bilkobear

This is very sad. A fine tribute to a terrible loss. My thoughts are with his family. I think most of us recall Colin from his time at Rangers with affection. RIP.

An outsider? For God's sake mate, every big club in the world relies on men from outside the club to come in and manage their football teams more often than not. Is this some kind of crazy West of Scotland xenophobia you have? We need a football manger and we need one fast. Heck any number of people could do better than McCoist, Dick Campbell from yesterday for a start. But we can do even better than that; we can at least attract an up and coming coach because we can offer a very decent salary with bonuses for success. Let us be honest the bonuses would be considered in the bag by any competent man. By the way the biggest issues we have are that we cannot beat Forfar Athletic, Every other issue after that particular one pales into insignificance. Our supporters do not turn up with their children, wives, girlfriends or pals to the Ibrox Stands to watch our Board fight with each other or scan our audited accounts. If thousands don't turn up on Tuesday for the Newcastle game, it won't be because of the Boardroom battle, it will be because of Saturday's result and inept football performance.

Say what you mean mate. You are really making a case for Ally McCoist and asking a football support to ignore the failings of the football side of the equation with a veiled hint that it will all turn out for the best. Why cannot we sort out the football side first, after all that is the very life blood, the oxygen of our existence? If the football is right, then the crowds will turn up and the money will flow. Then with the financial oxygen flowing into our commercial bloodstream we will be able to breathe and tackle the other issues. At this moment in time we are having our airwaves choked by a management team who an obstruction to the oxygen we need. Common sense dictates that this is what you have to deal with first. I suspect you are a McCoist apologist who follows the cult of the manager and for you the club and its health and future come a poor second. The Boardroom battle should not be used as an excuse to allow an inept financially destructive management team more time to cause the club further commercial harm. Enough is enough. If we are anything we must be something on the park, because if we are not then we are nothing against that in which we judge everything.

Not a rant at all mate. It is actually quite a pertinent and concise take on events those last 24 hours. Sad as it is to say much of it, it nonetheless should be said.

Ally has to go, his record is really appalling as a football manager.He just cannot cut it. But he is no bstrd, he is a club legend and is deserved of affection and loyalty, but just not the job as manager. I will always admire and adore him. I would always hope there is a place for him at Ibrox, maybe on the Board, he is an intelligent man. Why he cannot cut it as a manager is a mystery, but he is not the first great player to fail in this particular regard.

That is a very strong statement to make. Is it based on what you know? Or is it based on supposition not backed by fact? By the way, if we are heading towards a shyttstorm financially, will you be blaming Ally for spending Premier League wages to win a part time league? Will you be blaming Walter for letting him and backing his spending? Would be interesting to see how you separate Walter and Ally from the financial stuff, but no doubt have Green up to his armpits in it, yet Green wanted to get more out of the management team who it does seem need to have a hammer of large proportions to crack the measliest of nuts. Personally I think there are too many contradictions to be sure of anything inside Ibrox, but it is always interesting to hear from those who are so sure.

This in spades. It was good to have informative bloggers, but what we have here is people arguing in public over matters at the club that neither of them are clear about and have decided to use in a battle of playground one-up-man-ship. Both of them should take the guns off each other and stop doing the bidding of figures inside Ibrox. Once you become a patsy for infighting in the Board you stop being of any use to the support.

It should be compulsory at least once a week.

No he wasn't. For most of the game he gave the ball away from poor passing and squandered forward positions from his lack of movement off the ball. Against better teams he would have been a liability that would have seen the game lost. Lewis on the other hand had a poor game by his own standards, but he was learning to play on the left and still rarely lost the team possession, awkward as he sometimes looked in a new position.

I have no problem with what you want for your children. I suspect they will have their own ideas about this, you can trust me on that one. They may actually choose to like the unique identity of the Rangers support. It will be their choice. Good luck with your support for Rangers anyway.

I haven't called you any names mate, nor sought to use any vitriol in my post to you. So I am not sure why you have included that line in your post to me? Rangers and the support stand for something. They do so because they have inherited it from the generations of supporters who went before them and it is they who have defined who we are. The heritage was there before you. I suspect it will be there long after you have gone as well. By supporting Rangers you have embraced or at the least accepted the history and the heritage of the support that is part of it. Even if you don't carry the sentiment in your personal life, you cannot ignore its existence, nor should you dare to undermine the right of those who fully embrace it as a legacy from their seniors. Divorcing politics or even religion from sport sounds very noble. But whilst we have international football where the teams play under flags and represent political entities, it is a hollow aspiration. The reality is people want it. Football has always been tribal. My street against your street and so on. Without this need to identify ourselves, there would be no passion. There is nothing more hypocritical than politicians and social commentators carping at the situation of Rangers and for that matter The Filth over their respective displays of identity and tribal allegiance, and then see the same turning up at sporting events to bask in the publicity of stolen glory, much of it for political reasons. As for a split on religious reasons as a tribal identity, hell it’s as good as any other. I really don't care what you seek to gain from watching Rangers, whatever it is it is your right to do so. All I ask is that you afford me and the rest of the support the same respect. As for changing the support and their inherited identity, I suspect you will be howling at the moon, but I have a wee inkling this might be something you have an appetite for.

I think he acknowledged that we have many supporters who don't hold all of those traditions and that there are some that may actually hold none. However, a man would have to be blind and ignorant to ignore the obvious. In following Rangers you have to accept the complexion, colour, shape and form of what the club are and even if you are not part of that personally, you nonetheless have made a commitment to that rich heritage. The only alternative is that you somehow wish to change it. That would truly be bizarre. It reminds me of the hypocrisy of so many who have come as immigrants to the UK for a better life, more freedoms and to embrace a cultural development that offers a greater human opportunity than the failing benighted countries that they often gladly left behind or escaped, but then wish to reshape our nation into the twisted ugly form of their previous shit hole. If you have accepted who we are, why we are who we are, and that we are who we are and will not be changing, then why are you railing against a post that merely reaffirms our fine identity? A Spaniard can support Barcelona with all of the cultural and nationalistic baggage that Barcelona carry, and yet be a Spaniard or even a foreigner who shares not one bit of that sentiment. However, I doubt such a supporter would come onto their forums and pour scorn or even cast doubts upon that identity or indeed its integrity, because that would entail a liberty too far.

This is of course on the money. If Water's hand wasn't up Souness's back I am a Dutchman.

I think you should tell us what British soldiers deaths were celebrated in song by The Filth at last season's Barcelona game. I suspect that none of the rest of us tuned in. You could be our man on the spot so to speak. Don't bother listing them all, just give us a wee flavour.

Well I am old enough to know that when there are several indeed many varied and independent sources of information from different angles and many from the horses mouth then the appellation rumour becomes overtaken by the word evidence. But it doesn't matter how old you are, if you are burdened by blinkers then you will never see the entire picture anyway. Perhaps you should just be satisfied that you can focus on the Filth playing in Europe this season. That will whet yer appetite, eh?

I don't think Chris is claiming to represent your view. I don't believe there is any Rangers supporter out there that shares your views or would ever wish to associate themselves with them. Anyway I may be wrong? Your rush to defend the Filth over the singing about Lee Rigby is rather sinister. Exactly why are you so sure regarding the Filth not singing about the death of this British soldier when they have spent their entire history celebrating the death of every other British soldier? Indeed I would be more surprised if they had missed this particular tragic target rather than that they are being consistent and hitting it.

No disrespect to the Hearts poster, but so what, gee whizz? Last season there wasn't even this lone Heart's supporter’s voice giving our beleaguered club an ounce of succour. Instead it was the majority of them who had the floor and we have to assume that they were indeed the majority, because they dominated this club's voice from Owner, to Boardroom to media and press and to forums on the internet and ultimately to voting us to the outer reaches of the league system. And by Gorgie did they then, and do they today hate The Rangers!!! Even as they slither beneath the waves of a storm they have enjoyed mustering for themselves, they don't shout 'Help', but continue in their death throes to hurl abuse at Rangers Football Club. A tragedy? Not for me, merely a comedy. A comedy club that I will happily laugh to their death. But hey, they started it. As for the soppy mugs on this forum who fell for one single Jambo's cow eyes, don't stop panting, there will be a Filth fan along next to tell you that they aren't all Rangers haters either, that most of them aren't all bigots with a dark agenda to kill RFC, and that it is all the fault of the big boys on certain forums who did it and ran away. How many soppy mugs will fall for those eyelashes fluttering at you?

Does it sell newspapers? Everywhere he goes the circulation seems to plummit. If it sells newspapers why does he limit the controversial stuff to Rangers. Why not double your material output by taunting and winding up the Filth as well and perhaps if this really works, sell even more newspapers? I think we all know the answer.

Another fine article Roger. Whilst the thrust of your piece is perfectly pertinent and true, we unlike the good folks of Liverpool and the brave victims of a government conspiracy that protected guilty men through an establishment cover up, face something a wee bit different. We don't have an establishment conspiring in order to defend themselves and their own in reaction to an event without design. Instead we are the target of a conspiring establishment who have decided to wage a war against us. An aggressive action and not otherwise a sinister reaction. It is perhaps an unspoken war; a war where no council of war gathers to talk about their war aims, a war where the enemy doesn't show itself directly to confront us; but a war nonetheless. Conspiracy doesn't require that every person involved need be in the same room at one particular time. Those that murdered the Jews in WW2 certainly weren't. Some directed a policy in parts, other interpreted the policy in parts, some took part, some enabled parts to occur and individuals played their own part. In the end the conspiracy was complete like a jigsaw. However, not all the participants in the end game were Germans and not all of them were Nazis and not all of them even knew the end game, they just hated and were happy to help. Importantly it could never have happened without one particular shared ideology, one pervading aspect of propaganda and one significant single truism necessary for the participants to become involved in the conspiracy. The Jews deserved it. Today no matter the evidence, no matter the Court rulings and no matter the facts. Rangers deserve it. As a football club and as a football community with an identifiable culture, an identifiable tradition and an identifiable popular political persuasion towards Unionism, we have found ourselves in a perfect political storm of hate. The hate was always gathering itself like storm clouds, but with the vacuum created by our lack of financial robustness and organisational leadership it has rushed in upon us like a hurricane or a twister to wreak havoc. In Scotland we have the SNP who need to kill us off as a vibrant social pulse as we have become to them no less than a political and cultural wall, an obstacle of political alternative and a deadly enemy to their ultimate aims. Killing Rangers Football Club and seeing us dead is political sense to these people and they seek it, how can they not. On the other side of what is no less than a pincer attack we have our most vicious and traditional enemy, the cult of the Roman Catholic Church and their Republican activists who have seen our weakness as their opportunity. The chance to kill the last Protestant Castle in Scotland is one that the RC Church dare not resist at the moment of our greatest weakness. This weakness and this opportunity has created a whirlwind of activity amongst those who would carry the cultural and religious war in Ulster over to the West of Scotland, with the same political chicanery well learned and the same cultural hegemony equally aspired. Every day we witness not other supporters crossing into our territory through the shared interest of football, but something so very different. We face daily internet terrorists, cultural warriors and agenda driven politicians and journalists with the demise and undermining and destruction of our football club as the very target of their everyday energies, aspirations and endeavours. This is not something that other football clubs and their supporters have to endure. This is not normal. This is not something that we can even sensibly communicate to other football supporters in other countries because they could never understand properly; it simply doesn’t happen in civilised democracies that have no recognisable features of tribal hatred and war. Thus a football club innocently and naively born as a mere sporting entity, finds itself at the very heart of a political war with enemies on all sides and in the heart of a storm of hate that it is neither capable of recognising never mind resisting or even fighting. Like the bewildered Jews there is every danger we will walk into the heat of the inferno and into the jaws of our own demise disunited and confused regarding the very threats before us.

There you have it. The truth in all its naked ugliness. It may not be nice to look at when you undress all the spin, smoke and mirrors from it, shed away the bullshitt excuses, disrobe it of the spurious empty debate, because what you have left is the very fact that on the field we have been utter shyte.

No he has no mandate, other than the backing of many of his Rangers supporting peers; and many do back him. I think he does the job well, but there is always a few who will sit on the sideleines doing sod all and criticising those who are prepared to do something. Indeed no matter what a man does there are always those who will find fault. I never thought that English ran riot but that is my opinion and Chris can only get better and wiser the more he takes these people on.

Where do I say he is representing the whole Rangers support? Of course I didn't. You just see what you wish to see and ignore the small inconvenience of actually reading what you are responding to. He doesn't represent the entire Rangers support, indeed no one could given how splintered we are. But he does represent an awful lot of us and his commitment in facing our enemies is backed by a lot of us probably the majority, even if not you.

You're entitled to your opinion mate. But at least Chris is out there trying to get the views of the Rangers support into the mainstream, at least he is standing up for the club in public and as for his book you don't have to buy it, but in my opinion there are not enough books written about our club, so good luck to him in this, I will be buying it. Next time you are on the box fighting the good fight be sure to let us all know and we will tune in to support you as well.

Green for any faults that he had was still the hardest working down to earth CEO that appeared seriously interested in feeding off the ordinary Rangers supporter that we have ever had inside the Ibrox Boardroom in our entire history. But most in our support don't want to be met head on by someone running the club, most actually want to be kept at a distance and fed platitudes that keep them from thinking for themselves. Ally says we are the people, and to hell that our football stinks the stadium out every week. Thus any doubts we have about his management abilities are dissapated in a single line of meaningless rhetoric. The truth is we are the people who are easily satisfied by incompetence and the smoke and mirrors that hide it.

I don't believe you. I have been watching Rangers for over fifty years and whilst I have seen football that wasn't always the best it was always watchable. Most of it even under John Greig was still entertaining and often very much so, even if the results were frustrating. This season it has been the stuff of nightmares. Pedestrian, ugly, unimaginative, shapeless and forlorn with hardly a hint of organisation or motivation from the players. If it wasn't that it was Rangers no one who actually understands and likes football would watch it. But next season may be better, next season is worth investing in (yes again) and next season is a turn of the page worth making, because we are a story and the book is being written in our lifetime and being part of it is our chance to make a history that will resound long after we have gone, and will be an inheritance that will shape the character of those we leave behind..