Rangers: A hollow win

Whatever else it’s done, Rangers new life in Division Three hasn’t dented their ability to command column inches.

This week it was the results of the First Tier Tribunal that dominated the media, old and new.

The findings have been pored over. Lines have been read between to prove what the reader believes to be true.

Only one thing really matters though. The majority opinion found in the oldco Rangers company's favour.

Vindication for Sir David Murray and those involved with the controversial EBT scheme. A victory for the fans to celebrate over those who will now forever be framed as "enemies" of the club.

Those enemies include a vindictive tax authority - although the findings of the the FTT at no point accuse HMRC of indulging in frippery in their pursuit of Murray’s Rangers - and all those in the mainstream media and online who pre-judged the club as guilty and demanded the death penalty.

Confession time. I was named on a Rangers forum this week as one who should be issuing an apology. Strange company for me to keep, being included (admittedly at the bottom) in a list that included Neil Lennon, Alex Thomson and, somewhat oddly, Andreas Hinkel.

Another confession. I’m not going to apologise.

What I take to be the offensive passage from Valentine's Day 2012:

"Yet Rangers are where they are - and yesterday's developments do little more than nudge us closer to knowing where that might be - through financial mismanagement. 

"It might also be, and we're approaching a legal decision about this, that they are where they are on account of a gargantuan theft against the state. 

"These are things that should be punished. 

"A theft against football as well. Our football. Championships have been won that Rangers couldn't afford. Talents have been taken from other teams - although we must concede that those other teams have enjoyed the financial benefits - that Rangers couldn't afford. 

"That's cheating. Doping the game. Financial doping. Doping is cheating. We've all suffered. 

"But as Rangers falsely speculated, others in the league often accumulated. Football can send us down a cul-de-sac where moral absolutes are hard to find. 

"Let's finger David Murray and his cohorts as guilty. We can, at the very least, sentence them on the charge of gross mismanagement."

You'll note, I hope, that I didn't prejudge the outcome of the FTT - although my language might have been overly dramatic.

I think, and I've embarked on a somewhat egotistical trawl of my own archives, I was always careful not to make a premature decision on behalf of the three tribunal judges.

Yet I wrote the line: "That's cheating. Doping the game. Financial doping. Doping is cheating. We've all suffered."

How could I have written that when, according to the narrative adopted by many this week, Sir David Murray is once more above reproach and the FTT decision clears the Rangers he presided over of any wrongdoing?

Maybe that comes back to football's lack of moral absolutes.

Financial doping, noun,

Definitions

1) the situation in which a sports franchise borrows heavily in order to contract and pay high-performing players, jeopardizing their long-term financial future

2) the situation in which the owner of a sports franchise invests his or her own personal wealth into securing high-performing players, rather than relying on the revenue the franchise is able to generate for itself

Was Sir David Murray - along with other owners and directors in Scottish football - guilty of any of that during his tenure at Ibrox?

I'd suspect so.

Was he guilty of the kind of financial management described by Alan Keen MP in 2009?

"Lack of proper governance and financial instability are the two fundamental vulnerabilities to the success that English football has enjoyed in recent times. 

"Our report includes tough measures to improve the way the game is run and to combat 'financial doping' whereby short-term success can be bought at the expense of long-term financial stability."

I'd say he was.

Did Murray's business style at Ibrox fit Michel Platini's description of certain types of football governance representing a "serious challenge to the idea of fair play and the concept of financial balance in our competitions."

I'd say so.

None of this is against the rules, of course, and I fear that any rules that Platini's UEFA introduce on financial fair play will have the all effectiveness of a chocolate fireguard. Nor was Sir David Murray the only club owner in Scotland to indulge in such practices.

For a romantic old lefty like me though, it's an approach that doesn't fit with the spirit of the game. An approach that cheats the game of the fundamental requirements of fairness,

Others disagree. It was Murray's money to spend as he liked, Murray's club to fund as he saw fit and, as former Ibrox chairman Alistair Johnson said in September this year,:

"What is clear is that 'financial doping' is not and could never be construed as describing a situation where a club extends its credit facilities with a recognised financial institution."

Let the free market rule in football as everywhere else. Which is fair enough, although it also means that clubs and their supporters will sound hollow if they demand special treatment when they become the subject of investigations by the taxman.

In the case of the Murray era Rangers I think this week's decision has been used to fuel revisionism.

While it's true that he'd worked to lower the debt the club had amassed he failed to reach a stage where he was free from the attentions of the bank or able to find a legitimate buyer for the club.

Some bad luck played a part: Murray's Rangers helped create a new architecture for the European game that eventually left smaller leagues like Scotland in its wake. The game didn't offer the potential for earnings to reward a high risk business plan.

He also fell foul of the financial collapse that left the bank twitchy and, because this high risk strategy extended to other colonies in his personal empire, left him diminished as owner-protector of Ibrox in the eyes of those same banks whose own disasters cost him millions.

In speculating to accumulate at Ibrox, Murray sowed some very destructive seeds.

Enter HMRC - with their legitimate but ultimately failed investigation - and the stage was set for Craig Whyte, that evil caricature of a saviour.

The victims of all this were the Rangers fans. It's disrespectful to them for Sir David Murray's supporters to paint him as the wronged party in a nightmare that he co-authored.

There is a wider point here about the governance of football in Scotland.

I've written many times about how we gauge the successes and failures of our game with too much reference to the English game.

Our game is a very different beast. And our clubs must be managed differently.

We need to look at different models of ownership, different ways of delivering sustainability.

The Murray-model - and you can add in the Romanov-model and the Brooks Mileson-model - took no cognisance of that.

That's fine when the trophies roll in and the good times swing. But it's destructive when things turn sour.

It's a business model that disenfranchises the fans as stakeholders and turns them into anonymous consumers of big business.

The bigger the risks taken by the owners, the bigger the implosion will be if and when it comes.

And the more powerless the fans will be to step in and clear up the mess.

Where did a business model he no longer wanted to support and a tax investigation he wanted to fight but couldn't be sure of winning leave Sir David Murray?

It left him taking a quid and a fantasy from Craig Whyte. That meant the FTT win would forever be condemned to a Pyrrhic victory an nothing more.

There has to be a different way.

In the case of Rangers there has to be way of returning them to the top of the game that doesn't wrack up huge debts or lead to an end point where fans are celebrating the legality of a method of making overpaid players richer and a Labour MP is criticising HMRC for pursuing a case against a company working a system of aggressive tax avoidance.

The people's game indeed.

Last week I wrote about Hearts:

"Hearts aren't finished.

"We can only hope that the era of men like Vladimir Romanov soon will be."

For Hearts read Rangers, for Vladimir Romanov read Sir David Murray.

The prospect of an HMRC appeal remains. The findings of the SPL's inquiry into Rangers will be delivered in the New Year. There are growing calls to punish those who leaked information regarding the tax investigation to media outlets and the now disappeared Rangers Tax Case blog.

This story has not yet run its course. And Sir David Murray will remain in the public eye, unlikely to surrender his opinion of his own innocence.

But at every club we should be writing a new chapter, no longer in thrall to the dreams of unlikely profits propagated by false prophets.

Demanding a new start for a sustainable future.

If we don't, we'll be cheating ourselves out of the game we love.

Rangers: Another week of questions

Football attracts wideboys and chancers.

Over the years most supporters will have questioned the morality or legality of this director or that chairman.

But the collection of charlatans and chancers who seem to have attached themselves to Rangers in recent years must take some beating.

Take Dave King, a man still being chased by South Africa's tax authorities over unpaid bills and associated charges that stretch to over £220 million pounds.

King has announced plans to sue David Murray. That's David Murray, the man who presided over the club as it ran up the unresolved £49 million that continues to spew a noxious smog over Ibrox.

Somebody throw the bald men a comb to scrap over.

How about Craig Whyte? The much derided new owner, the fantasy billionaire, who is still - or so events in the High Court today would suggest - determined to get his hands on some of the money that it appears he never had any intention of investing in the club.

He wants to be remembered as the man who saved Rangers even while royally screwing them, a man so discredited that the SFA have belatedly discovered he doesn't even measure up to their own overly generous fit and proper person procedures.

Gary Withey, the company secretary and lawyer with the firm which played a key role in the massively damaging Ticketus deal? Well, he's quit his law partnership and disappeared.

Some would argue that administrators David Whitehouse and Paul Clark deserve to join this gallery of guilt.

Maybe, maybe not. I'll try to keep the last vestige of faith I have in decency and say they're not guilty of crapping on Rangers' doorstep. They've just got the unpleasant task of looking constipated while wading through someone else's shit.

Where now? The lack of consensus shows the complexity of this financial funk.

The administrators are looking for a quick sale. But what is there to buy? A club that's shuffled on it's knees to the block, a £49 million guillotine ready to fall?

I'm not a businessman but that doesn't seem like the sort of investment many accountants would be chuffed about.

So liquidation? Looks like it.

And then a conflagration in Scottish football like we've never seen before.

Rangers delivered from the murderous attentions of that parcel of rogues into the hands of the cowerin', timorous beasties of the SPL.

Will that august institution be ready?

Possibly not.

Neil Doncaster, chief executive of the SPL, has taken to saying that he never predicts the future. He says it with the crazed look of a man who has just realised that his only real job now is to try and prepare for the very future he never predicts.

What happens now if Rangers, newly liquidated and newly "newco-ed" come knocking on the SPL's door?

The SPL could let them in - and if the rules dictate they can't then the wonderful thing about the SPL, its central conceit, is that it can change its own rules to suit its members - and get on with things.

Getting on with things would offer some comforts - I've already explored the pull of the TV deal - but it would also be hugely uncomfortable.

There will be clubs - majority, minority, lone voice? - who claim that the sporting integrity of the league would never recover from such a move.

This is a league where the vast majority of clubs start the season thinking that third place is the best they can do. It's not a league where sporting integrity has tended to reign supreme.

Yet with each passing day public opinion would seem to be hardening. The easy fix for a lot of clubs - ignore what's right and do what's best for them - might now prove so unpopular that it drives their own fans away.

Timing will also matter. If Rangers are forced to ask the newco question before the SPL's investigation into second contracts - an investigation stretching back to the birth of the league in 1998 - has delivered its findings can the league even entertain the question of re-admittance?

And what planning has been done for life without Rangers? I've mentioned before that some clubs might see that life as a double punishment: the injurious distorting of the playing field and then a further whack as Rangers fantasy finances come crashing down.

What contingency plans does the SPL have in place to cushion the blow?

It's easy to rant about the league never recovering from the moral blow of letting Rangers back in. It's easy to theorise about the Scottish football boom that would - and there's absolutely zero guarantee - be sparked by the disappearance of Rangers.

But there are top flight clubs used to living a hand to mouth existence, clubs that find comfort in the peculiar world of the SPL as they know it, clubs that don't see where the benefit is for them in painting this as a simple battle between "good" and "bad."

How will they be protected?

All of which, as the tide surely turns against the readmittance of Rangers, means we need some sort of plan.

What we have instead is Neil Doncaster hoping that if he shuts his eyes it will all just go away.

And I'm not sure that's enough of a plan.

Where do Rangers go without the SPL?

I've seen a lot recently from Rangers fans arguing "well, screw the SPL, let's just go to the Third Division."

Fair enough. A lack of humility isn't really what's needed right now, but if it was an available option it might prove cathartic for all involved.

Would it work?

Doncaster has tried to sell everyone a dummy this week by saying that it's the SPL or nothing for Rangers. The weakness of the diversion is best illustrated by the confirmation that the BBC's Chick Young was the only person to fall for it.

No Rangers in the SPL would mean promotion for the First Division champions but no relegation for Dunfermline, Hibs or anyone else.

That would leave a gap in the SFL.

The new Rangers could apply to fill that position. There would be no guarantees they'd get in but one would expect the SFL clubs would see them as a gift horse rather than a Trojan horse and welcome them with open arms.

Again though timing would be important. Rangers, in whatever form, would need to be in a position to apply for the free spot and be good to go for the start of next season.

It's likely that they would be but their readiness could still depend on timing of liquidation and what assets the newco has to start with.

Both these eventualities - SPL or SFL - would look to depend on somebody being able to exert some control over events. Nobody seems to be able to do that.

That's why the unlikely scenario of a total, scorched earth collapse remains just about visible on the horizon.

I'd not bet on any outcome. The liquidation of Rangers as we know them I fully expect.

Then?

I'm still not sure.

We will get a brutal period of briefing, counter-briefing and hysteria as the SPL make a decision on which the lives of some clubs - not just Rangers - could depend.

After that I think it's now more likely - but miles away from being absolutely certain - that we'll see a new Rangers starting up from scratch in the Third Division.

But I'm guessing.

Another week on and we're still just following as Rangers continue their journey into the unknown.

Rangers off the market

Another of the SPL's interminable sagas would appear to be over. For now at least.

In a statement released today Rangers have announced they are no longer for sale:

MIH has received interest in its controlling stake from a number of parties. At this time, however, the board of MIH has not been able to secure an offer which it considers to be in the best interests of the Club, its shareholders and its fans.

Following on from the success of winning the 2009/10 SPL title and thereby securing participation in the group stages of the Champions League during 2010/11, the Club recently announced that the football management team had signed new contracts. At the same time the board of directors of the Club announced improvements in its financial position compared to the previous year stating:

"We believe the outcome of our recent positive discussions with the bank gives us a real platform for operational stability at the Club and we thank Lloyds for their support. We have a clear business plan in place and will continue to maximise efficiencies and endeavour to increase our non-playing income.

"The board of directors of MIH therefore considers that the interests of stakeholders are presently best served by providing the football management team and board of directors with an opportunity to implement its business plan which is supported by Lloyds Banking Group. In these circumstances, MIH hereby announces that it is no longer actively marketing its controlling stake in the Club for sale."

The statement was signed by Sir David Murray. Bad news, then, for those Rangers fans who wanted him out.

Clearly the bank are also happy enough that their interests will be better served by the devil they know. As the old saying goes: "Owe the bank £5000 and you've got a problem, owe the bank £30 million and they've got a problem."

And questions will remain: Will those interested parties just walk away? What lies ahead with the tax investigation? What money will be available for transfers? Has this healed the apparent boardroom rift that opened up during the protracted efforts to find a buyer? Where do the fans groups who had aimed so much of their ire at Murray go from here?

But the immediate future would seem to be clear. Rangers head into next season owned by David Murray and managed by Walter Smith.

'Cause I'm the taxman

"Lovely day."

"Aye, but we'll pay for this later."

It's never hard to find a Scotsman looking for the darkest of clouds in the clearest of skies. But I wonder how many Rangers fans looked at their celebratory drinks on Sunday night and saw a glass half full?

I'm sure they wouldn't have expected that they'd be given so little time to luxuriate in the comfort of title number 53. Or that they'd be brought crashing back to earth not by a resurgent Celtic but by the worrying knock of the taxman at the front door.

Added to the woes of financial mismanagement Rangers now have to deal with accusations of financial chicanery. To the tune, according to some reports, of £24 million pounds.

The club are prepared to launch a robust defence, a defence I'd imagine they would mount as if their lives depend on it, but I'm not wholly convinced by some of the noises apparently coming out of Ibrox.

Chairman Alastair Johnson has jetted in to deal with the latest crisis but he's also distanced himself from it, laying the blame at David Murray's door. Does that hint at acceptance of at least some questionable practices?

There also seems to be a default fall back on the "but everybody does it" defence. As bankers and politicians have found to their cost in recent months the public is not convinced by this kind of reasoning when the transgression would seem to involve a multi-million pound fraud. Portsmouth and Arsenal - the London club have apparently already paid out £11 million in back taxes - have found to their cost it's not really an excuse readily accepted by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs either.

Remember Mark Twain:

"The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin." 

I'm not a tax expert. Discussions of offshore accounts and hidden payments bore me. People trying to avoid paying annoys me. That it always seems to be the richest individuals, the biggest companies, at the centre of scandal merely reaffirms much of what I hold to be true of society.

But, as I say, I'm not an expert. And Rangers have been found guilty of absolutely nothing yet. They might have done nothing wrong, they might have done less wrong than a headline grabbing figure of £24 million would suggest, they might have done something wrong and get away with it. I don't know. And I'd guess that the journalists, bloggers, Rangers fans, Celtic fans and tax experts giving their opinions don't know either.

Of more interest right now is the short term impact. How long is a court case likely to take? What would be the timescale for HMRC completing and dropping an investigation or completing the investigation and getting the matter to court?

Because what Rangers don't have, from a footballing perspective, is much time. I suspect all this makes it less likely that Walter Smith will still be in charge by the end of the summer. And it would now seem impossible that the players looking for new contracts are going to get the offers they expect.

Any attempt by HMRC to get money back would also put the future of players with any real saleable value in serious doubt.

As for potential buyers? Right now Rangers are like a big, detached house with lovely gardens and a sea view. You wonder why such a property could be so cheap. Then you find out about the asbestos in the roof and are told that former owners include Harold Shipman, Fred West and Peter Sutcliffe. You run a mile. The house sits empty, it's fading grandeur unsellable at any price.

So, and even if nothing else comes of this long term, HMRC have condemned Rangers to limp along like they have been for the past 20 months. For now they limp along as champions and that's a fairly sizeable crumb of comfort.

But championships are transitory. It seems that the financial woe that engulfs Ibrox is here to stay. It might just haunt the club long after the latest batch of silverware has faded and Walter Smith's last band of brothers have disappeared into the night.

Question: Can anyone tell me if any of the Scottish newspapers/media outlets have dedicated sports business journalists? I'm thinking of someone like The Guardian's David Conn. The problems at Rangers, the ongoing crisis throughout Scottish football, the continuing struggles of professional rugby, a Ryder Cup and a Commonwealth Games in 2014. Seems there's a lot to report, somebody could be missing a trick.

In a rich man's world

Such has been the forensic focus on Ranger’s perilous finances over the last couple of days that following Scottish football has been like studying for an accountancy degree. Not so much fans with typewriters as fans with calculators.

To save everybody the hassle of crawling into every nook and cranny of the internet in the search for news about the country’s most bombastic football club collapsing into poverty I thought I’d do it for you.

First up is the man who, along with Walter Smith, broke the story of the bank’s increasing involvement. The game’s most fearless interrogator, the Paxman of Paisley, has his say on the BBC website.

Chick Young is not slow to mention that it was his exclusive "that launched a thousand headlines and a million theories." Other than that he has little new to add and even spends a bit of time hitting out at his critics. This is an increasing theme with Chick this year. You’d think that if you go out of the door every morning as “Chick Young” you would have a pretty thick skin but he’s getting increasingly riled by the brickbats that fly his way and can’t seem to come to terms with the idea that the fans can now voice their opinions easily and instantly.

Still we shouldn’t get on Chick’s back too much as his mind is, understandably, elsewhere as he waits to see if a buyer can be found for his beloved football club.

Apparently there are already a couple of offers in for St Mirren as well.

Two "quality" daily newspapers and two sides to every story. The bank is running Rangers say The Herald - which also profiles the man who predicted exactly this kind of unsavoury Rangers crisis.

No, the bank is not running Rangers says The Scotsman. The Edinburgh paper goes on to speculate about Martin Bain who is, apparently, hanging his designer threads on a very shoogly peg indeed at the moment. Ah well, Martin maybe you can go back to the modeling.

The Herald says Rangers’ woes will not necessarily affect Celtic and might even precipitate a decisive parting of the ways between the two chums. Rangers are agitating to get out of Scotland while Celtic are prepared to wait for a perfect deal because they are already financially secure. An interesting thought but the appeal of either club is going to be massively diluted if they can’t guarantee they come as a couple. Where Rangers play in the future will certainly be a consideration of any potential buyer and, as The Times notes, right now the club are not an easy sell.

Dave King, a Castlemilk lad who made his fortune in post apartheid South Africa, seems the man most likely to take over from David Murray. He’s rich and he’s a Rangers fan which will be seen as all that’s needed in a saviour. On the other hand he’s also the subject of some controversy due to his creative, offshore accounting. The South African authorities were understandably miffed to find out that King, who claimed to be below the tax threshold, was in fact the country’s richest man. He says he’s innocent and, if the cash is there, few questions will be asked of him.

Although, as the Wall Street Journal points out, Rangers already have a new owner in the shape of Downing Street’s most famous Raith fan.

Showing all the optimism of denial the Rangers pages on Vital Footballare already naming likely candidates to replace Smith when King takes over. Billy Davies is hotly tipped at the moment. That would seem to make sense. Having been at Nottingham Forest for a matter of months now Davies will be looking for a way out and everything about his managerial career suggests he is the man to bring the stability that Ibrox craves.

In The Record Jim Traynor advises Walter Smith to get out now with his reputation intact and before the sale of half the team forces him to steer a sinking ship. The speed with which King, or AN Other, can assume control will have a major part to play in Walter’s future although as I pointed out yesterday he must now be reaching the end of his tether.

Martin Samuel ignores catastrophic cash shortages to go straight for the jugular of the Old Firm going down south question. We don’t need them and we don’t need there barbaric bigotry harrumphs the big man. Apparently Rangers and Celtic going down south would run the risk of turning 15 year olds from Bristol into vile sectarian monsters due to their sudden exposure to Old Firm internet forum. This seems a specious argument based on the premise that teenage Bristolians are already easily led twats and ignoring the many years and generations of hatred that it takes to become truly vile.

It’s also to turn a blind eye to the less than stunning behaviour of some English fans. Are sectarian chants worse than chants about Munich or Hillsborough? Or is it all just proof that wherever large crowds gather a minority will be unable to resist the urge to act like total plonkers?

So there it is. Not quite the millions of theories Chick promised but quite enough to be getting on with. Interesting times, indeed.

The Great Depression

John Hughes described Walter Smith as the "godfather" of Scottish football managers the other day. In recent weeks, however, Smith's traditional taciturn gravitas has been replaced by a more haunted look, the look of a man who spends his long, sleepless nights wondering what went wrong.

When he returned to Rangers he knew there would be hard work ahead. At times he must struggle to comprehend that he somehow turned the car crash he inherited from Paul Le Guen into a team capable of winning a league title, three domestic cups and making an improbable appearance in a European final.

All that must seem a long time ago. For weeks now the same question has been asked over and over again: "Are Rangers a club in crisis?" On Saturday evening Smith gave us our answer.

Now the bank have taken over the running of the club. They'll have their own ideas and obviously investment isn't one of them, I just think there's a stagnation about our club at the present moment.

The financial problems at Ibrox have been the subject of conjecture and innuendo for months now but Smith's post match comments at the weekend are the first time that anyone inside the club has addressed them publicly and with any degree of honesty.

Radio phone-ins and websites were immediately abuzz with rumours that the club was in administration. Unsurprisingly that seems not to be the case. Banks tend not to leave such announcements to post match interviews with Chick Young.

What we do know is that the bank is concerned enough to have placed its own man on the Rangers board. The debt seems to be somewhere between 25 and 30 million pounds and David Murray's non footballing interests are no longer considered by the bank as a secure guarantor of that debt.

If Rangers were you or me they'd not have been declared bankrupt but they'd be past the stage of putting the demand letters straight in to the shredder and they could forget about extending the overdraft.

The club is for sale and, apparently, some people are interested. But David Murray is wanting to recoup some of what he has spent over the last 20 odd years. Any potential buyer must be prepared to keep Murray sweet, take on a massive debt and overhaul a threadbare and limited paying squad. It's only a certain kind of guy that finds that kind of small change down the back of the sofa.

Things could get worse and who, Rangers fans apart, wouldn't be intrigued by the SFA and SPL having to step in to punish the Ibrox side for going into administration. The nightmare scenario is for "doing a Leeds" to transform into "doing a Rangers."

Some Rangers fans, applying the universal myopia of supporters, will shrug all this off, safe in the knowledge that Rangers are "a massive club." Indeed they are but the bigger they are, the harder they fall and all that. Right now Rangers, through monumental financial mismanagement, find themselves losing groundstaff to Partick Thistle because the Jags pay more and Jocky Scott gloating about having more resources than Walter Smith.
Administration or not that's a pretty bleak place to be.

And it doesn't look like getting better any time soon. A transfer window will open soon and Rangers will go into it hoping only to hold on to what they've got. Rangers, as they are just now, are a club with the singular ambition of keeping their head above the water. Nothing more.

Smith and his management team are out of contract in the second week of the new year. At the moment the board will be unable to offer them new deals. That means Rangers, the SPL champions, will face 2010 with a manager who doesn't have a contract.

Walter Smith has proved himself time and again to be completely loyal to the club. But lifting the lid on the involvement of Lloyds on Saturday was the latest in a line of well timed indiscretions this season. His patience is wearing thin. His legacy and the future prospects of Ally McCoist are not well served by remaining on the bridge of a sinking ship.

How long the board, and the now absent but still powerful Murray, can hope to hold on to a man in his sixties with no need to work except a sense of duty is debatable. Would Smith be able to say with complete honesty that he hasn't thought about walking away in January?

Rangers are no longer a club that can operate with matters on the football pitch as their priority. Servicing debts and cutting costs now dominate board meetings. If Walter Smith is worried about his reliance on a 39 year old centre half then his directors might be happy to listen to his concerns. But they are completely powerless to do anything about it.

We hear too much about football clubs and their finances, about foreign owners and debt, about unaffordable wages and January fire sales. But in any consideration of Rangers at the moment it is the machinations in the boardroom that must dominate.

Against this Smith's achievements over the last couple of years appear even more extraordinary. But he'd never claim to be a magician and he's now being asked to do a job that seemed unimaginable when he signed on in 2007.

Whether he stays or goes Rangers are now less a football club than a stark warning about the dangers of big business going wrong. Money may or not be the root of all evil. But when the money men make mistakes they tend to be more calamitous than a goalkeeper fumbling a cross or a striker missing an open goal.

Rangers are living in a new reality. By speaking bluntly on Saturday Walter Smith was preparing the fans, who are not given to managing their expectations, for a long, hard season ahead.

Without a new owner soon Rangers footballing decline over the next couple of years could be spectacular. Don't expect Smith to stick around to preside over that.

Behind closed doors

The room is no longer smoke filled. The older man's colleagues in the wee Parliament had seen to that. But the lingering smell of Havana suggested that, after hours, this place was a smoke easy. The younger man, dressed in an expensive suit, nurses a brandy. He stares wistfully into the glass. Is he looking for something? Or are scenes from the past 20 years flicking through his mind?

Older man: "20 years, Dave. Quite an effort. What's left to achieve?"

Younger man: "John, John, John. So much left to achieve, so much. Well, a buyer that will give me my money back at least."

Older man: "And an end to the social blight of sectarianism?"

Younger man (snorting): "Johnny Boy. I signed a Catholic. I signed a team of Catholics. I signed up for every scheme. And still they want a blue Asda in Larkhall. What can we do?"

Older man: "I've brought together warring factions in Belfast, run a health service in another country, persuaded cabinet cowards to fight illegal wars. A little local bother in Glasgow? Nae bother."

Younger man: "John. We're dealing with the great unwashed here. We take their money, we get their ignorance. 20 years. I've lost my innocence. This is your pension, mate. All that shit, it's just there. Don't push, push or who will buy my Broxy Burgers and your Paradise Pannini's?"

Older man: "Aye, aye David. But these bastarding Nats at Holyrood, they don't understand, they put the pressure on. And I'm getting it from these idiots that run the old party now. And, not to put too fine a point on it, it's more your problem than mine, pal."

Younger man: "Aye, so it is. And if you could find a way of making every lapsed Catholic in Scotland as passionate about their heritage on a Sunday morning as they are on a Saturday afternoon they'd make you Pope."

Older man: "I don't know David, is there nothing we can do? I'm thinking beating up backbenchers was easier than this."

Younger man: "Well, I've got the press coming in this week. You know the deal. Free access in exchange for fawning tributes to 20 glorious years. And a bit of free advertising to try and sell the bloody thing."

Older man: "And? Where do I come in?"

Younger man: "Well, I'm thinking, I'll have a right go at you. You pretend I've hurt your feelings and fire right back. The press get in such a tizzy about two silly old buggers getting involved in a pissing contest that they forget we're doing bugger all to sort these cretins out."

Older man: "Brilliant Dave, my son, absolute genius. You ever think about politics? Seriously, you could have a future there."

The end.

By George, keep it shut. Or a Chick has kittens

"They are being punished for their success in reaching the Uefa Cup final. And it's something that the SPL and everyone in Scottish football has got to look at."

Not a Rangers insider talking but national manager George Burley. This is getting really dull and I'm not sure that Burley really needs to weigh in. He's apparently upset that he's had to pick Rangers players for his next Scotland squad despite the seven games they still have to play.

I'd like to ask George why his team are playing a friendly at this stage of the season? I'd like to ask why he needs to see the Rangers players after the 555 games they have played already this season?

And why only blame the SPL? If we need an extension then could George not have picked up the phone and persuaded his own paymaster to move the date of the Cup Final back by a week. Why not? If Rangers are being treated so badly the cup final could surely have been sacrificed.

Unsurprisingly George has one supporter though. Little Chick Young, invoking Jimmy Shand, Christopher Columbus and Morecambe and Wise in a blistering (in his own mind) few sentences, argues that this is the time to "put a bomb" under the administration of our game.

Now Chick is right that the SPL needs to be changed, although he does rather forget the role that Rangers played in creating it, but the season has to end some time.

And Chick forgets that allowances have already been made for Rangers, he forgets that if our league is not geared to success in Europe then the Old Firm are the victims of their own failures, he forgets that he was vocal in supporting the insurrection that got the Old Firm games cancelled before Scotland played Italy.

So there we have it. Walter Smith has accepted the fixture schedule as it now stands. But David Murray, the incredible reappearing owner, George Burley, the national manager trying desperately to make people care about a nothing game, and little Chick Young, the pantomime dame of Scottish football, stand united in raging against a decision that will not be reversed.

Please can we get on with the game.

Get the games played

David Weir denied the season had aged him

Scottish football is determined to scupper Rangers' European ambitions. That's the message pouring out of Ibrox after the refusal to extend the existing extension to the season. According to David Murray (funny how success can drive Mr Murray out of his hiding place) we will be the laughing stock of world football after the Russian FA happily cancelled four Zenit games to allow them to prepare for the UEFA Cup final.

The SPL have, however, stuck to their guns and the games have to be played. The SFA have also insisted that the Scottish Cup Final will go ahead on Saturday 24th May as planned.

These are the right decisions. The postponement caused by Phil O'Donnell's death were unforeseen. The postponements caused by the weather were unfortunate, although they were compounded by the poor decision to let Gretna groundshare.

The cancellation of Rangers game against Gretna to allow them to prepare for a European fixture was misguided. But the subsequent refusal to cancel Aberdeen's league game before they played Copenhagen means that the SPL would have difficulty justifying more cancellations.

Motherwell, Hibs and Dundee United are all still very much involved in the race for third spot and European qualification: they cannot be expected to further disrupt training schedules to help Rangers cause.

Celtic are, against all the odds, still in the title race. It would be difficult to ask them to agree an extension that will strengthen Rangers' hand.

And Queen of the South will already have been kicking their heels for a month so moving the Scottish Cup, still in name the blue riband event of the season, was always a no go.

The Russian authorities, only a few weeks into the league, did not have these factors to consider because time is on their side. An extension would have further damaged the SPL's credibility. This season's fixture congestion has been laughable enough without turning the last few weeks into a pantomime.

The fact that Rangers still have to play St Mirren makes a mockery of the already creaky premise of the SPL split.

And there are a few other points to consider: Rangers should have been able to beat Partick Thistle in the Scottish Cup in one game, there has already been an extension that would appear to inconvenience everyone except Rangers and, finally, the crux of the matter is that a team with Ranger's European ambitions and resources should have a squad to cope with the pile up.

Are we really to believe that this group of players will be unable to find the energy that will sustain them through the biggest night of their careers? That their failure to wrap up the title is solely due to the fixture list? Or that they will somehow be forced to struggle against a team that were part time only one year ago?

The bleating from Ibrox needs to stop before it sounds like excuses are being prepared early. They should be above the moans as they reflect on a season that has confounded expectations. And they should realise that the SPL is not around to suit the whims of a big club.