Fan power begins to flex its muscle

I am sure Neil Doncaster’s job is full of stresses and strains but this week will probably be a breeze.  Fans of every club in the league appear to be in uproar at the resolutions for an Insolvency Transfer Event to be voted on later this month. Infuriating everyone is surely better than infuriating most but leaving one group happy.

Fans of 11 SPL clubs have reacted in horror that the league seek to introduce a facility to allow a liquidated club to phoenix straight back into the top tier of Scottish football.  Fans of Rangers, while along with administrators and bidders for the club are publicly opposed to liquidation, are outraged that this new facility to allow a new club entry to the SPL should carry a sporting and financial inhibitor.

For clarification: the inhibitor is there to ensure clubs have a modicum of moral hazard against gaining an unfair advantage before ditching creditors and their old skins, and emerging in the SPL with player registrations from another club but without the debts or consequences of mismanagement.

Rangers US and Singapore based bidders seem unperturbed by the proposals.  Paul Murray’s Blue Knights consortium has curiously lost its tongue.  Maybe this helps explain all those years when the EBTs were unopposed by the former Rangers board.  Silence, not even an utterance!

There remains three possible outcomes to this issue:

The proposed SPL resolutions will be passed, allowing a Newco straight entry to the League.

The resolutions will fail and the SPL board will vote a Newco into the league anyway.

The resolutions will fail and the SPL board will deny Newco a place in the league.

Celtic Quick News first flagged this scenario in October last year when we predicted Newco would be given a parachute into the SPL, opposed only by Celtic.  As the key resolution (2A) requires only 8 votes I still expect this to happen, despite the ‘Bring it on’ view of many Rangers fans to the prospect of starting again from Division Three.

As the financial penalty resolution (2B) requires 11 votes I expect this to fail and no financial penalties to be imposed.

The question for Kilmarnock, Dunfermline, St Mirren, Inverness, Motherwell, St Johnstone, Hibs and Kilmarnock (don’t tell me they’ll not try to get two votes, they have a huge mountain of debt to service and have every right to demand two votes) is, will they listen to their fans or their bank manager?

Dundee United and Hearts, like North Korea, appear convinced of their own superior wisdom and, like a North Korean missile, could head off in any random direction to demonstrate their contempt for clubs scared of providing satirists with material.  They could easily vote themselves into a Gorgie-Tannadice League, if they could agree on a Gorgie-Tannadice/Tannadice-Gorgie naming convention.

For now, if you care about any of this, participate in the online SPL Fan Survey.  We’ll soon find out who runs Scottish football, fans or the Bank of Scotland! One additional point about democracy, it carries responsibility. In this instance, stopping Newco means fans of all remaining clubs have to step forward in increasing numbers to buy season tickets. This is the cost of sporting integrity.

Can you write an article for CQN Magazine? Give me a shout, celticquicknews@gmail.com

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