In the event of Rangers facing financial Armageddon after the resumption of their HMRC tax hearing a quick – very quick – recovery scenario is available to them. At any point during next month’s hearing they may consider their position is no longer tenable and, unable to meet the tax bill, a new company could be formed which attempts a prepack administration.
A prepack offer from a new company, for example, Rangers Newco FC Ltd, would offer an administrator a deal for all assets of the club, including stadium and offer to meet outstanding player wages. Deals like this seldom offer unsecured creditors much but even a small percentage might realise more cash than the administrator would gamble on raising in an unstructured sale.
In such circumstances, the administrator could accept as little as £4m for the unsecured creditors.
In normal business Rangers Newco FC Ltd would begin trading and this would be the end of the story but football is not normal business. Rangers Newco FC would own a stadium and would employ some footballers but they would not be part of any league structure. They would need to apply for membership to the Scottish Football League or Scottish Premier League.
In this scenario, the death of Rangers Football Club would leave a vacancy in the SPL, presenting several financial, logistical and sporting challenges. Without Rangers, the league would have to invalidate all this season’s results involving the club, one team would be without a game each weekend for the rest of the season, current TV contracts and sponsorship deals could be jeopardised, while future contracts would be worth a fraction of their current values.
Every team in the league would have to downsize and some would have to win fresh support from their bankers, which may or may not be forthcoming.
There is, of course, a resolution to this problem.
Rangers Newco FC Ltd could present an offer to the SPL. The new company, with its stadium and thousands of potential supporters, could take the obligatory 10 point punishment for going into administration and adopt the place of Rangers FC, complete their fixtures and allow every other team in the league to fulfil commercial obligations.
If these events took place before Christmas, Rangers Newco FC could be debt-free and signing players in January to enhance their league challenge.
To force the deal through, Rangers Newco FC would require 10 of the remaining 11 SPL clubs to vote in their favour. If any two clubs stand against them, they would have to apply for membership of the Scottish Football League, but, having researched this story for several days, I expect Rangers Newco FC Ltd would get enough support to pick-up the place of the defunct Rangers FC.
Any natural sympathies towards Rangers aside (which will not exist in all places), money talks and, apart from Celtic, this league is neck-deep in debt. Celtic might be in a position to survive Rangers failing but it would cost our club tens of millions.
Crucially, if the other SPL clubs back Rangers Newco FC, they create a template for a snap recovery from their own troubles. Instead of repaying your debts, simply get yourself into a safe league position, ditch the company, prepack and start again with a clean sheet.
This would create a clear incentive to stiff creditors. While the banks will get wise and not offer unsecured facilities in future, HMRC and small traders are likely to become perennial fall guys. Why would any mid-table team pay millions in tax, rates and policing bills, when they have a sporting incentive to ditch creditors without punitive penalty, freeing income streams to buy football bling in the next transfer window?
This would make a mockery of the Uefa predident Michele Platini’s Financial Fair Play initiative and make our league the poster-boy for Financial Doping.
Scottish football will be mortally wounded if it were to parachute a club straight into the upper echelons of the game while establishing a blueprint for the abandonment of creditors.
It is incumbent on all who care about the game, in Scotland and throughout the world, that we insist Scottish Premier League clubs do not allow a prepack company to phoenix into the shoes of a dead football club.
Celtic fans, as well as those from Aberdeen, Hibernian, Dundee United and St Johnstone, together with fans from Motherwell, who could become genuine championship contenders, and from those clubs who would avoid relegation if Rangers failed, must insist their club votes against any prepack company parachuting into the league.
The SFA executive must use whatever influence it can to prevent the name of Scottish football being brought into disrepute. Politicians, who either have, or aspire to have, tax raising responsibilities, must register their abhorrence that a self-serving oligopoly should attempt to vote themselves an escape from paying tax.
Fifa and Uefa must explain to the Scottish FA that the days of shady financial deals in football are gone.
Watch the media coverage of these events carefully. If and when the decision time comes, the case to acquiesce to Rangers Newco’s demands will be overwhelming. Sincere ‘impartial’ observers will do their upmost to convince us all we must do whatever necessary to save Rangers for the good of the Scottish game. Some voices will even tell you Celtic need Rangers Newco. Whatever part of my club is dependent on Rangers I am willing to lose.
Rangers-HMRC tax hearing resumes next month, when there is also a two week international break. The most important element of making a prepack offer succeed is to offer a fait accompli: ‘Here is a solution, you have no time and you have no alternative’.
Should Rangers go into administration, I believe this is a very, likely scenario. If you are a supporter of Celtic or any other club, make your views known.
Read issue 3 of CQN Magazine free online here or buy a print version at Magcloud.
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HAMILTON TIM.
Well done. Strangely,I didn’t see your opinion as a choice on there. Dirty stuff at the crossroads,methinks.
FWIW,I regretfully find myself in your camp on this one. I say regretfully,because my heart says bin them,hammer them,crucify them,etc.
But my head says I would be back,probably more of a malcontent than ever.
Supporting Celtic is about more than hating Rangers.
Well first off, if it had even to come down to other SPL clubs taking a vote on this then, the scottish game will have died….I cannot believe for one minute that fifa/uefa would allow rangers2012 to step into the shoes of the current club, just like that.It is FAR FAR TOO DAMAGING!
Secondly, if Celtic vote for them to carry on in the spl then, that will be the day I stop supporting Celtic…..Again, I’m certain that our board won’t, that is financial suicide, the risk in such a move too great….it would also confirm to me that our club is a million miles away from the support.I believe that this descision would kill us quicker than anything.
There are rumours circulating that it may be tomorrow for them.
Good evening friends.
Paul’s article has brought me out in a cold sweat. But first things first, I will still celebrate long and hard and expensively on the day that they go under and I’ll worry later about what to do when they reemerge.
Jobo
TT at 18:07 – Airdrie have a different name from before, so they are a new club. So a New RangersFC would be a new club, separate from the ‘achievements’ of the old one, no? I think Motherwell and Dundee didn’t actually go out of existence.
amadeus says:
27 October, 2011 at 17:55
Message to all hun lurkers.
Why do you hate being called huns, huns? You must have heard the word a million times and yet it still upsets you.
Nothing that you huns call us bothers me at all, and it never has, and it never will. The same applies to the whole Celtic support.
There’s a reason for this difference in attitude.
Have a wee lateral think and see if you can work it out.
Amadeus
==============================
They don’t hate being called Huns. Truth is, they used to revel in it.
This current flammery about the word ‘Hun’ is a construct of the Rangers forums and the wee-free mortally-offended mindset.
It’s straw-clutching, swallowed in full by simple-minded gullible journos, a retort to their own mirror-gazing of March when the world saw in full sick-glo technicolour the breadth of their bigotry.
So they needed a riposte to recover some face.
Their riposte is, laughably, the demonization of the word ‘Hun’ – only in Scotland with the institutionalised bigotry that permeates the water-table of our society could a former jocular nickname used by fans of ALL clubs to describe your average Orc become deemed a term of ‘offense’.
Dumb rubber-necks cops are now nicking Celtic fans for its use. I know the average intelligence of the police recruitment has dropped considerabley but recent intimidation and harrassment of our travelling support is reaching Mississippi ’63 levels.
The word ‘Hun’ has no connotations with sectarianism. Unless you’re a revisionist Hun determined to grasp what little ammunition you can to throw back at the subject sof your inbred hate.
Continue to use it. Continue to remind them of their petty desperation. Continue to laugh at their affected perma-rage.
Continue to undermine the foundations of this country’s institutionalised bigotry.
BMCUW
Bobby I would do anything to hasten their extinction, except one thing my friend.
lots of web rumours about tomorrow being a day of reckoninfg for the Orcs. Now I am on a long weekend off,it`s the wifes birthday,planned Jamie`s Italian meal for Saturday night,we`re at home , weather looks good…..surely it must be true. I best go and get another case of Becks from Asda just in case the party goes on longer that I planned.
James Forrest 17.35
“and the whims of other clubs who’s fans despise you”.
This is where your view on things falls down.
The fans may well despise Rangers ,but it is the owners who have the power.
The owners will do deals,that best serve themselves.The fans views will be secondary.
I have said from day one that Rangers will be our mortal enemy forever.
Just wait and see.
TT
clyde is so predictable – celtic put on a sincilating 2nd half display, away from home, in a cup tie, with a depleted squad to destroy a team who were on the back of a good confidence winning victory + with additional incentive knowin other clubs had been knowcked out.
The panel frame up tonighs callers with ” celtic were shakey and could have been 2 down”
Yes, we started slowly with a shot that was heading out for a shy on the other end of the pitch – took a wicked deflection and ended up in the goal. Celti also had easy chances to score in the first half.
beware – they are out to tarnish us and kill off our confidence!
I continue to support Celtic FC inspite of Celtic PLC
nothing will change that…
hamiltontim says:
27 October, 2011 at 18:14
BMCUW
Bobby I would do anything to hasten their extinction, except one thing my friend.
Well ,I`m firmly in the “anything” camp. I agree with our weather man from EK, party hard,savour the moment then take them on when it comes to any re-instatement nonsense.
Sandman
So eloquently put,I’m sure your the ghuy that first posted about the court case and how hun isn’t infact proved in a court to be illegal?
Hail Hail
Huddlehound.
Your missing my point.
I was
at Easter Road with a Raith Rovers fan last night.
He said that he still thinks of Airdrie as Airdrie.
He is right.
If we draw Airdrie in a cup we don’t differentiate them as old and new ,we think of them a Airdrie.
If we have to go to Ibrox next season.
Play New Rangers ,in Ibrox, in front of the same fans,it won’t matter a jot.
It’s just semantics.
TT
A Rangers newco in the Third Division would be the icing on the cake for me, but the best possible outcome, as far as I am concerned, is for Rangers Football Club (1873) to cease to exist. The newco can call themselves whatever they want, but the five stars on their jerseys will go, their little sectarian cesspit of a football club would be gone and the link to their inglorious history severed.
As to the name of the newco, I had read somewhere that when Farsley Celtic went out of business in 2008, HMRC blocked the phoenix club from incorporating, “Celtic,” in their name.
Paul67:
Great piece, I am optimistic from your recent contribution that the end is nigh…
In my opinion our Board, Desmond, Peter et al have a massive opportunity to make one of our great Club decisions in our 123 year history, stand up for integrity and renounce and put down the cheats and fraudsters that are soon to be the defunct rfc…by not paying their taxes and living outwith theirs means they most surely won trophies by foul means…
Be gone with them…
Keep the Faith!
Hail Hail!
Can I vote twice on that petition?
Allgreen,
If we had not got into bed with them in the first place we wouldn’t have had a worry.
This might not be the end for the huns but it is surely the end of the Old firm.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we tried to rekindle a new firm eventually.
If we actively concede to an escape route for them after the financial prudence that DD has preached then it is game over for this regime. They know it and we know it. If they were to press on regardless then it would be akin to a WWF audience.
We are Scottish football without us they have nobody to hate as thier perpetual acquiescence will testify too.
We as in Scots have never been so crap. Murray ruined our game and he is now gone.
If we cling onto our medieval ways for money we deserve to die alongside the huns.
HH
HT
Thank you very much.
Keep you chin up (;-)
TT
TinyTim says:
27 October, 2011 at 18:20
You are spot on, they will always be the orcs…the only difference is that their trophy list will not be added to in the history books, no more league titles etc….no more stars, that will do for me and the indignity of it all…
They will always be here though…
Happy Birthday mate, left you a message on FB
Keep the Faith!
Hail Hail!
Awe_Naw_No_Annoni_Oan_Anaw_Noo – If they were to press on regardless then it would be akin to a WWF audience.
Can you smell what DD is cooking? (thumbsup)
St Michaelsbhoy2 1823
“As to the name of the newco, I had read somewhere that when Farsley Celtic went out of business in 2008, HMRC blocked the phoenix club from incorporating, “Celtic,” in their name.”
NOW YOU ARE GETTING ME EXCITED.
If that were to happen then ,they would not to have any credibility in assuming the link to the old club.
I so hope that you are correct.
TT
Lennybhoy
Thanks for the birthday wishes.
I want them to disappear,what a birthday present that would be.
TT
I wonder how many of the present squad would stay if them were to disappear and have to start all over again? Maybe the other clubs would wonder that as well and vote for them not to reappear in the SPL? A level playing field perhaps? I just wish this would hurry up and happen so we could concentrate on the team on the park and not be gloating at the demise of them!
Philvis
Glasgow United ?
I registered all those names with company house circa 2004
HH
Why would Vladimir Romanov, the owner of Hearts (who are conspicuously absent from P67’s hypothetical roll of dishonour), having stated that he sees Hearts over taking the Old Firm as the main force in Scottish Football, wish to prop up the Status Quo? Hmmmmmmmmm.
aw_naw
with them it’s Glasgow divided….
TinyTim says:
27 October, 2011 at 18:29
It would be Nirvana…
Keep the Faith!
Hail Hail!
Awe_Naw_No_Annoni_Oan_Anaw_Noo – Glasgow United ?
It’s better than Dyslexia Scotland’s staff team:
Glasgow Untied. (thumbsup)
To the boycotters, consider the followeing scenario:
Rankers are reborn with minimal punishment.
We dont know what deals were done behind closed doors as neither celtic plc nor the sphell operates as a democratic institution.
So, faced with a resurgent rankers, you stop supporting your club as the best wee country in ther world delights in their favoured, reborn sons sweeping all before them in an orgiastic frenzy whilst attendances at celtic park nosedive.
As much as I might despise the celtic board for their acquiesence to cheats, dont you think our club deserves just a little bit more support from the best fans in the world?
DD is not Celtic FC. We are Celtic FC and I will support the team until the day I die as will 99.9% of you regardless of how you feel about the actions of the club owner (in all but name).
HH
For Pablophanque,
Wish you were here tonight buddy. Your prescence will always be missed by me and this blog. Hail Hail to you.
Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream, It is not dying, it is not dying
Lay down all thought, surrender to the void, Is it shining? Is it shining?
That you may see the meaning of within It is being, it is being
Love is all and love is everyone Is it knowing? Is it knowing?
That ignorance and hate may mourn the dead It is believing, it is believing
But listen to the colour of your dreams Is it not living, is it not living
Or play the game “Existence” to the end Of the beginning, of the
beginning
HH
The No.13 Shorts – Why would Vladimir Romanov, the owner of Hearts (who are conspicuously absent from P67′s hypothetical roll of dishonour), having stated that he sees Hearts over taking the Old Firm as the main force in Scottish Football, wish to prop up the Status Quo? Hmmmmmmmmm.
Maybe he’ll tell them: “Whatever You Want”?
Anyway, I don’t think you can ever safely predict what a man like Vlad will do, he’s a true original. (thumbsup)
Awe_Naw_No_Annoni_Oan_Anaw_Noo 18:39
I had the very same thought earlier.
EN
Haha great little call on clyde there!! had delahunt etc squirming, you could feel it….
“hello vicky, – vicky -hi its just a point about these bigots wanting Lennon infront of the sfa again
delahunt-now we cant call them bigots vicky,
vicky-well we can, these people dont pick on him because he has ginger hair, or is an aggressive character….we all know the real reason….it’s because he is an irish catholic!
well said vicky.
Estadio,
I an so used to being an hour ahead now that it is six it is very interesting.
1.2.3.4 Heaven loves ya The clouds part for ya Nothing stands in your way When you’re a boy
Clothes always fit ya Life is a pop of the cherry When you’re a boy
When you’re a boy You can wear a uniform When you’re a boy Other boys check you out You get a girl To say your favorite things When you’re a boy
Boys Boys Boys keep swinging Boys always work it out
Uncage the colours Unfurl the flag Luck just kissed you hello When you’re a boy
They’ll never clone ya You’re always first on the line When you’re a boy
When you’re a boy You can buy a home of your own When you’re a boy Learn to drive and everything You’ll get your share When you’re a boy
Boys Boys Boys keep swinging Boys always work it out
HH
TinyTim
Happy Birthday mate
Paul67
Do you know if the supporters groups are lobbying the club in this matter, I for one would struggle to support Celtic in its present form if the board sanctioned this.
For me, there is only one course of action for Celtic, if Newco are reinstated into the SPL.
The club must give immediate notice of resignation from the League.
Not to do so, is to condone cheating and, even perhaps illegality, within the game.
That would be an indefensible position to adopt, and flies in the face of UEFA Codes of Fair Play.
A side effect with UEFA, may be a more sympathetic hearing for escaping Scottish football.
If Celtic fail to act with honour on this potential situation, they will lose the support of many people who have supported the club throughout their entire lives.
I am one of them.
Celtic have had many ups and downs in it’s history, but there has never been a time when I have felt ashamed of my club.
This could change, if they were to put pragmatism before decency.
There is no place in a just society for RFC, in any shape or form.
merseycelt dumps sadsally says:
27 October, 2011 at 18:39
Thats a fair point – its just that when it turns out that the football league is not actually a sporting contest based on rules and punishing cheating – you would be as well watching the wrestling