The Whale and the Swimming Pool

19


Yes, odd title for this piece,
but bear with me; all will be revealed.
As we know whales are the largest
creatures on earth. Their dietary requirements are vast and the vast oceans
provide immeasurable plunder to sustain them. Take the blue whale.  It can devour well beyond 40 million krill
per day, krill being the tiny shrimp-esque crustaceans whales survive on.
So what happens if you take the
blue whale out of the ocean and plonk it in a large swimming pool? Does it
suddenly require less krill/food in order to survive? Of course not – its
dietary requirements remain exactly the same, and if they are not provided it
will perish.
Ok, enough zoology, but I am
hoping regular readers will already know where I am going with this logic.
Rangers fans are irate at the
loss of cash, the bleeding of revenue, and blame everyone from the board at Ibrox to
Whyte, to Murray
for being responsible for it. They certainly had their part to play, but they
are not around now and the board is. So the board gets both barrels.
However, going back to my
metaphor, Rangers are the whale, the SPL was the ocean, and the lower tiers are
the large swimming pool.
Let us take a look at the hard
numbers:
Winning the SPL nets a club £2.4M.
By contrast, winning the Third
Division earned us £42,000.
In one, instant, catastrophic
fell-swoop Rangers just lost nearly £2.4M.
League One gave us £54,000.
Not much better is it?
Now TV money:
SPL winners take £2.7M of the domestic pot for
themselves.
By contrast the National League
has to share £2M among 20 clubs
(thanks to the blackmail in order to gain SFA membership), which means Rangers
receive anywhere from £50,000 to £200,000.
Now we move onto CL cash.
Qualification for the CL group
stage guarantees £6.7M. That is a
basic payout simply for being in the group stage, be it by automatic slot or
qualifying.
Teams are then guaranteed a
further £3.3M for the 6 certain
matches they play in the group stage.
And let us not forget the CL TV
rights’ cash.
As Celtic were the only Scottish
side in this season’s competition, they secured the entire pot of £7.8M allocated to the country by UEFA.
Now we have season tickets.
In 2011/2012 Rangers sold 38,000
season tickets at around £550 each. That is £20.1M.
Charles Green reduced the price
to £350, reducing income to £13.3M
So, those are the big numbers.
Let us sum them up in one big
fell swoop:
Pre-admin income per season – £42.9M
Post-admin income per season – £13.5M
Naturally I have not taken into
account shirt sales, sponsorship revenue and other sources of income but the
numbers above give some idea of the catastrophic shortfall Rangers have
suffered in the past two seasons. No CL, no SPL prize money, wildly reduced TV
income.
Rangers are the whale, SPL was
the sea, and now League 2 then 1 are the swimming pools.
No wonder this whale is
struggling.

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19 COMMENTS

  1. We had a 22m share issue and at least 1.5m in loans, whilst we radically reduced the salary and operational costs. Our income is probably comparable to the SPL days.

    So why is this whale still struggling??

  2. Maybe the marine biologists who were employed to oversee the good health and prospering of the whale were more concerned with making a quick pound or two for themselves and really didn't care about the whale. Wouldn't it be much better to employ marine biologists who had proved there love and commitment for the whale and who actually had the money to ensure the whales happy future.

  3. You just dont seem to get it the whale has an enormous appetite for other peoples money , ours the Rangers fans and as long as we keep feeding it , it will take all we can give with NOTHING in return

    • Well said Willie, one doesn't have to look beyond the board (past and present) to see where the true problem lies. Its time for the fans to give the board the heave-ho, as they do not represent the team in any way.

  4. As they say in the Zoo please dont feed the animals and its time we stopped feeding the whales

  5. You just dont seem to get it the whale has an enormous appetite for other peoples money , ours the Rangers fans and as long as we keep feeding it , it will take all we can give with NOTHING in return

  6. Noah was swallowed by the whale?
    Did he escape or did he fail?

    Who was it that suffered the most?
    Was it Noah or his benign host?

    Did the whale use him for gain?
    Or suffer monumental pain?

    Noah would have it otherwise,
    Despite having fed all the lies!

    Gone now, but not forgotten,
    Those ill gains, so begotten!

    • It was Jonah who was swallowed by a whale ya twat. Are you the Celtic supporters' William McGonagall?

    • Sorry to inform you, but Noah had his ark to build, not sure if he had two whales on board or in in tow.
      Jonah was swallowed by the whale. Maybe anyone who now goes on the Rangers board is treated as a Jonah!

    • I don't care what Noah had to build, he wasn't swallowed by a whale. And why would he need to have any whales on board or "on tow"? They would have survived the flood without the need of an ark. I was just meaning the "poem" was having a dig at Rangers and wasn't very good anyway.

  7. But if we had small young males then they would fit I the pool and as they develop the pool will get bigger until they have the riches of the ocean. Some one should tell Ally that you don't to devope his on whales instead of buying expensive old whales, that require to stay I 5 star resorts to beat pikes

  8. I here your wailing, it must hurt stuck in a small pool with no obvious way our. May get worse if the plug gets pulled.

  9. i think allys had to many whale suppers at our expense well if i was on 800.50 grand a year i would give up the pies to

  10. good tosee the back of those pirranahs union bears and the blue order there vile chants and wrecking seats aroud the country has brought shame to our great club they have had there chips

  11. Imagine you were getting £1000 wages a month then your employer gives you a pay cut to £200. I hear about it and generously give you £5,000 to stick in a bank account for the future to give a bit of security for you and your family, then and you spent £4,500 of it on yourself (drink and drugs, clearly).

    Who would I blame for you being skint? You for spunking that generous donation or the employer for cutting your wage when you knew full well that was what was going to happen?

    Same situation. Rangers supporters, and investors alike, entrusted the board appointed by the owners of the club with £20m+. Rangers blew it. The position of the old board was untenable (Green, Stockbridge, Mather, Ahmad) and they are all, rightly, gone.

    The current board have lied as shown in the statements made at the AGM regarding our financial position.

    They are not to be trusted.

    The common theme here is not the board, it is the owners. As soon as you start realising that, doing some actual digging into who is the puppet master and not who the puppets are, you might get somewhere in realising there is a much bigger picture.

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