MarkD

Different point but probably not worth a thread in its own right ... does anyone else get annoyed by the number of replays in the highlights ... in the Ross County highlights each goal got 5 showings and each other clip chosen 3 ... how about showing more of the match with less replays ... can always run the clip again if you want to watch it again.

Busted? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/cycling/tour-de-france/9600518/Lance-Armstrongs-former-team-mates-provide-testimonies-crucial-to-USADAs-doping-case-against-American.html Shocking also that UCI's response is to sue Landis and (journalist) Paul Kimmage for defamation.

Well what do you expect, he's foreign (not English) and as Michael Owen says, its all the foreigners doing it. Including himself, with his Welsh name.

Err, well there's no way you can legally dock someone's wages for doing their job even if you don't like the way they've done it. Only for gross misconduct eg refusing to play or train or seriously abusive behaviour.

As you say, fantastic mental toughness after 4 GS "failures" and getting hauled back from 2-0 up. Plus beating the king of hard courts.

I agree with that, the selections in the last few games resulted in us snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. But I don't think that changes what he's trying to do now and the validity in moving the 'old guard' on even if someone else round the corner is putting their hands in their pockets to pay them.

"Ask not what your club can do for you, ask what you can do for your club"?

Shocking

Firstly, the 'people in authority' are the USADA who are the people responsible for ensuring that US sports are clean so they are just doing their job, same as when athletes such as Marion Jones, Justin Gatlin etc. got busted. Surely it's clean sports we want. Second the mantra that keeps getting repeated about 500 tests is just that - an irrelevant mantra. Unfortunately the drug cheats are ahead of the testers and have been for years. The fact is that in cycling, most of the other riders who have been busted were also 'clean' according to the tests and have since confessed. So clean tests actually mean nothing. It's hard to test for blood doping for example, and the test for EPO (I understand) didn't exist/wasn't effective. Jones, Chambers et al. only got busted when someone leaked - they'd also passed tests. Thirdly, the 'unsubstantiated testimony of untrustworthy people'. Well in our courts that's usually exactly how drug dealers are tried and convicted. And the testimony is from his own teammates - a dozen or so of them who have testified as to sytematic blood doping etc. I'm not sure why these people are any more untrustworthy than someone who's more incentive to lie about it. And of course it is Armstrong who's decided not to subject these testimonies to cross-examination etc. Most likely his lawyers have advised him he didn't have a prayer. The charges are very very damning and frankly I'm amazed that so many people think they shouldn't be properly investigated. http://www.usada.org/media/sanction-armstrong8242012 Given that just about every other rider who finished on the podium on those 7 tours has been found to have doped, it's not credible that Armstrong wasn't doing it as well. Now that the tests have been beefed up, riders like Cadel Evans and Bradley Wiggins who are believed to be clean are able to win, but at average speeds that are significantly less than in the previous 2 decades - that tells its own story.

May also explain, apart from money, why a number of players from last season didn't want to stay.

I happen to agree with Butcher mainly because of his (Munro's) poor distribution skills, and I don't think we've ever replaced Darren Dods as someone to lead the backline. At the end of the day you have to ask youself who knows more about football and defense in particular: Terry Butcher - 500+ senior appearances as centre back including 77 for England, 3 world cup finals etc etc. or all the armchair critics who, frankly, seem to be looking at the past through rose-tinted spectacles.

Munro and Tokely? The centre-back partnership at the end of our relegation season, one of whom got himself red-carded early on in the final, must not lose, game against those giants of world football, Falkirk.

The OG was a classic - a precision back pass from wide that found a non-existent gap between the keeper and the goal - can't remember the other goals!

Caley A v Caley B at TCS ... but which is which?!

How can the floating charge ovr Ibrox etc. have 'no debt associated with it' or is there a fixed charge as well...bizarre ... I do assume its not possible to transer

If you read on down it says that the HMRC's voting of

Maybe on paper, but give me the Brazil teams of the 70s and 80s to watch anytime ahead of Spain Exactly, Brazil 1970. Or Brazil with Pele and Garrincha playing. "Garrincha played 50 international matches for Brazil between 1955 and 1966, and was a starter for the national team in the 1958, 1962 and 1966 World Cups. Brazil only lost one match with him on the pitch, against Hungary at the 1966 World Cup. Pel

Well I guess being a fan is a bit like being a LibDem pre 2010 - it didn't really matter what you thought/said because there was no chance of you ever having being accountable for it. Firstly, directors of the companies (clubs) are fiduciaries to that company. That means you have to do the best for that company, which generally means financially. So, without knowing the details of e.g. the TV deal with and without Rangers, if in fact the deal 'with' is worth a lot more, it would actually be very hard, legally, for the directors to turn that down. The fact that the SPL rules seem to leave it up to their discretion (again without actually having read them) actually puts the directors in a very difficult position e.g. open to personal lawsuits if they didn't accept the best deal on the table for their club. Secondly, don't forget that directors are personally liable for a company's debts if they continue trading whilst they knew or ought to have known the company was insolvent. So if the 'loss' of the supposed income from Rangers being in the SPL tips a club from having a balanced budget (or within what third parties have agreed to stump up) that again leaves them open personally. I'm guessing not too many people here would be prepared to (e.g.) lose their own house in pursuit of a principle.

What, this one? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist) An anti slave campaigner

Of course the difference is that after 16 years most people would be worth more to their employer whereas a footballer eventually obviously goes in the other direction, hard though that may be for them to accept. I really don't think Butcher would have offered anything if he didn't want to keep him but as he said his hands are tied i.e. an annual deficit of £250k or whatever that has to be plugged somehow. If he pays more to Tokely that probably means one less youngster he can take on (without knowing the actual numbers). Not being in the UK anymore I can't comment on current form but certainly a couple of years ago both Tokely and Munro looked off the pace to me (when we got relegated), Munro's distribution was awful and it's not as though other SPL clubs were queuing up to hire them (compare eg Darren Dods) so life is hard but at the same time everyone is frothing at the mouth over Rangers, it's not realistic to criticise the club/management for making tough financial decisions.

When a business goes into administration, previous debts and assets become effectively forzen. The business can then continue to trade because the administrator will be liable for any subsequent shortfall. So obviously they are pretty careful to make sure that's not the case. By the same token the administrator has first call on any money's that come in. Otherwise nobody would be an administrator. By saying that they have sufficient funds to pay the players, all that means is that someone has agreed to advance that money, presumably the new owners. But that wont go to the previous creditors because the new people will wait until there's agreement on how many pence in the pound everyone will get before putting cash into the club.

I think the first time Munro and Tokely "linked up" was as our centre back pairing in the relegation season...that went well.

Is there some source for all the facts quoted here? I can't see any decision on the FTT website and as far as I was aware Rangers were contesting whether there was tax due from the EBT. There's no appeal against interest as that's just a calculation, but on penalties in fact it is for HMRC to show negligence (a fact they often omit to state) and if Rangers took 'proper' legal advice then prima facie they can claim they weren't negligent. In the case of EBT's there have been cases where they were upheld initially (eg the Phones 4U case - Dextra Accessories) so if the courts can't decide whether they work or not it's hard to prove negligence. Although in this case it may have been negligently implemented from the sound of things. And finally, presumably if HMRC do get penalties, this just reduces the amount that goes to all the small creditors.

A floating charge of £18m simply means there are liabilities of that amount, and also that the first £18m of assets (after fixed charges and, I think, any preferential creditors) will be taken by the holder of the charge. It may be that there are that amount of assets and more, but personally I doubt it.

The problem for creditors though is that there isn't really any value to the company's assets. It's a loss making business and there isn't a large queue of people out there willing to pay large amounts of money for it. In fact the £20m is exactly the point - the new owners are saying we'll commit this to make the business viable. Pretty much every football club is the same, it's a loss making business that requires a sugar daddy to put cash into to keep going. Creditors can object but ultimately the liquidation value is zero. And I think that includes the big tax case, after a company comes out of administration, a creditor can't go back for another bite on pre-existing liabilities, whether their quantum was known exactly or not.