 1966 it does seem to be "the impossible job". A lot rides on timing and the mood of a "nation" when the FA come around to doing the appointing. But like everything else in England since the systematic destruction of the working class industries (prevalently in the north) the entire set-up has become a brand. This I think has alienated a core support from the cities and towns in the north of England throughout these barren years: support for the local team seems more crucial. 

Which leaves the options open only to a good old Cockney geezer. A safe pair of hands. Cor blimey, guv'nor: we've only gone an' lost to Kyrgyzstan. Don't love a duck: LOVE ME! But more importantly he is manager of a rich London club; he is from London; he wears nice suits and he avoids going to prison when the evidence is against him. 'Triffic.

In the detritus of today's headlines it is no surprise that the reason for Capello's exit was over a Southern, expensively paid and spoilt footballer. Who, pending a court hearing, so happens to be a proto-racist. It will be no greater of a surprise that the headlines through the tenure of the next manager will turn ugly depending on well Harry writes his. 

It Was The Winning That Counted

This video footage of the 1995 Scottish Cup final brings back the memories of the sheer relief  I felt when Celtic ended their six year failure of winning any trophies. A particular poignant moment is when Peter Grant cried on Charlie Nicholas's shoulder. It was quite a turning point in Celtic's recent history. 


Despite of his proto-Tevez instincts, Petrus Ferdinandu Johannes Van Hooijdonk was my hero that season. His header in the first ten minutes of that game showed why.