found on chit chat about Rangers

How would you feel, if it was shown that Sea the Stars, Frankel, Usian Bolt, were all doped? (for clarity they weren't, this just an analogy)
You would feel cheated, and rightly so.
You may have invested money in a ticket to watch these events, you may have had a bet on their opponents, but it was **** from the start, you couldn't win.

Now, let's examine the rangers case.

The press in scotland happily peddle the myth that scottish football needs rangers, we will go back in time a a bit now to examine this.

In the 1980s, the Scottish league was competitive, despite what you might read in the tabloids.

League winners, pre- souness/murray financial doping era.

1979–80    Aberdeen   
1980–81    Celtic       
1981–82    Celtic       
1982–83    Dundee United       
1983–84    Aberdeen   
1984–85    Aberdeen       
1985–86    Celtic       
1986–87    Rangers   

During this era, Scotland regularly qualified for world cups, Scottish players were in almost every English top team.

In Europe, Aberdeen won the cup winners cup and super cup, Dundee Utd. got to the uefa cup final and where robbed by Roma of a place in the European cup final itself.

(As a footnote, when rangers weren't winning, it was not uncommon for crowds of less than 10,000 at ibrox.)

So, Murray takes over rangers and, aided and abetted by the bank of scotland, the financial doping starts.
To explain this, let's use an example-
Celtic and rangers want to sign Johnny foreigner, now, Johnny couldn't really give a fling fk about either, he only wants the money.
Celtic say, we will pay you 10 grand a week, ok? (around 5k nett?)
Johnny talks to rangers, they say we wil pay you 10 grand a week... but... you will be keeping almost all of it, you will only be getting around half with Celtic, because they pay taxes there, geddit?

This was done through what is known as an EBT, employee benefit trust, which may deal with image rights and the like, and can be legal, if administered properly.
(Ronaldo, Rooney, Messi, etc. have huge image rights clauses as they are known worldwide.)
What rangers did, was to say, here is some salary, a small amount, that goes through the books, the rest is "loaned" to you, but... you never have to pay the "loan" back.

Now, with this financial advantage, (jeezo i could have managed them to 9 in a row) rangers dominate Scottish football.

You start to see the end of locally produced players, affecting the national team.
Other clubs try to keep up, we had the ridiculous situation of clubs like Dundee signing Ravanelli, Cannigia, Burley etc. we had St. Mirren with Archibald and some good Spanish players, totally unsustainable, as was to be found later.

We touched earlier on the subject of rangers relationship with the Bank of Scotland.
This same bank tried to close Celtic down, in 1994 for a debt of around 5 million. (Celtic were saved by Fergus McCann and others and the fans)

When Lloyds took over the BOS, they looked at rangers figures and almost fainted, (murray group alone was indebted to almost a billion,) they put their own man on the board, under threat of closure.

Even after all this, they could still have got out of the mess, if they had cut their cloth, made a deal with taxman, but that isn't the rangers way.
After being knocked out the champs league qualifier in 2008, by Kaunas, (and losing out on the 10 milion or so) they could have sold some players and run a tight ship, no, they went out and spent another 18 million on players, for what? to win the SPL? Beggars belief.

Even after this, they signed Jelavic, from Rapid, for 4.5 million, Wallace from Hearts, for 1.5 million.
Hearts are still owed 800k from that, Rapid over a million.

We then had the Craig White takeover, lol.
Now, within one hour of this, internet boards had the full list of failed companies this guy had run, how was he decribed in the Scottish media?
"Billionaire", "wealth off the radar" and suchlike nonsense.

So, back to the EBTs.
These players, in effect had double contracts, a big no no.
Every game rangers played that included any of these players has to be recorded as a 3-0 defeat. (to give an example a Scottish team were kicked out the cup for only having one date on a form, you should have 2)
That is over 700 games.
That is league titles lost, cups lost, European runs lost, how do you put a price on that? Impossible.
The Scottish teams who where denied the league and therefore the potential European riches, the teams they knocked out en route to manchester in 2008, they could all feel, quite rightly cheated.


This is the team that Scotland needs?
Scottish football will die without them?
I would take my chances.