Wonders will never cease, folks.
Over the space of the last 48 hours, I’ve read two separate reports from two different journalists which have focussed, at last, on the dreadful Ibrox accounts and which are not repeating the spin which has been put on them by others.
One is by the notorious Ibrox sympathiser Gary Keown.
The other is by Alison Connell, writing for PLZ.
The question as to why she hasn’t produced a similar article for The Evening Times is a question we’ll leave open. Nobody else at that paper seems to want the story, and perhaps that’s why she’s writing it on a new media site instead.
Have we finally forced some of these people to confront the truth and write the facts?
Keown is writing about it because he’s troubled and angry.
This is actually what every one of their fan sites should be doing; taking this seriously for the wide-ranging implications in those numbers. Keown, working for The Scottish Mail On Sunday, is furious to learn that their wage bill is bigger than ours when the players earning those big bucks have spectacularly flopped.
Connell actually goes much further than Keown, whose primary motivation is to shame the players currently at the club over there for earning more than their Celtic counterparts whilst failing on almost every big occasion that has come their way.
But Connell gets right to the guts of it, and her piece is so searing I think it belonged in the mainstream press, although it echoes what this blog and others have said already. I always say that this stuff shouldn’t need to be written by people like me; if it was being written by people in the mainstream press then I’d have no cause to bother.
“The news last week that (the Ibrox club) are operating a £64m wage bill – £3m more than Celtic and a record amount – should ring pretty serious alarm bells,” she said, and she didn’t mean at our club but at theirs.
“At the very least it should scorch the theory that the Ibrox side are somehow operating as Glasgow’s poor relations when they are held up to the light with Celtic.”
As if that wasn’t enough, she hammered home an even more worrying point for those of an Ibrox persuasion.
“A £4m loss on the back of a campaign that delivered Champions League football and the sale of a player for just shy of £20m should not slip under the radar for anyone.”
Who does she mean by “anyone”?
Her own colleagues in the mainstream? Because its not so much slipped under the radar for them as they’ve simply chosen to ignore it. Notice that she’s quoting the accurate figure and not the one that’s being spread like manure across the rest of the press. She’s quoting all of us there. She’s telling it the way we have.
There’s no way to dress those figures up, although many of those in her business have spent the week trying, but she’s gotten to the heart of it with laser precision; if they can’t post a profit under those conditions, if they are losing money in a bumper year, then they are in big bother and no mistake.
It’s great to read that from a source other than a Celtic site.
There are doubtless some in the mainstream who will echo the sentiments so desperately expressed by an Ibrox fan site last night when it clutched at the pitiful straw that “the accounts could be a lot worse.”
Yeah, like a 2-megaton detonation over a city is lot worse than a 1-megaton blast … but there’s not much left of the city either way.
Celtic fan sites are so far out in front of this story that it should shame everyone who is late to the party. But you have to credit those who have finally arrived whilst their colleagues continue to push the same lies.
They have made a contribution of sorts to getting the truth out there and pushing back against the tide, and I don’t even care what their motivations are.
Keown is a bitter, anti-Celtic clown. His article comes from a place of profound anger at the way his club continues to be mismanaged, and his questions are rooted in his frustration that we earn more money and spend it better.
Connell might just be sick of seeing everyone on the sports-desk at her own paper writing easily disproved garbage and doing the job of the Ibrox PR department.
It matters not. For a brief moment we have seen a chink of light, and that might be a reaction to what we’ve spent the week saying and it might not be, but when the truth is so obvious and its already out there, the only wonder is that anyone is still denying it and writing fiction.
What these two have done is not radical by any manner of means but amidst this tortured landscape where lies are the currency so many trade in, seeing folks in the mainstream tell inconvenient truths about Ibrox can sometimes seem, as Orwell once put it, “like a revolutionary act.”
If the daily Record’s Newport , Berry , Inaction , McDermott , Wilson or McCarthy had the Donegal’s ,or the Sun’s Devlin , Grieve or Billy Leckie also to criticise the Rangers newest disastrous accounts ,you could say ….at last ! But when the sports editors of these two rags decide to ignore the story of the month so far ,but give more attention to Lawrence Shankland’s chunky belly …we know the old pals act is still as important as ever in wee Scawlin …don’t we ?
Last time I read The Record was on the night-shift and I’ve been out the job 27 years now…
It was a guy called Alex Cameron then and I’ve not heard of the rest apart from some guy Jackson that The Celtic Blog reports his Lies after Lies after Lies on here –
And I never paid for it as it was after ma wee gran – God rest her – was finished with it…
On a personal level I’ve never heard of the rest of The Record mob…
But ‘Inaction’ is an unusual surname –
There again The Scottish Football Media are highly unusual !
Long may their suffering continue.
On a different note. Uefa director comes out and states Italy not reaching the Euros would be a disaster. What happens, Ukraine denied a stonewall penalty in the 92nd minute. Not even checked by VAR. Disgracefull.
If I was one of that lot (and I thank the baby Jesus every day that I’m not) …. I’d welcome the truth. This is an existential crisis. They’ve already been through it once. Do they really want to bury their heads in the sand again and suffer the same fate?
I know it’s fun to paint them all as being delusional and entitled. But they can’t ALL be like that. Can they? Surely not! Lolz.
Wheres the RangersTaxCase guy? I’ve missed him.
We made money selling Mark Viduka, I thought that was good business.
What I’m still struggling to understand with the accounts from the scum, is where does the word “Sustainability” fit into the whole equation?
Isn’t “Sustainability” a requirement for European football, even more so when meant to be upon the Uefa watch list?
When you look at a scum club who still haven’t been able to produce a profit in there entire miserable existence, how is this practice still allowed to happen without any form of examination?
Just look at what has happened since the end of June already, after the losses occurred?
A mad spending spree, upon a massive pile of shite.
Actually would have increased the wage bill with the extra amount of shite imported.
No income from CL after another failure.
Couldn’t sell raffle tickets for the shite they claim as prize assets, and no one stupid enough to over what Shirley gave to ajax.
And even had to pay off the moleman for the wonderful job he done for the scum.
So how much extra costs have already occurred since the losses of the accounts from the scum?
Must already be well into the millions already, and still a demand for even more to be spent in January, without anything to sell to cover the spending?
So overall where does “Sustainability” fit in currently?
Have uefa suddenly changed its rules and allowing for debt to be continued to be built up without any form of investigation taking place either?
And nearly forgot to add in the extra court cases pending to add to the outgoings?
Maybe there is a new form of “Sustainability” currently in play, but fail to see how that practice is been operated properly within that scummy shithole?
Is there are reason for the media and bloggers having us only 5 points clear of sevco and not 8 as it stands just now.
Should we beat Motherwell on Saturday that will put us 11 clear of sevco,so how come the media and the pundits in the media and bloggers still say the pressure is all on us while it’s sevco doing the chasing and playing CATCH UP.
I think there were comments a few year’s back, maybe even from this site that suggested that the SFA oversees all the revenue based club detail and ensuring clubs are FFP for Uefa tournmnet inclusion and Uefa react to that only if red flags raised. If this is remotely true the the rangers are in no danger.
Alison McConnell used to be a contributer to the Celtic podcast ACSOM.
Keown and Connells numbers must have came up in a euro millions syndicate and they have decided to torch smsm on the way out.This is a departure from the norm.
I honestly hope this version dies too, and all versions thereafter until none exist. I know it’s not good for Celtic to not be pushed by somebody, but in my own selfish way, I don’t care. I would gladly watch Celtic pound on a premiership full of weaklings, and keep getting all the spoils of being champions. My wife and I cannot bear to watch the Ibrox or European matches live any longer, as they are too stressful. She tells me the score and if we won, I gear up and grab some popcorn to enjoy the experience to the fullest. If not, I read about the fiasco that was and put it out of my mind. This probably makes me a bad supporter, but at my age I can only handle so much. Real life is stressful enough, I want to see my team win so I can have the fantasy of feeling 10 foot tall and bulletproof. Same reason I vacation in Las Vegas, because you’re treated like a VIP tycoon even though it’s a fact that I’m simply a middle class slogger. Celtic are my paper tiger forevermore, and I love reveling in their domestic bliss. The Bhoys have just enough teeth that they will occasionally slay a European Giant, so I get their hope in my life as well. My favorite sports club serves my purposes, not the other way around. I pay a lot of money each year for this privilege and fantasy, therefore I do not feel the least guilty about it. Thinking about my champions while at work gets me through the day and puts a smile on my face.