Seen on the BBC today that Rangers players have agreed to take a pay cut, does this p1ss anyone else off massively? I personally think it is ridiculously unfair that despite the horrendous financial mismanagement of the club that they can be hit with a 10 point penalty keep all their players and still walk second place in the league, taking a reported additional £900,000 over the team finishing 3rd. At least Pompey have had their squad savaged with vaious players going out on loans and the 10 point deduction all but relegating them. If admin works out for Rangers they'll start next season debt free, no points deduction and a similar looking squad, there simply doesn't seem to be any 'real' punishment for them, and that to me is bullshit.
They won't keep all their players, all the decent ones will leave in the summer, they're only agreeing to this deal as they have little option.
IMO,.... the answer is simple to stop all this. AUTOMATIC RELEGATION FOR ANY CLUB THAT GOES INTO ADMINISTRATION. if that does not stop the mis-management of clubs then nothing will. In serious cases a 2 league relegation.
There's too much of a vested interest in the SPL to keep Rangers and Celtic in a position of massive dominance. It's unfortunate for Scottish football because the only thing that has a chance of saving it is if there was more of a level playing field (nothing to do with slopey pitches) and more genuine competition.
Fully agree, the Portsmouth situation fecks me off enough but this Rangers situation is utterly ridiculous and no one other than Celtic will benefit due to the ridiculously threadbare SPL standard. It's just not right
Henrik Larrson the only one who's done anything at a big club and that wasn't exactly a long term thing was it!
Am I really being asked if it pisses me off that a load of millionaires agreed to just get paid a few thousand pound a week instead of £15-20k so that the club continued to exist and the cleaners and office staff didn't get made redundant? The majority of the players have been trying to negotiate into the wage cuts deal cheap/free transfers in the summer so that they can go and get back onto bigger contracts. I don't know if any achieved it because the admin were reluctant to do it as it would reduce the value of the players as assets and put off buyers. As things stand Celtic and Motherwell will be qualifying for the CL and the team in 4th place will be in the Europa League along with whatever cup places are awarded, because Rangers need to have been bought by the end of this month in order to apply for the licence to play in Europe next season. They can't do it whilst in admin because one of the requirements is evidence you can fulfill all your fixtures for the following season.
I like Stephen Fletcher. The only thing that pisses me off about this is that all of us knew ages ago that Rangers and Portsmouth were looking dodgy financially. It's been speculated about all season yet only now has it become a concern. Why wasn't something done ages ago?
I remember us paying every single one of our creditors back, and i don't remember us trying to dodge our tax bill, nor trying to negotiate with HMRC. I also don't remember us offering a player 10k more than two other Championship clubs whilst we was in administration (Portsmouth). I do not sympathise with some clubs such as Rangers and Pompey, most of it is down to issues brought on by themselves. Where as clubs like Port Vale and those in trouble in League two are the one's who will find it hardest.
What's the difference? Don't allow the scale to affect your opinion. In all cases it's caused by having more cash flowing out of the club than is coming into it. The biggest cash outflow that can be controlled is player wages. If the clubs can't afford to be paying out more than a certain level of cash then they shouldn't agree to it, either sign players asking for lower wages or sign less players and use the kids more. Port Vale last summer signed 6 players on permanent deals and 2 loanees and have now used 27 players his season. Don't sign those 8 players and promote some more kids to the team. They may not perform as well on the pitch, but financially that's likely to be more than 1/4 of the wage bill saved (I've assumed there's at least 1 or 2 kids in the 27 and the signings were senior players on bigger wages). It's not fair to hold that argument against Pompey/Rangers and not against Port Vale just because it's L2 and there's less cash coming in to start with. In Rangers case it's more of an issue that they basically had the bank represented on the board and were dealing with their debt situation until they were taken over by someone who's now being investigated for fraud over the way he's run them, and is alleged to have promised to put in the cash they need to be able to pay the taxman and then failed to do so. It's like you spending your wages before you get them in the bank (eg commitment to mortgage payment or rent that you know is due?). If your employer refused to pay you you'd get bank charges, but you'd be entitled to claim them from your employer as they'd breached your contract and caused them. You'd be rather pissed off if everyone turned round and said that you'd brought on the problem yourself. The money was supposed to be in the bank, and it was reasonable for the rest of the board to assume it would be there when they committed to other outgoings, it's not been their fault that the owner/former owner (administrators are challenging his claim to anything due to the arrangements in place) has ****ed them. It's also not their fault that the rest of the league is piss poor that only Motherwell has got past them as a result of the penalty.
He's a good player, I only didn't include him as I thought we were talking about Scottish players and he's one of those that qualifies for Scotland as he once went on holiday to Edinburgh.
