"For every five pounds Celtic spend, we will spend ten,"

[Deodato]

JKB,

 

Firstly, I want to congratulate the BBC on their superb documentary Rangers, The Men Who Sold The Jerseys. YouTube has the whole version here:

 

 

However, these is one line from the documentary which has bugged me out for a while. Here's the official quote from Wikipedia.

In a quest to fulfil Murray's ambitions for Rangers in Europe, a period of unprecedented spending under the managership of Dick Advocaat saw the club's debts increase. As anticipated television revenues failed to materialise and the club's income failed to offset the growing cost of transfer fees and player salaries. Murray said; "For every five pounds Celtic spend, we will spend ten," in 1998.

 

(Source: Rangers chief is fully aware he has made errors, but he defends his running of club, The Scotsman, 16 January 2009)

 

Okay, so here is the kicker. The quote (I think) stems from this Ho Chi Minh quotes:

 

?You will kill 10 of our men, and we will kill 1 of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it.?

But Glasgow Rangers never did have to spend ten, nor did they have to spend five.

Indeed, for every five that Celtic Spend, Glasgow Rangers need only to spend four. That is, assuming Celtic players did face a effective tax rate of forty percent, and Rangers had reduced that to zero, then ?4 from Rangers equals ?5 of Celtic. Post-Bosman, there will be other benefits associated with this form of tax evasion too, so perhaps Rangers only need to spend three, as opposed to the declared ten. For any soccernomists on the boards, it would be interesting to work out the delta difference between transfer and salary spend between Rangers and Celtic to see if it really was the case that Rangers spend twice.

 

Small point, but was bugging me out for a while. Another reason why cheating the tax/sport system is wrong, and deserves to be punished thoroughly.

 

If the BBC plan to do a follow up to their excellent documentary, this form of 'limit pricing' would be worthy of more investigation. Ho Chi Minh was right, and HMRC got tired of this abuse. The game theory has a nasty ending.

 

 

Happy Saturdays.

 

 

Eumir Deodato

[WavyGravy]

For every Jeanette Krankie you pump, I'll no pump Joanna Lumley!!!!!