Football is not really about money. Not at its core. It is about trust.
Every supporter who buys a season ticket, every sponsor who writes a cheque, every broadcaster who pays millions, does so on the assumption that the competition is honest. Not perfect, but honest. That is why the Manchester City story matters.
The independent commission’s findings, as reported, paint a devastating and familiar picture. “Sham contracts”, disguised funding, misstated accounts and years of financial manoeuvring designed to present a reality that differed from the truth. The details are shocking enough. What is perhaps more remarkable is something else entirely.
The Premier League actually pursued the case.
For years.
Against one of its flagship clubs.
Against a club backed by vast wealth and equipped with the finest legal resources money can buy.
The English game has many faults, but nobody can accuse it of lacking the courage to ask difficult questions.
Whether you agree with Financial Fair Play regulations or not is largely irrelevant. Manchester City signed up to the rules and the commission’s reported conclusion is that those rules were systematically breached.
The authorities investigated. Evidence was gathered. Arguments were heard. Independent judges reached conclusions. That is how regulation is supposed to work.
Compare that with Scotland.
Many Celtic supporters will be looking south and wondering what might have happened if Scottish football had possessed even a fraction of that determination during Rangers’ use of Employee Benefit Trusts.
For more than a decade, questions were asked. Questions about player registration. Questions about undisclosed contacts. Questions about sporting advantage. Questions about governance.
Those questions generated reports, commissions, reviews and carefully worded statements. What they rarely generated was accountability.
Scottish football appeared more interested in managing the consequences than investigating the causes.
The contrast with England could scarcely be greater.
Nobody can accuse the Premier League of trying to protect Manchester City from embarrassment. If anything, the league has endured criticism for taking so long.
In Scotland, there was often an overwhelming sense that the priority was protecting the authorities themselves. The result was predictable, trust suffered.
Not simply trust in one club, but trust in the governance of the entire game. That is the real lesson here.
The Manchester City story is not a triumph. It is an embarrassment for English football. A reminder that rule-breaking on a vast scale can occur under the noses of regulators.
But there is a crucial difference, the regulators eventually acted.
Supporters can at least point to a process and say the allegations were examined. Scottish football still struggles with that test.
Years later, many supporters remain convinced that important questions were never fully addressed. The SFA refused to participate in an independent inquiry.
Transparency was sacrificed in favour of expediency, in favour of ‘Rangers’ and the people who destroyed their club.
Today, Manchester City’s owners are reportedly preparing appeals and legal challenges. That is their right. What they cannot reasonably expect is immunity from scrutiny.
And perhaps that is where English football has finally arrived ahead of Scotland. No club should be too big to investigate. No owner should be too wealthy to challenge. No institution should be too powerful to question.
The health of a sporting competition depends on that principle. Without it, trophies lose value. League tables lose legitimacy. And supporters lose faith.
Football can survive scandal. It cannot survive a belief that the rules apply differently depending on who breaks them.
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Agree Paul 67, but what about the manager at the time and current ambassador. ?
The difference between the Premier League/FA and the SPL/SFA is that Manchester City is not nor any club for that matter is the establishment club, in Scotland there is one and it is protected because most within the game are ‘Rangers minded’ if not out and out supporters/former players as well as a huge dose of ‘which school did you go to?’ and ‘which Lodge do you belong to’?
Too many supporters or cheerleaders, too many with snouts in the trough in Scotland and too many with any real knowledge or interest in what is right and what is wrong, as long as Ra Rangers are ‘where they belong’!
Paul 67,
Remember there are many more non football staff employed by Man City and their associated companies.
The rich will remain rich no matter what happens. I hope the ordinary workers don’t pay the real price
HH.
out and about this morning i had the misfortune to hear mccoist and brazil on talkshite
ally must have taken some advice to get back on message
while citys misdeeds are huge and ally recognises this he expects the owners to be punished but the trophies cannot be taken off them maybe have an asterix against them but you cant take the medals back because the players themselves didnt do anything wrong .
ffs
P67 writes… ‘every sponsor who writes a cheque, every broadcaster who pays millions, does so on the assumption that the competition is honest. Not perfect, but honest.’
I don’t wholly agree with that. Sponsors just want the audiences and exposure. Broadcasters want the game content and post-match debates and gas-bagging. The integrity of the comp is nice if it’s there, but it seems no biggie if the game’s kinda sorta bent or loaded.
Even knowing the Huns cheated and Zombie FC took their place, none of our sponsors walked away over integrity concerns; we were happy to pal along with the 5Way save the day – and the circus was able to roll on, marginalised but intact. End of day, money talks and the league felt it needed the ole sectarian club in its ranks.
But Barca in Spain; Chelski; Juve and Parma in Italy; Marseille in France plus, of course, the ugly sister here.
Most walks of business life (and fitba is the entertainment bizo) need as much honesty as it takes to be seen as being honest.
I’m a bit crabby tonite after doing my knee in a five-a-side hyper-extension injury.
Have any bigwigs at Man Utd released a statement saying what a wonderful club City are, with a great history (you have to admit it 😉) & how they wish they could remain in the division just for the challenge & all that?
A big difference between the stories is that the EPL thrived before Man City became the biggest trophy winner and will survive after.
The EPL will have everyone in football behind them, the mood is so dark that they could sell just about any punishment to most of the fans and the other clubs. Its important that they do, the integrity of the competition that the other clubs rely on depends on it
But the unbiased among the regulators and administrators would have been justified in being worried about a Scottish football without Rangers. There was a material risk that Scottish football would have been severely damaged without a Rangers in it, even one that was so crippled it wasnt able to compete. Doncaster made some big errors at the time but he was still duty bound to do the best for the game, his thinking would have included the commercial implications of everything.
Morally totally wrong, of course but a consideration for every governing body for sure.
I read yesterday that the new English independent football regulator played a big part in speeding up the verdict. Its as big a job as they’ll face, probably ever, so unless the position is to be an empty seat they will need to make sure this is done right.
Given what we know about the influence that The Huns have and continue to have on Scottish football, and the carnage that followed them going bust wouldnt it be sensible to have someone similar in Scotland?
Excellent article, Paul67 👏👏
Does anyone have any word on the status of the public enquiry the Scottish Parliament committed to in 2021 looking at the ‘malicious prosecution’ of Charles Green et. al. and concomitant ‘abuse of state power’ by the COPFS that has already cost the taxpayer £50/60 million?
Unfortunately in a parochial backwater, it would seem very few are ever held to account.
Of the many shortcomings of the LNS ‘performance’ was that the issue of Good Faith was not touched upon.
This was a (then) SPL rule and all member clubs were (and remain) required to act “in the utmost good faith” in all dealings with the SPL and its members.
It is a curiosity that this requirement – ‘utmost good faith’ – was carried across into the SPL’s rules from the English Premiership, the solicitor given the job of drafting the SPL’s rules basically cribbed the rules of the English Premier League document and did a Find & Replace ‘English’ for ‘Scottish’. (I’m being a little unkind here, but not so that I’m being grossly inaccurate).
The meaning of the principle of ‘utmost good faith’ stems from the insurance sector where the insured is bound to disclose all material information, and that failing to do so renders the contract null and void – You can’t get a terminal diagnosis then take out a life insurance policy and expect it to pay out. At law, it is defined as:
“…the principle that each party is entitled to repose confidence in the other, and the law endeavours to secure that such confidence should not be abused.
…all such cases have the common characteristic that one or both of the parties is bound to disclose all material facts known to him, and that failure in disclosure is a ground for the reduction of the contract.”
It’s a pretty unforgiving clause and some Scots lawyers contest that ‘utmost good faith’ outside of an insurance or similar setting simply means ‘good faith’ in ordinary course.
Both SPL and SFA require clubs to disclose all material facts regarding player contracts in order for the player to be validly registered. For example: “…a Registration Form will not be valid unless it is accompanied by the contract entered into between the club concerned and the player stating all the term and conditions”
And “All payment to be made to a player relating to his playing activities must be clearly recorded upon the relevant contract and/or agreement.”
And so on. You get the picture – there is a short list of onerous requirements in order that a given player is validly registered to play. At every turn for a decade and more, the contracts of more than 50 Rangers players were submitted without declaring all the payments due.
From 1998 onwards, a series of directors of Rangers who acted with executive capacity as regards player contracts and tax schemes were concurrently directors of SPL and SFA. As Rangers directors they were withholding contractual information contrary to rules and articles that as SPL/SFA directors they were obliged to enforce.
Even if we strike ‘utmost’ from the good faith definition, we are still left with the ordinary course requirement to:
“…act with honest action and fidelity to whatever norm, or rule or obligation the statute prescribes as attracting the requirement of good faith observance. That fidelity may extend beyond compliance with the black letter of the law absent the good faith requirement.
…A good faith provision offers a warning that game playing at the margins of a statutory proscription or obligation may attract a finding of liability.”
All of the Rangers directors who concurrently served as SPL directors were recipients of the unlawful tax schemes. Moreover, the then President of the SFA not only executed the DOS scheme, but was a beneficiary of the EBT scheme to the tune of £100,000 approx.
Get that.
The President of the SFA, the principal purpose of which is to ‘foster the game and protect it from abuses’ was an executor of one of the tax schemes used to pay players and a beneficiary of another scheme, all of which unlawful and contrary to the rules of the organisation of which he was the fechin President,
And in that light, when the SPL prepared their case against Rangers, they inexplicably (!) elected not to pursue a breach of the good faith obligation, against either the club of the relevant directors.
And then… the SFA decided not to participate in an independent enquiry into the whole affair.
That is 19th century Scotland’s legacy to the 21st century, and shames us all for tolerating it.
Shame again that it’s taking the English Premier League, 15 years down the line, to show us how responsible people act.
UberrimaFidesCSC
Should read “…against either the club OR the relevant directors.”
The Celtic Board and Desmond, totally bottled it to pursue the huns for lost titles and millions in revenue, and for people on the Board to say they never seen the 5WA, is for the birds,and I’m being kind there…..so no matter how many times this subject comes up,look at what our Club done rather than point fingers in other directions.
The President of the SFA Campbell Ogilvie had received payments through EBT while at rangers.
He knew fine well what was happening.
The whole EBT episode which clouded Scottish football makes an absolute mockery of our football governance.
The “people” at the very top are an embarrassment..
It has not recovered.
Celtic40me
“Doncaster made some big errors at the time but he was still duty bound to do the best for the game, his thinking would have included the commercial implications of everything.”
Doncaster himself will tell you unashamedly that his ONLY consideration is the commercial benefit for the SPFL. His organisation has no regulatory or moral responsibility to the Game. That’s the SFA’s job, he’ll tell you. His job is to maximise the commercial return to the members.
And that direction comes from the members themselves.
BTW When the SPL merged with the SFL in 2013, they discovered that the outgoing SFL CEO and President had been acting in consort to appropriate in excess of £500,000 of members’ funds. The SFL members were apoplectic. £500,000 is more than most of them turned over in a year. Once folk had calmed down, it was decided to allow that sleeping dog to lie, given the other angry hounds pursuing them at the time. No proceedings were ever brought.
I think all this Man City stuff has triggered us all.
I’m sure ogilvie got a job at uefa despite all that he knew did and received.
The legal purposes of the SFA require its Directors to: “…take all such steps as may be deemed necessary or advisable for preventing infringements of the rules of the game, or other improper methods or practices in the game, and for protecting it from abuses”.
Not participating in an independent enquiry into the whole disgrace is utterly shameful. They acted to protect themselves from the consequences of the abuse they themselves were party to.
The main difference between down there and up here is the social unrest consequence…
Stewart Regan…”My discussions with a number of media outlets last night centred on what may or may not happen to Rangers in the future,” he said.
“In the event there wasn’t a Rangers, that’s got dire consequences of the game and for Scottish society, generally.
“The economic impact and social unrest are all things that could result as an impact of having no Rangers.”
So there! Now you know…
Same topic on the huddle breakdown:
https://youtu.be/rfzFyn0I31M?is=Iqou3lNuorcEv7Dk
Are we back at Lennoxtown yet?
So Man City are going to appeal despite being found guilty! Who do they think they are ?
R2ngers!
i have always struggled with what was actually meant by the social impact ?
what was the actual threat ?
financial aye . businesses around ibrox loosing out on their 24 games at home benefits
hotels and transportation mibbies some
away games are hardly a dent in teams overall attendance now.
so what was meant ?
social unrest as in violence and rioting so what.
Dessybhoy
What job did Ogilvie get at UEFA ?
Genuinely curious. I knew the guy back then and didn’t really like him tbh.
Don’t know he had got a uefa gig though.
He was appointed to a uefa committee can’t remember which one
In July 2012, Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell and SPL chief executive Neil Doncaster traveled to London to hold emergency negotiations with Sky Sports to salvage the Scottish football television contract. This critical intervention occurred immediately after Rangers FC went into liquidation and were placed into the Third Division. The demotion effectively wiped out the top-flight Old Firm derbies, which had been a mandatory condition of a previously agreed five-year, £80 million broadcasting package
• Revenue Drop: The original unsigned £80 million deal was scrapped. In its place, Lawwell and Doncaster secured a revised five-year agreement worth £63 million, representing a straight £17 million loss in projected revenue.
• Lower-League Rights Demand: Sky refused to finalize the contract until the SPL could also guarantee the broadcasting rights for a set number of Rangers’ matches in the Third Division. This forced the SPL to rapidly bid for and buy up lower-league broadcasting rights from the Scottish Football League (SFL).
• Diminished Club Payouts: Because the SPL had to pay the SFL roughly £1 million per year for those lower-league rights—combined with an existing £2 million annual breakaway fee—the actual pot distributed among the 12 top-flight clubs dropped to roughly £10 million per year.
Perhaps tomorrow you’ll get around to discussing Celtic’s response or lack there off to the football authorities brushing the hun financial doping under the carpet, Paul ?
I’m interested to see if even one sports journalist in the UK has the balls to call out Sounness on his Everest height hypocrisy regarding trophy stripping.
I suspect not.
The people at the top of Man City are all achievers in life.
They must be innocent.
The janny did it.
😊
THE BADA BING on 30TH SEPTEMBER 2026 1:11 PM
The Celtic Board and Desmond, totally bottled it to pursue the huns for lost titles and millions in revenue, and for people on the Board to say they never seen the 5WA, is for the birds,and I’m being kind there…..so no matter how many times this subject comes up,look at what our Club done rather than point fingers in other directions.
—-
Not only did they bottle it – Desmond is on record praising them.
It’s a matter of fact that Celtic FC has criticised the Club’s most successful manager of the 21st century more than they criticised a decade of financial doping at the huns.
Great article.
My concern though is that in the end the establishment clubs don’t get punished regardless of their rule breaking and financial doping activities. Smaller or less established clubs do with penalty points leading to relegation etc. Perhaps Man City will fall into the bracket of less established and so will pay the price.
As well as other highly dubious financial arrangements, e.g Chelsea, there have been two massive breaches of financial fair play/financial doping, known about, this century, in Europe. In both cases, the punishment did not fit the crime. Glasgow Rangers FC, now liquidated rather than fans or a fan stepping up and assuming the responsibility and paying their taxes to see their club survive, received a slap on the wrist. Real Madrid and Barcelona both effectively traded while insolvent and were bailed out by their governments not only polluting their own leagues with their cheating but European competition as well. They couldn’t compete with the PL for transfer fees and wages and so cheated to make up the difference, ironically at the same time as Man City. The Spanish FA/League did next to nothing. UEFA, paragons of virtue, did nothing. The three biggest establishment clubs in their countries, massive cheating, no proper punishment.
I don’t think there’s a good record in this area and so will wait till this is over before being satisfied that regulators or FAs or whoever can bring the financial cheaters to book.
Good afternoon CQN.
Turning into a lovely afternoon.
Lionroars67 @ 6:53pm last night re CSL shares update …
… much appreciated.
I must admit .. I struggle to find news from either the CSL or the Haughey initiative.
This small step was interesting.
BTW – “small step” is intended to be accurate, not dismissive.
If board room change is to happen, I suspect it will require many, many small steps over an extended period.
If the elites can murder, rape, pillage, etc, etc, etc with total impunity, I expect Cty will get a token slap.
As for honesty, I have to say that’s the best laugh I have had today in what’s been a really trying day, thanks for that Paul, fair cheered me up, honesty, Ha Ha Ha Ha………
The Celtic board are not the problem.
What are they supposed to think about anything when 53k season ticket holders keep throwing money at them?
All PLC boards are full of sharks and duplicitous operatives.
That is why Fergus McCann created a PLC.
To shaft the fans and ensure that there would be no accountability of the PLC because fans emotional weakness would see them being too scared to boycott season tickets for fear of losing their seats.
If fans can’t break free from the PLC’s psychological arm-lock since 1994, then Celtic PLC board will never be held to account on any issue.
If they go along with the same club lie, which should have been a nuclear issue, and fans did not lay a single glove on them by boycotting any tickets, then the PLC is untouchable.
Weak and fearful fans will continue to financially champion the PLC whether fans are big enough to admit that or not.
The PLC have read the room of the supporter base and all that they see is weak hypocrites throwing tangerines after buy their season tickets.
The entire club on and off the pitch is a sham which has been ruthlessly exposed on the pitch by Derek McInnes.
If DM had the resources last season that he has this season, then he might have cleared out the entire Celtic stables, on and off the pitch, during the summer.
Maybe he’ll do it this season?
With a club like Celtic who think they are too big to learn lessons from one week to the next, who rule out a McInnes blowing down of the House of Cards that Dave King recited as the one eyed king in the land of the blind?
Every empire comes to an end.
It’s our old friend moral hazard that also emerged from the 2008 crisis. The huns were deemed too big to fail in a Scottish context. Man City are certainly not in an English context.
Scottish football will be forever stained by the episode. Hopefully the English authorities follow through and absolutely send a message to the wider league that financial doping isn’t worth it. And hopefully this episode is what finally bursts the horribly inflated corporate bubble that is the EPL. It’s completely ruining football.
This is an excellent a analysis by my friend Alan Morrison of the relevance of the Man City situation and Rangers and a very accurate account of what took place in 2011 & 2012.
Alan is well informed and will be listened to by many.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thehuddlebreakdown/p/man-city-rangers-and-the-story-scottish?r=55bmto&utm_medium=ios
The whole podcast is worth a listen but it only takes 15 mins to get a full understanding of the Man City/Rangers relevance..
Two things come out to me from what was said during the podcast:
That we must keep the issue in the public mind because putting Scottish football on an honest keel matters, even if it is not our generation who see the benefit.
That one of the other things Res12 achieved, which is mentioned is that UEFA removed the subsequent monitoring after a licence was granted from national associations including the SFA and took over the process as part of FSR.
The benefit of that is Rangers can no longer buy titles using other peoples money which reduces the squad quality that saw them exit Europe altogether. (and I appreciate that reflects on how poor we have been since the 3 0 win v Lask)
What will have helped UEFA decide this was necessary, apart from any input from Celtic who wanted lessons to be learned, can be read in this letter to UEFA from Res12 shareholders lawyer at end of May that produced the Traverso new club/company reply.
That letter was real fun to construct.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/0B6uWzxhblAt9VlVMT2Q0cnFLdTQ/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=107947982974245186134&resourcekey=0-KgFdsuQbqP_qawitjwKyiA&rtpof=true&sd=true
Even the shareholders lawyer, a Hibs supporter, tackled the drafting with relish.
TBB
The charges that should have been put before LNS were as you describe under Article 5 of SFA rule
Why they were not is an interesting story involving Duff and Phelps whose staff were paid compensation for malicious prosecutions.
How LNS was misled with an assumption of motivation – to sell Rangers- is now documented but best held until either the sanctions are announced or if City are going to appeal put all around social media.
Back to utmost good faith: all the details are in this article published so long ago I forgot where. It comes at latest pages.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LgNu5ECIDhTzbJcHzlBJNpLnBt7_2CY8/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=107947982974245186134&rtpof=true&sd=true
Neil Doncaster will be brought back into the woods too as the creator of the same club myth using legal sophistry (is there any other kind?) to do so.
Back around 2018 it was obvious that there was no wider interest in Celtic support or wider in pursuing Res12 or LNS.
So an archive was built for the day the issues of integrity and trust might become relevant and the Tooth Fairy was not involved.
Thank the Scottish Football Monitor contributors for that who went wider than The Celtic Support.
An Dún on 30th September 2026 3:10 pm
THE BADA BING on 30TH SEPTEMBER 2026 1:11 PM
Actually there is a different narrative on The Boards part that gives them plausible deniability which I posted somewhere in last two days.
The Doncaster e mail asks Celtic to accept The 5WA to avoid the danger of Rangers challenging any investigation that turned out to be the LNS Commission.
Only if Celtic knew that LNS would be a whitewash, a sham – and they might but there is no proof- could they be blamed for what LNS decided.
The big mistake they made was allowing the tainted titles to be portrayed as won honestly by the same club.
They had a chance to appeal the LNS Decision but Eric Riley swerved the SPL Board meeting that agreed not to appeal. There is more to it than that but The Resolution that mentions him was deemed defamatory and was replaced at last minute by something that was acceptable to requisitioners and Celtic alike which was Celtic took over pursuit of Res12.
What TET said @ 3.48pm 👌
Police Scotland officers being used to investigate the NI First Minister plus other ministers of the Stormont Govt, senior politicians from SF AND SDLP as well as those leading the Garvaghy residents association, Chief constable of the PSNI associating peaceful protest with criminality being manoureved by the likes of Jamie Bryson is madness, the Labour SOS for NI needs to intervene ASAP before this explodes unnecessarily
“A large scale criminal investigation is underway regarding unlawful protest on the Garvaghy Road. I have given a clear direction regarding prioritising the evidence gathering and a criminal justice process.”
Chief Constable Jon Boutcher.