Britneys days at Rangers Numbered ?

[Martin Luther 53]

This deserves a thread of its own in his own words Britney isnt best friends with Smith.

Maybe Gordon smith has been hired to put the final nail in britneys coffin.

From The Times

October 13, 2007

Rangers remain Gordon Smith’s Achilles’ heel

Graham Spiers

Following the furore triggered by Gordon Smith’s claims about “an agenda against Rangers” I received a text message on Thursday from someone who has been at the heart of Scottish football for over 20 years.

“Smith is a national embarrassment,” his text said.

“Why?” I replied, genuinely shocked by the claim.

“A former player of a club which revelled in anti-Catholic bigotry for over 100 years, and he has the gall to say it’s all the fault of Catholic schools?” came the reply.

Whatever he has got wrong, it is time, I believe, to nail some of these calumnies about Gordon Smith.

First, and most crucial of all, he is not a bigot, he doesn’t have a bigoted bone in his body, and he is incapable of such a thing. Smith is too decent and too right-minded for such a disease, and it is time some of these stupid allegations were muzzled once and for all. In response to the story in The Times on Wednesday about his allegations in a forthcoming book, frankly, I don’t know what Smith and the SFA were doing in issuing a statement denying that he was a bigot. This had never been at issue: who or where in our story had anyone suggested bigotry on behalf of Smith? It was a trifle dumbfounding to find him and his media advisers coming out of their corners wildly swinging their anti-bigotry handbags when it hadn’t been suggested in the first place.

Secondly, nor will Smith in his role at the SFA show any bias or favour to Rangers or anyone else. I have said before that those Rangers fans who hope to have “one of us” firmly ensconced at the SFA, or those Celtic fans who hope to find “an obvious enemy” in the corridors of power at Hampden Park, are both going to be sorely disappointed.

Smith wants the best for every club in Scotland, big or small. He genuinely cheers for Celtic, say, in Europe, just as he does for Rangers, Aberdeen or anyone else. Those who think they detected “a sneer” in Smith’s countenance whenever he speaks of some Celtic success story are simply misguided fools. They evidently don’t know him.

Smith is not small-minded, he doesn’t harbour petty grudges. On the contrary, he is broad-minded, progressive and even a touch radical in his outlook, with a strain in his thinking which often goes against the grain. For all of this and more he is to be encouraged and aided as a figurehead at the SFA.

Rangers, though, remains his Achilles’ heel, and he has to work through it. This is obvious from the comments he has made in It’s Rangers For Me?, the intriguing book which is about to go on release. Nor is it much of a defence, if you assert as Smith has that there is “an agenda against Rangers”, to argue that these comments were made before he took up office at the SFA.

The fact is, it is what he believes, and it is out in the open now. Smith has been burnt by what was always going to be a fiery transition, from being a freethinking, almost fast-and-loose media pundit to becoming an SFA figurehead. There was always a risk in that journey and it has come back to haunt him.

And now that he has said it, let’s try to cut to the core of it: what does Smith mean by “an agenda against Rangers”?

Initially, there was a hint that he may mean “an agenda” at the heart of Uefa but I don’t think this is what he means at all. There is also a hint that he may mean “an agenda” within the Scottish media – presumably, among those of us who have heavily criticised Rangers over their bigotry problem – but in further comments Smith quickly and specifically backs away from this.

I believe I know exactly what he means, and it is a worrying sign. By “an agenda against Rangers” I think that Smith believes there has been a climate created in Scottish football – created by blokes like me – in which it has come to be open-season on Rangers in terms of the club’s reputation. I think Smith has looked at the critical comment on Rangers in recent years – and the way these media comments triggered Uefa’s prosecution of the Ibrox club – and has decided that Rangers, much more than Celtic, get a hard time these days. That is really what he is getting at.

The reason this is worrying is because Smith is openly vexed about the truth: Rangers have had a significantly worse press than Celtic, precisely because they have had a significantly worse problem among their supporters. Frankly, if Smith can’t live with this, then he is kowtowing to the hoary old line, once put about by knee-knocking newspaper editors, that you should always make everything absolutely equal in terms of comment about Rangers and Celtic. In terms of bigotry, for instance, this facile principle always meant asserting that “One side is just as bad as the other”, or that “They’re both just as bad as each other”. For years this was the great unwritten, safety-first rule of Scottish sports journalism.

Well, we’ve moved on from this, even if not quite yet in Gordon Smith’s mind. Rangers and Celtic are no more equal in terms of the bigotry problem than Glasgow and Edinburgh are equal in terms of urban deprivation. Indeed, it would be a mild freak if they were. Today, there doesn’t need to be any more hang-ups about condemning Rangers for their significantly greater problem, just as the Ibrox club deserves commendation for the strides it has made in the past two years. Life is hard in this context, life is rarely equal.

Smith needs to get his head around this - it is his one blind spot. He is timorous about it but the age of cowering over bigotry in football is over. “I think there needs to be more even-handedness about it,” Smith complains of the Old Firm debate. Really, Gordon? Do you mean like... just pretend it is equal, always say that “One side is as bad as the other”?

Like I say, we’ve moved on from this. If this is really what the SFA chief believes, then his mind is stuck in a previous age. And it ill-behoves a good man with many good ideas.

[BRITNEY IS NOT FEELING IT 8,293]

FFS A repeat of your post in another thread

[Martin Luther 53]

FFS A repeat of your post in another thread

As I said I think this deserves a post in itself away from the rightful welcoming that G S deserves.

But I think this interview gives a right good insight into things to come.

[StuartM6 279]

"A significantly worse problem among their support" [compared to celt*cs support].

He really is an arsehole, craving attention. We're to easy a target at the moment, the sooner someone from Rangers stands up for us, the better.

[Martin Luther 53]

"A significantly worse problem among their support" [compared to celt*cs support].

He really is an arsehole, craving attention. We're to easy a target at the moment, the sooner someone from Rangers stands up for us, the better.

2007 this is dated from. This constant hammering of our club needs to fucking stop.

[Chuck_Fickens 425]

Graham Spiers should be banned from Ibrox, simply for the fact that he's the definition of a douchebag. Such an over inflated sense of his own importance, fuck off ya harsh faced wank.

[gunslinger 270]

no one will be banned.

[markybear 136]

If smith cheers Celtic in Europe he can gtf outta ibrox

Does anyone else which Britneys right hand would just fall off with gout or summit just so he stops writing a load of pish

[SteveJ 743]

This deserves a thread of its own in his own words Britney isnt best friends with Smith.

Maybe Gordon smith has been hired to put the final nail in britneys coffin.

From The Times

October 13, 2007

Rangers remain Gordon Smith’s Achilles’ heel

Graham Spiers

Following the furore triggered by Gordon Smith’s claims about “an agenda against Rangers” I received a text message on Thursday from someone who has been at the heart of Scottish football for over 20 years.

“Smith is a national embarrassment,” his text said.

“Why?” I replied, genuinely shocked by the claim.

“A former player of a club which revelled in anti-Catholic bigotry for over 100 years, and he has the gall to say it’s all the fault of Catholic schools?” came the reply.

Whatever he has got wrong, it is time, I believe, to nail some of these calumnies about Gordon Smith.

First, and most crucial of all, he is not a bigot, he doesn’t have a bigoted bone in his body, and he is incapable of such a thing. Smith is too decent and too right-minded for such a disease, and it is time some of these stupid allegations were muzzled once and for all. In response to the story in The Times on Wednesday about his allegations in a forthcoming book, frankly, I don’t know what Smith and the SFA were doing in issuing a statement denying that he was a bigot. This had never been at issue: who or where in our story had anyone suggested bigotry on behalf of Smith? It was a trifle dumbfounding to find him and his media advisers coming out of their corners wildly swinging their anti-bigotry handbags when it hadn’t been suggested in the first place.

Secondly, nor will Smith in his role at the SFA show any bias or favour to Rangers or anyone else. I have said before that those Rangers fans who hope to have “one of us” firmly ensconced at the SFA, or those Celtic fans who hope to find “an obvious enemy” in the corridors of power at Hampden Park, are both going to be sorely disappointed.

Smith wants the best for every club in Scotland, big or small. He genuinely cheers for Celtic, say, in Europe, just as he does for Rangers, Aberdeen or anyone else. Those who think they detected “a sneer” in Smith’s countenance whenever he speaks of some Celtic success story are simply misguided fools. They evidently don’t know him.

Smith is not small-minded, he doesn’t harbour petty grudges. On the contrary, he is broad-minded, progressive and even a touch radical in his outlook, with a strain in his thinking which often goes against the grain. For all of this and more he is to be encouraged and aided as a figurehead at the SFA.

Rangers, though, remains his Achilles’ heel, and he has to work through it. This is obvious from the comments he has made in It’s Rangers For Me?, the intriguing book which is about to go on release. Nor is it much of a defence, if you assert as Smith has that there is “an agenda against Rangers”, to argue that these comments were made before he took up office at the SFA.

The fact is, it is what he believes, and it is out in the open now. Smith has been burnt by what was always going to be a fiery transition, from being a freethinking, almost fast-and-loose media pundit to becoming an SFA figurehead. There was always a risk in that journey and it has come back to haunt him.

And now that he has said it, let’s try to cut to the core of it: what does Smith mean by “an agenda against Rangers”?

Initially, there was a hint that he may mean “an agenda” at the heart of Uefa but I don’t think this is what he means at all. There is also a hint that he may mean “an agenda” within the Scottish media – presumably, among those of us who have heavily criticised Rangers over their bigotry problem – but in further comments Smith quickly and specifically backs away from this.

I believe I know exactly what he means, and it is a worrying sign. By “an agenda against Rangers” I think that Smith believes there has been a climate created in Scottish football – created by blokes like me – in which it has come to be open-season on Rangers in terms of the club’s reputation. I think Smith has looked at the critical comment on Rangers in recent years – and the way these media comments triggered Uefa’s prosecution of the Ibrox club – and has decided that Rangers, much more than Celtic, get a hard time these days. That is really what he is getting at.

The reason this is worrying is because Smith is openly vexed about the truth: Rangers have had a significantly worse press than Celtic, precisely because they have had a significantly worse problem among their supporters. Frankly, if Smith can’t live with this, then he is kowtowing to the hoary old line, once put about by knee-knocking newspaper editors, that you should always make everything absolutely equal in terms of comment about Rangers and Celtic. In terms of bigotry, for instance, this facile principle always meant asserting that “One side is just as bad as the other”, or that “They’re both just as bad as each other”. For years this was the great unwritten, safety-first rule of Scottish sports journalism.

Well, we’ve moved on from this, even if not quite yet in Gordon Smith’s mind. Rangers and Celtic are no more equal in terms of the bigotry problem than Glasgow and Edinburgh are equal in terms of urban deprivation. Indeed, it would be a mild freak if they were. Today, there doesn’t need to be any more hang-ups about condemning Rangers for their significantly greater problem, just as the Ibrox club deserves commendation for the strides it has made in the past two years. Life is hard in this context, life is rarely equal.

Smith needs to get his head around this - it is his one blind spot. He is timorous about it but the age of cowering over bigotry in football is over. “I think there needs to be more even-handedness about it,” Smith complains of the Old Firm debate. Really, Gordon? Do you mean like... just pretend it is equal, always say that “One side is as bad as the other”?

Like I say, we’ve moved on from this. If this is really what the SFA chief believes, then his mind is stuck in a previous age. And it ill-behoves a good man with many good ideas.

Do you have friends on RM? Every post I see you make is cringworthy, yet you have made near 2,500 posts!

Spiers has made some decent articles in his time, against Rangers, against Celtic and against any person he finds the need to write about.

I admit that he sometimes can be found biased towards the green fraternity, during this news dry era, but he has also been given shite from the Celtic fans during the uprising of David Murray and the downturn of Celtic - a term where he started his career! The same era when the 'Daily Ranger' was the best Scottish selling paper, yet the Rangers fans now hate the Daily Record because they went against them on one issue!

Fickle!

[rangersxfc 265]

this could be rangers best deal in the last 20 years this guy knows how the media are after us after all he was workin at the BBC scotland sportsound he was the only guy who gave that ginger mug richard gordon a figth when it came to rangers .....................................the hunters become the hunted.................................................

[StuartM6 279]

2007 this is dated from. This constant hammering of our club needs to fucking stop.

Can't believe we've had 4 years of this. That in itself shows how great a support we are. Having to deal with constant abuse from the media etc, yet we all keep coming back for more. Nothing, especially a rodent like britney, would stop me from supporting the team I love.

Read in another thread, can't remember what one or who the poster was, but someone said along the lines of "a sleeping giant". I really hope this is the case, everyone should know not to mess with the Rangers!

[RFC55 108,799]

Its from 4 year ago ffs.

We have more important issues at the moment than banning journos ffs. Let Whyte get his own house in order first then we can go after the enemies

[Martin Luther 53]

Its from 4 year ago ffs.

We have more important issues at the moment than banning journos ffs. Let Whyte get his own house in order first then we can go after the enemies

4 years ago and yet it still continues to this day

you dont like me do you

[RFC55 108,799]

4 years ago and yet it still continues to this day

you dont like me do you

Its nothing to do with not liking you.

Craig Whyte needs to get a board sorted out, get spending in the transfer window and hold on to our top stars. Then come September the 1st 2011 he can start to rid the club of the bastards who have tried to tarnish our reputations.

Plus as you say its went on for 4 years and i dont see it stopping anytime soon. Btw its actually went on longer than that, His article on Davie Cooper and Rangers was fucking sickening! That was the day of the Cooper final between us and Motherwell

[Martin Luther 53]

Its nothing to do with not liking you.

Craig Whyte needs to get a board sorted out, get spending in the transfer window and hold on to our top stars. Then come September the 1st 2011 he can start to rid the club of the bastards who have tried to tarnish our reputations.

Plus as you say its went on for 4 years and i dont see it stopping anytime soon. Btw its actually went on longer than that, His article on Davie Cooper and Rangers was fucking sickening! That was the day of the Cooper final between us and Motherwell

oh i do know its went on longer than that and not by just speirsy.

[RFC55 108,799]

oh i do know its went on longer than that and not by just speirsy.

Exactly and some of the shite he has written since then has been worse,

However i do hope we get other things sorted first then go after these cunts

[TMB 14,167]

Graham Spiers should be banned from Ibrox ASAP. I heard that bastard rattle on about 'Rangers support is worse than Celtic's' in terms of sectarian singing. I listened in to Clyde-1 after the last Hearts v Celtic game when all the pro IRA and "the wee h*** are shite" stuff was coming from the Celtic end. Did Graham say much of anything about it, no. Spiers is the one with the agenda get him to fuck.

[SteveJ 743]

Graham Spiers should be banned from Ibrox ASAP. I heard that bastard rattle on about 'Rangers support is worse than Celtic's' in terms of sectarian singing. I listened in to Clyde-1 after the last Hearts v Celtic game when all the pro IRA and "the wee h*** are shite" stuff was coming from the Celtic end. Did Graham say much of anything about it, no. Spiers is the one with the agenda get him to fuck.

Maybe you should be banned?

The arseholes who get tetchy because the other fans want to argue the other, should be ridiculed!

If it is a Rangers man, slap him - if it is a Celtic man, slap him!

[ibroxgers25 18]

Britney i like her baby 1 more time song haha

[ibroxgers25 18]

This deserves a thread of its own in his own words Britney isnt best friends with Smith.

Maybe Gordon smith has been hired to put the final nail in britneys coffin.

From The Times

October 13, 2007

Rangers remain Gordon Smith’s Achilles’ heel

Graham Spiers

Following the furore triggered by Gordon Smith’s claims about “an agenda against Rangers” I received a text message on Thursday from someone who has been at the heart of Scottish football for over 20 years.

“Smith is a national embarrassment,” his text said.

“Why?” I replied, genuinely shocked by the claim.

“A former player of a club which revelled in anti-Catholic bigotry for over 100 years, and he has the gall to say it’s all the fault of Catholic schools?” came the reply.

Whatever he has got wrong, it is time, I believe, to nail some of these calumnies about Gordon Smith.

First, and most crucial of all, he is not a bigot, he doesn’t have a bigoted bone in his body, and he is incapable of such a thing. Smith is too decent and too right-minded for such a disease, and it is time some of these stupid allegations were muzzled once and for all. In response to the story in The Times on Wednesday about his allegations in a forthcoming book, frankly, I don’t know what Smith and the SFA were doing in issuing a statement denying that he was a bigot. This had never been at issue: who or where in our story had anyone suggested bigotry on behalf of Smith? It was a trifle dumbfounding to find him and his media advisers coming out of their corners wildly swinging their anti-bigotry handbags when it hadn’t been suggested in the first place.

Secondly, nor will Smith in his role at the SFA show any bias or favour to Rangers or anyone else. I have said before that those Rangers fans who hope to have “one of us” firmly ensconced at the SFA, or those Celtic fans who hope to find “an obvious enemy” in the corridors of power at Hampden Park, are both going to be sorely disappointed.

Smith wants the best for every club in Scotland, big or small. He genuinely cheers for Celtic, say, in Europe, just as he does for Rangers, Aberdeen or anyone else. Those who think they detected “a sneer” in Smith’s countenance whenever he speaks of some Celtic success story are simply misguided fools. They evidently don’t know him.

Smith is not small-minded, he doesn’t harbour petty grudges. On the contrary, he is broad-minded, progressive and even a touch radical in his outlook, with a strain in his thinking which often goes against the grain. For all of this and more he is to be encouraged and aided as a figurehead at the SFA.

Rangers, though, remains his Achilles’ heel, and he has to work through it. This is obvious from the comments he has made in It’s Rangers For Me?, the intriguing book which is about to go on release. Nor is it much of a defence, if you assert as Smith has that there is “an agenda against Rangers”, to argue that these comments were made before he took up office at the SFA.

The fact is, it is what he believes, and it is out in the open now. Smith has been burnt by what was always going to be a fiery transition, from being a freethinking, almost fast-and-loose media pundit to becoming an SFA figurehead. There was always a risk in that journey and it has come back to haunt him.

And now that he has said it, let’s try to cut to the core of it: what does Smith mean by “an agenda against Rangers”?

Initially, there was a hint that he may mean “an agenda” at the heart of Uefa but I don’t think this is what he means at all. There is also a hint that he may mean “an agenda” within the Scottish media – presumably, among those of us who have heavily criticised Rangers over their bigotry problem – but in further comments Smith quickly and specifically backs away from this.

I believe I know exactly what he means, and it is a worrying sign. By “an agenda against Rangers” I think that Smith believes there has been a climate created in Scottish football – created by blokes like me – in which it has come to be open-season on Rangers in terms of the club’s reputation. I think Smith has looked at the critical comment on Rangers in recent years – and the way these media comments triggered Uefa’s prosecution of the Ibrox club – and has decided that Rangers, much more than Celtic, get a hard time these days. That is really what he is getting at.

The reason this is worrying is because Smith is openly vexed about the truth: Rangers have had a significantly worse press than Celtic, precisely because they have had a significantly worse problem among their supporters. Frankly, if Smith can’t live with this, then he is kowtowing to the hoary old line, once put about by knee-knocking newspaper editors, that you should always make everything absolutely equal in terms of comment about Rangers and Celtic. In terms of bigotry, for instance, this facile principle always meant asserting that “One side is just as bad as the other”, or that “They’re both just as bad as each other”. For years this was the great unwritten, safety-first rule of Scottish sports journalism.

Well, we’ve moved on from this, even if not quite yet in Gordon Smith’s mind. Rangers and Celtic are no more equal in terms of the bigotry problem than Glasgow and Edinburgh are equal in terms of urban deprivation. Indeed, it would be a mild freak if they were. Today, there doesn’t need to be any more hang-ups about condemning Rangers for their significantly greater problem, just as the Ibrox club deserves commendation for the strides it has made in the past two years. Life is hard in this context, life is rarely equal.

Smith needs to get his head around this - it is his one blind spot. He is timorous about it but the age of cowering over bigotry in football is over. “I think there needs to be more even-handedness about it,” Smith complains of the Old Firm debate. Really, Gordon? Do you mean like... just pretend it is equal, always say that “One side is as bad as the other”?

Like I say, we’ve moved on from this. If this is really what the SFA chief believes, then his mind is stuck in a previous age. And it ill-behoves a good man with many good ideas.

here was me thinking we were all living in 2011 not 900's

[ForeverBlue_Since91 2,895]

So Rangers have more of a problem than celtic do, about what songs we sing, do we?

so he is really saying that IRA songs are not as bad as, the billy boys, the sash etc.

well what chance do u have, when you have arseholes like this writing about Rangers and what they done 100's of years ago?

I wonder what this arrogant poofy little wank would think if any of his family were amongst these people that got killed by IRA bombs?

He keeps saying there is no agenda, but he keeps going on about Rangers past and the times when they never signed catholic players.

I don't ever see these Spanish basque teams like, athletic bilboa, ososuna, Real sociedad etc getting treated this way. They only sign basque players and still do to this day.

And Celtic never appointed jock stein on the board because, he was a protestant. but you never here anything about that or celtic having a problem with sectarianism.

And what about this anti poppy banner ǝpɐbıɹq uǝǝɹb ǝɥʇ had on show? that wasn't in the press for long was it? considering you have people like spiers dragging up Rangers past just to have a dig.

[Dennis 1,011]

good find

[Martin Luther 53]

[Martin Luther 53]

Do you have friends on RM? Every post I see you make is cringworthy, yet you have made near 2,500 posts!

Spiers has made some decent articles in his time, against Rangers, against Celtic and against any person he finds the need to write about.

I admit that he sometimes can be found biased towards the green fraternity, during this news dry era, but he has also been given shite from the Celtic fans during the uprising of David Murray and the downturn of Celtic - a term where he started his career! The same era when the 'Daily Ranger' was the best Scottish selling paper, yet the Rangers fans now hate the Daily Record because they went against them on one issue!

Fickle!

Haterz gonna hate

dont hate the playa hate the game mo fo