Not sure why Alex is talking about Rangers being dead.

It has been proven in a Court of Session, by Rangers and by the SFA and SPL, that Rangers is a sporting entity - still preserved - owned by a different company.

It's just a lie to suggest Rangers are dead. Really poor article.

Alex, I normally enjoy your contributions, but this is just a load of embittered cack.
And I'm disappointed that the editorial team at WSC for their poor judgement in giving it space on the homepage of the site.

Like so much in Scottish football, this debate is intrinsically linked the Scottish mainstream media: sections of which, along with the SPL and SFA, told every other club they'd be doomed without Rangers.

Some Aberdeen fans can be massively obsessed with Rangers, but this summer we've all seen that the media are far more obsessed with/reliant on them than Aberdeen or their fans are.

Is it really naive to think that Aberdeen's involvement in sell-out-Saturday is simply their response to being told that they'd be doomed without Rangers?

Well I don't remember Aberdeen having a 'sell out Saturday' before so, yes, it does feel like it's intrinsically linked to their preoccupation with Rangers.

The author makes a really valid point about the motivation for going to watch football. Frankly at this stage of the season Aberdeen, or indeed any other SPL club, shouldn't need to be making public urges for support. In a season where anything is possible, for the first time in years, Pittodrie should be sold out for the first game of the season.

Ah well, I thought the Dons supporters were being pro-active in banging the drum to try and prove that the 'We Are Doomed Without (Ex)Rangers' brigade have maybe got it wrong.

Bizarre piece.

So are there any Dons fans on here who know if their game is close to being sold out?

I didn't think the piece was as bad as everyone is making out. I certainly agree as a follower of Hibs that the media is very Old Firm centric and it is equally as much the fans who have to turn that around by watching their local club. It is the same in England though, as a Grimsby Town supporter, whenever a small team beats one of the 'big clubs' it's never how well the small team played, it's how poorly the big club did. It seems to me that's fooball

On that note about giant killing, I always enjoy the suprise in the media when a smaller team beats a bigger team as if the little team have never seen a football before and wouldn't know what to do with hit if it hit them in the face and rolled over the opposition's line

"Scottish fans should focus on their own clubs" - including the author of the article, it would appear.

Word.

What a bewildering piece.

So that's where Evan Evian got to . . .

Thanks to those who posted to say they got it (and I would just like to confirm Ingolade and AMMS are not the nom de plumes of my mum and dad) but, without wishing to sound sarky or narky, I honestly think most of the feedbackers here have failed to read a few key sentences of my bizarre, bewildering piece:

In the opening para I state

I despise the mainstream media fixation with Rangers and Celtic as much as the next man because it skews everything - it's kinda hard to convince people you're not just a glory-hunter when, even in the third division, your club (or a version of it) is gleaning as many headlines as the national champions playing in the Champions League qualifyers - and also because, as I'm saying by way of sarcasm-denoting inverted commas, it's not genuine concern the tabs, radio and TV feel for the SPL; it is, of course, just ratings-grabbing hysteria. So that's agreed.

And, having spent most of my life thinking Scottish football would be a much nicer place if Celtic were dead and buried, it'd be kinda rich for me to suddenly start thinking different when the other half of the beast lies slain. But having toured all of Scottish football for years, ticking anorak boxes, it's pretty clear to me that the bitterness which expresses itself through sectarianism under Rangers and Celtic is just as prevalent under the label of the Ayrshire derby, Falkirk-Dunfermline or even Scotland-England.

There is an idea that the air will be cleaner without the Old Firm - somehow purer. Well, one half of it's gone and the first thing punters are doing is fixating on the Old Firm. "sections" of the Aberdeen support will no doubt be trying to fill Pittodrie this Saturday in a spirit of genuine Granite City fever but it's apparent that so much of it is just biting the very tabloid wind-ups which they're purporting to portest against. Christ, the Daily Record is backing the "campaign" - I'd take that as both a clue and a warning.

Poster Blameless should note that, in the opinion of many, I have no club to focus on. It died in June. So what I have left is my love of Scottish football (the wee factoids about Hibs, Killie etc were meant to make it clear that, while I can't "switch off those enmities", ie with Celtic, I retain an affection for the Scottish game I couldn't get rid of even if I wanted to) - if the death of Rangers was indeed allowed to bring down the rest of the game in this country then it would be truly tragic. What i'm saying is that the way to keep Scottish football healthy is to feel the love. Fill your grounds coz you want to see YOUR team and you want to see them for their own sake. And I'm also saying that this is exactly what Hibs, Hearts, Dundee and Ross County fans have and will be doing.

And the bitterness which permeates the game here - Outrage and dissafection seem to be the aim of half our football enthusiasms - results in our national team being shite and our clubs doing poorly in Europe despite a massive well of talent over the years. I'd like to think the death of Rangers 1872 could at least have lightened the mood to the point where we get some genune positivity throughout our game. So far it's not promising and I take absolutely no pleasure in that.

RossDunbar93 A very good point, Sir. Not just about my article being poor - that's a given - but about punishments for oldco Rangers being inflicted on the new. If the authorities, football and otherwise, keep treating it as one entity then why shouldn't everyone else. But it's "MY dead Rangers". The Rangers I loved - one which didn't run itself into the ground in the space of 9 months and didn't have to start splitting hairs about plcs and ltd companies - is dead. It shouldn't ever be the same again but if these Ayburdeen punters keep thinking about us even when we're not there then there's obviously less desire for Rangers to vanish than there was financial necessity for it. At Brechin in July and at Ibrox last night, however, I saw a new club which, even though it's in the lower leagues, might be worth going to see again. Nice strip. Their owner sounds like a rabble-rousing shyster - but I'm used to that where I come from - so when they get rid of him I might even buy a season ticket. Right now, though, I'll just take it a game at a time.

Really poor post from you rossdunbar93.

You say: "It has been proven in a Court of Session, by Rangers and by the SFA and SPL, that Rangers is a sporting entity - still preserved - owned by a different company."

Which comic did you read that total nonsense in!?!...or did you just make it up in your wild imaginative mind!?

The Truth is, it is a lie to suggest "Rangers FC" is alive. The soon-to-be liquidated club is dead and lying in the morgue awaiting burial.

I provide the evidence that "Rangers FC" is dead:

i46.tinypic.com/2ihplc3.png

i47.tinypic.com/2mnfztc.png

img213.imageshack.us/img213/2927/002ptch.jpg


To deny that "Rangers FC" is dead is to fool only yourself.

Anyone who wishes to use the evidence that is provided in the links that i have provided above in regards to the death of "Rangers FC" is more than welcome to do so.

"If these seats had been filled regularly over the last two decades then the Old Firm stranglehold wouldn't have been so strong."

Well, quite! If there weren't busloads of fans leaving every provincial town every week to gloryhunt and/or entertain ancient sectarian rivalries, then perhaps those seats would have been filled. What a ludicrous, ludicrous post which can only have come from an OF fan. There are only so many football fans in Scotland (a far higher proportion per capita than almost anywhere else, as has been pointed out repeatedly).

As for: "When clubs and media spend years stoking and exploiting football enmities, I love it when punters refuse to switch them off at the fiscally prudent moment."

Well, quite (again). The rivalry which has been stoked at great financial benefit to certain parties (orange strips?) is now presumably proving very financially prudent to a certain "shyster" the author refers to, as he seems to have attracted a rather large crowd to his "hoose" last night. I imagine said "shyster" loves this even more than the author, who has apparently refused to switch off at the moment financially prudent to his own coffers.

Rangers is alive and well. It has just gone an hid from the tax man in basement of scottish football.

There is only one piece of evidence needed to prove that Rangers is alive and well and that is the number of people who moved from supporting a Premiership outfit to supporting the "basement club". I mean really, if they were not the same team, would any Rangers fans give a shit about them?

Jim Davis is right.

When Fiorentina went bankrupt in 2003 and were reborn as 'Florentia Viola' in Serie C2, they still attracted 20,000 plus crowds, for whom they remained 'Fiorentina' whatever their official name. Within a year they had their old name back, and within two, after 'skipping' Serie C1, they were back in Serie A.

It will be interesting to see if Rangers really have to wait three seasons to reclaim their SPL place.

Fiorentina's bankruptcy actually occurred in 2002. and their season in C2 was 2002-2003

rossdunbar93 is right. Lord Glennie in his Court of Session ruling on the trasfer described the old company as one that "presently operates" the football club.

Similarly, Malcolm Cohen of BDO who are liquidating the old company has said: “It’s important to understand that the appointment of liquidators will not mean the end of football at Ibrox – only the end of the company that ran the club”.

And Duff & Phelps (whose letter Itwiznaeme completely misunderstands) have said such things as: "The history and spirit of the Club have been preserved by the sale which completed on 14 June 2012 and it is now the responsibility of the new owners to secure its future" (from their interim report of 10 July).

If you really think Rangers are dead it's surely time to stop obsessing about the club!

("Trasfer" should be "transfer embargo". Got distracted by the Olympics!)

who is this "Rangers" that people talk about in the basement division? Rangers (IA soon to be liquidated) are no longer a football team. The new team are called SEVCO 5088.

had i bought the assets (stadium and training ground) of the team formerly known as Rangers (IA soon to be liquidated) for £5.5M then i wouldn't have been going around saying that i was them.

in any case this saga still has a long long way to run for the following reasons:

- the soon to be appointed liquidators, BDO, will likely question the validity of the sale to Charles Green
- HMRC asked for BDO to be appointed which means they have not given up getting their unpaid taxes
- the stadium still has a "floating charge2 over it which is held by Craig Whyte (as confirmed during John "Bomber" Brown's rant on the steps of Ibrox stadium
- Ticketus are not giving up the £23M that they are owed for buying future season tickets
- Strathclyde Police are still investigating the validity of Craig Whyte's takeover
- the administrators (Duff and Phelps) are being investigated by their own professional body over allegations of misconduct and conflict of interest
- the SPL are investigating dual contracts which means that previous titles are likely to be stripped away
- many football debts (Arsenal, Rapid Vienna, Hearts etc) remain unpaid. these must be paid for the SFA licence to remain valid
- the SFA still have to punish SEVCO 5088 at the request of FIFA and UEFA for SEVCO 5088 taking the SFA to court
- there is a serious shortfall in funding

if this new club last until Christmas then i'd be very surprised.