Rangers Have gone into Administration

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"we don't do walking away"

Rangers 0 Dundee Utd 2
                Gunning 16′
                Russell 35′
5 February 2012
Att: 17,822

oof. thats lower than the crowds celtic got in the season at hampden isn't it?

yes, Rangers recorded crowds under 5k in the 80s. they do do walking away

i remember 11k against forfar? in about 82 or 83. i dont remember as low as 5k

I've heard that but I can't believe it ever went that low - got any specific games/figures for that?

Like I said upthread, there doesn't seem much point in a Rangers that doesn't win all the time, I'd expect crowds to tumble. There's no scope for glorying in being an underdog.

All crowds tumble, Celtic are no exception, but they never ever went as low as Rangers did in the early 80s.

I do remember campaigns to try to get boycotts going pre-McCann, but afaicr 'success' was getting below 30,000 on occasion.

yeah the boycotts just didn't take off. And if there's a proper boycott going on you cant use that against a club for low attendances. It's not the same.

well they took off a bit as some stopped, but more than half the support still went it seems.

the boycotts were succesful, there were <20k crowds on at least a couple of occasions, iirc.

and i think if you're dropping attendance by around a third or more that's not insignificant. the majority of fans, in britain especially, are not going to be active or engaged in fandom above buying a ticket and going to a game, buying a shirt from the club shop, etc.

ok fair enough. but its very different from fans stopping going as the teams shite so cant be held against the supporters.
Accies fans tried to boycott a game late 90s and a few hundred stood outside firhill. but loads still went in and W@atson gave out free tickets to kids in maryhill to boost the crowd. The police let is watch the game from the embankment and we sung whole game. Players came over as far as they could and applauded us at the end.
I must admit during those years of demonstrations the police and stewards treated us very well. They understood.

Rangers vs Brechin 23 Sep '81 att 5,000

Someone listed one on twitter the other day at 4,500 but i can't find it

unlike the stewards now who are wankers apparently

A lot of kids grew up in the early 80s supporting Aberdeen and Dundee Utd. Doubt that happens now to the same extent as neither have won or even challenged for the league in over 20 years. Aberdeen never recovered from that last day of the season defeat at Rangers when Hately scored. (remember Rangers fans didn't like him until that game? as he replaced super sally and played up front with mojo)

xp

wow that is low if true

The League game against Dundee United on May 2nd 1984 is PROBABLY the lowest being quoted as 5,000 in some quarters and 7,500 in others. The same season saw gates of 8,000 and 8,500 in the League Cup v QOS and Clydebank.

I've seen the Clydebank figure cited as low as 7,000 but only in the same publication which gives 5,000 for the Dundee United match.

Ironically after 1983-84 Rangers attendances are much more reliable and had you asked about the past NINETEEN years the answer would be 8,424 for the league match v Dumbarton on Mar 2nd 1985

http://www.scottishleague.net/archive/archive105.htm

In the past 40 years the lowest League gate at Parkhead is the 4,956 who watched Celtic v Dundee on Apr 24th 1984.

The lowest Rangers figure is more problematic. The match at Ibrox on May 23rd 1979 against Partick Thistle is quoted in 'Rothmans' as just 2,500 but other publications have listed a figure as high as 6,000.

Games in 1972 against Ayr United and Dunfermline Athletic on Apr 27th and May 1st respectively are both given as 3,000 by 'Rothmans' and 4,000 elsewhere.

There is a definitive answer but unless the Scottish Football League puts these figures into the public domain the best I can say is that it is likely to be one of the matches mentioned above.

Incidentally, the Football League in England has no such reticence when it comes to gates. Attendances for every League game from 1925-26 onwards are freely available.

In Scotland we have to make do with seasonal totals which reveal the worst average attendances in the past 40 years to be 18,390 for Celtic in 1983-84 and 16,400 for Rangers in 1981-82.

http://www.scottishleague.net/archive/archive101.htm

Those kids mostly didn't stick with their original teams as soon as the duopoly reappeared xp. I've never really got over that myself.

Some did, I have a colleague in his early 40s from Ayrshire who follows Aberdeen.

wow those are seriously low figures. both clubs have done under 5k in the 80s. Im stunned by that

80s gate at scottish football matches generally not partic high. also in celtic's case at least underreported for tax dodging purposes.

Wow, all those are much lower than I thought xps - I guess Souness really did bring boom times with him.

The Dundee figure seems really weird, actually. Didn't Celtic challenge that year? Maybe there were other circumstances, a 0530 Tuesday morning kickoff or something?

actually looking at this graph, 80s is the nadir:

http://www.londonhearts.com/charts/avg_l_crowdsOF_files/image001.png

The 80s were tough. Bad results and high unemployment is a lethal combination.

I get annoyed with people talking down relatively big crowds given how bad it has been in the past. A couple of years back we had 35,000 for a UEFA qualifier, the highest in Europe that night, and Hugh Keevins was going on about "twenty five thousand stay away fans" wtf.

as a kid i supported liverpool and scotland. Parents didn't want me supporting either of the old firm. in about 79 a guy who worked with my dad used to give me programs of Aberdeen games so i supported them til about 83 after cup winners cup when i moved to prestwick where not one person in my class supported them so i ended up supporting celtic. in about 88 my ayr/accies supporting mate persuaded me to go see an accies game as they were my 'local' team since i was from that area pretty much. Stuck with it. Seen it all. Accies til i die (even if i dont go to games haha, but i did not miss a game home or away for 12 seasons. went to reserve games)

xps

BUT HUGH KEEVINS IS A CUNT!!!

And yeah, Souness really did help change things (with other boom time factors obviously). More than I even thought judging by those figures.

That graph is fascinating. It really shows that the whole post-Souness boom is a two-club phenomenon.

the money both clubs had then were astonishing. Rangers couldn't sustain it though. The spending under Advocaat was ridiculous.

Also the Edinburgh clubs outdrawing Celtic in the fifties. (what happened to Celtic post-war btw? There was an extended fallow period there that doesn't even get acknowledged on wiki)

i really hope Ailsa is right and this will lead to other clubs challenging. Might take a while though.

Wont be Accies though, we will never have a big enough support to generate money. If we even got 5k a game we would still have been in SPL. But most people here go to parkhead and ibrox. Other clubs are far away enough to avoid that. but whats a 25 min train/bus journey.

(what happened to Celtic post-war btw? There was an extended fallow period there that doesn't even get acknowledged on wiki)

Celtic were in the proper doldrums until Jock Stein arrived. One league title between '38 and '66 (start of nine in a row) and a couple of famous wins (Coronation Cup and beating Rangers 7-1).

I think the team was selected by the board before Stein arrived, which might explain some of it.

when did the league restart after it was postponed in 39? was it 46?

yes 46-47

who owned Celtic in the 50s and 60s? was it still white and the kelly families?

Rangers were owned from the 1890s to mccann by a cabal of 3 families.the whites and kellys were the final generation.

Lol,Celtic even.tired.

p much, some info here

http://www.thecelticwiki.com/page/Celtic+Board+-+Past

xxp

cheers guys. Had no idea it was the same family basically all the time.

Fuck, missed quite a lot last night.

fwiw, I was in the pub with an Aberdeen supporter in his 30s from Johnstone.

pfunkboy, did you *really* support Celtic for a couple of years then chuck it in the double-winning season? Did your dad never try to steer you towards Hearts?

Rangers couldn't
sustain it though. The spending
under Advocaat was ridiculous.

You just noticed this about 700 posts into a thread about Rangers going bust?

Twitter detectives recommending that a knowledge of financial assistance may be useful. So here we go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_assistance_(share_purchase)

You'll need to add the end parenthesis on yourself.

Also this question:

Imagine you went to the bank and
tried to borrow money. They ran a
credit check against your company
and it was good. So they lend you
cash. Now imagine you set up a company with almost exactly the same name as the one with the good credit
history and paid the loan into that
one. Imagine that

These were both tweets from @celticrumours who I think were the people who first said to gain awareness of EBTs, first one I saw anyway.

Re ticketus accounts (many many posts back) - I checked Companies House and learned two things:
the accounts for the FY to July 2011 (a) might not even contain any reference to the Rangers deal, depending on when it was concluded and (b) even if they do contain ref to the Rangers deal, if last year is anything to go by, the accounts won't be available until April/May anyway; and
there are lots and lots and lots of Ticketus companies (which suggests to me that each ticket acqusition is run through its own entity) so finding the Rangers one would be a total mare.

Imagine you went to the bank and tried to borrow money. They ran a credit check against your company and it was good. So they lend you cash. Now imagine you set up a company with almost exactly the same name as the one with the good credit history and paid the loan into that one. Imagine that

The financial assistance angle is interesting, though I would be surprised if a CW would trip over that easy-to-avoid regulatory hurdle.

On a non-law point: the silver lining of a rangers pre-pack and div 3 re-entry would be that I could manage Rangers in Football Manager without feeling like I was cheating.

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I assume that the name change thing is to do with Wavetower changing its name to Rangers FC Group, I would take it to be an insinuation that Whyte's group have taken money meant for Rangers. But that wasn't a loan. Also, lawyers, it's not *my* insinuation, just my interpretation of someone else's.

The financial assistance thing, I'm intrigued. A well-known self-promoting Irish journo/blogger is also advising a crash course in the Scots Law crime of 'uttering' which I roughly understand via Google to be using false documentation to commit fraud. Please correct me if wrong.

I am making no claim as to the veracity of whatever is driving these rumours. Just reporting hearsay from sources that have been right in the past as I thought them germane to the matter in hand.

You're even beginning to sound like a lawyer now

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you're supporting the various thirdhand bits and bobs I've picked up on - I'm just a bit agog at some of the stuff that people are talking about and the way that they are talking about it. Suspect that this is not because the people who are talking about the administration (being, all of Scotland) are more stupid than average, just that it's butting up against stuff that seems obvious to me from the work that I do.

I don't know any more about uttering than you do, ailsa, I'm afraid - criminal is not my area.