News that Hearts are set to go into administration today will give Scottish football has yet another morality lesson to consider, but this time, there will be no pleas for rule changes, no lobbying by the massed ranks of the media for other clubs to ‘do the right thing for Scottish football’, as opposed to the actual right thing. Hearts will face their fate with a straight bat.
This is an unusual football insolvency. Normally clubs go into administration when they cannot cut costs quickly enough to satisfy a creditor but on this occasion it was the way the club’s debt was structured which caused the problem.
While Celtic have long term loans with fixed repayment terms stretching years into the future, Hearts owed money to their own shareholders, most of which was repayable on demand (as almost all non-term loan bank borrowing is). If Hearts shareholder-creditors had issued loans instead of an overdraft, as long as the club continued to make repayments administration would not be on the table.
Ukio Bankas and UBIG, once both controlled by Vladimir Romanov now both insolvent, extended generous credit to the club without the formalities of an agreed repayment schedule. This informality led to their ultimate downfall.
I’ve read interesting views elsewhere that the absence of Rangers International from the SPL has claimed a further victim but there is no evidence to suggest that RI FC playing in the SPL would have sufficiently supported the Lithuanian property and investment market to prevent the collapse of the country’s banking system.
As far as we are concerned it is business as usual but there could be a crunch coming. All we can do is look after Celtic (principally by buying season tickets, never underestimate how important this is) and let nature take its course. If the crunch comes to Kilmarnock (I know, how would this be possible with a sharp kid like Michael Johnston in charge?), St Mirren, Motherwell and others, the game here needs to come up with something more radical than a unitary league body. Any ideas? I’ve one.
You can buy Willie Wallace’ autobiography below:
[calameo code=0003901713852289beccb lang=en page=12 hidelinks=1 width=100% height=500]
1,023 Comments- Pages:
- «
- 1
- ...
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- »
There is a line in that last youtube link
‘even hearts are still afloat’
Drambowiecelt
01:21 on 19 June, 2013
ok. ramorra brur.
CSCquantizedtimeunit
clunk you still there? can you link a song called the baby?
hollies.
Mags, I tried to read the link and got this message:
“This page is forcing your browser to use legacy mode, which is not compatible with Disqus. Please see our troubleshooting guide to get more information about this error”.
Does this mean we have to travel in separate cabins?
Drambowie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esnbZZzqZLY
It says its in HD, did they have that in 1972?
CSCquantizedtimeunitindeed
Dear Mag please hold me close ,you seem to relay the feelings of all the Glasgow Celtic
support . is it your alluring charm ?is it your proverbial scent that excludes men from the well being of their existence ?or is it just that they don’t spell so well my love.
Top drawer clunks thank you. what a song Alan Clarke had left them and they had to come up with something
you ok mag? theres a new kid on the block in fact 8 new kids are you ready?
Clunks, total belter:-). My favourite is this, More than A Hero
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HyPCe73fdw
Closely followed by Stadium of Silence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylucI-soxJ4
With an all time classic BN chucked in to remind everyone of the way the huns behave both in and outside of Glasgow. This is what we have to look forward to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZMR3Xt1NIY
Lets hope it doesn’t come to this and that they get pumped senseless in the diddy leagues and never darken our door in their latest guise.
A Ceiler Gonof Rust
01:26 on 19 June, 2013
Now is the winter of our disqus tech.
use firefox.
ACGR
More than a smile. classic, going on facebook just now.emailed that to my dad who works abroad. hun spam filter wasnt happy.
From east to West to north and south
ACGR
Billy Nowell. might be a modern tim john lennon.
works for me.
ACGR
You have to admire the thought and genius that goes into the writing of the songs.
Class
And it makes me wonder
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxfniXCwrJA
http://www.dutchfootball-league.com/talent-scout-virgil-van-dijk/
Article on Virgil, can we just call him Dick, van Dijk from a Dutch blog.
This was written back in 2004 (not by me). If you want to read the rest of it, and see what the author suggests as part solution, then go to the Scottish Government archive HERE and you can save it in PDF format.
Introduction
It is clear Scottish Football is in crisis and has been for years. From a viewpoint that is both unique and unusual I would like to offer the Enquiry Into the State of Scottish Football my analysis of how we arrived in this parlous situation. I also hope that I can help offer the beginnings of a way out of this mess.
My name is Ged O’Brien. Until February 6th, 2004 I was the Project Director of the Scottish Football Association Museum Trust, known as the Scottish Football Museum (SFM). I had been employed full time on the project to build a national football museum since 1993, but I had been working on the project as a consultant since 1990.
As the Project Director I was responsible for finding the money to build the Museum. When the Museum was linked with the project to rebuild the South Stand at Hampden Park, I became involved in the Millennium Fund application for the entire Stand.
From 1993 I worked closely with the SFA (then at Park Gardens) and later Queens Park Football Club (QPFC) and the National Stadium plc (TNS). I came to understand much of the workings of Scottish Football.
As I have recently requested an enquiry into the running of the SFM from the Officer of the Scottish Charities Regulator, I will limit my comments here to how the SFM linked to the SFA. A copy of my request for an enquiry into the SFM has been deposited with the Scottish Executive.
Historical Overview
The Scottish Football Association was founded in 1873. The driving force behind it was Queen’s Park FC (founded 1867). QPFC saw the need for a national association for two main reasons: a) to run the international team and b) to organise a national cup competition. They turned down the suggestion from others that they run football in a similar way to which the Marylebone Cricket Club once ran English Cricket. They had no desire to act as the governing body as well as be a constituent member of the SFA.
QPFC’s motto was ‘Ludere Causa Ludendi‘ (The Game for the Game’s Sake). This sentiment was entirely fitting for an amateur club in an amateur era. All Scottish clubs were amateur, which meant that the SFA was founded by organisations who all had the same core philosophy. This maximised harmony in an inherently competitive organisation.
In a pragmatic sense harmony also was ensured because QPFC were the mightiest club in the world with a membership of 800+. (150 was a good figure at the time.) It is doubtful if too many other clubs felt they could challenge what QPFC might regard as ‘good for the game’ in the 1870s and 80s.
This situation continued for the first ten years of the SFA’s existence. Problems were initially created by the onset of professionalism in England in 1885. As Scotland had invented the modern world passing game the ‘Scotch Professors’ had been moving to England in their droves to train players and clubs in the new style. The Scottish game became weakened as scouts and club officials flooded into the big towns and cities to entice players south. This situation was exacerbated by the attraction of being paid in England to play football.
At first the SFA tried to hold back reality by ‘blacklisting’ players who were known to have turned professional in England. This had no effect and did not stem the tide. The posters of the lists of banned players are early testimony to the SFA’s futile efforts to ignore a wider reality beyond their control.
Matters were made more complicated in 1890 when the Scottish Football League was founded. QPFC refused to join the League, as they viewed it as a precursor to and enabler of professionalism in Scotland. Clubs needed to retain rosters of players who would have to train intensively to meet the challenge of regular games over a season. This could only be done if players gave up ordinary employment and devoted themselves to their club. In turn clubs had to pay the players to ensure their loyalty in the provision of contracts.
QPFC were correct in their prediction. Many clubs such as Glasgow Celtic had been paying players covertly. Reality was accepted by the SFA in 1893, when Scotland embraced professionalism. QPFC found that their old friends who joined the League quickly decided it was more important than friendlies and the Spiders’ match card diminished. In 1900 they were obliged to join the League, whilst maintaining their amateur principles.
With paid players both sides of the Border, the structure of the game moved out of synch with the original principles of club football. Very quickly power moved to the large clubs in urban areas. They could provide the large grounds, attendances and money which would attract the best players.
In the 1880s arguably the three best teams in the world came from a small area of Dunbartonshire: Vale of Leven, Dumbarton and Renton (World Club Champions
1888). Each club was in a town of about 6,000. This was insufficient to provide the wealth for a professional football club.
Even before overt professionalism, Renton saw their best players tempted away by large clubs such as Aston Villa and Celtic. This trend accelerated after professionalism became official. Small town clubs lost players to city clubs and Scottish clubs lost players to English cities. Renton no longer exist, Vale were reborn in the 20th Century as a Junior Club and Dumbarton have gone from League Champions in 1891 and 1892 to stalwarts of the lower divisions in the 21st Century.
In this new era, paranoia and suspicion must have occurred. No longer did a player stay with his club because there was no incentive to move: money became the driving force. The structure of football from 1893 was no longer suitable. However, nothing changed structurally. The SFA was still a body founded by clubs, who delegated Directors to serve on committees. If that was not the case, Directors were delegated to serve on SFA committees through being members of the Scottish Football League or minor associations such as the Junior FA.
It is extremely difficult to believe that any club director would dismiss the bias they had had ingrained in them through decades of fighting to keep their club alive, to become disinterested committee members the moment they walked through the doors of Carlton Place or Park Gardens.
A good example of the problem lay in the group who chose the international team. A gathering of SFA committee men picked the squad until the late 1950s, when the Manager was given full powers of selection. Until that time players were chosen by the most strong minded and persuasive members of committee. There was a strong degree of horse trading concluded between members e.g. ‘I’ll vote for your
goalkeeper if you vote for my inside right’. This might explain why the greatest Scottish goalscorer of all time: Jimmy McGrory only won seven caps in the 1920s and 30s.
Yet again we see an SFA function being irrelevant to the contemporary situation, yet being maintained decades after its usefulness had gone. By the 1930s, when Celtic and Rangers had attained the dominance they still enjoy, it is extremely hard to perceive how they could determine many links between their business model and that of a lower league team. It is even more difficult to see an empathy with the arguments of a representative of a minor association which still operated within an amateur ethos. That it happened at all would have been down to the personal views of individuals within the game e.g. Sir Robert Kelly of Celtic expressing concern that TV would harm small clubs the most.
With the rise of European football as a money spinner and source of stronger competition, it is easy to see how Rangers and Celtic allowed the Glasgow Charity Cup and Glasgow Cup to wither as major tournaments. They might have been important parts of football’s cultural life before World War II: they ceased to be priorities for large clubs: particularly the Old Firm. In this sense all SFL clubs would have developed the same attitude to their County Cup competitions: all of which are now minor affairs or defunct. The size and beauty of the trophies are mute testimony to the importance they once held in their localities.
Nothing remains forever. The same battle is now being played out in the increasing dominance of European Club competition. This will be to the almost certain detriment of minor domestic leagues and minor domestic cup competitions. The Scottish League Cup will go the same way as the Glasgow Charity Cup and the Inter-City League.
Currently the Old Firm remain as colossi. They have won more than 65% of all domestic competitions. They account for the large majority of fans who attend football on any weekend. As money is attracted to them, other teams are weakened, so providing less competition in a League which Celtic and Rangers already disdain. It is difficult to see how the cycle can be broken under the current structure.
This is one of the many crises which Scottish Football faces. Other countries have similar discrepancies of success (Norway, Netherlands, Portugal) but it is at its most stark in Scotland. On the one hand it is known that situations change. Problems occur in football where change is not planned but comes about as a result of short term arguments and self interest.
On a related point it is known that that critical situations which remain unmanaged, quickly spin out of control to the detriment of all. The current unresolved situation over promotion and relegation in the Scottish Premier League (SPL) is rooted in actions taken years ago with insufficient regard for the long term consequences of those actions.
The Chicago White Sox Paradigm
The fact that the White Sox Paradigm relates to American Baseball does not detract from the core principles which were at stake in the early twentieth century. The way in which Baseball solved its problems should be a lesson to Scottish Football.
Members of the Chicago White Sox agreed to throw the 1919 World Series as part of a betting scam. Their opponents were the Cincinnati Reds. When the scandal was discovered it led to sweeping changes in the way Baseball was run. It was realised that a governing body made up of clubs was incapable ultimately of running itself, such were the irreconcilable differences between them. Ironically it is suggested that the Cincinnati Reds’ owner slowed up an enquiry into the 1919 World Series because he could not believe that another Club would do such a thing as throw a competition.
To negate the problem, the clubs decided to appoint their first commissioner: Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, to whom they gave total power. He served from November 1920 until his death in November 1944. Landis’ powers were too wide and he used them in a draconian manner against the accused players who were actually acquitted in a court of law. Nevertheless, a strong body of opinion argues in hindsight that his actions over the ensuing decades restored public confidence in baseball.
The principle has remained to this day: that a disinterested person, with wide ranging powers, beholden to no club or sectional interest can and should run a sport for the good of all. It is clear that this is a situation that applied in Scottish Football to a great extent until the resignation of Jim Farry in 1999. It no longer operates due to a massive change in the management and power structure of the SFA.
Jim Farry and his predecessors acted in effect as Football Commissioners, through their personal drive and unparalleled knowledge of the rules. Each Secretary was followed by a like minded man. Currently power is vested in a virtually full-time President working with a ten man Board of Directors. The board have legal power and responsibility to run the SFA.
Good God, if you want to look at the behaviour of the hun support in the riot they caused in Romania on Utube you have to set up an account and prove you’re over eighteen. I didn’t realise there would be actual goat molestation involved.
This is the closest I could find without a night of internet sign-in ins or breaking the flimsy laws.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGtUQcdLhU4
Well done to Madness in describing these sub cultured members of our beautiful country.
Celtic Champions
Mags, you internet techies gie me the boak and the occasional stiffie.
Asking me to use firefox is like asking a hun to understand what administration and liquidation means.
There are some things in life that thick huns will never get, but I’ll check out this fox with an open mind and some scraps of food.
Hail Hail Bruv:-)
In 2014 Glasgow will host the Commonwealth Games, welcoming thousands of athletes and visitors from around the world. Yet as this, the fourth in-depth urban study in the acclaimed Played in Britain series reveals, Glasgow has long been at the forefront of sporting development.
It is well documented – if not always acknowledged south of the border – that the modern form of Association football owes its origins to the ‘passing game’ of Queen’s Park FC in the 1870s, and that by the early 20th century Glasgow’s three leading football clubs had the largest stadiums in the world. Nor is it a coincidence that the world’s first specialist stadium designer was a Glaswegian engineer.
But beyond Hampden Park and the famed (and often infamous) rivalry of Celtic and Rangers, there exists across Glasgow a fascinating network of Junior clubs, community grounds and hidden heritage. The red, dusty ‘blaes’ pitch – scourge of many a schoolboy’s knees – is as much a part of that heritage as are the swards of Glasgow Green.
Over the last century Glasgow has had three racecourses and eight greyhound tracks. It has a surprising number of long established cricket clubs, and a range of fine Edwardian and Art Deco pavilions too. It was in Glasgow in 1848 that the rules of modern bowling were set out – leading to a higher concentration of greens in the city than anywhere else in Britain. The most popular of these greens, laid out on the site of the 1901 Kelvingrove International Exhibition, will host the 2014 Commonwealth Games tournament. Also in Glasgow is the world’s oldest manufacturer of bowls equipment, Thomas Taylor.
As might be expected in Scotland, the map of Glasgow is dotted and ringed by a web of nearly 40 public and private golf courses, many with their own topographic quirks and interesting clubhouses. Less evidence survives of nearly a hundred former curling ponds, although author Ged O’Brien has discovered the 1902 clubhouse of the Partick Club, hidden away in a Glasgow park. O’Brien also reveals where Britain’s first black footballer lived in the 1880s when he captained Queen’s Park and was capped by Scotland, and the site of the private swimming club where the sport of water polo was invented in 1877. Two other Victorian private baths clubs survive and thrive – the Arlington and the Western – each with original features not to be found anywhere outside Scotland. Less well known is a network of home-made ‘doocots’, built by rival pigeon-fanciers on wastegrounds across the city as part of a time-honoured local tradition. O’Brien enters this secretive world to explain how it is done.
With its accessible blend of social, cultural, historical and architectural detail, backed up by stunning archive and modern photography and maps, Played in Glasgow offers a new angle on the city’s rich heritage as it prepares the next generation of 21st Century sporting facilities for 2014.
Played in Glasgow is sponsored by Historic Scotland and Glasgow City Council.
Played in Glasgow was written by Ged O’Brien and can be viewed and boughtHERE
A Stor Mo Chroi, Regarding your post at 02.03, is it available on kindle?
A Ceiler Gonof Rust:
If you click the link mate it’ll open in PDF format (free). I’m a pauper, Kindle is for posh people, or so I was told.
Clunks at 01.55, brilliant and I’m still listening now as I post back to you. I never saw them live, my maw wouldn’t let me get on the bus to Knebworth. Just one of the reasons I still want to kill her. She let my older bro go and he’s a strawberry short of a full fruit salad and only eleven months older (da rithem system fails again).
Other than that I love ma dear auld maw…………………………………
Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!
HAW:-)
A Stor Mo Chroi, I’m pulling your chain bud. I just canny read long posts at this time of the day.
The kindle thing was a wee joke.
Hail Hail Bruv, I love your work..
.
Paul67..
Could You pass on My Email to RioSkorrie l seem to have Lost His..TIA..
BhoysOfOz@gmail.com
Summa
I love all the angst about hooper and big vic but I cant help just being a celtic supporter and trusting in our manager and JP to provide us with the necessary combatants to deal with what’s ahead next season.
They know we must be ready for Europe and I’ll put my trust in them to make it so. They better not let us down
In Lennon and Celtic I trust to take us forward in football.
As for the off field responsibilities of our board and the discontent around saying fuck all about the way they’ve behaved in light of the work done by people like Auldheid, Phil McG, AT et al. I’ll now put some faith in Neil Canamalar. Its’s good to see he’s got his stuff together and has focused on something positive instead of his angry self defecating posts.
Canamalar, I’ll hold true to my earlier post and I expect you to do likewise. I’ll see you in paradise when you present your question to Peter Lawwell.
Goodnight Celtic men and wummin
We Are Celtic (copyrite of The Black Knight)
Now don’t go taking this out of context, this is just a tiny part of the study, I just found the quote ever so candid. It is part of the report An Examination of the Evidence on Sectarianism in Scotland, not the 2003 report but the right up to date one.
A Ceiler Gonof Rust:
No worries, but consider yourself lucky I never posted that full report mentioned in my last post. There’d be no golf for you for the rest of the summer if I had.
‘
I can’t post long posts anymore, when I try, they get taken hostage by the ‘in moderation’ mujahideen, and they just fade away in a cyber Guantanamo Bay.
a ceiler gonof rust
03:16 on 19 June, 2013
When I read self defecating I thought you meant self deprecating.
Then I realised you cleverly meant what I read first time.
Morning,all.
Dunno if this has been mentioned yet,but looks like Sourhampton are after one of our players-and it ain’t Hooper…..
http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/sport/spl/4974860/Hoops-braced-for-record-bid-for-Victor-Wanyama.html
It’s in The Sun,so it must be true!
B.M.
Sun,same page,can`t decide if Gary Hooper is a striker,frontman or a midfielder.
Good morning all from a cloudy but still bright, calm and very pleasant EK.
!!Bada Bing!!
14:26 on
18 June, 2013…………and Magnus.
Macjay-Rogic will be a cert to start next summer,an ageing midfield will get overrun.Depressing to watch Iraq with average age of under 21,dive ,cheat and timewaste as if it’s second nature.
Lads,Rogic transformed the approach from the minute he came on.
Classy player who ,in the middle of a melee,seems to have all the time in the world.
It was inexplicable to me why Osiek played wee Cahill ,as the single frontman,against a large clugger,in a game we needed to win.
Oar and Kruse were marked out of the game because they were the successes against Jordan.Predictable.
Osiek brought on Josh Kennedy and Tom Rogic,thereby solving a problem of his own making.
Nae matter,we`re on our way to Rio.
BMCUWP
£10m …do one
Wanyama is better than Southampton ….
Macjay
Congrats to Aus ….looking forward to watching Rogic in the World Cup ..I always have an interest in CFC players playing in tournaments
Good morning CQNers,
A Stor Mo Chroi, Some things never change
http://belfastmediagroup.com/union-jacks-over-council-property/
But, then again some things do change
http://belfastmediagroup.com/close-up-census-figures-are-revealing-2/
However, as the Scottish catholic population amounts to around only 16% I’m afraid that simple statistical fact will determine the sociopolitical direction in Scotland for many years to come and I’m afraid that 66 year old you quoted above is not solitary old fool.
—–
Reading the latest tranche of ‘Charlotte’s’ releases just shows the depth of the of media manipulation network that is Murray’s legacy. I wouldn’t be surprised if the 2 complaints investigated by the BBC (Hen!rik @ 20.03) were also orchestrated by this grouping.
I do hope Camalmar is successful in forcing our board to grasp this golden opportunity to generate a belated Celtic opinion to the malaise in Scottish football, for if they don’t I fear Paul67’s pleas for SB renewal will fall on many deaf ears.
—–
Funnily enough I always read Kojo’s posts with a Scottish accent in mind, well surprise, surprise, in future I’ll read them with an English accent in mind but I’m not sure whether it’ll Geordie or west country.
Morning CQN
Gonna be a busy day so got my bets for Ascot on early. Anyone know of a 50/1 cert, please post it here.
2.30. Gale force ten @4/1
3.05. Chigun @7/2
3.45 Al Kazeem @9/4
4.25. Stirring Ballad @ 8/1.
5.00 Sweet Emma Rose ew @16/1
5.35 Bracing Breeze @8/1.
Good luck with the punting bhoys. Someone will surely get rich today, lets hope it’s one of us.
The findings of the BBC ESC are ridiculous ..
One has to wonder upon what basis they reached their conclusions ….did they seek guidance from UEFA …or is it simply hunguffery for the masses
Twisty
Bets on …50p ew acc … 10p ew Heinz …£90k….return
Ill get you a drink if they come in :-))