Last year we attempted to quantify the money other SPL clubs were denied by Rangers improperly registering football players – on the assumption that being found guilty of improperly registering football players was actually worthy of punishment.
Below is an excerpt of the article and figures:
Some of the losses were easier to calculate than others. For example, it was easy to calculate that when Rangers won the title in 2009 with improperly registered players, earning automatic qualification to the Champions League group stage, they denied Celtic £15m European earnings, plus £340k SPL prize money. Other losses are less clear, specifically when a club was denied a place in a qualifying round for the Champions League or Uefa Cup, which they may or may not have progressed from.
We have established three figures for each club in the SPL during the season just finished, to cover the period from 2000 to 2012:
Minimum loss:
The absolute minimum each club was denied from European and SPL prize money as a result of Rangers finishing above them with ineligible players.
Weighted loss:
The figure based on Scottish clubs gaining entry to Champions League/Europa League (Uefa Cup) group stages from 20% of their qualifying campaigns (which is slightly less than trend).
Maximum loss:
The maximum a club could have achieved if it qualified for the European group stage it was denied entry to.
Out estimates take no account of the subsequent effect money has on future years. For example, If Celtic earned an additional £15m from entering the Champions League group stage in 2009-10 their league challenge for that season would have been £15m stronger, and Rangers £15m weaker, potentially resulting in consequences in future years.
This multiplier effect would have benefited Celtic but it would be likely to have a greater effect on other clubs, some of whom would be denied the enormous percentage increase in budget automatic qualification to European group stages would have brought.
Hearts finished immediately behind Celtic and Rangers more often than any other club over the period and suffer the greatest potential losses, even more so than Celtic. Hibernian, Aberdeen, Dundee United and Motherwell also suffered significant losses.
Several clubs got nowhere near European football over the period, and some of the 11 spent only a few years in the SPL but each club lost over £1m.
Figures for each club are:
Hearts
Maximum: £72.3m
Weighted: £16.3m
Minimum: £6.2m
Celtic
Maximum: £46.7m
Weighted: £21.9m
Minimum: £17.4m
Hibernian
Maximum: £34.8m
Weighted: £8.4m
Minimum: £3.6m
Aberdeen
Maximum: £21.1m
Weighted: £5.5m
Minimum: £2.7m
Dundee United
Maximum: £20.8m
Weighted: £5.2m
Minimum: £2.4m
Motherwell
Maximum: £16.7m
Weighted: £4.4m
Minimum: £2.1m
Kilmarnock
Maximum: £5.1m
Weighted: £1.9m
Minimum: £1.3m
Dunfermline
Maximum: £3.4m
Weighted: £1.8m
Minimum: £1.5m
Inverness
Maximum: £1.3m
Weighted: £1.3m
Minimum: £1.3m
St Johnstone
Maximum: £1.1m
Weighted: £1.1m
Minimum: £1.1m
St Mirren
Maximum: £1.1m
Weighted: £1.1m
Minimum: £1.1m
In the event Rangers fielded ineligible players during the period under consideration, which everyone apart from Neil Doncaster knows, and even he will be unable to deny next week, we know the following:
Rangers received a minimum of £40.9m which should have gone to the 11 other clubs, assuming each club lost all their European group stage qualifying campaigns. This calculation does not include earnings from clubs now in the Scottish Football League, such as Hamilton Accies or [then]Dundee.
If Scottish clubs progressed to the group stages of European competition on only 20% of their qualifying campaigns the loss would be £69.0m.
The figure for total potential losses if clubs successfully progressed to every European group stage is, as the figure for 100% failure, more illustrative than likely, but the maximum cost to the 11 SPL clubs is £224.6m.
You can read our calculations here. European income figures were sources from Uefa data.
The people who really matter in this entire debacle are those who buy tickets for Celtic Park, Pittodrie, Easter Road, Tynecastle, Tannadice, Fir Park and elsewhere. It is patently clear that the game in Scotland is failing fans and clubs alike. It is time for fans of SPL clubs to unite and move beyond the busted grip of the SFA.
Only SPL fans, working together, can ensure each of clubs has a viable future.
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TBB – great stuff, I couldn’t agree more. The verdict might not have been purely motivated by Sevco’s best interests ; there were other heavily conflicted parties.
scotlands shame
21:58 on
1 March, 2013
Everyone was angry with the outcome on here yesterday with not only the verdict…guilty, but the phoney fine.
Myself, i stewed and pondered over the goings on as some others did.
I waited and read what the more informed posters on here had to say
before i could get a balanced view on the farce.
Others vented their anger in other ways as it was an in your face masonic stitch up that we have seen and suffered from before, not as blatant or on such a large scale though.
Think mostly it was anger and on the clear light of day we are were we are and they swim in the gutter.hh
And THEY want an apology :O(((
BC
Cheers.
I actually think in the wider view, that the outcome for the now defunct club Rangers was in all probablity pretty much irrelevant.
This decision wasn’t a case of ‘the Establishment’ in Scotland acting to protect one of its own. That was the least of the fairly profound issues raised by the case, if it was even a consideration at all.
In my view, of course.
TBB
Maley’s Bhoys @MaleysBhoys
Read that statement from Celtic as “Yep, we know. We can’t say it in quite the same way you lot can, but we know.”
End of the day RFC got liquidated. Sevco in 3 rd division. Celtic in Champions league last 16.
I’m happy enough with that.
petec
regarding your recurring comment about the redevelopment around Celtic Park, I hope you can savour this performance without taking offence at the song title …(!)
http://youtu.be/MfZ4YaR8GXM
Gregory Ioannidis @LawTop20
Celtic shareholders and possibly fans could also have a right to appeal before the European Court of Justice.
Agreed sipsini but our board had nothin 2 do with decision an were gettin pelters yet tonite have come out an said goin by on here exactly what those who were angry on here what needed to be said. A response was demanded an one given together with our manager leaving public in no doubt. I just think credit where credit due. We are Celtic we haven’t put a foot wrong financially in years we followed the rules but because some judge nothin to do with us made a farcical decision that the world can see through an our board get slagged for it.
Apologies, in advance, for a long post on the LNS ruling not suited to Friday night posting.
I realise that there are a fair few Lawyers on CQN and that respect for the rule of Law is a fundamental principle behind a civilised and mature society. It can, when exercised free from interference be a bulwark against the Right of Power to suppress the Will of Many. In short, I would not abandon respect for law lightly because, if I do not obey a legal rule which does not please me, then I can scarcely complain when others break laws that I do favour.
So, must I accept the decision of the impartial Lord Nimmo Smith as the final settled word on all of this? He is a more learned man than I. He heard and saw more evidence than I have. And I have no evidence or reason to undermine his impartiality. I wanted an impartial decision on the EBT & registration issues and LNS, along with Mrs. Mure & Rae before him, have pronounced their final verdict, which is, that EBTs are legal, that Rangers meant to administer them legally as they told them that is what they intended to do despite not quite achieving their intention, and that the withholding of side letters, though a technical breach of the rules, there was sufficient dubiety over the SFA rulebook, to believe that Rangers applied their intentions honourably but just chose not to seek guidance on whether they had got it right. Again, the word of the Old Board, though they were criticised, was ultimately accepted and Rangers were guilty of an “honest mistake”. £47 million pounds worth of honest mistake, to be closer to precise.
There are no obvious appeal mechanisms to the LNS decision though the FTT appeal moves on with the handicap of a majority decision from the Assenting Judges for HMRC to be overturned. I am hopeful but not confident that justice may yet be done on one part of the rotten scam that was Ranger’s finances in the 21st century.
I feel we should be able to appeal the LNS decision. First rulings can be open to challenge in most systems so why not ths one? Especially since the learned mind of LNS, so keen to explain his deductions and thinking processes on many minor issues, loses all traditional Scottish scepticism and analysis, when it comes to accepting the views of Sandy Bryson and others that the prosecution evidence, of which he is supposed to be a part, is not really that watertight. Suddenly, LNS is back to pronouncements and decisions without deduction, analysis or rationale. Mr. Bryson’s view is accepted with a shrug of “Well, if that is his view, he ought to know and we should not challenge it”. The explanations for the omissions and oversights of Mr. Murray’ and Mr. Ogilvie are accepted without any questioning of how such dynamic able company men could be so slapdash and disinclined to share detail with their Board members. Secrecy and lack of a written trail for an important financial decision in a Company are usually tell tale signs of a plot, at best, and a possible fraud, at worst. yet, in LNS’s world, these are honourable men and their sense of honour must preclude us from having such sceptical thoughts (that includes you Ms. Poon) as, otherwise, an appaling vista opens up.
I wrote before the LNS decision that I feared we would be faced with a watered down punishment and a judgement that was heavy on pronouncement and light on deductive reasoning. LNS did not disappoint me though he may have disappointed some CQN lawyers who expected better of him.
I hope there are avenues to challenge this. I spoke before of Lord Denning’s idiotic judgement that Ken Livingstone’s GLC transport policy, involving subsidies of public transport, was illegal, because the GLC charter committed them to running an “economic” Transport Policy and that, in his view, economic meant breaking even in strict budgetary terms. It was a recklessly one eyed interpretation of a policy by a Judge whose blatant “small l” liberalism guided his world view. He was learned but not wise.
A more dramatic example can be found in the case of Roger Taney, the first Catholic on the Supreme Court of America. In the Dred Scott case of 1857 he issued a judgement that the US constitution could not be represented in court and had no rights because they were not and could never be part of the original community of citizens of the USA. The case and the intemperate and inhuman language used by Taney in describing slaves was one of the factors in raisng tensions towards a Civil War which broke out 4 years later.
And yet there was hope. Just 8 years later on February 1st 1865, John S. Rock of Boston was able not to be merely a defendant or a witness in a US court but to be admitted to practice before it. John S. Rock was a black lawyer.
Now, before anyone invokes Godwin’s Law or its racial equivalent, I am not equating Celtic’s injustices to the treatment of US slaves in the 18th and 19th century. I am merely offering hope that when the law is an ass, it can be challenged and overturned. We must now find ways to challenge the reticence and faulty analysis of the LNS decision. Human Beings make mistakes and, if lawyers are to be considered as Human Beings, we must be prepared to countenance that they get things wrong.
What kind of message has LNS sent to the
children of Scotland ?
iki
17:40 on 1 March, 2013
I try to be articulate and sometimes I am too smart for my own good.
I have striven to find the words to express my response to Nimmo Smith.
In the end, I can do no better than this ……..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoZ7JXkv6_o
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Now that is funny……..hahahahahahahahahah
missed out a line in final submission there
For “he issued a judgement that the US constitution could not be represented in court”
read “he issued a judgement that the US constitution meant that a former slave, even in a non-slave state, could not be represented in court”
Vin rouge.
Vino rosso.
Krasi kokkino.
Actually Greek red wine is on a par with the white stuff.
Swally as one poster on here put it. Sorry. Can’t remember who.
Tarrant
Just in form work .
Thanks for posting the Luke Kelly – always good to hear stuff like this that’s outside my musical comfort zone.
Slainte
Jimbo
History will prove that LNS has done
a great disservice not just to Scottish football
but to Scottish society.
SFTB
I enjoyed your long post. This is a matter that cannot adequately be addressed on Twitter.
I second your emotions Paul.
Worse than cheats they are hypocrites.
Their mantra. Law and order. Humphh.
gordon64
22:54 on1 March, 2013
History will prove that LNS has done
a great disservice not just to Scottish football
but to Scottish society.
My thoughts eggsactly.
I loved hearing this again earlier this evening, after a long time.
The Scottish football authorities think we can’t read.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnyZQBaUSXc
Apologies from me for what has probably been dealt with today or yesterday, but these things have got to get off my chest…
The purpose of these Rules
[65] Evidence was given by Iain Blair, the Company Secretary of the SPL…
[67] In recognition of the need to regulate the business of professional football in order to maintain its sporting integrity the international and national associations and the professional leagues have adopted extensive measures to ensure (so far as possible) that players do not receive irregular or improper payments or benefits.
General conclusion
[83] For all these reasons, we are satisfied that breaches of the Rules have been established…
So, Manager McCoist, you were found guilty of a breach of sporting integrity. Not an admin error. A breach of the rules set out by football to allow football to “maintain its sporting integrity”. Roon ye.
Why do people keep talking about appeals? Rangers were found guilty. What would you be appealing? For the decision to be reversed to not guilty?
Wise up folks!
History will prove that LNS done what he was telt(IMHO).
Goodnight all
what a difference 24hrs makes yesterday I was in “whats the point mode”
Tonight I cannot wait till kick off tomorrow.
there are people on here who show me the way to conduct myself. THANK YOU for being you.
HAIL HAIL
Abbot of Clonmacnois
“Roon ye”?
Don’t remember that being a central part of your argument when you were on the phone to me earlier.
But, curiously, it has a ring to it.
[85] In addressing us on Issue 3(c), Mr McKenzie sought to include a reference to period 2. Although there is a passage in the outline written argument for the SPL which may be taken to relate to period 2, Issue 3(c) and the relevant passage in Issue 3(b) both relate to period 3, from 23 May 2005 until 3 May 2011 (inclusive). No notice is given in the Notice of Commission of any comparable allegation relating to any earlier period, and for this reason we are not prepared to consider this part of the argument.
Why was the ineligible player question not addressed to the pre-2005 periods 1 and 2? Is LNS saying here to the SPL or SFA to look at this question now?
Great post earlier from TBB on why it was far easier for football administration as a whole (I refuse to cap it up) to pretend there was nothing it could do here. The alternative was unthinkable.
Neil Lennon Abbot of Clonmacnois
THANK YOU FOR THAT :))
SFTB
Great post. Made me feel like an even bigger illiterate than usual but I’ll forgive you!
Jimbo
[87] Mr McKenzie explained to us that SPL Rule D1.13 had hitherto been understood to mean that if, at the time of registration, a document was not lodged as required, the consequence was that a condition of registration was broken and the player automatically became ineligible to play in terms of SPL Rule D1.11.
He accepted however that there was scope for a different construction of the rule, to the effect that, as the lodging of the document in question was a condition of registration, the registration of the player would be liable to revocation, with the consequence that the player would thereafter become ineligible to play. He accepted that no provision of the Rules enabled the Board of the SPL retrospectively to terminate the registration of the player.
It became apparent from his submissions that Mr McKenzie was not pressing for a finding that Issue 3(c), together with the concluding words of Issue 3(b), had been proved.
WHY NOT? What was McKenzie doing there if not to argue for the SPL rules to be interpreted properly and implemented in this judgement?
Tom McLaughlin
I’ll try to wise up if you promise to read what posters are writing.
There were a range of charges being investigated from administrative errors (honest mistakes) at Level 1 right up to corporate fraud at level 10.
If you are happy that they are found guilty at level 1 only then I am happy for you but the decision gives me no pleasure. A murderer may shoot someone and throw away the gun. When he is found guilty of littering, I am unlikely to be satisfied.
He accepted that no provision of the Rules enabled the Board of the SPL retrospectively to terminate the registration of the player.
I don’t believe that McKenzie accepted that this was a deal-breaker after pages and pages of the report say that breach after breach was accepted. It’s garbage to suggest this notion (Bryson) and its garbage to accept it (the commission).
The big tax case, a 2/1 decision goes in their favour, their lawyers admits to five cases of tax evasion…………
the hun reaction……..we won the big tax case….jubilation.
The spl/LNS enquiry…..they are found guilty and fined 250k, they have broke rules for 11 years, they have cheated for 11 years………
The hun reaction…..we won….we demand appologies from everyone……
They really are a different species, wired up all wrong.
I reckon the aliens who are controling us need a fecked up bunch to study >}
Abott of Clonmacnois
TBB answers the ‘why not?’ question. The alternative was unthinkable. All those Scottish games, all those UEFA games, all those FIFA games.
Best pretend there was nothing anyone could do.
The sums were too hard.
It was nearly lunchtime.
The nights were fair drawing in.
A wee bit of Luke Kelly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTBC7ckTWpo
Good night
Jog on, Timmy. We are the people.