Zenit St. Petersburg Vs Rangers (UEFA Cup Final)

[Syxx]

Tell me. Tell me. I DON'T CARE AT ALL, NOT A SINGLE BIT, but tell me.

[CHUCK LIDELOL]

I think the sent the scottish cops up there, then the sent scottish cops up to the moon, to steal the cheese from the fat Irish idiots. Fuck.

[Scrooge]

Originally Posted by CHUCK LIDELOL

I think the sent the scottish cops up there, then the sent scottish cops up to the moon, to steal the cheese from the fat Irish idiots. Fuck.

Aye?

It'd need to be a fuckton of something decent like applewood smoked cheddar or something to justify the overtime.

See other than talking shite though, I only asked a question. Poorly phrased possibly, using unwords undoubtedly, but there ye go.

I'll check back in at some point to see if anything gets said. Rip my posts, word choice or whatever to bits if you like, I dont use the forum often enough these days to care.

Cheers.

[CHUCK LIDELOL]

Fuck off then.

[Scrooge]

Righto. Cheers Pete.

[CHUCK LIDELOL]

Look, what do you expect, you've said nothing of value in here. Do you know me? Why are you using my name?

[Scrooge]

I know I never said anything of value particularly, never intended to. I was looking for a bit of information, that's all.

Looking back on it, I should have probably posted it during the day when folk that are capable of answering were online - although a couple of folk did, which was appreciated. You, sir, are just acting the cunt, as per.... which is often funny, but since no-one is really posting just now you're just targetting whatever I post. Hope you enjoy it and suchlike.

No, I don't know you, I'm only using your name as you're well known on the forum, so it seemed right. If it bothers you that much I won't do it again and do accept my apologies for doing so etc.

Say whatever you like after this, I'm off to my kip. But, I'll take the opportunity to thank you for reminding me why I stopped using the forum - I got sick of the attitudes of some of the people that are on it. Cheers for that man, sincerely.

Goodnight.

[fracture4]

Originally Posted by CHUCK LIDELOL

Don't believe it. I don't dispute you've heard that but I don't buy that they'd bring Scottish officers down.

they did. my mate was one of them but he's transport police. his shift ended at 7pm and he was in the pub with 10 other transport for the game kicking off.

as far as he tells me all the cops he knew from here that were sent down all finished before the game, so i doubt they could have been the ones weighing in after it. he said there was about 50 transport cops sent down to help out.

[I'm Your God Now]

Around 5am in the Station.

Loved it.

[Zippy]

A club with poison at its core...

From The TimesMay 16, 2008

A club with a poison at its core

Graham Spiers

Utterly predictably, the fate of Rangers is once again to find excitement on the field marred by loutishness and delinquency off it. Losing the Uefa Cup final in Manchester on Wednesday night was no disgrace for Walter Smith or his team, whose very presence at the game was a triumph in itself. Beyond the stadium, however, before and after the match, events told their own story of how accursed Rangers remain as a club.

Willie Waddell, a memorable Rangers manager of the early 1970s, whose team brought the 1972 European Cup Winners’ Cup back to Glasgow, once aimed the following simmering words in the direction of his club’s supporters: “It is to these tikes, hooligans, louts and drunkards that I pinpoint my message. It is because of your gutter-rat behaviour that we are being publicly tarred and feathered like this.”

After that European triumph of 36 years ago, Rangers were banned by Uefa for the rioting of their fans, causing Waddell to implode with rage. The blight of Rangers - defined by loutish behaviour and bigoted chanting among groups of supporters – is proving a durable social poison. Here we are four decades on, still lamenting the seemingly endemic way in which these supporters behave like primitives.

The chaotic scenes in Manchester on Wednesday night - a Zenit fan stabbed, rioting Rangers fans, and 15 policemen getting injured - were frightening to behold. Moreover, the footage released yesterday and shown on Sky News, of hundreds of Rangers fans charging at police and setting upon one who stumbled to the ground, will make the already weary Ibrox hierarchy cringe.

Rangers have a repeated get-out for these episodes: the script always says this is “just a small minority” of fans. Moreover, as incident upon incident passes with the club’s supporters - at Villarreal in 2006, in Pamplona in 2007 and now in Manchester in 2008 - it is always “heavy-handed policing” and not the Rangers fans themselves who are said to be the blame.

Well, this is no small minority of Rangers supporters, and nor are the Greater Manchester Police renowned for their truncheon-wielding brutality. Instead, this is a football club with a poison somewhere at its core.

Such scenes will enrage those legions of decent Rangers supporters who love their club and follow it with impressive ardour. The postmatch eruptions were all the more depressing on Wednesday because the vast Rangers support gathered inside the City of Manchester Stadium had created a brilliant spectacle of colour and noise, including many who stayed on to applaud the Zenit St Petersburg players on their 2-0 triumph.

Other aspects, however, were familiarly ugly. During the day before the match, and certainly in the drunken aftermath, there was too much evidence of the sort of primitivism that enraged Waddell 36 years ago. In particular, bigoted or sectarian chanting remains an excruciating pastime for too many Rangers supporters, despite repeated pleas by the club to give these anthems a rest. For two days in Manchester, if you were based in the city centre as I was, you woke up to these dirges in the morning and you went to sleep to them at night.

Since being punished by Uefa two years ago for such antics by their supporters, Rangers have hired PR people, as well as Kenny Scott, a seasoned and former high-ranking Glasgow policeman, to try to gouge out the social disease which has clamped itself to the club. Scott, in particular, knew very well the inherent dangers of 100,000 Rangers fans descending upon Manchester for the Uefa Cup final.

The downside of Rangers reaching such a prestigious game in as close an area as the north of England was that it was an open invitation for the club’s less impressive followers to display their capacity for drinking, aggression, and sectarian abuse. I would go so far as to say that Scott, as head of security at Rangers, will have been cringeing at the very prospect from the moment the club qualified for the final.

Some spoke yesterday of another Uefa investigation of Rangers, but this surely won’t occur. It is almost impossible for Uefa, however much they care about the image of football, to weigh in on such affairs as public disorder in the city centres of Britain.

But who has the answer to this blight? Can anyone offer Rangers a cure for this ugly delinquency which afflicts a sizeable group of their supporters?

Until that cure is found, the once-proud name of Rangers FC will always trigger thoughts of yobbishness and bigotry. The club, to be blunt, is paying a heavy price for its century-long antipathy towards signing Catholic players, a policy which planted this bitter harvest.

[Zippy]

Seems like the Scottish media are finally asking questions about the goings on:

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com...EFA.4095433.jp

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle3953876.ece

[Jaemi]

Right-
What is about Rangers that attracts knuckle dragging bigots?
What is about Rangers that attracts the likes of the ICF and your every day football hooligan?
Do rangers court, at all, these people?

These are the questions that need to be asked.
I'm fairly certain that the Rule Britania, "we are the people" overtly british, "prodestant and proud" attitude that Rangers Fc (the club) are happy to accept is a catalyst, but I doubt it's the sole reason these people are attracted to Rangers.

I think it's a self perpetuating problem, the more it happens the more those sorts of people want to be involved with it. It's gotten so bad now that I don't think they'll ever get rid of it.

[AWESOMEUS MAXIMUS]

Originally Posted by Zippy

A club with poison at its core...

Wow.

Once again, Graham Speir's appears to be the only scottish journalist who has the balls enough to try and offer a sensibly fashioned reason behind these 'problems'.

And, appears to the only journalist who can mention Rangers without mentioning their rivals in the same breath.

Top drawer all round.

Jaemi - yer not adding anything to what Speirs has already pointed out mate.
THink he answered what most of us thought, anyway.

[Jaemi]

I didn't read GS's article.
I've still not.
Those were part of my own thoughts.

[MarkMono]

A 'sizeable group' is just another way of saying 'a minority' though, neither of which sit very well withy me as both expressions seem to seek to absolve the club of all and any responsibility.

These people are following your club, buying your strips and consuming your merchandise. Pretending ignorance as to what could possibly spur these animals onto violence when the very existence of the club and its size gives the fans carte blanche to get pissed up and mental as far as the police are concerned is just bullshit.

There an old saying that "You can't help who believes in you" but I think after the thousandth riot any sensible person would have too admit some culpability.