{"id":13221,"date":"2018-07-31T09:14:36","date_gmt":"2018-07-31T08:14:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/etims.net\/?p=13221"},"modified":"2018-07-31T09:14:36","modified_gmt":"2018-07-31T08:14:36","slug":"celtic-diary-tuesday-july-31-ibrox-crisis-stop-laughing-weve-a-game-tomorrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/etims.net\/?p=13221","title":{"rendered":"Celtic Diary Tuesday July 31: Ibrox Crisis: Stop Laughing. We’ve A Game Tomorrow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Celtic play Rosenberg tomorrow night, which is exactly what I said in yesterdays diary.<\/p>\n

Which surprised me, as I’m sure that I read somewhere it was tonight. Just as well I didn’t book the train, or I’d have looked jolly silly standing outside the ground typing a piece about how these games aren’t attracting the fans any more.<\/p>\n

We might get the occasional story wrong, but that would have been a doozy.<\/p>\n

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So, tomorrow, Celtic will try to cross the halfway stage in this years qualifying campaign by defending and possibly improving on a 3-1 lead.<\/p>\n

The club have decided not to appeal Jozo Simunovic’s red card after they viewed the incident from another angle.<\/p>\n

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With Mikael Lustig not quite ready for a start, and Dedryck boyata not answering his phone, it looks increasingly like we’ll have Ajer and Hendry in central defence again.<\/p>\n

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It could be worse, I suppose.<\/p>\n

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However, and lets not lose sight of this, despite the one mistake, bith of them looked pretty comfortable in the first leg, and I’d expect them to build on that.<\/p>\n

Who knows, maybe Boyata won’t get back into the team….<\/p>\n

Worryingly, though, Scott Brown has done the Rosenberg team talk for them..<\/p>\n

They know they have to come out and score two goals so here’s hoping we can open them up a little bit,<\/em><\/p>\n

Nobody wants to be opened up. And in most countires its against the law.<\/p>\n

Brown has had a lot to say over the last couple of days, most of it sensible, but a fair chunk of it almost certainly hand written PR…<\/p>\n

The sensible… on tomorrows game…<\/p>\n

“We’ve gone over there and won before, so the aim for us is to go over there, score goals and create chances and play good football and we believe that we can do that.<\/em><\/p>\n

“It’s always hard going over there, but last season we went over there, we were 0-0 at home, we went over there and got a great victory and it’s a great goal by James Forrest.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The aim this season is just to take every game as it goes, make sure we try and go as far as we can in the qualifiers and try and get into Champions League football and then on Saturday start the league campaign with a good victory and a good performance as well.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The PR…<\/p>\n

\u201cI put a lot of trust in the manager and he\u2019s produced a lot to be fair. I trust him with my life.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe way he\u2019s doing things at Celtic he\u2019s improving us in every single department so yes I have a lot of trust in him.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIf the manager doesn\u2019t believe we need anyone then I think we can do the business with the squad we have.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got a great squad in that dressing room. We stick together on and off the park.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have Ryan Christie and Scott Allan back and we have Mikey Johnston and Calvin Miller coming through too. Two experienced ones who\u2019ve played in the Premiership and two young ones back in the squad.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

And of course, the inevitable question about the challenge from over the river…<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe will see what happens, we play them in the fourth game of the season.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are looking forward to it but we have a lot of games before then so we need to make sure we focus on that and not too far ahead.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone is going to be working to be that team to beat us. It\u2019s about how we react this season.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe we have come back in better condition and we are looking sharp already.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be a lot of challenges this season. Aberdeen will be up there, Hibs will be there, Rangers will be there and Hearts have brought in a lot of players too, so we will need to figure it out to be perfectly honest.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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Diplomacy at its best.<\/p>\n

Gerrard has a tough managerial baptism ahead of him. He may not survive August.<\/p>\n

Then again, neither may his club\/company \/basket of assets.<\/p>\n

Mike Ashley.<\/p>\n

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The man who Dave King claimed to have seen\u00a0 off in a bitter head to head battle last year re-appeared on the scene yesterday.<\/p>\n

And, as expected, he won his court case aginst “rangers “, and Dave King, who given his considerable court room experience, one could have expected a bit more of a fight from.<\/p>\n

A little bit of background…<\/p>\n

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Rangers ready to challenge Celtic again after Mike Ashley surrenders merchandising deal<\/h1>\n

( Telegraph, Roddy Forsyth, June 2017 )<\/p>\n

Dave King: Rangers’ refusal to cave in to Sports Direct was the key to striking new Ibrox retail deal<\/h1>\n
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By\u00a0Christopher Jack<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0@Chris_Jack89<\/a><\/span>Group Senior Sports Writer\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/address>\n
Evening times, June 2017<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Ralston and Jack are not known for their investigative journalism. They work in a sort of advertising department at their respective papers.<\/div>\n
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Roddy Forsyth works for the BBC. which is also a sort of advertising department, especially in Scotland,<\/div>\n
Though his day job is with the Telegraph, and he explained in his article just how tight a grip king had on ashleys bollocks…<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Bollocks is a word that seems to fit this article, come to think of it.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Despite a frequently venomous relationship between Dave King and Ashley – who tried to have the Rangers chairman thrown into prison for contempt of court \u2013 the two sides finally agreed an end to a contract so onerous that fans had boycotted Sports Direct stores.<\/em><\/p>\n

It took a significant effort from both parties to get the deal across the line, although details of the ongoing bargaining were revealed exclusively by\u00a0Telegraph Sport\u00a0in March,\u00a0when King first indicated that he believed a conclusion favourable to Rangers was possible<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

In his latest statements, King indicated that Ashley \u2013\u00a0who is seeking a buyer for all or part of his holding in Newcastle United<\/a>\u00a0might relinquish his 8.9% stake in Rangers. \u201cI can’t talk about that at the moment but I would expect an announcement on that fairly soon,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

In the meantime, the door is now open for Rangers to claw back some of the clout which once made them the most successful club in the UK in terms of merchandising. Ashley pounced on incredibly weak terms offered when Charles Green\u2019s Sevco consortium was in charge at Ibrox and struck a deal which gave the club only seven pence for every \u00a31 spent on its own merchandising.\u00a0When Dave King\u2019s subsequently unseated the puppet regime installed by Ashley in March 2012<\/a>\u00a0he declared that his priority would be to tear up the agreement.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Rangers\"<\/em><\/div>
The new deal will let Rangers keep a larger proportion of their revenue from merchandising<\/span>\u00a0CREDIT:<\/span>GETTY IMAGES<\/span><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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T<\/span>he new deal lets Rangers take the bulk of profits from sale of merchandise through their Megastore and Webstore outlets along with an equal share of profits from sales at Sports Direct stores. Asked if the deal had effectively placed Rangers in a stranglehold and hindered their efforts to regain some form of parity with Celtic, five years after the Craig Whyte went into financial meltdown, King said: \u201cYes. Without bringing in another source of revenue, the only way you could compensate for it was to get people to lend money.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cYou had a structural deficit within the ongoing operations. So, one of the priorities for us over the last couple of years – the biggest priority if you are ignoring the football side of getting back to the Premiership and into Europe – was the resolution of the retail deal.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been very time intensive. I\u2019ve spent more time on Rangers litigation over the last two years than I have on my own businesses in South Africa and globally – much more.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have gone week after week after week, every single day – Saturdays and Sundays – working on this. It has been a really monumental effort, taking a massive amount of time and resources to get to this point, but it was so critical to the club that we got something sorted out.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

K<\/span>ing added that he believed the deciding factor in Ashley\u2019s decision not to maintain his siege of the Ibrox board was the endless cost of legal battles. \u201cI don\u2019t think they came around to our way of thinking,\u201d he said.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Spiralling legal costs may have played a part in Ashley’s decision<\/span>\u00a0CREDIT:<\/span>\u00a0PA<\/span><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cWhat happened was the level of intensity in the litigation, with all our directors being sued in a personal capacity and issued with injunctions which meant we couldn\u2019t talk about Sports Direct, that I could have gone to jail last Christmas for saying unkind things about them.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe had a level of ferocity at us from Sports Direct for about a year. I said \u2018you can do what you like, you can try and put me in jail\u2019. We had come to do a job for the club and we will not back down.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSports Direct applied their mind and asked themselves whether they felt Rangers were going to back down. The answer was \u2018No\u2019, so was it not better to seek some sort of negotiated outcome? It was a realisation from them that the initial strategy of trying to blow us away hadn\u2019t worked.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI get Mike Ashley’s position. Mike Ashley is saying, \u2018I came across a weak board in a weak position and I took advantage’. Let the buyer beware.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew that wasn’t good for us, because we were giving Celtic that unnatural advantage because of the lack or our retail performance. And in my calculated estimate, it can’t have been good for Sports Direct, because Rangers certainly wasn’t a good model for them to go to other clubs.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cCeltic have obviously had three advantages over Rangers over the last couple of years. One is they have had retail operations and we haven\u2019t, so we have had find that money from somewhere else.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThey have had access to European income and we have had none and they have had a player squad of a level of quality that they could bring cash in if they had to. We have taken the retail opportunity out of the equation completely and I think that will go back in Rangers\u2019 favour again.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we have got to do now is bridge the other two gaps and I think it is fair to say that now we are back in Europe we will be back in Europe every year.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

And this…<\/p>\n

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