You have been presented with a narrative that we should collapse the Scottish Premier League this summer and have the SFA register a new, two-division, league system to resolve the problems inherent in having too many bodies running our game. This is complete nonsense.
Those pushing for a SPL 2 are, perhaps with good intentions, trying to pull a deal together to reduce the impact of the demise of Rangers FC buy allowing a phoenix the chance to gain entry into the league structure two levels higher than what they now face.
It’s a stupid proposal.
As things stand, there is no chance of a Newco getting access to the SPL next season. Despite Neil Doncaster heavily advocating the notion, the idea is simply undeliverable. Our club has been committed to opposing the proposition from the beginning, while many others now realise they have to observe the strong feelings of their own supporters on the matter.
Doncaster should have realised this was a campaign he could not win before he boxed himself into a corner over it. SPL 2 is an attempt to address the ‘No to Newco’ concerns while bringing the income some in the game hope Newco will deliver.
The unnamed SFA source who briefed the BBC on this topic last week made no reference whatsoever to Newco, their focus was all on the administrative challenges of having multiple bodies in charge of the game, but this was disingenuous. If there was a prospect of Newco getting into the SPL we would not be having this debate.
Tell us the truth, be honest, and these random, ill-considered, notions will perhaps be received in a better light.
The hope is that fans of the former club, Rangers, bring their cash along to watch Newco, which would play SPL 2 football next season and would be subject to whatever penalties the various independent bodies impose for years to come for the illegal actions of Rangers. This would allow Newco to claim the history of Rangers, would perhaps maintain the existing BSkyB TV deal and would meet the ‘No to Newco’ demands.
There are several huge obstacles to overcome. The SFA will soon instruct Lord Carloway’s Appellate Panel to consider a new punishment for ‘Rangers’ for misdeeds during the Craig Whyte era. I expect him to suspend the ‘club’ for 12 months. A new independent judicial panel will consider the case against ‘Rangers’ for subverting our game for over a decade through the illegal registration of players. If/when the First Tier Tribunal finds against Rangers a fresh wave of charges will be brought against any club claiming to hold that identity – as a guide, think of the punishments for the Craig Whyte era multiplied by 12.
These three independent judicial panels will destroy whatever is left of what we used to call ‘Rangers’ and there is nothing the football authorities can do about it.
Sevco, who own Ibrox and have applied for SPL access, already face an enormous challenge to meet trading costs for a year, even in the SPL, never mind a lower league (as Dave King correctly concluded). They are prime candidates for another insolvency event any time soon. Best of all, a Celtic fan has now bid for the assets (more on this later)!
Even if Newco overcame these enormous challenges, the SFA and SPL executives, having realised they cannot convince fans of 11 clubs to hold their noses and put up with a Newco-Rangers, will now try to convince former Rangers fans to cough up cash to support a Newco that will be rendered impotent by the most severe penalties in the history of our game.
I cannot see former Rangers fans accepting their role as cannon fodder for St Mirren, Motherwell and (cough) Kilmarnock in a league where the Mighty Celtic romp home by 30 points.
I don’t have an objection in principle to a two-league SPL but plan it properly, don’t allow knee-jerk reactions to dictate thinking. There’s no point in us getting paranoid about this, it’s not some attempt to help the remnants of ‘Rangers’, it’s just a stupid proposal from people who have yet to see the big picture.
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Go on the Sheep
Yeeeha,,,,im correct!!!
Hail hail
jim spence says that ABERDEEN will vote No on radio just now bbc scotland
Speaking of stars on the jersey..
It is a constant source of satisfaction to me that the single golden star adorning our green and white hoops, is the cause of all the strife and final destruction of that horrible club
we should remember and salute the memory of the men that earned our club that golden
I will never forget the Lions of LIisbon and the management and backroom team along with the tens of thousands of our fathers and mothers who roared them on to glory
hat a fantastic feeling that is
And dons have just announced they will vote NO …IT JUST GETS BETTER!
HH
M
Go on the Dons!
So we have Hearts, Dundee Utd and Aberdeen confirmed apart from us (who MUST vote against this) and Hibs almost certain. I think Motherwell is likely. So that’s it.
Spence on shortbread…DU fans called the shots…well done arabs.
ABERDEEN ALSO SAY NO…Dons fans hostility against newco forced it through….Spence..its becoming an avalanche of No’s…
Aberdeen now
Spence:
The Dam has burst.
There is also a fraternity
Solidarity.
‘Mon the Sheep :-) This just gets better.
Well done the sheep-shaggers: ewe know it makes sense.
Getting up early is at 5 am ya bunch o light weights :>)
Spence thinks that today the 5 votes for No could all be announced.
Come on Celtic.
Liberty, equality , fraternity.
Jim Spence is French, not a ginger Dundonian of Irish descent.
Who’d a thunk it?
Good morning CQN Bhoys and Ghirls.
Well done to Vlad and Hearts for doing the right thing. Thought his article was great.
Well done to the Arabs for listening to their fans and not the MSM scaremongering on Sky deal.
If big FF does not want to sign and be a winner and play in the CL for years then as much as I would love him to sign, then NFL needs to pull the plug on hime and bring in another keeper. There is indeed a few out there.
Rotten weather for June but I cannot get the song I’m singing in the rain out my head this morning.
Any bhoys in the Dublin area be extra careful this weekend as my 2 daughters and my 2 nieces are heading your way for the weekend. they are going to see westlife then party all weekend. All good Tims so expect to hear a few Glaswegian voices singing a few rebs tonight.
HH
Your rangers til July.
Your rangers til July.
I know you are, I’m sure you are…
Your rangers til July!
Jim Spence forecasting on bbc radio that it’s likely that 5 clubs will confirm NO vote by close of play today
anyone else think he knows it ?!
HH
M
Morning Bhoys and Ghirls from a rainy Dublin.
It looks like almost every club outwith of Killie and Hun old co will vote against the Newco on July 4th. I am confidently predicting at least 8 of the 12 clubs will vote against Newco in SPL. Celtic, Dundee utd, Aberdeen, Hibs, Hearts are 5 absolute certainties. Likely to vote against Motherwell, ICT, St Mirren and Ross County.
Unknown St J
Yes Vote Huns Oldco and Killie.
Its game, set and match for the newco. Shame eh :)
Hail Hail
Roccobhoy
JJ
The hanging by a thread comment vexed me as well
Are we pedants
Personally I hunk the journos are poor
Everything I pointing to justice and integrity triumphing ………. Well done, Scottish Football fans ……. We all overcame the LL …
Good over evil
Any accountants of the turf variety know what odds are being offered for the outcome of the SPL vote?
Aberdeen said NO
Dundee Utd said NO
Hearts said NO
Ulster says NO
The kids from Grangehill just said NO
Even the man from DelMonte is thinking about it!
Morning Bhoys
Been up north for a few days on business , and had dinner with an ICT fan who has a fair involvement with their supporters trust.
He says that ICT will consult with fans and will be swayed by their opinion. He reckons 75% of ICT support says “NO to Newco”
I’m now thinking Newco have no chance of winning this vote , and the meeting on the 4th may be even quicker than the CVA vote ….who’d have thought.
Anyone have FF access? I’m kind of interested to know if ra Bears are queuing up to jump off their roofs.
Schadenfreude CSC
Does anyone think that Kilmarnock’s Johnstone has played this very cleverly?
Could he be hoping to pick up the inevitable number of hun deserters by being seen to be the good guy (in their eyes)?
With no SPL football and possibly no football at all, the Orcs may choose to reward him for his loyalty.
monteblanco
I don’t know about the Man from Delmonte as I fear he may be of the Orange persuasion……
Is it too early to talk about a “landslide”?
Yes, probably a bit early…
… I’ll wait until lunchtime.
JCGE
And there was three…nirvana…
Keep the Faith!
Hail Hail!
Should Celtic now be considering a redistribution of the monies and the voting rights in light of the support for integrity within the Scottish Game? por cierto
Do you think with all the clubs coming out now it will put pressure on ND & SR to do the right thing ?
Or do you think theres more chance of 2 moons appearing lol.
interesting that Jim Spence had the Dons story since late last night – was able to hold it as teaser until 08.30
not one other media source (correct me please….) could trump him
..either they couldn’t because they didn’t have the story confirmed ..or they wouldn’t
my view is the LL are nowhere on this and Spence is the go to guy for the SPL chairmen now
They will be falling over themselves ..
Jim Spence better have a few spare fone batteries with him today methinks ;)
HH
M
Fass
They’re way past the roof jumping stage.
They’ve landed horribly only to find that there is no paradise after death for sinners such as they.
My contact from the netherworld says a group of huns were last spotted arguing with a big three headed dog about whether they had to pay any ferry dues at all , them being the peepil . Big dog not happy looking, says my intermediary. Something about alsatians and tetanus in Manchester.
Huns being directed to a branch office of Hades where they are being asked to try negotiations with a large red chap with a pointy fork.
This won’t end well.
From New Statesman
by Kevin McKenna
The NS Profile: Rangers FC
Glasgow Rangers FC represented everything that made working-class Protestant Scotland proud to be British. How was the football club reduced to this state?
On 14 February this year Rangers FC formally applied to enter administration. The Glasgow club’s owner, Craig Whyte, a west of Scotland property and construction tycoon who bought an 85 per cent majority share in the club in May 2011, had finally accepted that its huge and accumulating debts could not be serviced by an annual income of £45m. Under the rules of the Scottish Premier League (SPL), Rangers had ten points docked, which in effect ended any hope they had of retaining the League title. Duff & Phelps, a Manchester-based insolvency firm, was appointed to manage their finances and it was hoped that Rangers would leave administration by 31 March. Failure to meet that deadline, or to have supplied annual accounts by then, would entail Rangers’ exclusion from the 2012-2013 European club competitions.
Today, Rangers remain in administration and no accounts have been filed. But that is the least of it. The club is appealing a tax bill that, with interest and penalties, could leave it owing Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs between £75m and £100m. On 12 June, HMRC signalled its intention to oppose a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) that the club’s new owners hoped would be accepted by its hundreds of creditors. In so doing, HMRC has brought the curtain down on the 140-year history of one of the world’s most successful football clubs. Rangers will now be liquidated and their assets sold. The next few weeks will determine what form any new club rising from the ashes will take.
When autumn arrives there is a good chance that Rangers as we know them will have ceased to exist. For those not initiated in the lore of Glasgow’s Old Firm (Rangers v Celtic) and Rangers’ place in the social, cultural, political and religious narrative of the Scottish nation, this is yet another cautionary tale of greed and hubris bringing about the downfall of a great football club that chose to live beyond its means. The crisis has shaken the foundations of four of the pillars of Scottish society: the government, the judiciary, the banks and the press. This is the nation’s very own bonfire of the vanities.
The story goes back to 1988 when a stagnant Rangers were trying to rouse themselves from torpor after a ten-year period in which they had won only one League title. David Murray, a charismatic steel magnate then aged 36, bought the club in August that year by agreeing to wipe out its debts with a £6m loan from the Bank of Scotland. He came from an affluent Ayrshire family and was a keen rugby player before he had both legs amputated following a car accident in 1976.
By then, his company, Murray International Metals, had been established for two years and its continued success despite the extreme physical and psychological trauma he must have endured made him an inspiration for a generation of aspiring Scottish entrepreneurs. His vision for Rangers was simple: to turn the underachieving giants of Scottish football into one of Europe’s premier clubs. In chasing this unlikely dream, he began to spend astonishing amounts in transfer fees and on wages for England internationals such as Terry Butcher, Mark Hateley, Trevor Steven and Paul Gascoigne, as well as international stars who included the Danish forward Brian Laudrup and the Netherlands quartet of Ronald and Frank de Boer, Artur Numan and Giovanni van Bronckhorst. The Bank of Scotland, both before and after it merged with the Halifax, bankrolled Murray’s mission with the sort of largesse that made you wonder if it thought it was dealing with Saudi princes, rather than a football club of limited means. Eleven League titles and 12 national cups were duly delivered in the 13 years before 2001.
Yet meaningful success in Europe continued to elude this all-star cast, though Rangers in effect reached the semi-final of the inaugural European Champions League in 1993 (which consisted of only two groups of four). By then, the financial stakes had been raised by the birth of the English Premier League, powered by Rupert Murdoch’s Sky. Not even HBOS’s fabled elastic overdraft would stretch to match Murray’s ambitions in these circumstances.
Another source of income had to be found. It duly presented itself in the unlikely figure of Paul Baxendale-Walker, a former solicitor who had begun to produce (and appear in) his own pornographic films. Baxendale-Walker introduced Murray to an offshore tax arrangement called employee benefit trusts (EBTs). The structure of these vehicles is simple – a company places money into an offshore trust which is then divided into sub-trusts in the name of nominated employees. In Rangers’ case, these included 60 of its highest-paid players and senior executives.
The EBTs allowed the company to make discretionary payments to the beneficiaries in the form of loans that did not have to be redeemed. Neither the company nor the employee is liable for tax in such transactions, because the payments from the sub-trust are supposed to be discretionary. There ought not to be any contractual element in them. HMRC has deemed Rangers’ use of these trusts to be aggressive tax avoidance. However, the club claims that they were legitimate tax-avoidance vehicles, all of which were rubber-stamped by teams of auditors and accountants.
Aidan McLaughlin, a senior tax consultant with experience of setting up EBTs and operating them for clients, fears the worst for Rangers. “I can’t see anything other than the first-tier tax tribunal rejecting their appeal,” he told me. “In recent years the courts have strongly backed the government’s drive against tax avoidance . . .
I have seen a copy of one of the side-letters that Rangers issued to one of their players which indicates that the payment from the sub-trust was non-discretionary.”
Until around 2000, EBTs were used as bona fide instruments by companies to reward employees. After that, there was a Gadarene rush to deploy them as top-ups for highly paid executives. The contaminant factor in the Rangers scheme is the existence of the side-letters referred to by McLaughlin. If they had been arranged in this way, the payments would cease to be discretionary and would form part of a player’s salary. The tax tribunal, sitting in Edinburgh but with UK-wide jurisdiction, has been considering its verdict for more than five months.
Just as damaging are the claims about Craig Whyte’s takeover. He bought the club for a nominal £1 from Murray, having undertaken to pay Rangers’ £18m debt to Lloyds/Bank of Scotland. It has since been reported that the club withheld all VAT, income tax and National Insurance contributions during the nine months of Whyte’s tenure from May 2011 to February 2012. A list of 332 creditors is owed amounts ranging from millions (to English and Continental clubs) to a few hundred to local newsagents, florists and taxi firms. The overall debt mountain is potentially more than £140m.
Whyte funded the takeover of the club by mortgaging four years’ worth of season-ticket revenue, amounting to £24m, with an English firm called Ticketus. In effect, he bought one of Britain’s biggest clubs by trading on its future income. Although he had reassured Murray that he would be in a position to pay its debts, they have increased under his tenure to such a level that the club’s continued existence is in doubt.
Hand in glove
The prospective new owner, Charles Green, an English financier who was previously chief executive of Sheffield United, had cobbled together a deal to buy the club for £8.5m, put up by unknown investors in the form of an eight-year loan with interest. The CVA had asked creditors to accept 9p in every pound of debt, but as HMRC has rejected it, creditors will now get less than 5p in the pound.
HMRC and Ticketus together are owed 86 per cent of the Rangers debt, and as a CVA requires agreement from creditors owed 75 per cent of a firm’s debt, the approval of both is a prerequisite. If either demurs, a winding up of the assets and liquidation will follow. In such circumstances a newco (a new club) would need to be formed. It might look like Rangers and sound like Rangers, but would it be accepted as Rangers?
The sheer scale of the club’s corporate failures is such that, not until a few more years have elapsed will the whole saga be exhausted. The Scottish FA, the SPL, an independent tribunal, three Scottish law lords and the Court of Session, sitting in Edinburgh, have been trying to unravel the extent of the misdemeanours and find condign redress. The shadow of Fifa, football’s international governing body, has fallen across the hallway. If it rules that the Scottish FA has not sufficiently punished Rangers, then, based on precedent, it can exclude all Scottish clubs and the national team from competing anywhere in the world. Fifa is already irked that Rangers chose to challenge the edict of a transfer ban in a civil court. Any sympathy that Rangers might have had from fans of other clubs has largely evaporated because of an absence of remorse or shame on the part of the directors and executives.
The football authorities must now decide if the new Rangers will be allowed to take the place of the old club in the SPL. If they reject the
application, new Rangers will face the prospect of playing Alloa Athletic, Cowdenbeath and Stenhousemuir for the next three years. It is the football equivalent of the Rolling Stones playing Digbeth Civic Hall.
The media in Scotland stand accused of failing in their duty of scrutinising Rangers’ finances and of holding David Murray to account. It is
a commonly held view that Murray had most of the Scottish football writers who mattered in his pocket throughout his period of ownership. Mark Daly, the BBC’s splendid investigative reporter, has carried out two detailed investigations into Rangers’ finances, but it has been claimed that the subsequent revelations of financial incontinence are largely a triumph of the new, very articulate and extremely well-informed citizen journalism. Unlike newspaper journalists, though, bloggers seldom need to concern themselves with much in the way of corroboration, writs for defamation or the Press Complaints Commission.
However, one cannot deny the impact of two blogging sites, Celtic Quick News and Rangers Tax Case. Each is written elegantly, with a forensic understanding of the esoteric world of corporate insolvency. Last month, the anonymous author of Rangers Tax Case was awarded the Orwell Prize for best blog. Another whistleblower is Phil Mac Giolla Bhain, the Irish-based author, blogger and journalist who has broken four major stories about the Old Firm in the past two years. In April 2010, he supplied the Scottish News of the World with the first print story on the extent of Rangers’ tax liabilities. Curiously, while several UK-wide news outlets still retain his investigative services, not a single Scottish newspaper has contacted him throughout the period of his breaking stories online.
“I don’t think there was a ‘cover-up’ [by newspapers] in the manner that some have alleged,” Giolla Bhain told me. “But I do think there was a reticence to go after Rangers for fear that it may hit circulation. Also, David Murray used to be one of the most influential figures in Scotland and I think some people enjoyed being in his tent too much.”
It is impossible to underplay the Rangers debt saga and its effect on Scottish society. Rangers are much more than just a football club. Jeff Randall, the Sky business news presenter and Daily Telegraph columnist, once described them, and correctly, as “the quintessential British club”. Founded in 1872, they draw their support, in the main, from what once would have been described as the white, Protestant artisan class. Between the early 1900s and 1989, Rangers had not knowingly signed more than a handful of Catholic players. Scotland had been the cradle of the Protestant Reformation in Europe, and while there was a Rangers FC, the spirit of reformed Protestant 18th- and 19th-century Scotland would always be alive. It is fashionable now to be outraged and censorious about the old Rangers signing policy, but for almost a century every major institution in Scottish
life acquiesced in it by refusing to intervene: local and central government, the trade unions, the Catholic Church and Church of Scotland, the SFA and Celtic FC.
Queen, flag and country
Rangers supporters claim that their club is the most successful in the world because it has won more trophies than any other: 115, including the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1972. But all the old certainties that once underpinned the hegemony of the Scottish Protestant way of life have crumbled. The Church, the Queen and the Conservative and Unionist Party are now peripheral influences in a society in which the once-downtrodden Catholics (many of Irish origin) are rising to the top in every sphere of influence. Only Rangers remain as a potent symbol of what Scotland once was. Every match day at their home ground, Ibrox Stadium, is a royal jubilee day, with its Union flags, “Rule Britannias” and occasional tributes to British army personnel.
When Rangers went into administration, Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party and First Minister, said that Scottish football needed them. He was stung when Celtic rebuked him by stating that their own financial well-being did not depend on Rangers’ strength. Two years before a referendum on independence in Scotland, when every vote counts, Salmond’s dilemma is that it is difficult to quantify how many Rangers supporters live in Scotland, as opposed to England and Northern Ireland, where the club is popular among Protestant loyalists. But if the 200,000 people who turned up in Manchester for the 2008 Uefa Cup final (between Rangers and Zenit Saint Petersburg) is any indication, it is safe to conclude that a large percentage of the Scottish population harbours affection for the club. If bad things happen to Rangers, they will surely look for an early opportunity to punish a Scottish government that fiddled as their club crashed and burned.
It is hard not to feel sympathy for the ordinary Rangers supporter. While very rich and garlanded men were creating this scandal, the rank and file have continued donating a significant portion of their incomes in the struggle to save the club. Not long after the list of creditors was published by the administrators, assorted supporters’ groups began to organise special fundraising events. Soon some of the small businesses that were owed money by Rangers were visited by fans and asked to accept handfuls of notes by way of payment for services rendered. Perhaps the most obscene irony of all is this: as these impromptu visitations were taking place, the cash meter on the Duff & Phelps account for three months’ work was reported to be approaching £5m.
Does anyone else think that one or two club managers who have clearly shown a Rangers-minded approach in the past might now realise that they have been pandering to the fans of the wrong club?
Twats like McCall,Butcher,Brown now no for sure that their favourite team is L-O-A-T-H-E-D by the people who should have been most important to them-their own fans!
(Admittedly,they don’t like us much either,btw)
Shoogly pegs for them all,methinks,if results start to go awry.
A wee lesson there for members of the MSM……
Blindlemonchitlin on 22 June, 2012 at 08:51 said:
LOL !
Por Cierto on 22 June, 2012 at 08:49 said:
Should Celtic now be considering a redistribution of the monies and the voting rights in light of the support for integrity within the Scottish Game? por cierto
share on F’book or Twitter
Yes if clubs are voting for integrity over money then i
Por Cierto on 22 June, 2012 at 08:49 said:
Should Celtic now be considering a redistribution of the monies and the voting rights in light of the support for integrity within the Scottish Game? por cierto
share on F’book or Twitter
Yes if clubs are voting for integrity over money then i think we should do the right thing.
Rieperman on 22 June, 2012 at 08:44 said:
Does anyone think that Kilmarnock’s Johnstone has played this very cleverly?
Rieperman, it could be that Johnstone wanted Sevco in the SPL to set a precedent, so he could go down the same admin/liquidate/Newco/SPL application route due to the amount of debt his club are carrying.