I see Leeds United are being held up as a model for Rangers to liquidate and emerge as a new club. Leeds United’s circumstances are highly unlikely to bear any relationship with those at Rangers unless Duff and Phelps can agree a Creditors Voluntary Arrangement.
Leeds United AFC Ltd entered administration in the control of KPMG Restructuring on 4 May 2007 and on the same day were sold to a new company Leeds United Football Club Ltd subject to a Creditors Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) being agreed. Both Leeds United AFC Ltd and Leeds United FC Ltd were controlled by Ken Bates.
A CVA requires 75% of creditors (by value) to vote to accept a reduced percentage of the money they are owed. The company was forced to act as HMRC, who were owed in excess of £6m, had issued a winding up petition which was due to expire on 25 June 2007.
Before creditors voted on the CVA several other bidders came forward with offers for the club, however, the vote, on 1 June 2007, returned 75.02% of creditors accepting the CVA offer (75.20% after a recount).
Creditors can challenge a CVA within 28 days of the vote. On the 28th day, 3 July 2007, HMRC challenged. With the CVA subject to a challenge, KPMG asked for further offers for the company to be submitted by 9 July 2007. Despite the extended offer period, the administrators still accepted the offer from Ken Bates Leeds United FC Ltd.
With a CVA agreed, subject to challenge, the Football League transferred Leeds United AFC’s league share to Leeds United FC Ltd under its “exceptional circumstances” provision. The League imposed a 15 point penalty on the club for the 2007-08 season for failing to satisfy the outstanding legal challenge in time, necessitating the ‘exceptional circumstances’ rule.
HMRC withdrew their objection to the CVA the following month. Leeds United subsequently appealed against their 15 point penalty citing a CVA had been agreed and that the league programme does not allow time for spurious challenges to be dealt with. The Football League refused the appeal.
Believing Football League procedures were at fault, not their own behaviour, Leeds United served the League with a High Court writ to challenge the points deduction, however, both parties agreed to abide by the findings of an arbitration panel hearing.
The arbitration panel found against Leeds United citing the following two reasons:
A director of Leeds United FC signed an earlier agreement not to commence any proceedings against the League.
Leeds United waited 7 months before commencing the action, which brought unnecessary sporting consequences on other promotion chasing clubs, specifically Doncaster Rovers, who would no longer be in an automatic promotion spot if Leeds’ 15 points were restored.
In summary:
Leeds United AFC Ltd’s administrators achieved the necessary 75% support for a CVA.
They withstood the challenge from HMRC, paid creditors and concluded the transfer of assets, including League share, to Leeds United FC Ltd, according to the terms of the CVA before winding up the old company. No loose ends were left.
This is not a Liquidator’s Charter. Provisions in football only exist to transfer a League share from one company to another if creditors are satisfied, either by being paid in full or, as with Leeds United, with 75% agreeing to accept a diminished amount.
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troops any ideas who i should follow on twatter. cant get my head round it
Dharma Bam
very much so …. forget about copying it unless you have a good video camera
Hail Hail
It must be a Jaconelli’s T-shirt on Saturday, with raspberry on it as well. Mmmmmm
Thanks.
A wee visit to amazon and ebay is in order…
JaggedTimeLapseCSC
DECLAN
If yer trying to get your head round a twatter,yer doing it wrong.
Get yer bud Beano to show some of his specialist movies,sorry,I meant specialist moves.
Sixteen roads to Golgotha on 4 April, 2012 at 14:18 said:
“12 noon kick-off for the Kille game? WTF is that all about?”
To be fair, I think they may have moved it forward so that some of us could get home in time for the Easter Vigil …
FF
Ho hum, still at a loose end.
I was thinking of writing a blockbuster based on the Rangers financial collapse; but I’m not sure if the title ‘orange crush’ or ‘orange squash’ will go down well.
So in the meantime I flicked through my travelogue album and it reminded me of the great pleasure to be gleaned from swapping knowledge and skills between cultures.
While staying in a village just inside Namibia, the local big cheese there ‘Matusi’ (I can’t vouch for the spelling) who had been educated in Edinburgh showed me how to survive in the bush and desert with only my wits and wiles to reap sustenance from the arid ground.
In return I showed his seven daughters and seven wives (aye ye can take the man out of Auld Reekie……..) how to transform a simple roughly hewn bit of Zulu furniture into a work of magnificent art and a treasure that would light up their lives for years to come.
I had already been given the moniker ‘rain God’ because wherever I went the clouds would cascade like the Victoria falls, but now they marvelled at my upholstery and feng shui magic.
I believe they still tell folk tales and sing songs in honour of me. Anyway….you too can learn this secret skill by having a look at the utilitarian ‘before’ bland bit of decor and the ‘After’ masterpiece from the mind of a black belt in whittling and embroidery.
Please keep the applause muted as I am mow back to my keepy up practice.
A master at work
Later I will show you what I van do with a cushion, balloon, long piece of rubber tubing and twenty three Celtic Programmes from 1988.
Hail Hail
Estadio
2010 Never Again
Amazing article
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
BARCELONA’S SECRET TO SOCCER SUCCESS
Simon Kuper
March 22, 2012
We all see that Barcelona are brilliant. The only problem is understanding just how they do it. That’s where my friend Albert Capellas comes in. Whenever he and I run into each other somewhere in Europe, we talk about Barça. Not many people know the subject better.
Capellas is now assistant manager at Vitesse Arnhem in Holland, but before that he was coordinator of Barcelona’s great youth academy, the Masia. He helped bring a boy named Sergio Busquets from a rough local neighbourhood to Barça. He trained Andres Iniesta and Victor Valdes in their youth teams. In all, Capellas worked nine years for his hometown club.
During our last conversation, over espressos in an Arnhem hotel, I had several “Aha” moments. I have watched Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona umpteen times, but only now am I finally beginningto see. Guardiola’s Barcelona are great not merely because they have great players. They also have great tactics – different not just from any other team today, but also different from Barcelona teams pre-Guardiola. Barça are now so drilled on the field that in some ways they are more like an American gridiron football team than a soccer one.
Before getting into the detail of their game, it’s crucial to understand just how much of it comes from Guardiola. When a Barcelona vice president mused to me four years ago that she’d like to see the then 37-year-old Pep be made head coach, I never imagined it would happen. Guardiola was practically a novice. The only side he had ever coached was Barça’s second team.
However, people in the club who had worked with him – men like the club’s then president Joan Laporta, and the then director of football Txiki Beguiristain – had already clocked him as special. Not only did Guardiola know Barcelona’s house style inside out. He also knew how it could be improved.
Guardiola once compared Barcelona’s style to a cathedral. Johan Cruijff, he said, as Barça’s supreme player in the 1970s and later as coach, had built the cathedral. The task of those who came afterwards was to renovate and update it. Guardiola is always looking for updates. If a random person in the street says something interesting about the game, Guardiola listens.
He thinks about football all the time. He took ideas from another Dutch Barcelona manager, Louis van Gaal, but also from his years playing for Brescia and Roma in Italy, the home of defence. Yet because Guardiola has little desire to explain his ideas to the media, you end up watching Barça without a codebook.
Cruijff was perhaps the most original thinker in football’s history, but most of his thinking was about attack. He liked to say that he didn’t mind conceding three goals, as long as Barça scored five. Well, Guardiola also wanted to score five, but he minded conceding even one. If Barcelona is a cathedral, Guardiola has added the buttresses. In Barça’s first 28 league games this season, they have let in only 22 goals. Here are some of “Pep”’s innovations, or the secrets of FC Barcelona:
1. Pressure on the ball
Before Barcelona played Manchester United in the Champions League final at Wembley last May, Alex Ferguson said that the way Barça pressured their opponents to win the ball back was “breathtaking”. That, he said, was Guardiola’s innovation. Ferguson admitted that United hadn’t known how to cope with it in the Champions League final in Rome in 2009. He thought it would be different at Wembley. It wasn’t.
Barcelona start pressing (hunting for the ball) the instant they lose possession. That is the perfect time to press because the opposing player who has just won the ball is vulnerable. He has had to take his eyes off the game to make his tackle or interception, and he has expended energy. That means he is unsighted, and probably tired. He usually needs two or three seconds to regain his vision of the field. So Barcelona try to dispossess him before he can give the ball to a better-placed team mate.
Furthermore, if the guy won the ball back in his own defence, and Barcelona can instantly win it back again, then the way to goal is often clear. This is where Lionel Messi’s genius for tackling comes in. The little man has such quick reflexes that he sometimes wins a tackle a split-second after losing one.
The Barcelona player who lost the ball leads the hunt to regain it. But he never hunts alone. His teammates near the ball join him. If only one or two Barça players are pressing, it’s too easy for the opponent to pass around them.
2. The “five-second rule”
If Barça haven’t won the ball back within five seconds of losing it, they then retreat and build a compact ten-man wall. The distance between the front man in the wall (typically Messi) and their last defender (say, Carles Puyol) is only 25 to 30 metres. It’s hard for any opponent to pass their way through such a small space.
The Rome final was a perfect demonstration of Barcelona’s wall: whenever United won the ball and kept it, they faced eleven precisely positioned opponents, who stood there and said, in effect: “Try and get through this.”
It’s easy for Barcelona to be compact, both when pressing and when drawing up their wall, because their players spend most of the game very near each other. Xavi and Iniesta in particular seldom stray far from the ball.
Cruijff recently told the former England manager Steve McClaren, now with FC Twente in Holland: “Do you know how Barcelona win the ball back so quickly? It’s because they don’t have to run back more than 10 metres as they never pass the ball more than 10 metres.”
3. More rules of pressing
Once Barcelona have built their compact wall, they wait for the right moment to start pressing again. They don’t choose the moment on instinct. Rather, there are very precise prompts that tell them when to press. One is if an opponent controls the ball badly. If the ball bounces off his foot, he will need to look downwards to locate it, and at that moment he loses his overview of the pitch. That’s when the nearest Barcelona players start hounding him.
There’s another set prompt for Barça to press: when the opposing player on the ball turns back towards his own goal. When he does that, he narrows his options: he can no longer pass forward, unless Barcelona give him time to turn around again. Barcelona don’t give him time. Their players instantly hound the man, forcing him to pass back, and so they gain territory.
4. The “3-1 rule”
If an opposing player gets the ball anywhere near Barcelona’s penalty area, then Barça go Italian. They apply what they call the “3-1 rule”: one of Barcelona’s four defenders will advance to tackle the man with the ball, and the other three defenders will assemble in a ring about two or three metres behind the tackler. That provides a double layer of protection. Guardiola picked this rule up in Italy. It’s such a simple yet effective idea that you wonder why all top teams don’t use it.
5. No surprise
When Barcelona win the ball, they do something unusual. Most leading teams treat the moment the ball changes hands – “turnover”, as it’s called in basketball – as decisive. At that moment, the opponents are usually out of position, and so if you can counterattack quickly, you have an excellent chance of scoring.
Teams like Manchester United and Arsenal often try to score in the first three seconds after winning possession. So their player who wins the ball often tries to hit an instant splitting pass. Holland – Barcelona’s historic role models – do this too.
But when a Barcelona player wins the ball, he doesn’t try for a splitting pass. The club’s attitude is: he has won the ball, that’s a wonderful achievement, and he doesn’t need to do anything else special. All he should do is slot the ball simply to the nearest teammate. Barcelona’s logic is that in winning the ball, the guy has typically forfeited his vision of the field. So he is the worst-placed player to hit a telling ball.
This means that Barcelona don’t rely on the element of surprise. They take a few moments to get into formation, and then pretty much tell their opponents, “OK, here we come.” The opposition knows exactly what Barça are going to do. The difficulty is stopping it.
The only exception to this rule is if the Barça player wins the ball near the opposition’s penalty area. Then he goes straight for goal.
6. Possession is nine-tenths of the game
Keeping the ball has been Barcelona’s key tactic since Cruijff’s day. Most teams don’t worry about possession. They know you can have oodles of possession and lose. But Barcelona aim to have 65 or 70 per cent of possession in a game. Last season in Spain, they averaged more than 72 per cent; so far this year, they are at about 70 per cent.
The logic of possession is twofold. Firstly, while you have the ball, the other team can’t score. A team like Barcelona, short on good tacklers, needs to defend by keeping possession. As Guardiola has remarked, they are a “horrible” team without the ball.
Secondly, if Barça have the ball, the other team has to chase it, and that is exhausting. When the opponents win it back, they are often so tired that they surrender it again immediately. Possession gets Barcelona into a virtuous cycle.
Barça are so fanatical about possession that a defender like Gerald Pique will weave the most intricate passes inside his own penalty area rather than boot the ball away. In almost all other teams, the keeper at least is free to boot.
In the England side, for instance, it’s typically Joe Hart who gives the ball away with a blind punt. This is a weakness of England’s game, but the English attitude seems to be that there is nothing to be done about it: keepers can’t pass. Barcelona think differently.
Jose Mourinho, Real Madrid’s coach and Barcelona’s nemesis, has tried to exploit their devotion to passing. In the Bernabeu in December, Madrid’s forwards chased down Valdes from the game’s first kickoff, knowing he wouldn’t boot clear. The keeper miscued a pass, and Karim Benzema scored after 23 seconds. Yet Valdes kept passing, and Barcelona won 1-3. The trademark of Barcelona-raised goalkeepers – one shared only by Ajax-raised goalkeepers, like Edwin van der Sar – is that they can all play football like outfield players.
7. The “one-second rule”
No other football team plays the Barcelona way. That’s a strength, but it’s also a weakness. It makes it very hard for Barça to integrate outsiders into the team, because the outsiders struggle to learn the system. Barcelona had a policy of buying only “Top Ten” players – men who arguably rank among the ten best footballers on earth – yet many of them have failed in the Nou Camp.
Thierry Henry and Zlatan Ibrahimovic did, while even David Villa, who knew Barcelona’s game from playing it with Spain, ended up on the bench before breaking his leg.
Joan Oliver, Barcelona’s previous chief executive, explained the risk of transfers by what he called the “one-second rule”. The success of a move on the pitch is decided in less than a second. If a player needs a few extra fractions of a second to work out where his teammate is going, because he doesn’t know the other guy’s game well, the move will usually break down. A new player can therefore lose you a match in under a second.
Pedro isn’t a great footballer, but because he was raised in the Masia he can play Barcelona’s game better than stars from outside. The boys in the Masia spend much of their childhood playing passing games, especially Cruijff’s favorite, six against three. Football, Cruijff once said, is choreography.
Nobody else thinks like that. That’s why most of the Barcelona side is homegrown. It’s more a necessity than a choice. Still, most of the time it works pretty well.
A big thanks to the bhoys for the advice . re budapest visit .
oldtim67 . God good to hear from you , was speaking to blantyretim on sunday at the game ,he grassed you in for being a member of the prawn sandwich brigade. . Unfortunately i wont make the day visit to the golf ,ive got a family wedding down in tamworth on the saturday and will be travelling down golf day . I was going to offer to drive you and sftb round the course in your limo too. never mind will have to wait until another time. I, ll be in touch with paul nearer the time to make arrangements to deliver our donation . But i know the day will go well again . take care old friend .
hail hail
jimtim.
Sixteen roads to Golgotha on 4 April, 2012 at 14:18 said:
Acquaintance of mine used to claim that if Rupert Murdoch unearthed a big enough market for it in the Fare East or Australia, Us and THEM would be forced to kick off at midnight.
More seriously, and I was one of his critic, no one would listen to him when Robert Kelly bitterly opposed televising football in any form.
Quite rightly, as Saturday’s noon kick off illustrates, Kelly along with Hib’s Harry Swan argued that once in the door, television would rule football. Sky’s refusal to countenance any deal that did not guarantee Us and THEM four times a season (they do not allow ESPN even one of these fixtures) is a perfect example of what Kelly was so accurately forecasting.
Estadio on 4 April, 2012 at 14:35 said:
Brilliant! :)
Estadio
With the right agent you could have your own wing at the Tate Modern.
… That’s if they let you out of your own wing at the asylum.
;-)
Estadio 14.35
Estadio you sir make me smile broadly THANK YOU.
HAIL HAIL
ESTADIO. jeezo man what you like .LOL
jimtim.
Paul67, 12:41;
Well done Paul.
Good grief indeed!
neilr/roccobhoy
I thought this had been dealt with but some of you racist apologists keep defending the man so here goes again…
Last night, he esentially said that racial mixing was bad for America and the UK and provided, as an example, that a thoroughbred and a farm horse wouldn’t be bred together.
So, in the context of apartheid and nazism, who might be the thoroughbred (by definition a superior breed)? Just possibly, the nazis and afrikaners. That means, the others, the jews and the blacks represent the lowly farm animal (inferior breed).
And you dont believe this view is discriminatory!
What planet are you on or are you both Kojo in disguise?
And anyway, leaving the horse analogy to one side, why would you consider miscegenation to be a problem unless you are racist?
Ethnic cleansing anyone?
Stop insulting my intelligence!
See the thing with Celtic TV…is Ingerland,where I live,regarded as a foreign country? I ask this,seriously,coz I’d much rather give them my money rather than Sky & ESPN….I pay THEM grudgingly,but I have little option where I live if I want to see Celtic play,and internet streams are notoriously unreliable.
I think it would be a good idea for Celtic TV to show matches live everywhere and the club could reap the benefit,especially if revenue diminishes from sports channels if/when Rankers get relegated to the twilight zone?
People forget we have a huge following in the Highlands, These away games are great for the fans up North. getting on a bus for 6 hours down to CP & 6 hours back on the same day every 2 weeks aint easy, just as it aint easy for the Irish Bhoys to get to CP every 2 weeks. We are not just a Glasgow support.
16 Roads
Time to end this farce, or it will only get worse next season. We need to look at alternatives, (see Auldheid from a couple of weeks back), that will allow us to contribute to Celtic FC, via direct transmission. But do not expect any help from the PLC, they could not give a damn what time the games are played, or whether it is Inverness in the middle of January. Tend to agree with Canamalar, let us go for a year without a TV contract, see how the numbers worked out, and take that opportunity to look at all the options.
quonno on 4 April, 2012 at 14:37 said:
If they didn’t show Celtic games,i would ditch them in a second.Darts is about the only other sport i watch on them,horse racing and maybe the odd fight.
Rugby,Speedway,Cricket & the much-hyped EPL – Nonsense.
I feel like taking a hack saw to the dish now.
miki67
Unfortunately no neither is Ireland. Despite the fact that in footballing terms we are all different, when it comes to Sky’s broadcasting contract, they regard the UK as one and even lump Ireland in with it.
Punished twice.
Mort
not sure we can put the genie back in the bottle re live football on TV. the simpler solution would be televised games at decent times. and the current KO times are as much the fault of the Police as they are the TV companies.
Celtic Mac on 4 April, 2012 at 14:44 said:
Big time.
£1.2million – that’s all we get from them.
We are gonna win the league anyway.
COME ON CELTIC!
Apologies if posted already
Alex Thomson tweets
Club 9 confirms what CW told me y’day that they’ve not spoken. Not into buying RFC, either.
As someone who lost money when Leeds Utd went into administration, I do not think that Leeds should be sited as a model for any company to follow. I received less than £300 for a debt of £1800, and at the time my own company badly needed the full amount. I would rather have seen them liquidated, as the 2 paltry payments that I received (4 years apart) did nothing for me and I was forced to wind my company down. My company struggled, but I always paid the Inland Revenue, and Clubs like Leeds and Rangers should be made examples of, and liquidated immediately.
What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin. ~Mark Twain, Notebook, 1902
ryanleftback
Well said mate. In addition to the tainted trophies this is the reality of the situation- real people paying the price. And the huns still think they are being victimised here? Sums them up.
HH
merseycelt lmfao as the big house door slams shut on 4 April, 2012 at 14:42 said:
Aye,right enough – Jewish people are a great example of diversity & multi-culturalism.Fair enough,they like to promote the idea,as long as it doesn’t involve themselves.
Goyim,our some other horrible word is what that call Gentiles,or non-Jews?
DAVIE HAY is set to manage a Celtic side again.
And in the opposite dug-out will be his former captain Billy McNeill.
A tribute match has been arranged to honour the man dubbed the Quiet Assassin.
And the opportunity is there for supporters to play in the game, which takes place at Celtic Park on Sunday, May 20.
Davie enjoyed a very successful six years as a player in the Hoops before moving to Chelsea, where injury forced him to hang up his boots prematurely.
from RTC poster
Jonbhoy says:
04/04/2012 at 2:46 pm
Rate This
Duff and Duffer still not paid the Police for attending the Legends game !
RFC(IA) agreement with the Police means that they need to clear the last Police invoice before the next home game, so D&D are taking this to the wire a tad !
Bill should be paid by 1700 today or else Police can pull the plug on the St Mirren game.
I’m sure they will pay as there is a couple of hrs still to go but D&D do take things to the eleventh hrs it seems.
Any updates I’ll post
@fritzagrandold: A FOI request for details of SNP discussions with HMRC regarding Rangers has been denied.
O.G.Rafferty on 4 April, 2012 at 14:49 said:
O.G can you clear up something for me please are Rangers on the Market?
What is it the Blue Knights are offering to buy and how can they buy it if Craig Whyte doesn’t agree??
Thanks
Starry
16 roads
Ok, let’s start the jew bashing!
I suppose 6 million deserved to die because you dont like the word goyim!
FFS, get a grip!
merseycelt lmfao as the big house door slams shut on 4 April, 2012 at 15:00 said:
No.
You are a maniac.
Merseyside it’s you that needs to vet a grip, there was no Jew bashing as you call it just identification of hypocracy
Coming up tmrw on channel4.com/news the state of Glasgow’s “succulent lamb” media straight from the horse’s mouth.
V
I was banned from ff 2 months ago but they keep sending me emails even tho ive told them not to. So I sent them this. <o)))))
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUemq-6t_yQ
Woah I think a step back is required. Godwin’s Law is getting smashed to pieces here.
You are entering red card, nevermind yellow card territory