Rangers

[Deutsch Wolf]

There shouldn't really be any block on him owning them (other than if we get into the realm of barring people from owning clubs because we suspect they're not going to have their best interests at heart, which would be great in theory but hard to enforce), but I suppose the SFA can make up their own rules if they really want to, it is their domain after all. In any case I suspect Ashley has what he wants over Rangers now. A load of property and merchandising rights signed over to him because Rangers have inevitably had to draw down on the loan facilities he offered up with the proviso that he had security over various things. He gets all that without owning the club and King will repay the loans to him ASAP so that he buggers off, win win. A load of potentially very valuable stuff for free essentially, that is now going to be hard to prise back out of his hands.

Ashley won't buy the club now, that phase of the game is over. Dave King will.

 

[Kenny]

Dave King, Paul Murray and John Gilligan have succeeded in being voted on to the Rangers board at Friday's extraordinary general meeting at Ibrox.
Shareholders at the meeting called by King, who owns 14.5% of shares in Rangers International Football Club plc, voted Derek Llambias and finance director Barry Leach off the board

Hopefully there is now a light for the club. They need some proper sensible running of the club and probably be for the best that they don't go up this season (looking unlikely now Hibs are on the charge).

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

King will at least have the club's interests at heart (even if he isn't a squeaky clean character himself).

They need to divest themselves of all Ashley influence ASAP, get the best possible legal people on the case and rip up any contracts that are in any way dubious.

 

[Kenny]

Touch and go if he will pass the owners test due to his conviction in South Africa.

They need to spend the next few months clearing up the mess that has been made since they went pop. Start again next season and give Stuart McCall the job to get them back in the Prem.

 

[Alan]

Slightly off topic, but how exactly is it that Celtic and Rangers managed to separate themselves so wholly (in a competitive sense) from the rest of Scotland's clubs?

 

[Sniffer]

Huge grounds and fan bases I suspect.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

champions league. bigger crowds. only show in town as far as TV are concerned.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Huge grounds and fan bases I suspect.

Yup. Leaving aside Hampden I think Tynecastle is the next biggest ground in Scotland. Holds around 18k.

 

[Alan]

So it's generally been down to population?

The UCL participation I'll grant you even though I think that system is fucked in a really bad way.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Scotland is pretty sparsely populated. Edinburgh is the capital but is much smaller than Glasgow. Their other major urban conurbations are more Wolverhampton than Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield etc

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Glasgow has a population of around 600,000. Basically it is pretty much all Celtic or Rangers bar little bits of Partick Thistle.

And the old grounds were massive. Really massive. Celtic Park held 83,500 in the old terraced bowl, and the record crowd at Ibrox before it was completely rebuilt was a mind-blowing 118,000.

 

[Alan]

Not totally mind-blowing!

I've spent a fair bit of time in a ~110,000 seater for American football. Think I was deaf for the next week.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Essentially, imagine Arsenal and Spurs were the only two teams in London, both had 60,000 seater stadiums, and all the other teams were from places with a population of under 500,000 and stadiums holding a maximum of 20,000. And there were only eight other teams in the top flight most of the time.

Arsenal and Spurs would clearly be the top two 90%+ of the time.

 

[Alan]

Yeah, it makes sense. I guess I didn't realize just how big the populace disparity really is.

 

[Law's Bus]

Scotland is pretty sparsely populated. Edinburgh is the capital but is much smaller than Glasgow. Their other major urban conurbations are more Wolverhampton than Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield etc

They're not even that. Wolverhampton would be the third largest place in Scotland by quite some way. Aberdeen and Dundee are only about 2/3 the size of Wolverhampton, whilst Greater Glasgow has well over a million people - plus even out in say, Greenock there are massively more Rangers and Celtic fans than there are Greenock Morton ones.

Edinburgh is about 450,000, and is more of a Rugby area than the Glasgow area.

To put the population disparity into focus, about 20-25% of Scotland's population live in Greater Glasgow, then another chunk in the surrounding towns.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

True - and down to demographics etc, Paisley doesn't really rally behind St Mirren, they have a core support but still that area is Celtic/Rangers dominated. Whereas there really aren't that many Villa supporters who come from Wolverhampton.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Motherwell isn't exactly exclusively motherwell either... bar Dundee and Aberdeen (plus Edinburgh obviously) you will find Celtic and rangers are the two biggest supported clubs in virtually every Scottish town.

 

[Lycan]

Forget Paisley, you can go to some God awful places like Banff and a good 60-70% of football supporters there will follow one of the Old Firm.

I've lived in the central belt of Scotland for 15 years and I can honestly tell you that apart from actually going to the grounds and sitting next to the poor bastards, I have NEVER met a fan of Stirling Albion, Alloa Athletic, Stenhousemuir (Paddy aside) or East Stirlingshire. I know 2 Falkirk fans and one of them is a Wolves fan who randomly picked Falkirk as his second team.

In Stirling where I used to work there are two main council estates, The Raploch and The Cornton. Cornton is mainly Rangers and Raploch is Celtic. Even where my parents live in Dunblane which is a quaint little commuters town, there are three main pubs; the Tappit Hen which is a whiskey/real ale pub (cracking boozer actually), the Village Inn (Celtic) and the Dunblane Hotel (Rangers).

The only places where you'll find more football supporters supporting their local team rather than the Old Firm are Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen and even then it's a close run thing.

 

[FrankMunro-371]

There is a Queen of the South fan where I work. His favourite English team is Nuneaton Town. He can never be accused of glory hunting...

 

[Lycan]

The old Queens manager Jim McIntyre (current Ross County manager) used to live next door to my parents.