Rangers owner fighting to keep club afloat

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Craig Whyte is the owner of Rangers football club and he came into power after muscling his way to the top through an investment from a company called Ticketus. He managed to secure funding to purchase the club through a promise of the sale of 100,000 season tickets in the future.

His method of funding the purchase was kept a secret and many people thought that he had funded it with his own money, but once the story was broken by Record Sport he became a disgrace in the eyes of the fans.

Now the football club is in a financial crisis and it seems that they could be about to enter administration. Paul Murray has been working hard at finding a way to save the club and improve its financial situation but it has recently emerged that he has been working with an investment firm that the fans are not going to like.

It has emerged that Mr Murray has approached the parent company of Ticketus for funding that would enable the football club to stay out of administration. This has left many fans rather bewildered and they are unsure about why Mr Murray has made this decision. He has recently made the argument about why Octopus, the parent company, should be involved with the club and help it to stay in business.

It is expected that Mr Murray is going to meet with executives from Ticketus in the near future to discuss a rescue package for the club. The deal is also expected to involve the removal of Mr Whyte from ownership of the club.

The investment company is going to help the club deal with a significant amount of debt, which totals nearly £25 million. They are also going to provide some funding in order to keep the club running during the next few months. Once a financial recovery has occurred, there are going to be shares issued in the club which will allow the investment fund to get a return on their money.

It is going to be very hard for the fans to understand how their club is going to be saved by the very company that brought them to near financial ruin in the first place. There are sure to be significant trust issues about this company and the deal by Mr Murray is being doubted by many.

Mr Murray commented, “It is important that people remember that it is Mr Whyte who was responsible for many of the club’s financial problems, not Ticketus. They have offered us an agreement in good faith and I want fans to remember that they have helped us in the past.

They helped us get out of the debt we had to Lloyds bank and they also have significant experience in the industry. My primary concern is bringing the club out of its administration proceedings and I will take whatever steps necessary to make this happen.”

If the deal does go ahead, the football club is going to have a significant debt to repay. The club has struggled with debt payments in the past and last year they failed to repay around £10 million to a lender.

Mr Murray continued, “The club does not need to be involved in any sort of legal complication right now. We need to move forward with this financial planning, so that the best interests of the football club can be preserved. We are currently looking at our projections of future cash flow and we are ironing out the main details of the deal.

“I have come forward about how I am getting this funding because I believe secrecy has got the club into trouble in the past. Mr Whyte taught us that secrecy is suspicious and I don’t want to run the club in this way. If I find a better option, I’ll take it, but this is the only choice we have right now.”

David Bernstein and the new England manager

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The chairman of the Football Association, David Bernstein is causing some people to worry about his decision to pick the next manager of theEnglandteam. The announcements recently by Fabio Capello that he would be leaving the team should have sounded alarms with many people as he departed with the words, “I am very interested to see who is going to come and replace me.” In retrospect it is clear to see that this was a power-play that Mr Capello was very much enjoying.

The decision to let Mr Capello go seems to be a more foolish one with each passing week.Englandhave experienced their first defeat in over 15 months since the manager’s departure and it was even at Wembley Stadium. The question many people are going to be asking themselves is why would a great manager go to work for the FA. Most football managers who are any good are already in employment and don’t really fancy going anywhere else.

Additionally, it is usually preferred that a native person takes the role of manager of theEnglandteam, but this is probably going to be impossible. The simple fact of the matter for the FA is that there isn’t a brilliant English manager just sitting at home waiting to be called up to manage the team. Furthermore, it has also been announced that the new manager is going to be being paid half the amount the Capello was getting. Considering all of these facts, it seems increasingly unlikely that a good replacement manager is going to be found for Capello.

It seems that Mr Bernstein thinks he is important enough to have the power to draw Harry Redknapp away from Tottenham Hotspur. It seems entirely improbable that Mr Redknapp would wish to move from this team to Wembley and he has not shown any interest in taking on the position just yet. The only person who is remotely qualified for the job who has come forward is Stuart Pearce, this is going to be bitterly disappointing to Mr Bernstein. Furthermore, Mr Pierce withdrew his application after just six weeks, stating that he was no longer interested in the job.

The FA have said that they have a shortlist of around five names that they are considering but many people are wondering who could possibly be on this list. There has been no announcement about the names and the FA have not issued a statement. The director of football development for the FA is Sir Trevor Brooking and he has stated that he would be able to work with Mr Redknapp if he was made the manager of the team despite professional differences they have had in the past.

The FA have said that there have not been any discussions about who they want to make the next manager of England, but the fact that Sir Trevor needed to make the statement seems rather contradictory to this point. If there had been no discussions then why would he feel it necessary to announce that he would not have a problem working with Redknapp. This should be a simple appointment, but the FA and particularly Mr Bernstein, have turned the whole affair into a fiasco and something that doesn’t look like it will be sorted out in the near future.

FA in no rush to find new England boss

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FA in no rush to find new England boss The Football Association have stated that there have not yet been any approaches made to candidates about becoming the next coach of the English football team.

Earlier in the month, Fabio Capello resigned from the position after he was forced to remove captaincy of the team from John Terry. Since his decision to leave, the team have been looking for a new captain to lead them into Euro 2012, and the other competitions to follow.

The coach for the under 21 team, Stuart Pearce, is currently in the position on a temporary basis and will hold the position when the team face the Netherlands this Wednesday. He has expressed an interest in taking over as the coach of the main team during the European Championship.

It is widely expected that Harry Redknapp is going to be named as the new coach, but he has said that he has not been in talks with anyone about taking over the position yet. Currently Mr Redknapp is the head of Tottenham Hotspur football club.

The chairman of the Football Association is David Bernstein and he has the responsibility of finding a new coach, along with the managing director of the club and its football development manager. Adrian Bevington is the managing director and he has said that internal discussions have been taking place, but no talks with potential coaches have happened yet.

Mr Bevington commented in a statement to Sky News, “We have had several conversations about who is going to replace Capello and we have asked the FA board to make a recommendation. It is important that people know that we are not close to making a decision just yet. No external bodies have been consulted about who we want as the next coach and we feel there is no real need to rush into a decision.”

Adebayor celebrate birthday with a surprise guest

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Adebayor celebrate birthday with a surprise guest Spurs footballing star Emmanuel Adebayor recently celebrated his 28th birthday in a London club called Aura.

A surprise guest at his birthday party was Rihanna. There were also numerous footballers from other leading clubs including Manchester United, Queens Park Rangers, and Manchester City.

At one point in the evening the football players started throwing banknotes at Rihanna while she used an umbrella, a joke based on a famous song of the same name. Some of the footballers didn’t quite understand what is going on though and started to throw change at her as well.

It seems she very much enjoyed her evening at the nightclub because she took time to go onto Twitter and write a message about how much she enjoyed being at the club. She eventually left the venue at four o’clock in the morning and went back to her hotel suite at the Carinthia hotel, which costs £8000 per night.

A source close to the star stated that she had a very enjoyable time at the club and was seen to be drinking a lot of champagne. She has also been seen in London enjoying socialising with friends at a West End venue.

Other than partying, Rihanna has been producing a television show about fashion, with the star of the band Girls Aloud, Nicola Roberts. She has also been promoting a new action film that she is starring in called Battlefield and is also going to be making an appearance on the Jonathan Ross show.

PM Cameron gets involved in football racism rows

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PM Cameron gets involved in football racism rows Prime Minister David Cameron has involved himself in football’s recent racism scandals, announcing his own plans to get rid of the problem once and for all at the launch of an anti-discrimination project at Downing Street.

Cameron revealed that he has given the FA a two-month deadline to come up with a scheme for tackling the apparent increase in racist incidents within the English game; an indication of just how seriously the issue is being taken at all levels of the game and beyond.

The Prime Minister, while concerned about individual cases, was more worried about the impact that racist behaviour on the football pitch would have on the streets, adding that many young people are influenced by the behaviour of their footballing idols; even if that behaviour is unacceptable and discriminatory. Cameron added that football has the potential to affect people’s opinions and behaviour for the better, and that the FA should not miss their opportunity to take a stand on the racism issue.

English football has been hit by a series of high-profile racism scandals in recent months, most notably the cases of Liverpool’s Luis Suarez and Chelsea and England captain John Terry. Suarez recently served an eight-match band for racially abusing the Manchester United defender Patrice Evra, but the incident was back in the headlines recently, when Suarez refused to shake Evra’s hand before the two sides played each other.

Despite his somewhat reluctant apology in the aftermath of the furore caused by the missed handshake, the story refuses to go away; those old combatants Kenny Dalglish and Sir Alex Ferguson have been trading veiled insults in the tabloid press ever since. Ferguson’s comment that if Suarez had been a United player he would have sold him rather than keep such a disruptive influence at the club provoked a particularly strong reaction from the Liverpool boss.

Meanwhile, Terry faces a criminal trial in July on a charge over allegations he racially abused QPR’s Anton Ferdinand. The decision by the FA to temporarily replace him as England captain, until the result of the trial was known, led to the resignation of England coach Fabio Capello, only a few months before the Euro 2012 competition in Poland and the Ukraine.

The results of the FA inquiry into racism in English football and how to tackle it will have been published before Terry goes to court – but the 25-year-old defender can expect serious consequences within the game of he is found guilty, with some pundits even calling for him to be dropped from the England squad altogether.

The eight-match ban imposed on Suarez, the longest ever for this kind of offence, has made it clear that the FA is taking the problem seriously, and is prepared to take action even against some of the biggest names in the sport if they racially abuse another player.

It is unclear what the FA will propose when they speak to the Prime Minister in two months’ time; most anti-racism initiatives in the game have been aimed at the terraces and preventing racial abuse from fans, but it seems that David Bernstein and his FA colleagues may need to look a little closer to home when it comes to developing their next anti-discrimination scheme.