In three months Duff and Phelps have not made an inch of progress on the key issue, the Only Show in Town, Craig Whyte, who has security over the stadium and Murray Park is extremely likely to inhibit any attempt to dispose of these assets against his will.
Without a stadium the SFA and SPL cannot licence and admit a football club. While Duff and Phelps may have preferred the SPL to negotiate directly with the owner of Newco (once he was appointed), they were not in a position to ask the SPL for admittance yesterday without a stadium – perhaps a more practical explanation as to why they didn’t attend yesterday’s meeting.
Now that a CVA has finally been acknowledged as undeliverable, players will leave Rangers after Sunday’s visit to St Johnstone as free agents. There will be no Newco on hand to offer them a new deal. Those who can, will find employment elsewhere. This will be more than just the headline players, I know youth players at all levels have been scouted by clubs across Scotland and England. The chance to scoop up another club’s prime youth talent for free will not be passed up.
Getting a deal done this week with the SPL, the SFA, Bill Miller and the players would have allowed Duff and Phelps to maintain continuity, with Newco taking over for Sunday’s game. This will not now happen. The finger Duff and Phelps placed in the dyke back in February is set to slip.
Staff who cannot find employment elsewhere will remain at Rangers until 31 May. If Duff and Phelps sell ‘the club’ before that date, players who want to transfer to Newco can do so under TUPE regulations, which maintains their pay and conditions, however, they will be unable to transfer their player registrations until Newco is a licenced football club (which is dependent on SFA approval, which in turn will indirectly be dependent on Craig Whyte disposing of the stadium).
Duff and Phelps have no money to fund Rangers FC after 31 May, so must sell all assets before that date or the padlocks will go onto Ibrox and Murray Park. Yesterday was their last best chance to pull a deliverable deal together.
The fact Duff and Phelps didn’t even turn up to the meeting, and yesterday evening Neil Doncaster told Radio Scotland they didn’t return his calls when he phoned to ask why, indicates how on-target plans are.
Incredibly, I read one newspaper today suggested ‘Rangers [were]to benefit from SPL delay’. Where there’s life, there’s hope, I suppose. Somehow I cannot see Duff and Phelps’ Clark and Whitehouse high-fiving at the prospect of withdrawing from yesterday’s meeting. It is more likely that an undignified disintegration of a football club is set to take place in the weeks to come.
On a separate note: Just when Duff and Phelps would have presented Craig Whyte with a take-it-or-leave-it offer for all his assets, Brian Kennedy nips in as a second potential bidder for the stadium. Unless Kennedy is putting more skin on the table than Bill Miller all he is doing is fortifying Whyte’s negotiating position.
You can buy a hard copy of the new issue of CQN Magazine via Magcloud here.
The graphic below is just for a flick through, to read the magazine go here to it’s dedicated site.
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up_over_goal on 8 May, 2012 at 17:12 said:
I am most disappointed that I won’t have the opportunity to walk into Ibrox Stadium on the day of an Old Firm match as my friends tell me the hair on my arm will stand up
Tee hee. I was about to suggest we invite him to Parkhead next year for a derby. Then I remembered there won’t be another one.
Looking forward to some clips from the swamp guys…….even if it is only to see how they spin it as NL’s fault.
This may just be the biggest own goal ever.
Brogan Rogan Trevino and Hogan supports Kano 1000 on 8 May, 2012 at 11:10 said:
If you are not a journalist – you should be
Great piece (AGAIN)
67ECW
The deil cam fiddlin thro’ the town
And danced awa wi’ the Ragers;
And ilka wife cries, auld Mahoun,
I wish you luck o’ the prize, man.
The deil’s awa, the deil’s awa
The deil’s awa wi’ the Ragers
He’s danced awa, he’s danced awa
He’s danced awa wi’ th’ Exciseman.
We’ll mak our maut and we’ll brew our drink,
We’ll laugh, sing and rejoice, man;
And mony braw thanks to the meikle black deil,
That danc’d awa wi’ the Ragers.
Chorus
There’s threesome reels, there’s foursome reels,
There’s hornpipes and strathpeys, man,
But the ae best dance e’er cam to the Land
Was, the deil’s awa wi’ the Ragers.
wonkyradar on 8 May, 2012 at 15:29 said:
South of Tunis:
Forty Shades of Blue sounds painfully Hun Like.
Seriously though, I didn’t like that film one bit. Although the music as decent. I have seen better films about Baudelairean Ennui than that. Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia is a better film. Esoteric yes but goes beyond ennui to embrace notions of spiritual homelessness, longing, even the ultimate meaning of faith…what a director Tarkovsky was- Paradjanov a real artist as well. The closest Cinema can ever come to pure poetry.
…………………………………………………..
Oooooh! Don’t you just love the Glasgow banter :-)
Brogan Trevino and Hogan supports Kano 1000 on 8 May, 2012 at 11:10 said:
Good Morning.
Let me start out straight away by pinning my colours to the mast. Just in case anyone doesn’t know, I am a Celtic Fan. That means that I support and feel an association with a particular club that just happens to play football, and it is called Glasgow Celtic. This is not the forum for spouting my beliefs and preferences for what I describe as the Celtic Ethos—I have written elsewhere at length on that—but suffice to say part of my affiliation to Celtic has deep seated roots in certain charity work and a way of life. It has nothing to do with football…. And certainly nothing to do with my religion before that is suggested.
However in sheer footballing terms,I have followed Celtic FC all of my life, and it is a journey which has taken me to many strange and varied places. All over Scotland, England, Europe and beyond. As a 6 year old, I was the youngest Celtic fan who travelled to Buenos Aries to watch the infamous second leg of the 1967 World Club championship match in the Estadio Presidente Juan Domingo Peron, and I was there again at the ill-fated decider across the River Plate in the Estadio Centenario in Montevideo. There will be better travelled, more experienced Celtic fans, and there will be those who can recount more facts and figures, who have attended more games, who go to Dinners and functions, and are members of this or that Supporters Club—all of whom may well be able to claim some kind of better status or greater love of things Celtic…… But I would give them a run for their money.
However, this post is not about following Celtic…. Not at all. It is about following something much more basic. It is called…. Football.
You see as well as following Celtic, at various times in my life I have taken mad notions to go and watch other football teams. As a teenager from the West end of Glasgow, 2:30pm on a Saturday would often see me and a pal start the long walk up Wilton Street from one end to the other to get to Firhill just in time for kick off. I Had a pal who played in the first team at the time and he would leave tickets with the redoubtable Molly for me every week, and as often as not if Celtic were “away” I would be at Firhill for thrills to shout on Partick Thistle. Sometimes I would be there even when Celtic were at home if fate dictated that I couldn’t get to Celtic park.
Then, even later still, I found another footballing home from home at Holm Park Yoker. There were a variety of reasons for this. First, I was originally a Bankie, and Yoker kind of spanned Clydebank and the West End. Second, I again knew ( and had played with ) some of the guys in the team. Third, by that time I had a working relationship with the late Willie Blaney who was an office holder at Yoker Athletic and at the Scottish Junior Football Association, and fourthly for a brief period I personally or the firm I worked for ( can’t remember which ) was the company secretary to the company which ran the social club or the club itself.. the detail is lost in the mists of time.
However, the real reason that I sometimes went to Holm park, was that if the football was rubbish, or even if it wasn’t, You could wonder out of the ground and go for a pint in the Lovat Arms at half time… or any other time for that matter….. and then go back into the ground if you chose.
Following Yoker also took me to games at Pollok ( now there is a Glasgow Derby! ) and all sorts other other places. I have frequented the grounds at Auchinleck, Giffnock North, Petershill, Maryhill and various other junior and Amateur grounds……………….. even as far as Carnoustie Panmure…. but I am still a Celtic fan.
I wonder how many of a certain age who read this or any other blog, remember being utterly entranced by the 1970 World Cup where we may have known the name Pele but where we were introduced to the wondrous football of Jarzinho, Gerson, Tostao, Carlos Alberto, Everaldo, Clodoaldo, a dodgy Goalkeeper called Felix, and the magnificently moustachioed and wildly eccentric genius nicknamed “The little king of the park”- Roberto Rivelino?
Or who will admit to taking a huge intake of breath when you first saw Johan perform the Cruyff turn, and then endlessly practice it in the play ground for years to come… and I do mean for years… like still doing it in my 40’s only to just about give up in my 50′s!!!
Who watched the last World Cup final and wondered at the passing of the Spanish Midfield, and willed that style of football to defeat the more cynical and physical approach of a Dutch team that bore no resemblance to Cruyff, Neeskins, Haan, Rep, and company nor Gullitt, Van Basten, Reikard & crew.
My point is this. Football fans may well own an allegiance to one team or another, but all football fans will watch the game played properly and openly. We want to see football, and football played well and competitively. That is part of supporting a team—whether you win lose or draw—and a part of having an interest in the game even if you are a neutral in terms of the teams playing.
That love of and interest in the game is what bridges otherwise bitter divisions and rivalries. Apparently you will be hard pressed to find a Madrid fan who does not want Carles Puyol as captain of Spain despite his heroic status at Barcelona, and apparently you will struggle to find a Catalan who will not support Vincente Del Bosque as manager of Spain despite his long and successful association with Real Madrid.
Football is football. Football fans love football- it is a love affair that stretches beyond the love of a team or club. A love affair that gives you goose bumps if like me you have been lucky enough to walk in to the Bernabau, the Camp Nou, The Meazza, Old Trafford, Old Wembley, Hampden.. and yes Firhill or Holm Park.
That is all a long way about bringing me to the SPL.
It seems to me that everyone concerned- fans (even Rangers fans), chairmen, journalists- are all of the view that Rangers FC just cannot go unpunished as a result of the way that the club has been run, both recently and in the past two decades. However, the reluctance to administer real and proper punishment is based on not the justice of the situation, but on the fear of the cost of proper justice to other SPL clubs. The views of SFL clubs seem not to count too much.
In determining that cost, it would appear that the view of the Clubs’ bank may well be the determining factor. Both bank and club seem to be afraid of the financials in the event of Rangers not being in the SPL, and presumably that fear has its roots in the potential downturn in TV Income and the loss of the Rangers travelling support.
While it has been said that some Football Directors do not understand business and living within their means, I would have to argue that it is even more the case that Bankers do not understand both football or the football fan.
That must be true, as the banks (Ok then HBOS) gave absolutely ridiculous sums to football clubs over the years. Sums which were never sustainable, and so showing a complete misunderstanding of the football business. To be frank. HBOS funded the Murray Mint to such an extent that it effectively killed off all of the opposition other than Celtic. The same bank then funded other clubs to levels which were unsustainable in the sense that those clubs were never going to be successful as a business because they lived in a land where one of their competitors were so hugely funded to achieve success that every other club was only funded to fail—in both footballing and business terms.
In turn that “borrowed” success made Rangers so commercially successful in the eyes of sponsors and TV etc that the remaining clubs are afraid of losing the monster that has been unlawfully and arguably illegally created. They are afraid to stand on their own even though the cost of keeping this unfairly enhanced business monolith is ultimately to their cost, reputation in sport and the cost of their league’s standing in the eyes of the fans. In short, they are afraid to exist outwith the shadow of the financial bully. Financially petrified, terrified and castrated.
Now, their bankers are looking at how they get their money back, and seem to be putting pressure on Club Directors to allow a Rangers New Co back into the SPL, for fear that without a Rangers of some sort the clubs will go bust!
There are a few problems with that scenario.
For a start, who is going to bust the clubs and what would they get out of it?
If the Rangers debacle has taught anyone anything, it is that the fixed assets of a football club ( stadia ) tend to be worth bugger all in a fire sale, and that there are very VERY few people in Scotland who are prepared to invest heavily in a football club. If no business person in Scotland is prepared to take a punt on a cash cow like Rangers after a 4 year exposure to the market by the owner, where is the sense in busting a provincial football club? Imagine the bank force the liquidation of Kilmarnock FC? Eh what will Ernst & Young or PKF get for Rugby Park?? Does such a course of action make any sense for the Bank’s shareholders?
Further, as someone whose business is business, I am firmly of the view that the best way to recoup the banks money from any football club in debt is on a slowly but surely basis. That comes from filling seats, not from a small share of a pathetically low TV contract. Anyone who has read my “Good Morning Fatty” article on CQN Magazine will know how one businessman with experience in the EPL argues that the business of Football is all about bums on seats—not about a share of TV income. Relying on TV income in his eyes spells inevitable financial failure each and every time.
I have read on Dunfermiline FC forums that they achieved Higher attendances in certain SFL games than they did in the SPL. Games against Raith Rovers and Cowdenbeath brought a local Derby edge and so attendances were higher than for say the visit of St Mirren or Inverness in the top flight. Just watch the attendances at Inverness when Derek Adams & Co come to town next year!
At times this year, Motherwell had big increases in attendance when they dropped the entry price, and Hibs enjoyed their highest attendance of the season last night in the relegation decider against the Pars. Over 14,000 were at Easter Road last night when the game was A) Important and of Consequence and B) was not on the TV.
Again, my point is that football people will come and support a football club or watch a football match if there is something to play for, if there is an edge to the game, if the game is not on TV and most importantly THE RESULT MATTERS. You do not need Celtic or Rangers to make the games viable and profitable in Scotland, you need your own fans to care in the competition. When Hibs did suffer their relegation a few years ago, more fans turned up to watch a Hibs team actually winning in the SFL. Bums on seats makes football- nothing else.
Does anyone think that Hampden will not be full on 19th May because there will be no Celtic or Rangers? I know fans who support neither of the Edinburgh clubs who are talking of going just for the sake of the atmosphere and the spectacle—if they can get a ticket.
With respect to the Banks, if you influence the structure of the league for fear of a TV contract, and in so doing you leave the football fan—fans of all clubs—believing that in certain ways competition in the game is predetermined and not open to proper sporting integrity, then you will succeed in nothing more than chasing customers away from the market. You defeat the very business model you should have been lending against; you make your security less valuable and the possibility of actually getting your money back far more remote. That is what the bank has already done by supporting the Murray lead Rangers so heavily. Fact.
There are clever money men among the Directors of the clubs of the SPL, and I would hope that in this time of crisis someone from say a club like Celtic, would prepare a business plan for the poorer off clubs and the league as a whole which in turn could be shown to the banks so that the business idiom and argument presented by the bank can be challenged. Given that Rangers Football Club does not have a bank willing to provide ANY facilities, such a proposal would not present any conflict of interest. In fact, a business plan which preserves sporting integrity, increases overall competition, improves the chances of prize money, increases the likeliehood of fans coming to grounds over all and so improving the league must be a better business bet than a league with an already poor TV contract featuring a weakened Rangers , which kills sporting integrity and which tens of thousands of league customers have openly stated they will not financially support.
Any other business with access to such considerable market research would not ignore it—could not ignore it—- and any executive who had possession of such research should be expected to resign if he or she acts in the face of such clear evidence from their customer base. In fact ignoring such potentially damaging market research could in theory result in Directors being held to account by Shareholders who suffer loss as a result.
However, the reality is that the football fan doesn‘t really want to know about legal actions, Directors accountability, Adminsitrations, Liquidations, Hive ups, Hive Downs or any of that sort of thing.
The football fan wants to know about a game called football. A Game where the rules are applied to one and all, without fear or favour, without being influenced by outside forces such as bankers, lawyers, insolvency practitioners, courts or whoever. Where the same rules of entry, admittance and play can be relied upon by the common man whether he be at the Camp Nou or at Holm Park Yoker.
The Financial and commercial mistakes of the past are what have lead us to this mess in the first place, and it makes absolutely no sense to allow them to shape determine and dictate a drab commercial but televised future especially where they have been shown to be wrong in a business sense and where they result in the football fan feeling that the very fundamental basis of fair competition in football has become extinct. That will only drive fans away.
In the early 80’s when Aberdeen and Dundee United were at their zenith the attendances at provincial clubs were far better than they are now. Games at Celtic Park with those clubs were full of excitement, were eagerly anticipated and were full of that buzz that is needed in football. At that time, Rangers were a far weakened force in Scottish football, and it was that situation which lead to the Souness revolution and ultimately the introduction of David Murray and his “resurrection” of Rangers Football Club.
Does anyone think that the Murray plan has improved football? Does anyone think that the same plan has really improved Rangers overall? I doubt it.
I believe that in football and financial terms you only need to look back to look forward. I know things are hard all round financially. I know it is a tough decision. I know that some but not all Rangers fans will not agree with me. Yet I genuinely believe that in this instance you have to trust and appeal to the customer, the football fan. Rangers will recover and survive and even prosper if run properly and in a true sporting sense.
The SPL clubs and all of Scottish Football should just play the game. Play it fairly, with integrity. If you do that then the fans will come. Sell your soul and the only people filling the grounds will be ghosts, troubled souls and insolvency practitioners by the busload.
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That was a great read, I doff my cap, and there is hardly a thing I would criticise.
Spoken from the heart.
From a Rangers fan that wants to do the right thing, it has to be Div 3
The path of righteousness is narrow- as thin & hard as the sharpest sword made from Damascus steel- but it is the straightest Street to the bright dawn of Truth.
Or stroll the broad boulevard of easy corruption; slip smooth into the maze of its endless night: wandering lost in the warren of its darkest alleys…
i’m a man who likes to call a spade a spade…but whats a gold plated shit shovel?
No matter how Dungaster/raygun want to spin it- don’t we just know the spins gonni get gyroscopic- they are far too willing to bend over the newco barrel…a jobby in a box wrapped in a ribbon is still a jobby…
In the style of John Lee Hooker:
Oh Sally May…Sally May…
The Day is coming maybe May or June…
The Day of Judgement is coming soon…
You’ve got a no good business…
Ain’t no good for your happiness…
Oh Sally May…Sally May…
You ought to change your way…