Rangers: Topping a breathless day

Twitter timelines were abuzz this afternoon as announcement followed claim followed counter-claim.

The subject?

Have a guess.

You're right: Rangers.

And the continuing travails of the rickety finances at Ibrox.

A drawn out process? The Icelandic economy crashed and burned in less time.

What did we learn today?

That Paul Murray and his Blue Knights - if we can allow trivial nomenclature to distract us, that is a really crap name - were rumoured to have got hold of Craig Whyte's stake in the club.

That turned out to be nonsense. Whyte has no objections to selling to Murray's men. Or, perhaps, he has withdrawn his objections. But he's done nothing yet.

"Selling" might be the crucial word: Whyte believes he's in line for £30 million. He's determined to get it.

The Motherwell-born fantasillionaire might be ridiculed and reviled. But he's not gone anywhere. He will do walking away but probably not without a fight.

Brian Kennedy was back at the table. Then he'd left the table. Then he was maybe back at the table. I'm not sure if he's now got cold feet or a cold dinner.

Kennedy did take time out to warn against US bidders Club 9. He needn't have troubled himself said Club 9: they may or may not be part of an active consortium but they've denied that they are interested in taking control of the club.

Rangers had applied for the licence they need to compete in Europe next season. Now we're told that the administrators were barking up the wrong tree with any attempt to circumvent the rules which deny any club so fiscally addled access to continental competition. And they were told that last week.

So a lot was reported today. But not very much happened.

What we do know is that the creditors will be asked to vote this week. Not about the liquidation saving company voluntary arrangement (CVA). Rather they'll be voting to extend this current period of administration until deep into April and beyond.

Where are Ticketus in this mess? Embedded deep in Paul Murray's consortium of Blue Knights? Or creditors looking for the money they believe they are owed when another bidder takes over?

That's another unknown variable that punches you in the face when you try looking for quick answers in this befuddled web of monetary madness.

Liquidation, say the fans, remains the worst option. Apparently Craig Whyte agrees with that, although he does seem something of a company liquidator extraordinaire so we might take his opinion with a Grant Holt-sized pinch of salt.

But surely, given none of the bidders seem to either have or be willing to spend Sheikh Mansour amounts of cash, liquidation does indeed remain a very real option. Maybe a tactical option or maybe an unavoidable option but most definitely an option.

With the question of Whyte's £30 million remaining unanswered, with the big tax case decision still a blot on the future landscape, with a lot riding on where exactly on the campsite Ticketus are having a piddle, we can't rule out anything.

And none of the outcomes look like being quick or free of pain for Rangers.

Meanwhile it's reported that Ralph Topping, the often elusive chairman of the SPL, has sent a letter to club chairmen giving the non-Old Firm teams something of a slap on the wrists over their rumoured cries for insurrection of late.

Sponsorships are being threatened, argues Topping, with the current uncertainty.

He makes it clear that Rangers' administrators will vote with Celtic to shoot down any moves by the "rebel" ten to upset the status quo.

That will go down like a lead balloon in some boardrooms and among a large number of fans.

The administrators will, of course, vote in a way that best preserves Rangers' interests. That is their duty.

It will annoy people, however, that the SPL would appear to be taking the side of two clubs against the majority.

The SPL chairman is, and I paraphrase, saying:

"Look, Rangers are barred from Europe, they're at the centre of the country's most recent, most complex corporate balls-up, their very future remains uncertain, they might be found guilty of shafting the taxman for a decade or more, we're investigating them ourselves to see if they've been breaking our rules.

"But, come on, Dundee United, Hibs, Hearts, St Johnstone and the rest. Get back in your box and give Rangers the respect they deserve. Because it's you lot that are causing the current uncertainty."

That's going to stick in a lot of craws.

It does, however, confirm something important: if liquidation happens, the SPL - as personified by Topping and Neil Doncaster - will vote to preserve a "newco's" top flight status.

They can't imagine the SPL without Rangers. And they'll fight tooth and nail to keep them there.

I've long argued that would be the case and I know from the reaction to those arguments how deeply unpopular a move that would be.

If nothing else that means there remains the chance of us seeing a Scottish football rammy to end all rammies.

More days like this lie ahead. Breathless days where, ultimately, nothing really happens.

Stay tuned though: this story has drama aplenty still to play out.

Like this? Like the Scottish Football Blog on Facebook.

The SPL's Blue Monday: 10 Plus 12 Equals The Future

Blue Monday. The most depressing day of the year.

Fitting that it was today we heard another version of the SPL’s grand new plan for Scottish football.

Forget the two ten team leagues idea of a couple of weeks ago. The head honchos have listened to the near universal condemnation of that plan.

And come up with a top league of ten teams and an SPL 2 of twelve teams. A magnificent response to the weight of public opinion:

The Scottish Premier League (SPL) clubs today reaffirmed their commitment to the work of the Strategic Review Group to develop a structure for the whole of Scottish football.

Broad support was given to progressing a 10-team Premiership and a 12-team Championship at the top of a pyramid for Scottish football as the preferred option.

The SPL clubs have asked the executive team to further develop aspects of these proposals and to update the Strategic Review Group's report.

The SPL will now consult with the Scottish FA and the Scottish Football League and its clubs before a final decision by the SPL clubs.

STV report that Inverness, Hearts and Kilmarnock were the only clubs to vote for the 14 club compromise model.

So there we have it.

To listen to Neil Doncaster, SPL chief executive, this is the model that will have stadiums full to bursting, TV companies locked in a multi-million pound bidding war and the quality of football reawakening thoughts of a Scottish football golden age. And no doubt a number of postponements causes by blue snow.

It’s unclear how he expects this to happen. Nor does he seem to be able to adequately address the fears of the sheer boredom of watching your team play against the same nine clubs four times each season.

Doncaster says a new relegation model will keep the league refreshed. He ignores concerns that it will lead to clubs playing a dismal, safety first brand of football, petrified by the fear of relegation.

The only benefit of a 12 team “championship” would seem to be to deliver the SPL a majority of Scotland’s professional sides. That will make it much harder for the SFL to prevent a “merger” with the SPL.

If the 12 “championship” sides are also going to be playing each four times a season the idea of relegation/promotion play offs to keep the top flight refreshed seems disingenuous. Surely those extra eight games will favour the top flight teams going into the play-offs.

The SFA would seem pretty powerless to do anything about all this after the review they commissioned backed a ten team league. Henry McLeish has been utterly discredited by the way in which he allowed the SPL to hijack his report. Trusting a man who couldn’t run his own office expenses to save the national game was a mistake.

What will a pyramid system involve? Surely that's not just been tagged on to the proposals because it's something that a lot of people have been calling for. How is it going to work? What financial assurances will be in place for those clubs that don't make the final cut of 22?

Do we even know if this is the model that teams in, for example, in the current Third Division or in the non-professional leagues will see as the best for them to secure their futures.

And the SPL clubs?

Rod Petrie backs a ten team SPL even as he watches his Hibs side implode. It would break my heart but deliver some form of justice to this most non-footballing of men if Hibs were to start this brave new dawn in the lower division.

Peter Lawwell backs a return to the dark days of a ten team top league even as Celtic wage a war of modernisation against the SFA.

Martin Bain backs a ten team SPL even as Rangers continue to wade through a financial mire that may or may not include tax evasion.

These are just some of the people of influence who are prepared to ignore the views of the fans to chase a short term financial gain that nobody can be sure will materialise. The usual suspects with their usual blend of arrogance, self preservation and blind optimism in a get-rich-quick scheme.

I rather suspect that these men reply to emails that offer money transfers from bank accounts in Nigeria.

As someone pointed out to me today it is unusual to have such a widespread appetite for change in Scottish football. And yet somehow the SPL come up with a scheme that seems to appeal to nobody except Neil Doncaster, Ralph Topping, Henry McLeish and eight or nine SPL chairmen and chief executives.

They are prepared to fly in the face of public opinion to pursue a course of action that they are either unable or unwilling to properly explain to the fans.

We shouldn't be surprised that we are ignored. Football chairmen have being doing it for decades. But the idea that our opinions are forged in ignorance, that none of the counter proposals were championed out of a love for the game and a desire to see Scottish football improve is sickeningly arrogant and stubborn.

I don't believe fans should stop supporting their teams. I don't believe a boycott of clubs over league restructuring is necessarily a good idea.

But prices won't drop in the SPL's new era. The kick off times will still be awkward. The pressures of life will continue to crowd in on the football going habit. And I am concerned that the prospect of repetitive Premiership with tactics borne out of fear will see fans continue to drift away.

Standing at the crossroads Scottish football has, I suspect, chosen to travel up a dead end. Extricating ourselves from that folly might be beyond us.

The Scottish Football Blog News Feed

The SPL: Twelve Does Not Become Ten. For Now

“Scottish Premier League officials have been forced into a tactical retreat in their campaign to cut the number of clubs in the top flight from 12 to ten. That reduction was due to be the subject of a vote at a meeting of SPL clubs next Monday, but the vote has now been postponed in the face of mounting opposition.”

It seems that the SPL, self declared saviours of the Scottish game, can’t even push through a gerrymandered vote on a ten team league.

Despite assurances from SPL chief executive and chairman, Neil Doncaster and Ralph Topping, that ten teams was the only way to save the game the clubs have so far proved themselves unwilling to be saved.

Dundee United had already voiced their reservations while Hearts have seemed consistently unmoved by the plans. Inverness, Motherwell and Kilmarnock were also uncertain.

Now it seems that St Mirren and Motherwell have joined the list of doubters. All the more remarkable when we remember that they were both represented on the SPL working group that formulated the ten team plan in the first place.

That would appear to leave five teams in favour or undeclared with Hamilton joining the other four members of the working group: Aberdeen, Celtic, Hibs and Rangers. It’s those four clubs, or their representatives, that we must now presume to be the movers and shakers in one of the most universally unpopular ideas to hit Scottish football for years.

The ten team SPL isn’t dead. But nor is it as close as Topping and Doncaster had hoped.

Let’s not celebrate this too much. There has been no, or at least not a very big, victory for fan power. Rather the SPL have displayed the kind of incompetence and cack handedness that we tend to expect from our football administrators.

There does seem some hope though that not all the chairmen were taken in by a plan that, from this distance, seemed flimsy and so full of supposition as to be no more than a shot in the dark.

Our problems remain and a solution still needs to be found. The ten team SPL will be back. For now it’s up to someone to come up with a more attractive plan. Our breath is bated.

The Scottish Football Blog On Facebook

Choose your own Topping

That's international week over with and fans of Scotland are scratching their heads as to what the point of our Japanese adventure was. All we really know is that George Burley is not scared to play replacement replacements if required. Probably didn't have to go all that way to find that out.

In SPL world we are being buffeted by winds of change from across the border and over the north Atlantic. Are we any further forward on that issue? You tell me.

One definite change before we get down to business is in the SPL chairmanship where Lex Gold has stepped down and William Hill's Ralph Topping has stepped into the most coveted role in world football. Or not.

William Hill? First prediction of the week: if Ralph has granted Chick Young an interview (no doubt erroneously described as a global exclusive) and one of them uses the phrase “if I was a betting man” then I will most probably shoot one or both of them. Or myself.

Ralph says the job combines his three passions: business, football and Scotland. Poor old Mrs Topping.

It's game week eight and here's the runners and riders.

Aberdeen v Hearts

Anglo-Scots hybrid Andrew Driver has been the talk of the country this week giving Csaba Lazlo another unwanted distraction as Hearts try to kick start their season. Mark McGhee's budget tinkering at Pittodrie will have continued apace during the international holiday. Goals are not coming easily for either side and another low scoring match seems likely. I'm tempted by the draw but I'll go for the home win.

Celtic v Motherwell

I'm not sure if a lay off after an Old Firm defeat is good or bad. Apparently Tony Mowbray has spent his time working on new partnerships at the centre of defence so we can probably expect to seen Maloney and Samaras starting at the back. Jim Gannon keeps Motherwell plugging away and will have relished the extra few days with them. I'm saying a home win but I don't rule out a shock.

Dundee United v Hamilton

United's away draw with Hibs last time out seems to confirm the view that those two will be in at the business end of the third place battle. Hamilton won't be involved in that but will probably have a battle of their own to fight come next spring. If Ralph Topping was to give me a free bet I'd put at least £1.99 on a home win.

Falkirk v St Mirren

At some point Falkirk are going to need to start winning games like this at home. St Mirren are not opponents that you relish but revivals need to start somewhere. That's if revivals are possible. If they're not then you'd probably scrape a draw in a game like this. So I'll back a low scoring share of the points.

Hibs v Kilmarnock

Apparently John Hughes is worried that Benjelloun and Zemmama will have hangovers after the disappointment of missing out on the World Cup with Morocco. Derek Riordan's influence clearly knows no bounds if two Muslims are the worse for drink. On a serious note Hibs had a few players away and Kilmarnock will be up for this one. The kind of game that Hibs need to win to prove they are a class above the Kilmarnock's of this world this season. They should win.

St Johnstone v Rangers

No money, no players and an Old Firm win. Funny old game etc etc. Rangers should be too strong for the Saints and probably will be. But such is the Ibrox madness this season I'm sticking my neck on the line and going for a Perthshire party. Well, maybe not a party. But a resounding share of the spoils.

By the way, I've gone alphabetical this week. St Johnstone entertain Rangers in front of the TV cameras and it kicks off at 12.30 on Saturday.

Tale of the tape to date: 13(!) out of 36 (I missed a week)