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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Paul67,
This just gets better and better. The unimaginable seems to become the reality every other day. Never in my wildest dreams, never mind hopes, could I have envisaged the mess thems have become. The piece de resistance, of course, is the Celtic supporter bidding for them. Even if he is a chancer, (the bigger the better in my book), can you even contemplate how thems must be feeling right now at the prospect of one of us taking them over. Please, please let it happen…..Joy unconfined down in North Ayrshire.
Talking of change strips, I think we should go for the one Ireland wore the other night. Class.
What is the difference between Jimmy Carr and RFC 1872-2012 (liquidated)?
1. Jimmy Carr is still alive.
2. Jimmy Carr apologised for his tax misdemeanours!!
Hail! Hail! PMTYH
Macjay1,
So we’ve moved on from those all caring doctors who are only in it for the good of humanity, the good old days that never were, when your revisionism is quashed, it’s back to the real motive, the motive you dismissed initially.
Don’t be too hard on wee Matt Lindsay of the ET
He is hurting badly now that his team are no more. He will now be sent to cover Junior football reminiscing of the old days, when he would lap up everything WalterEBT said at the post match press conferences before heading down to The Grapes for a post match pint, with his buddies Darryll, Keith, Jim, Chick + Derek
43(soon to be 50) and counting Matthew
Auldheid
really good article
http://henryclarson.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/stop-the-fight-ref/#comment-399
——————————
As others have said the mibs being mibs do mibbery for nothing other than their love of the superiority cult.
On the other hand it might make sense for an egomaniac to delegate the nobbling of the refs from the grassroots up, to someone who was in overall control of refs and their progress.
justathoughtCSC
HH
Vlad says No to NewCo
http://www.heartsfc.co.uk/articles/20120621/vr-statement_2241384_2818454
There seems to be so much disagreement on here today that I feel like making a statement which will make CQN its normal, harmonious self.
Thatcher was a poor PM and a horrible woman.
There. That should do the trick o:-)
JJ
Hearts voting no then, Mad Vlad just issued statement on Hearts website
Mon the Herts,
(doubt I will ever say that again!!!)
This guy Green, by his own admission and the testimonials of others, is nothing other than a businessman out to make hard cash; yet he comes here, with no background or credentials in Scottish football, and sets down the conditions by which football in this country should and most certainly will be managed, if he gets his own obstinate way. He claims: we cannot have ANY football, even at grass root’s level, without money, and coincidently, the consequence of that is FC Sevco must be immediately installed into the SPL. Thus he assures us, with free advise and his special brand of altruism, that to fail to do so will be an almighty act of collective suicide for our game. The Luciferean presumption is staggering in its shameless audacity. Now we know that the satanic will of this “institution” has been channelled and inherited by FC Newco. Liquidation is certainly no spiritual exorcism. You have to wonder if some form of institutionalisation occurs after a few days to whoever walks up that much vaunted marble staircase. Everyone associated with that former club seems to go power crazy. The ghost is still here, it will no doubt continue to haunt the game here- it’s a case of more of the same.
Only just in the door and Green in full throttle goes hammer and tongs with the ancestral blackmail, threats and empty promises that was so characteristic of the old club. He wants to set up a new contract with the SPL clubs that is the same as the old contract. Based on coercion by fear and desire. He wants a continuation of the old power system. A certain familiarity, consistent with the idea that “familiarity breeds contentment”, determines that these clubs want to belong to such a situation again by re-establishing it, admittedly with a few minor adjustments in their favour. This negotiation to such adjustments is their “resistance” to the power being exerted on them by FC Sevco, is also their exertion of power, and the willingness to negotiate is evidence they want the old power system of co-dependence to continue as before. The Pavlovian Gang of Ten have become so conditioned to co-dependence that they are maintaining this power axis by merely acknowledging Agent Green. We need to move beyond the contamination of the power virus. Its the very reason our game is in the terminal decline its in. Yes, power is a human disease, but we need to find a cure, but before we do we need to recognise the disease that is killing us.
If we want to escape this situation then the clubs have to show some moral dignity and prepare to stand alone and say they can operate independently of such a toxic institution. The level of indoctrination inherent in Scottish football to the idea that we cannot function with FC Sevco has went dangerously unrecognised. By consequence these clubs have shown no great appetite for change, a willingness to explore a future without FC Sevco or even any real ambition to achieve something and embrace an opportunity to qualify for Europe or widen their fan bases.
Charles Green is the worst type of chronic pessimist and egotistical cynic that pollutes the modern world, who measures everything by its cost and value in monetary terms. This has become the status quo, and unfortunately it is the existing state of affairs in the world today. Let’s step aside the quantum approach to human relations and examine the qualitative dimension of moral integrity and its inherent dignity to the exaltation of human life. First of all, if everything in human relations can be reduced to a monetary factor, there is absolutely no future for the human race- we need to look way beyond the imaginative parsimony and the paucity of potential of these cynics who would hold us hostage to such a sterile and incomplete vision of humanity. This fixation on money is a kind of barbarism, and the likes of Green and his ilk are merely refined barbarians. Those who believe everything can be reduced to money are abysmally ignorant of humanity. The human condition is infinitely better than that empty model that is as grey as Greens suit. It is a crippled vision of humanity. No matter what the money men in suits and other refined barbarians say there is more important things in human life than money: certain things must remain inviolable, if life is to remain bearable, and must remain sacred at the very root of the human condition: Moral Truth, Justice and a deep abiding concern for our fellow brothers and sisters.
His argument can easily be reversed to say that there can be no football, at any level, without it being founded upon sporting integrity. If we place everything secondary to money where do we draw the line and who draws the distinction- the money men? Can we trust them when they have their greedy snouts in the golden trough? Yes football to a certain extent is a business, but it is a very limited one, in terms of profit margins, akin to trying to run trains at a profit. It can be done, with rare exceptions, in the case of our own Fergus. But who makes money from football clubs? Only the players really make any money from football and their demands are even running the cash rich swell of the EPL dry- how has the swell of cash flowing down south improved the English national team? Lucky to get out of a poor group at the Euro’s and they will be lucky to get by a fairly ordinary Italy team. If anything, native talent is suffocated under the monstrous weight of money. The same has been true ever since the so-called Souness revolution here. Once we held our own in European club competitions and a national team that regularly qualified for major tournaments, has since the moustachioed one continue upon a rapid downward trajectory to an abyss of oblivion.
Money is not the answer. It is part of the formula. It is one element amongst many. But it is no panacea.
If the people, the paying customers, the fans, continue to be treated with disdain and widespread contempt as is the tradition of their clubs directors and chairmen then Scottish football is doomed. What if the cash cow, the hallowed Sky TV deal, falls throw for some reason, as it did so incidentally, when the old Rangers were in the SPL, what will happen then? There will be no fall back position for these clubs without a fan base present. More alienation of the fans, is akin to violating the very DNA of the game. THE FANS ARE THE GAME. But how long will it take the dinosaurs sitting in boardrooms to see that before they rush headlong into extinction? The warning are there for all to see. Who will watch the games on TV even if, by consequence of the chairmen’s blinkered decisions, the terraces are attended only by ghosts, particularly if the game is perceived as rigged in favour of one club? The credibility factor of Scottish football will be at a zero factor- who would sponsor a product that is perceived to have no trust from its increasingly exiled customer base? How far will the authorities and the other football clubs go to what could be effectively a poor FC Sevco in the SPL at the expense of credibility? Will they jeopardise the increasing widespread perception that the game is rigged in favour of the short term benefit of one club? These are questions if compromised upon will lead to a catastrophic loss in the trust value of the game as a saleable product- the effects could be immeasurable in the long term.
even the quintessential Scottish football establishment figure, He of the Cardigan, said a few years ago, in connection with an Atlantic League, that it would be beneficial for the Scottish game if Celtic and Rangers left for greener pastures elsewhere- his rationale was that it would give other teams a chance of success and so attendance were certain to increase. Yes there is backtracking now of course, with all and sundry desperate to reinstate FC Sevco under any conditions, just as long as they are not too detrimental to near future success and the restoration of the “We Urra Peepul” cultural triumphalism. The Gang of Ten clubs risk alienating new generations of supporters, in already diminishing fan bases and that is a process that will inevitably be accelerated by the reconstitution of the old system of mutual exploitation and power. It effectively sells out the fans for the idolatry of the golden calf of money. But we have to burn down that idol with the fire of our collective outrage. As Wordsworth said:
Rapine, avarice, expense, this is idolatry;
and these we adore;
Plain living and high thinking are no more.
Will we be the generation that saved the Scottish game from the perceived panacea of over-commercialisation and the unholy grail of TV money and all the moral corruption that accompanies its primacy? Or will we viewed by our descendent’s: as a generation who initiated the period when people in general took moral responsibility, re-prioritized what was really important, and set the game on a dazzling new freeway into a brighter future?
Neil canamalar Lennon hunskelper extrordinaire on 21 June, 2012 at 14:37 said
Neil.
I find your cynicism painful.Perhaps justified.
Other than that,I have no response.
Vladimir says no, ho ho ho,
monteblanco
I have disliked , intensely sometimes, some of the Hearts` fans. The Hearts Club, however, behaves like any other FC…..apart from the one which has recently died.
JJ
FF off to Southampton? Anyone confirm if this is true or borrocks.
Vlad the Impaler ready to drive home that stake.
Right on
HH
Quick question…..does neil doncaster make the decisions for the spl clubs or is all his insane ramblings and ill thought out plans the views of the spl clubs?
Neil
Something we can agree on .
Vlad says “no” is good.
Scottish football fans survey
http://www.scotsman.com/edinburgh-evening-news/sport/survey-what-league-should-rangers-play-in-next-season-1-2366687
Have your say.
Teuchter
.
MacJay..
I’m Guid..
Enjoying the Weather on The Bellshill Rivera @ the Moment..(Think Queensland in the Wet Season without the Heat..:O()
Might stay a Extra week to go Over to Hamster Jam to see The Bhoys and Me Olde Mates was there when the Amsterdam Arena was being Built..Left just before it was Finished so would be Guid to Visit Rotterdam and Head up to The Jam with Mates for the Game..Me and Sammi Could Converse in Dutch..Greek and Aussie..Ha Ha..
Summa
RogueLeader on 21 June, 2012 at 14:40 said:
Vlad says No to NewCo
http://www.heartsfc.co.uk/articles/20120621/vr-statement_2241384_28
*********
To quote, “wow,just wow”.
Vlad the Lad spells it out.
Everybody knows.
There is a cancer in Scottish society. It has its epicentre in the toxic brand of whatever guise rfc(dead) adopts.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get rid of it. Do it now.
Everybody knows.
Ol’ Vlad doesn’t mince his words in that statement
Well done to Hearts on this occasion
Fingers crossed, 5 teams are now telling Newco “Please do not ask for credit as a refusal may offend”.
Quite a statement from Vlad! I tried to copy and paste but it wouldn`t work.Quite a statement, as I said. Not just against the disease that was Rangers but against Murdoch as well. No bad, Vlad!!
JJ
PS I would love to see the reaction if our Chairman came out with such a statement.
PPS
The more enequivocal staement of support for ” no to Newco” that come out, the more likely are the waverers (like Thomson at DU) likely to go with no (a new slogan?)
What the blazes is a “media aborigine”?
Yvonne Goolagong?
Well we can add Hearts to the no votes.
Although once it becomes clear that they can’t win even under the rejigged rules we know the goalposts will be moved again.
Jungle Jim
I never thought they would support the zombies, out of all of this mess, Hearts, in my opinion, stand to benefit most from this. They are lurking like a wee evil auntie at the wake, eyeing up the jewellery and waiting on the inheritance.
Jings – Vlad doesn’t hold back does he… RFC, Murdoch, Sky, the media in general…
I know it has already been highlighted, but I can’t resist repeating this wee bit of Vlad’s statement:
“They have lived beyond law and all morals, and should now be declared beyond the pale.”
Gaun yersel big man!
The scotsman “what league should rangers play in next season”.
There is no rangers!
Vlad should issue more statements, I think we’d all like to hear a bit more from him.
HH
Mr Romanov, who has been consistent in his views since investing in Scottish football in 2005, said:
“The opinion of Heart of Midlothian FC in regards to the current situation of Scottish football is clear and robust.
“The football mafia represented by former owners of Rangers FC and Rupert Murdoch’s media are to blame for some of the worst problems to hit Scottish football andmust not be allowedbackin under any circumstances.
“As regards the club itself, we can only express our deepest condolences to its supporters, who have been lied to for so many years.
“It had to happen sooner or later. Victories were achieved not by sporting merits, but through slander, conspiracies amongst players and their poaching via third parties, unfair pressuring of referees, who in themselves are as valuable to the fabric of football as the football stars themselves.
“All of this brought hollow victories and destroyed football. We can also mention the attempts to eliminate Heartswiththe help of the tax petitions, through false accusations and threats to revoke the club license. There is a saying aboutdigging a grave for someone: you get it for yourself …
“Without these people football will become cleaner and stronger. Without Murdoch the whole of society will improve, in particular sport and culture.
“Supporters deserve a new beginning and have to accept the fact that their club has to start from the lower league, keeping order in the SPL and without creating unfair competition withother clubs.
“As regards the pitiful state of Scottish football finances, a lot of the blame should be placed at the doors of Murdoch’s media. They pay huge sums to English clubs, whilst in Scotland, where football is better supported per capita than anywhere else in Europe and there are more cable or Sky subscribers per capita than in England, clubs receive peanuts for their broadcasting rights.
“At the very least this is discrimination and protectionism for the English football product, which at the same time stunts the development of the game in Scotland, that is regarded as the cradle of football.
“I feel that it is absolutely realistic to create a company that would bring to Scottish clubs at least the same broadcasting income, and even grow it by 50-100% over the next two to three years. This company should be in the hands of Scottish clubs and work with those who want to earn moneythe honestway,instead of conducting business the Murdoch way.
“They have lived beyond law and all morals, and should now be declared beyond the pale. A societythat allows the destruction of integrity in sport, which is a crucial part of Scottish culture, is destroying itself – and all for the benefit of a media aborigine.”
……………………
Not so Mad Vlad. Huns dying is very good news for him.
HH
monteblanco on 21 June, 2012 at 14:56 said:
Love the analogy!
Imagine if our owner came out with a statement like Vlads.
HH
“They have lived beyond law and all morals, and should now be declared beyond the pale. A society that allows the destruction of integrity in sport, which is a crucial part of Scottish culture, is destroying itself – and all for the benefit of a media aborigine.”
Your turn now Peter……
monteblanco
“They are lurking like a wee evil auntie at the wake, eyeing up the jewellery and waiting on the inheritance. ” a bit harsh, maybe, but very funny!
Great article Paul.
The desperation is palpable.
Sane Vlad is correct Wraith Rovers should apply to the third division.