Glasgow rangers biography examples

Association football club in Glasgow, Scotland

This article is about the men's football club. For the women's team, see Rangers W.F.C.

Football club

Rangers Football Club is a professional football club in Glasgow, Scotland. The team competes in the Scottish Premiership, the top division of Scottish football. The club is often referred to as Glasgow Rangers, though this has never been its official name. The fourth-oldest football club in Scotland, Rangers was founded by four teenage boys as they walked through West End Park (now Kelvingrove Park), in March 1872, where they discussed the idea of forming a football club, and played its first match against the now-defunct Callander at the Fleshers' Haugh area of Glasgow Green in May of the same year. Rangers' home ground, Ibrox Stadium, designed by stadium architect Archibald Leitch and opened in 1929, is a Category B listed building and the third-largest football stadium in Scotland. The club has always played in royal blue shirts.

Rangers have won the Scottish League title a record 55 times, the Scottish Cup 34 times, the Scottish League Cup a record 28 times and the domestic treble on seven occasions. Rangers won the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1972 after being losing finalists twice, in 1961 (the first British club to reach a UEFA tournament final) and 1967. The club has lost a further two European finals; they reached the UEFA Cup Final in 2008 and a fourth runners-up finish in European competition came in the UEFA Europa League Final in 2022. By number of trophies won, Rangers are one of the most successful clubs in the world.

Rangers has a long-standing rivalry with Celtic, the two Glasgow clubs being collectively known as the Old Firm, which is considered one of the world's biggest football derbies. With more than 600 Rangers supporters' clubs in 35 countries worldwide, Rangers has one of the largest fanbases in world football.^&#

“IBROX, GLASGOW, 7 MAY 2011

It was no use. We were stuck. There were fans everywhere, blocking the road.

“Let’s just walk from here, shall we?” I said to the others in the taxi.””

From page vii of Into The Bear Pit, sub-titled, An Explosive Autobiography, it is the first example of Craig Whyte’s leadership. Ironically it would appear, on the evidence of the book, it was his last.

Let me do as we all have to when it comes to matters about the two biggest clubs in Scotland and set out my stall. I am neither a Rangers nor a Celtic fan. I have therefore little investment in the fortunes of either nor in the misery of the other. But I, as a football fan, who saw the benefits of one of the big two fall into the laps and onto the terraces of many a smaller club can see why it is that these two take up so much of our broadcast media and attention. They are a big deal.

On the evidence of his own book, Craig Whyte was very much far from a big deal, though he constantly claims to have handled many big deals. It is his hope that he can make sense of that complexity. He cannot.

The facts are simple.

On or around the 6 of May 2011, Craig Whyte bought Glasgow Rangers Football Club for £1 from Sir David Murray. The deal involved the transfer of considerable debt to Whyte which meant the £1 was symbolic: it was to cost him far more than a quid. In advance of the final transfer of the club, Whyte had been touted by some in the media as a man who had wealth that was off the scale. It was not the last time that the mainstream media was to further suckle on falsely succulent lamb (When buying Rangers, entrepreneur and millionaire, Sir David Murray once hosted a lunch for the Scottish media serving lamb described by one journalist in his column as succulent. Since then it has become the byword for sucking up to owners/directors/anyone in charge). Once in charge, Whyte oversaw the

Football anti-catholic signing policy

Between the 1930s and 1970s, the Scottish football club Rangers had an unwritten rule whereby the club would not knowingly sign any player who was a Roman Catholic. This was because Rangers were viewed as a Protestant, Unionist club, in contrast to their Old Firm rivals, Celtic, who were viewed as an Irish Catholic club, although Celtic never adopted a similar signing policy. Rangers' policy was ended in 1989 when they signed ex-Celtic striker Mo Johnston, under manager Graeme Souness.

History

Origins

Prior to the First World War, Rangers did not have any policy regarding players' religion, and at that time the club did have a number of Catholic players. In 1912, Belfast-based shipbuilding company Harland & Wolff acquired the Govan Old, Middleton and Govan New shipyards in Glasgow, and this created employment opportunities for large numbers of workers from the Belfast shipyards. This workforce was overwhelmingly Protestant and Unionist, and many of them chose to give their support to Rangers, who had an existing, albeit solely competitive, rivalry with Celtic. The Parkhead club were at the time Scotland's most successful team, with Rangers comfortably second in terms of overall trophies won, thus it was the Govan-based club who posed the greatest and most sustained challenge to Celtic's dominance of Scottish football. The influx of largely loyalist workers to Glasgow also helped precipitate an upswing in popularity of the Orange Order in the city and surrounding areas. Occasionally, Rangers players and directors attended functions in Orange lodges, and subsequently, with the connections between Rangers and loyalism/Orangeism rapidly strengthening, the club quietly introduced an unwritten rule that they would not sign any player or employ any staff member who was openly Catholic.

Why did you write Tangled Up in Blue?

I felt it was a book that was crying out to be written. Everyone knows the vague outline of two aspects of Rangers history, namely that they had an unwritten ban on Catholics at the club, which was operated for decades and was a feature of the famous rivalry with Celtic, and also that the club recently suffered a catastrophic financial collapse which ultimately led to liquidation.

I thought I’d put the bones on both stories and try to bring it to as wide an audience as possible.

Too often in Glasgow it’s almost as if you can’t see the woods from the trees because of the intensity of the rivalry. I thought I’d try and get above that and write a balanced and objective account, although where I feel the club deserves criticism, over its exclusionary employment practices for example, I don’t shirk from giving it.

You must have been expecting a backlash from the hordes. How has that been?

Inevitably, there will be a backlash from an element of the Rangers support, simply because they don’t take too kindly to criticism of the club, even when it’s justified, and it’s a book about Rangers not specifically aimed at Rangers fans.

It’s a universal story which in the end cannot avoid criticising the subject being examined. There will be people who don’t like that idea and yes it has started already. Ever since April when the publication of the book was announced Follow Follow have had a couple of threads on me, with people posting my picture and slaughtering the book without obviously having ever read it.

I had a photo on my twitter timeline of me in the Celtic shop standing next to copies of my novel Paradise Road which was being stocked there. That was posted on the thread and was more than enough to set a few people off.

Did your own opinions change during your research for the book?

Not really. I lived in Scotland through most of the David Murray years so I’d already followed quite closely what was happening. Murray wa