posted Mar 7, 2008

I wish Brooks Mileson well he seems a nice man. However Gretna going bust will be no loss to Scottish football. As others said they bought their way into SPL before running out of funds. The SFL should be ashamed of ever letting a village team into the leagues. We are a small country and don't need 4 leagues of professional teams. If we needed more why not try to get a club in East Kilbride or somewhere with a chance of a support?

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posted Mar 7, 2008

Lots of other clubs have been bailed out in different ways or depended on someone with deep pockets to get through (Hibs & Farmer, DU & Thomson, Rangers & Murray, Celtic & McCann - need I go on?). The difference of course is that underneath each of these there was a sustainable business waiting to get out. Gretna have never had the long-term fan base to pay for an SPL club end of story. I'm sorry for those who are worried about their next pay packet and wish Brookes a full recovery but the sad truth is Gretna could never survive in the SPL without constant subsidy.

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posted Mar 7, 2008

Gretna should never have been admitted to the Scottish League in the first place. We have enough clubs playing out of small towns that can't sustain a football club, without bringing in another one!
We need less clubs in the Scottish League, not more diddy teams.
Gretna were "living the dream", but where does it stop, Brooks Mileson could have put his money into a pub team and they could have competed in the Scottish League at present. We need :
a) a lesser amount of teams in the Scottish league which will hopefully improve the quality, or
b) allow the larger teams (Celtic, Rangers, etc) to run second teams in the lower leagues in Scotland.

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posted Mar 7, 2008

If we needed more why not try to get a club in East Kilbride or somewhere with a chance of a support?

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Yes, but EK is too close to Glasgow, Paisley and Motherwell. The idea seems to be to encourage regional teams. Livingstone was another failed project of this ilk.

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posted Mar 8, 2008

Good Luck Gretna and Get Well Soon Brooks

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posted Mar 8, 2008

Fairytale is a word often used when talking about Gretna. Taking a team with limited resources from the 3rd Div to the SPL, Scottish Cup final and subsequently Europe could be considered a fairytale but Gretna didn't have limited resources. Mileson bankrolled the signing of SPL quality players to play in the 3rd division and from then on they steamrollered thier way to the SPL. That is hardly an acheivement! It's easy for people on the outside looking in to have a fluffy little perception of Gretna but almost everyone who follows football in Scotland saw this coming, you simply cannot sustain SPL or even 1st Division football in a town with a population of 2700. They had this coming. That may sound harsh but the Gretna story got under the skin of many SFL fans who follow teams of very limited resource and had to watch a Multi-millionnaire's pet project charge up through the leagues for 4 years while the rest of us struggled. True Fairytales come from true acheivement and not throwing money about willy-nilly. Try reading up on Airdrieonians on wikipedia. That was a true Fairytale/Tragedy.

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posted Mar 8, 2008

Jeff, if you're going to adjudicate on the quality of posts on this thread, you might want to try and write something sensible yourself. What an arrogant and patronising individual you are.

Our league at the top level is better than most other associations. At the other end it is no worse than many other associations. What you really mean is that our league is not as good as England's therefore it must be amateurish...yes? Gosh, you people really can't help yourselves, can you?

The SPL is dominated by two teams. France and Germany are dominated by one - look at the statistics. The English league is dominated by three teams - one if it wasn't for Roman Abrahmovich - England's Gretna on a bigger more sustainable scale.

Spain - dominated by two teams; Romania, Holland, Norway, etc, etc, - all dominated by one, two, and no more than three clubs. Are they all amateurish too then? Only Serie A offers any kind of uncertainty over who might win the league in any given year. If you think the EPL is open competition you're still living in the past. It's a long time since Everton, Forest, Leeds, far less Derby County could compete for the top spot.

You write that "The great thing about Gretna is that they made people from other countries watch the Scottish league". I don't care if Gretna made you want to tune in and watch fairytale stuff and I doubt if most of my compatriots feel differently.

There isn't going to be a happy ending, there was never ever going to be a happy ending. How could there possibly have been a happy ending? We are talking about a team that have been given false prominence due to the injection of personal funds from a single rich individual. Once that goes, the club will collapse. That's the difference between Gretna and other clubs. Other clubs level would still be in the professional leagues and at a fairly high level at that. Gretna's natural level is in the Unibond League. That's where they came from and hopefully, the club can survive and go back there.

You clearly are an outsider who hasn't been following the events and does appear to live within the pages of 'Roy of the Rovers'. You don't even know the owner's name - it's Brooks Mileson! As a paying supporter of Scottish football who does'nt watch from afar, I don't really care what you or your like from Swindon, Milton Keynes, or Cambridge want to see happen.

I want to see Brooks Mileson or his family continue to support the club to the end of the season and complete their fixtures. By doing so it will prevent the SPL from losing credibility, and means that the club's players and staff can be paid and meet their own financial committments. That's what happens in real life. The players and staff of Melchester Rovers never had bills to pay!

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posted Mar 8, 2008

Credit and praise should be doled out in spades to Eddie Thompson. The man is dying but he has made the necessary arrangements for the club's future, and pledged the finance to continue to support it after he passes away.

http://www.theherald.co.uk/sport/headlines/display.var.2103717.0.Thompson_focused_on_uniteds_future.php

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posted Mar 9, 2008

Gretna are not a fairytale, they are a rich man's plaything, bought and funded through the leagues for no other reason than glory. No-one has even bothered to think about how it will be sustained, at least othr clubs that have been bankrolled by sugar daddies (Chelsea, Blackburn, Fulham etc.) have put contingencies in place to ensure that they have nto/will not completely collapse once the investment dries up.

I'm sure the owner is a nice guy, I'm sure he had the fans and club at heart, but he has no ehad for the business and it's better for all concerned if he stays out of it in future.

Do the right thing and pay up for the rest of the year, let the club go down, release most fo the players and start again with a proper budget and finaincial plan.

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posted Mar 10, 2008

i think it's incredible what they have achieved considering the owner suffers from ME, if anyone knows what that is like then you would only have kind words to say about them.

i hope he gets better and the club survive. regardless of the league they are in.

best wishes

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