Like most things in life, timing is rather crucial.
Indeed, it is absolutely vital with planted stories in the media.
Last night on Fitba Twitter set about @magnusllewellin and handed him his arse on a plate.
By allowing that work experience exclusive on his front page he has probably haemorrhaged what little credibility he had left.
Full disclosure, I couldn’t resist joining in…
Of course, Magnus Llewellin has form for bad judgement.
However, that isn’t what is niggling me.
Yes, it was a squirrel.
My question is this:
Why now?
What is it that prompted the Sevco High Command to get the deflector shields up?
I currently don’t have an answer to that.
Well, I’ve gamed this out over the last 24 hours and I’m left with two possibilities.
- Some bad financial news is imminent at Sevco.
- This is part of Blue Room manoeuvres within the brogue hierarchy.
I think the first one is the most likely.
That said there is nothing that should be looming right now.
The Ashley retail case isn’t back in court until January and even then it could be kicked down the road again.
That would almost certainly be the preferred outcome from the Sevco side.
As has been recently reported here there were more RIFC shares printed.
Late yesterday a trusted source told me that this was an emergency move to pay a large legal bill that had arrived at Ibrox.
My understanding is that if it had not been paid then RIFC might have struggled to get legal representation in January for the Ashley retail case.
So it was paid.
Once more, those fine chaps at Club 1872 stepped up again to chip in.
However, this means that they’re probably maxed out now until the spring of next year.
Number two on that list refers to the majority faction in the Blue Room who now, finally, realise that King will have to go.
He is had been cold-shouldered and therefore toxic to anything that he touches within the UK business community.
This is the boardroom equivalent of the plague.
Unclean! Unclean!
I still come back to the timing of that ridiculous work experience exclusive in the Times.
Why did Strategic Squirrel Command decide to launch it this week?
Good question.
My first port of call is usually cui bono?
However, given I’m fairly sure of the provenance of this squirrel then that question is redundant.
What I don’t get is WHAT benefit?
I’m no further forward on that one, but I am working on it.
However, I am sure of one thing.
The reputational damage to anyone involved with it will undoubtedly be substantial, especially after HMRC so publicly admonished them.
This is very atypical behaviour for that organisation.
I’ve been in contact, on and off, with the HMRC press office since the start of 2010.
They don’t do this stuff.
They really don’t.
Suffice to it takes a lot for Hector to administer such a public slapping as this.
Of course, that doesn’t answer why those who dispatched this arboreal rodent decided that this week, in particular, was perfect timing.
If I did find out then you will read it here and not in the badly soiled blatt currently “edited” by Mr Magnus Llewellin.
As for option two on that list, there has been the start of a rather low key briefing against King by other members of the Sevco High Command.
However, the two natural pretenders to the Brogue Throne have their own personal reasons for wanting another brother to replace King.
Meanwhile, there are Ibrox affiliated chaps who eagerly waiting for the basket of assets to receive a £50m tax rebate!
I know, I know…
You see, dear reader, this shit happens when journalism takes a moral holiday and stops being the Fourth Estate.
All I can promise you is that abdication will not happen here on my watch.
Have a weekend!
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I wonder how HMRC is getting on with recovering the unpaid tax from McLeish, Regan and the host of players who were beneficiaries of the EBT scheme?
Have their advisors asked Rangers to honour the letters of indemnity given to them along with the side letters, only to be told to contact BDO as it was the old club that indemnified them, nothing to do with Newco.
It’s all very well releasing a useless squirrel that most of our media were drooling over with grown men making fools of themselves.
The players and officials owe HMRC many millions of unpaid tax. Perhaps the Scottish media would be better served by leading a campaign to ensure that as much of the unpaid tax as possible is recovered, yet their silence is deafening on the subject.
Does anyone for a minute think that their reporting might be a tad different if it was Celtic that had fallen foul of the law?
In one word! AYE!!!
Perhaps the likes of Keevins and his mates in the Scottish media can explain why the team that finished runners up to Celtic in the then SPL didn’t take part in European competition the following season.
At the same time explain why most of the first team squad did walking away to earn themselves juicy signing on payments at other clubs with no financial gain to their former employer.
Every right thinking person knows that the original mob died in 2012…there’s no debate about that.
What should continuously be brought up however….is the granting of the UEFA Licence …and the granting of illegal Titles and Cups which were won under cheating side letter circumstances.
These two travesties have to be pursued…and its the duty of our Club to do it.
There’s no point in bringing the other Clubs into it….they don’t care.
We, however, MUST care.
It shouldn’t be left to people like Auldheid and his cronies to try and resolve things on their own…Our Club needs to address this head on.
Your absolutely correct ! But as we all know Celtic want this matter to go away , now why exactly would Celtic not wish to pursue this to the bitter end ? Could it be that as suspected Celtic are in it along with them , and it’s only us the mug punter who is genuinely concerned .
Or it was part of the secret 5-way agreement?
Don’t know how many fans of “other clubs” you know. Seems very few. Most of us “other club”fans are furious with the cheating and fraud perpetrated by that cheating entity.
But being merely “other clubs” no-one, including yours, really cares.
That’s where you’re wrong. We (Celtic fans) would love fans of “other clubs” to be more vocal, perhaps even joining forces with Celtic fans, for the greater good of Scottish football in its entirety. But, for reasons best known to the supporters of those “other clubs”, you appear to have settled for the status quo (and I’m not ticking about the rock band), thus it is left to the RES12 requisitioned and the rest of the Celtic support to pick up the gauntlet.
I don’t believe it’s too late to lend us your support, so as a fan of whichever “other club”, get behind us. As a collective, we can all clean up OUR game. Not to do so is akin to switching on your telly around 3pm every Saturday, to ITV’s World Of Sport, waiting for Dickie Davies to introduce our weekly fix of a “sport” called wrestling, where we can be “enthralled” at the sight of GIANT HAYSTACKS v CATWEAZLE, etc. If we don’t do something now, how long before we are all tuned in to WWE, waiting for the highlights of a “kiddie-on sport” called SCOTTISH FOOTBALL?
Fuck me Steven!! Dickie Davies? Giant Haystacks? Catweazle? You’re fair giving your age away. Agree with the sentiment of the post mind you.
Now then Charger, my good man. Less of the ageist stuff if you please. You’ve just made meself feel really f*****g old. Cheers mate. Hail Hail
Thanks for your kind offer, Charger… however, you’re not my type. 😂
Throughout all that has happened since Maxwell took over as the top man at the SFA, his silence and disappearance when anything remotely controversial has raised its head is guaranteed.
£300k per annum plus bonus and best seats in the house for doing the round sum of feck all.
How many applicants were interviewed for the job, who sat on the interview panel?
Another job for a brother.
How is it possible that someone from a lower league club with minimal educational qualifications, emphasised by his failure to tell the difference between complaint and compliance, is running the show?
Whats his response to King’s cold shoulder, where are we months down the line with AJ’s fit and proper status?
Why is Maxwell running away from Res 12?
As he wasn’t involved personally why is he not bringing to justice those responsible for what is clearly a criminal offence, or is that the very problem?
Fraud is a serious criminal offence. Those involved in the big lie should be having sleepless nights waiting on Police Scotland’s fraud squad come calling in the middle of the night.
The evidence is out there and was magnified during Craig Whyte’s trial.
I’m not for a minute expecting a word from Maxwell on Res 12, Kings cold shoulder while acting as de facto Chairman of the football club, nor AJ’s fit and proper status.
Nope, there is no way he would have got the job if the selection panel, if there was one, thought for a moment that they were employing someone who would rock the boat.
This is what passes for good practice at the SFA and their mates at the SPFL down the corridor.
It stinks to high heaven.
Maxwell is just the front man / useful idiot.
Petrie is running the show at Hampden, IMO.
The author of the 5WA is now running Scottish football.
And my own club – along with the 41 other senior clubs – didn’t raise any concerns or objections whatsoever.
[…as far as the paying punters are aware anyway.]
Heard a rumour about Rangers and the big bad taxman…The Times…50 million compensation…falling on sword…reason for liquidation..not their fault etc. Searched the media today and nothing. Did I imagine it? Anybody?
Something interesting I noted in the brief froth and frenzy among what passes for the Scottish sports media….
In the 24-36 hours after the news broke (late Wednesday evening) about the ‘Times’ from page for the next day… there appeared to be some sort of reluctantly bi-polar honesty going on.
There was fury amongst the klan about the usual ‘orchestrated demise of Rainjurzz’, ‘deliberate wrongdoing to put them down’ etc etc…
… but in among it all was the prolific use of a word that for the last 7 years seemed to have been wiped from the English language in Scotland. The local media having been using the ‘Revised Ibroxford English Dictionary’ since 2012.
The word in question is LIQUIDATION…
Having barely heard if uttered in Scotland since 2012, (it has usually been erroneously synonymised with terms such as ‘put down’, ‘came back’, ‘demoted’, ‘reborn’, ‘relaunched’, Etc etc) I was suddenly hearing and seeing this word everywhere and in quarters where there was previous insistence that no such word even existed.
In that brief twilight zone of time wedged between a liberated rodent and an irked bowler hat there appeared to be (and I still question the reality of the moment in my own mind) an admission that Rainjurzz really WERE Liquidated in 2012, and that the current club located in Govan were a new and different club altogether. Astonishing.
The internet has been awash with the use of the newly discovered word… and Radio Clydes phone-in were using the ‘L’ word like there was a sponsors quota to be fulfilled. Indeed, even critical thinkers like Ally McCoist and Derek Johnstone were briefly familiar with this new word and willing to hear and use it in the same sentence as Rainjurzz…
I have never credited ‘The Peepul’ with much when it comes to neural substance… but there seemed to be enough cognisance in those capable of thumb typing or calling a radio phone-in to compute that the Times story only gave validity to their rage and retribution if one key underlying and suppressed fact was admitted to.
Things seem to have gone quiet again since Hector unzipped the flies on his pinstripes and put out the now burning squirrel.
It was all too brief … but it does just confirm to US, the media, the new club and their fans ….
…. that Rangers died in 2012.
We’ve always known! But now we know that deep down , no matter how suppressed in denial and hatred… they know it as well !
Indeed but alas this word is not to be uttered without the accompanying term “ Holding Company”
For it is this term that is the real reason for the flippant disregard of the new found love of the word Liquidation.
Read between the lines in any of the subsequent response to the Times wild claims.
Once they get the “Holding Company“ firmly fixed into the solitary brain cell bouncing round the huge chasm within the average Orc cranium then phase 2 can commence…
We can sink the Newco Holding Company and press reset WITHIN the top flight
TA DA! I give you The RANG3RS International Fc #goingfor55
Now please give generously 🤫
murray should be stripped of his title and rangers should be stripped of all titles won under murray. that would be fair and just punishments.
I must also add that in all of this nonsense in The Times, it has been lost and completely ignored as to how spectacularly beautiful Gillian Anderson is.
Ice cream & jelly anyone?
Nom, nom, nom! 🙂
My feeling is the story has surfaced because the author thought HMRC would not reply.
They were banking on silence from HMRC as that has always been HMRC’s stance regarding ongoing live cases
Trying to set a new narrative for what happened to rangers 1872 ….. had there not been a reply from HMRC the hun internet bampots & SMSM would have run wild with conspiracy stories/fake news
The strong response and rebuttal from HMRC has shown them up
I think I agree more with your first possibility Phil. I think there might be a real financial shitstorm coming in – possibly sooner than any of us expected – and this whole episode was an attempt to create a massive diversion of righteous indignation among the peepul. Apart from the timing, the target is also puzzling. Unless the shitstorm is coming from that direction. Strangely enough, if Hector IS on their case again, the now dead squirrel MIGHT STILL have done it’s intended job. The peepul will scream from the rooftops that the Taxman is now just being vindictive and targeting them specifically because of that article.
The problem the MSM and the Artist formerly known as “the rangers”, is their PR messaging style, is or has been run as some sort of election. Pedal fear, recriminations, compile the enemies of the rangers and have at em as it were. They’re opportunistic approach to sell onto their lowest common dominator and buyer is pretty basic.
When other industries and enterprises run the same selling patterns, they tend not to do it taking on significant sections of the government or industry bodies. They merely try to sell their product and use whatever AB profiling necessary and market accordingly. They also as far as I am aware if they wish to advertise this element in print, PAY FOR IT.
RIFC have clearly avoided this like much else like the dearly departed RFC. Irrsepctive of the immoral and spin on the articles and the cohoarts, pushing the narrative, the likes of Sally, Wee Barra, Chris Graham and the likes….. When this campaign for the hearts and minds unravels and …it will. They will be left with more debt than they went down with the last time, a celebrity ego walking away, a civil war in their own blue filled room, an ageing squad, and a fundamental crack to the DNA.
When Neil Francis Lennon, chastised the one and only Hugh Keevins, after a title win, in a post match title winning presser, pointing out “maybe you and your kind” will give us some more credit. Sadly he will have to do the same again, as that narrative of it’s been unchallenged is growing as well as the aforementioned “We were put down by them” . They know it’s coming, the last roll of the dice hasn’t worked. The election style does work here, because it’s sport and commerce, they are not getting elected, like the illegal Putsch of 2015.
What I’d like to see HK (after all he did say it’d always be rangers to him) ask, – So Rangers the club I’ve always known. IN admin 2, Are you accepting a -12 point deduction as a new club or a -30 point deduction as the old one?
Celtic win December 2019 and the hand of history is on our shoulder. The Grim reaper is on theirs.
Please be familiar with the rules and penalties if going to quote them..
We are trying to disown several Rainjurzz myths here… we don’t need to promote any others ourselves.
There is no old club new club distinction now as there is only a 5 year post administration period that applies. This is now passed so the points penalty would be an immediate -15 with -5 to follow at the start of the next season.
SPFL rules 2919/30 . Club Finances, Administration rules E3 & E4
https://spfl.co.uk/admin/filemanager/images/shares/pdfs/067_324__rulesofthespflasat19_january_2018_1518083042.pdf
Of more immediate damage would be the likely ban from European competition and players leaving for minimal or zero transfer fee as administrators look to cut the wage bill. If no CVA type agreement or an immediate buyer was forthcoming, then liquidation would surely follow.
Murray is under threat of having his title removed, as in KEN DODD, LESTER PIGGOTT… Think of the clout that title brings? By being SIR DAVID MURRAY instead of plain ol’ David Murray, that surely opens a few extra doors? If the threat to remove that title was made, I’d would have a detrimental effect on which “doors” can be opened, as in future corporate business plans.
That’s what’s making my “antennae” twitch. As I said, I might be a million miles wide of the mark, but I just get that gut feeling about this. Maybe Murray’s new ventures are under the HMRC microscope, and this is designed to distract from what’s about to happen.
It’s not about how you deal the cards – it’s about how you play with the hand you’ve been dealt.
There is definitely something “iffy” about this particular squirrel. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I sense we are all being deliberately led down the wrong path deliberately.
If Murray was the source of the squirrel it has backfired spectacularly.
Murray should have been defrocked when his EBT scheme was exposed for what it was.
Tens of millions of unpaid tax resulted with never a word of apology.
No surprise whatsoever that the biggest benefactor of the EBT scheme introduced at Ibrox was Murray himself and to cap it all he was charging the football club a significant amount of dosh for his professional expertise around the scheme.
Why he is still titled is a mystery that us little people are not, and never will be, privy to.
He obviously knows people who know people!
They ARE ‘The People’ after all…
I just don’t understand why they wouldn’t rally the troops and encourage their worldwide fan base to send £1.00 a year to fill the coffers. I mean £500 million is not to be sniffed at.
Do they pay Close on installments? Maybe they were about to call in for continued late payments and Close were close lmao to picking up some assets that would make the running of the club a tad difficult
My gut is telling me that there is an Admin event coming soon.
The release of this B/S story did have a subliminal message to it.
That message was it was the Holding Company that lays in tatters and the mighty Gers survived unscathed so any future Issues will result in the same outcome?
That is ignore the noise whatever happens it will be ok William…now please give generously.
1) Indeed, in the absence of an Ibrox statement late, last night – the timing of this well executed squirrel is still strange.
Sometimes it’s the simplest answer: mibbees Traynor just dropped the ball with the ‘now release the bad news’ part of this old 1-2 strategy ? Mibbees a threat to RIFC hasn’t materialised as quickly as expected?
2) As for the new info. that the £2.1M raised was an emergency to pay legal bills is FAR more interesting, IMO.
Remember as at end of June, RIFC Trade Creditors [suppliers] balance had DOUBLED from the previous year, from c.£5M to c.£10M.
Payment Terms could have been radically revised, but on the face of it, this doubling of liabilities suggests that suppliers are waiting forever to get paid.
As in, numerous, irate suppliers are phoning the Ibrox Finance Department on a daily basis – demanding their money.
As in, MD Stewart Robertson is micromanaging cash flow on a daily basis – and probably personally authorising any supplier payments >£x thousands.
And that £10M balance was at the end of June: four and a half months ago.
The balance could be a good bit higher today.
Perhaps Robertson doesn’t have any more wiggle room with suppliers?
…and it’s all your fault Phil: how do you think some RIFC suppliers will feel if they learn that the lawyers have been paid first…?
You’re a very naughty boy! 🙂
Might be worth having a photographer loitering near Ibrox – again!
Hi Phil
Your investigative joirnalism and desire to expose the truth is truly refreshing, the hun hacks should hang their heads in shame but don’t hold your breath.
The lies and deceit perpetrated by these c***** continues to astound, you have single handedly cut their stories, squirrels fake news or my preferred description propaganda to shreads, exposing the great hun under belly.
Keep up your fantastic work.
Best regards
Jim Doherty
Could the squirrel be that Close Bros are thinking of calling in the loans? Even so I can’t see how this would deflect anything as this all pertains to the dead club and has nothing to do with the new club.
Having digested this particular story, I’m wondering if it has been deliberately designed to make us all think “inside the box”. Am I the only one thinking “outside the box”, as in, David Murray’s name is conspicuously absent from this puff-piece. I might be a million miles wide of the mark here, but I think that, instead of focusing directly at this story, we should be concentrating our minds on what’s going on “behind the curtains”. Murray’s name is bubbling away in this story, just below the surface. I just have this gut feeling about it.
Trying to clean up his image within the Ibrox fan base for a triumphant return?
Steven, I’ll wager my gut is bigger than yours, and while you might be on to something I strongly suspect Cyan O’ just might be closer to the mark. To me this was an attempt at some kind of pre-emptive strike. I’ve heard wee rumours that they’re stiffing Hector again. I can’t verify them but it’s what I’ve heard from a couple of sources. I really find it hard to accept them because IF THEY’RE TRUE it would be an act of unbelievable stupidity. Especially since they’ve now pissed Hector right off.
I’m with you on this Charger, my gut feeling is Hector is about to go after them for non payment AGAIN and the purpose of this Squirrel was to rally the troops against HMRC. They’re targeting us, everyone else gets longer to pay, it’s all that Times Newspapers fault for poking HMRC yada yada yada. While at the same time laying the foundation for don’t panic though, as before it’s the holding company that will go down, don’t worry ‘The Rangers’ go on like nothing happened 55 is on its way…….