Are they going to play in Italy instead then?
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"Rangers may quit playing Scottish football" Did I imagine reading that?
(28 posts) (12 voices)
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The All New Jeni B
offlineMemberThey've already had one application to join the FA knocked-back (along with Celtic), and are now threatening EU Equality action because the FA allowed a Scottish women's team to join.
Frankly, 99% of the other clubs in Scotland can't wait to see the back of them, their bigotry, and their unbending self-belief that what they did wasn't wrong and that we're all out to get them.
Posted 4 months ago # -
beau-jolly
offlineMemberThere are Welsh teams in the English FA but only because they haven't got anyone to play with at home. Much the same as Celtic and Rangers I guess.
Posted 4 months ago # -
dvo4fun
offlineMemberThat's all we need. A mindless bunch of sectarian bigots supporting a football team.
Oh, hold on ...
Liverpool/Everton ...
Spurs]/Arsenal ...
[Space here for an expert's view from Midfield]
Tactics for the FA should be they can't even consider an application as long as Rangers are contracted to play in Scotland. Then, after they've burned their bridges up there, politely to tell them to piss off and try their luck in South America.
But if they do have to be let in then Mr Wiki says:
"There are more than 140 individual leagues, containing more than 480 divisions.[1] The exact number of clubs varies from year to year as clubs join and leave leagues or fold altogether, but an estimated average of 15 clubs per division implies that more than 7,000 teams of nearly 5,300 clubs are members of a league in the English mens' football league system."
Let them join at the bottom and work their way up. That should take them well past independence day when they'd have to leave anyway.
Sorry about all this. When do the MOTO GP & F1 seasons start?
Posted 4 months ago # -
beau-jolly
offlineMemberFans' team FC United of Manchester are working their way up through the leagues. One day they will play Manchester United. They were a shot in the arm for their opponents as, even though they flounced everyone, the gate money for the one game was more than the other clubs pulled in for the whole season. Making Rangers work their way up would give a much needed injection at the bottom (No Dawson No!)
(Not a fan or follower but did some restructuring and saving consulting for Bacup FC in a different life)Posted 4 months ago # -
Ironduke
offlineMemberI should think if Rangers left Scottish leagues they wouldn't have Celtic to play four tiems a year (plus cups) and they'd be unlikely to qualify for Europe; the Rangers and Celtic standard from a couple of years ago would see them high-championship / low premiership standard.
So...hard to see where they'd get their enjoyment from.
Posted 4 months ago # -
The All New Jeni B
offlineMemberId, since their liquidation and resurrection as 'The' Rangers, they've been playing 3rd Div football, so haven't, and won't, play Celtic for a long time.
Posted 4 months ago # -
AReader
offlineMemberThat's all we need. A mindless bunch of sectarian bigots supporting a football team.
Oh, hold on ...
Liverpool/Everton ...
Spurs]/Arsenal ...
No that's a very poor comparison. Liverpool/Everton is not sectarian at all - more like fighting between members of the same large family.
Posted 4 months ago # -
The All New Jeni B
offlineMemberWhy does England have to put up with them?
Because, like the relative no-one wants to have over for Christmas, we've had them for ages, and it's your turn now.
Scottish football has a truly awful reputation for sectarian violence, but as someone who's been to damn near every ground in the country, I can say honestly, that the only sectarianism occurs when either Rangers or Celtic are involved.
Posted 4 months ago # -
Ironduke
offlineMemberJeni, two and a half seasons to get to prem and chances of cup runs in the meantime, I presume before they cross swords with Celtic.
I'm curious- why does Scotland have four half-size leagues and play each other four tiems a season? Is it just so Rangers and Celtic can play merry hell with each other more often?
By the way- loed the Rangers powerpoint presentation for their big meeting. 'We're Rangers, so fuck you' in cut and stick on a cheap printer with a dodgy blue cartridge. Nice touch.
Posted 4 months ago # -
The All New Jeni B
offlineMemberDunno, Id, but there's plans for reorganisation afoot. The leagues have always been arranged to allow Rangers and Celtic plenty of games, especially since the advent of TV coverage.
Rangers are rapidly turning into the ranty drunk man in a city centre claiming that everyone is out to get him...
Posted 4 months ago # -
Midfield Diamond
offlineMemberWith apologies to dvo and anyone else who may think I am the fount of football knowledge, I know very little about Scottish football. However, I do work closely with a Rangers fan who, to back up what Jeni has said, reckons that Rangers were picked on by the authorities because of who they are rather than what they did. Which seems like a complete load of arrogant twaddle to me. He was not amused either when I pointed out that the two men that appeared to have contributed the most to Rangers' downfall were Green and Whyte (Charles Green and Craig Whyte). I thought it was funny.
Although there are no doubt some pretty serious rivalries within English football, I am not aware of any that are so steeped in Sectarian values as Rangers - Celtic. The nearest is possibly the alleged anti-Semitic motives behind Arsenal moving to North London from Woolwich in 1913 where Tottenham had a substantial following from the local Jewish community. But few of today's Arsenal and Spurs fans hate each other due to that, they're just local rivals as far as I can make out.
Posted 4 months ago # -
Oxbridge
offlineMemberThere's no serious sectariansim in any of the English rivalries a la Rangers-Celtic. I support Tottenham and for sure I don't like Arsenal one bit, but there isn't any real difference in the supporter demographic. Despite Tottenham's well-established Jewish identify, lots of North London Jews support Arsenal instead and most Tottenham supporters aren't Jewish anyway. IMHO the most utterly venomous rivalry in English football is between Southampton and Portsmouth, two long-time underachievers.
Logically, Rangers and Celtic would go into the English League. They are far too big for the rest of Scotland as it stands and no-one has any chance of winning the SPL, even with Rangers down in Division 3. The last non-Old Firm team to win it was Aberdeen in 1985, managed by Alex Ferguson. Whatever happened to him anyway? When Celtic play at home, just under half of all the people watching football anywhere in Scotland that weekend are in their stadium and when Rangers are at home they still get the biggest single turn out by far, that's the scale of it.
Trouble is, if the SPL did go that way, there might be questions against a separate Scotland football team at UEFA level. [Yes, yes, insert your own gag here - but I think most Scots still want one anyway]. So they are probably stuck with each other for the foreseeable future.
Posted 4 months ago # -
The All New Jeni B
offlineMemberBut Welsh teams play in FA leagues, yet still have a separate national team.
I think that if Rangers and Celtic were to play in England, the crowd numbers at other grounds would grow. There is an element of 'Glory Hunting' with supporters of the OF teams, particularly those supporters not native to Glasgow, and with no connection to either team beyond their support, and those people are just as likely to start attending games with some of the 'smaller' teams.
Yes, the OF crowds are consistently the highest, but how many of them would be prepared to traipse of to the south of England every other week, and how many supporters of English teams would be daft enough to travel to Glasgow?
Posted 4 months ago # -
beau-jolly
offlineMemberOne/two of the biggest Celtic/Rangers supporters clubs is/are in Corby, Northants.
But that's because the entire town is Scottish from when they built a steelworks (but then closed it again).Given that there are more Scots living in England than there are in Scotland why not let them have some footie teams here too?
Posted 4 months ago # -
Midfield Diamond
offlineMemberOf course Rangers and Celtic should be allowed to join the English Premier League. After many years of trying to get 'big' Clubs into the Premiership in place of 'little' Clubs, something has to be done to get rid of the annoying Wigans, Stokes and West Broms. Relying on football results alone isn't working. After all, the whole point of the Premier League is to attract TV money and corporate sponsorship, and these 'little' Clubs deserve none of that, despite their achievements on the field of play against the odds. Time for radical action. Barcelona are good for TV audiences too, maybe they could be persuaded to join.
Posted 4 months ago # -
The All New Jeni B
offlineMemberCue "Superleague"...
Posted 4 months ago # -
Ironduke
offlineMemberA league that only four teams can win is not enthralling long-term; however there is mobility now, but not in the old-fashioned sense of 'having a great manager, developing a good team, making a couple of great signings, coming to a peak and triumphing' a la Notts Forest, Derby, Aston Villa in the 70's and 80's. Henceforth to be known as 'the good old days'
The mobility now is 'getting bought by an oligarch' in which case the club has an upsurge entirely consistent with that of a spoilt child being bought the whole playground so its always their go on the swing.
By the way, just watch- West Ham get the Olympic Ground, Gold and Sullivan sell for a stonking profit to someone rich as Croesus and they'll become the new Chelsea / Man City. Give it 6years. Danny Potts still there as token hoem grown player, alongside Brazil, Germany, France, Holland and Italy's finest.
Posted 4 months ago # -
Ironduke
offlineMemberAlvin Martin and Julian Dicks played with their socks rolled down and no shin pads and therefore so did I. I didn't go so far as to develop premature male pattern baldness in honour of Alvin, but I did model myself on the skinheaded fierce Julian, albeit a right back version.
My four year old wasn't allowed to start his first toddlers football practice session until we'd borrowed shin pads for him, and the trainer clearly thought I was nuts for presenting him without pads.
Posted 4 months ago #
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