Another week closer to the reconstruction that will save Scottish football.
Or another week further away from the reconstruction that will save Scottish football.
On Monday St Mirren poked their head out from under Neil Doncaster's blanket of SPL unanimity to confirm that actually they wouldn't be voting "yes" to the 12+12+18 structure after all:
"The concept of playing 22 games prior to breaking into three leagues of eight, including the middle eight losing their points gained in the first series of games, is not a system we see as taking the game forward in the long term. You will be aware that other countries have tried this system and have since rejected such a set up.
"We also feel that this system is not fair to fans who buy into their club by way of a season ticket, who are then unsure of what they are purchasing. It is also against the basic wishes of the fans for larger leagues as highlighted in all recent fan surveys."
Ross County are rumoured to be planning to join St Mirren on the naughty step, which led East Fife chairman, Sid Collumbine, to warn County's Roy MacGregor about the pressure he'll face:
"It is bullying, there is no question about that."
The "aye" camp roared to the defence of the proposals.
Stewart Milne called them "absolutely vital" for Scottish football:
"We believe it’s the right thing for Scottish football. We’ve been working on this for nearly three years now.
"We worked on the initial option of a 10-12 [structure] which we believed delivered all the things that would help Scottish football move forward.
"Unfortunately we couldn’t get enough support for that. We worked on this revised proposal over the last eight month along with reviewing all the other options."
Neil Doncaster, fresh from making a hash of releasing the SPL's post-split fixtures, wasn't for mincing his words:
"It’s really important that
we don’t decide against all the benefits that can be delivered with a positive vote. At the moment, we have a scenario where, every season, any number of teams are playing Russian roulette because we have one team relegated from 12 into the financial abyss. I do not see that is in the best interests of the game.
"The money that is distributed to clubs in the Premier League, you get a tiny fraction of that within the SFL First Division. We need to solve that."
Armageddon in an abyss?
Kenny Cameron spoke with forked tongue in Inverness:
"The numbers just don't add up, so a vote against 12-12-18 this time round would be a vote for the same again. That's also true as far as SFL clubs are concerned. This is not a 'pick and mix' offer that is on the table but one requiring a straight yes or no.”
"The majority of these requests are delivered by the new proposals, a larger top league being the only omission, he said
"Some 85 percent of what fans asked for is being offered. But defeat for the new proposals could mean defeat for all the elements of change, which is surely a step backwards.
"If the SPL gets its fingers burned this time, having come such a long way, then my fear is that it may be years before we come so close again."
Threats, half truths, a certain willingess to play fast and loose with what the fans think.
A new dawn indeed.
"85 percent of what fans asked for." Really?
Watching your team in a league structure that you want, a league structure that you actually understand, only accounts for 15 percent of what you want when you buy a ticket?
I must be doing it wrong.
We're five games from the end of the season. Can nobody find the handbrake and just ca' canny?
Why are the proposals not "pick and mix?"
Why not push ahead where there is consensus and take time to reflect on the one issue that is really not convincing the paying public?
Why can't we disband the SPL and the SFL, create a new organisation and agree on a model for redistribution within the current set up for just one more season?
Why can't we let that new organisation decide on the new structure, rather than lumbering it with a both a fix and a muddle bequeathed by the dying SPL?
This is Scotland, current world champions of the 'interminably long navel gazing over a simple yes/no question' division.
What's the rush?
"We’ve been working on this for nearly three years now," says Stewart Milne.
They've been talking about it, stalling and enraging fans for far longer.
It's never been suggested before that a "yes" vote is required weeks before the end of a season.
Is 12+12+18 going to persuade sponsors to fling money at the game, the irresistible lure of a failed Swiss model run by an organisation that doesn't yet exist?
Kenny Cameron indicates that if we don't do what the SPL wants right here, right now they're going to pick up their ball and go home.
Maybe that passes for constructive debate in the SPL, an organisation so addled it can still use Neil Doncaster as its spokesperson.
It's not healthy that St Mirren and Ross County can dictate the future to every Scottish club. It's not healthy for any two clubs to be able to do that.
St Mirren and Ross County didn't create that system.
It's a difficult decision though: stop 12+12+18 and everything is off the table and the SPL, perhaps after ushering in hand selected teams for SPL2, will raise the drawbridge.
A new start in a house divided by SPL's intransigence? Or the SPL going it alone and let them eat cake?
Bullying? It looks like it. Bullied by the SPL, the failed experiment that was going to "save" Scottish football in 1998.
What will happen on Monday?
I don't know. But whatever way the vote goes don't hold your breath for a brave new world.
Showing posts with label SFL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SFL. Show all posts
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Wednesday, April 03, 2013
I'm a muppet and other tales of reconstruction
I've been a little neglectful of the blog of late.
Real life stomped through the door uninvited, turned 2013 into a big bundle of rubbish and left even a little light blogging a stretch too far.
Beyond turning up at Easter Road and groaning quite a lot at what I've been watching, Scottish football has been a care too much.
I have, however, found the time to sign up for a season ticket renewal.
Which makes me a muppet.
Muppetry, some will say, is a particular requirement for life on what nobody should ever call the Hibee highway.
But there we are. On that score muppetry courses through my veins.
I'm well beyond the stage of buying a season ticket with high hopes for a summer of constructive, yet prudent, spending that lays the foundation for a season of thrilling accomplishment.
Far easier to expect a summer of underwhelming transfer market dealings, a panicked spate of loan signings and a season of distinct underachievement. It deadens the heart to the disappointments that follow.
That's the strange thing about season tickets. If you're not just buying out of habit, you're leaping before you have a chance to look at the squad that might break the pain of your fall.
"Here's my money Mr Petrie, I'd like you to spend it on a decent squad but I've noticed your jacket buttons are a bit strained of late so if you want to fire up to Slaters and blow the lot on suits then go for it, nowt I can do about it anyway."
That's usual.
As my justification for getting a season ticket is "it keeps me out of the pub" I can hardly complain.
Except this year I probably can. And so can fans of any other club in the country who have taken delivery of their club's annual begging brochure.
Because this year they really are doing little more than mug fans.
"Renew your season ticket. And we're offering a special deal for all our loyal fans this year.
"For the same price, or more, as last season you can watch an as yet unsigned team play in an as yet undecided league structure under the auspices of an as yet unconfirmed organisation.
"And if you sign up before 1st April you'll get a fiver off our as yet unreleased new fifth shirt."
Bargain.
(I should say that my season ticket renewal cost the same as last year but this time I've got a "cup top up" as well.
Obviously the cup top up might be worthless. But still - it's the same price as I paid for the dull, run of the mill league games this season.
Is £405 for a seat at Easter Road value for money?
The answer is both entirely subjective and completely obvious.
Of course it's not value for money.
But think of the cost of the pints I might drink, the legal fees that I might run up during my short descent into alcoholism if I wasn't at the football every fifth Saturday and every third Friday/Sunday/Monday.
It's an expenditure on the bigger picture.)
I used to tune into Watchdog to see Lynn Faulds Wood feign sympathy as daft folk looked mournful because the hotel they stayed at in Benidorm didn't look like it did in the brochure.
Then they'd hold up the brochure and show a lovely drawing of a nice hotel.
"It's a drawing," I'd think. "What did you expect?"
Now I've joined them. I've bought a season ticket to watch an artist's impression of a league structure.
Or, as we're dealing with Neil Doncaster, David Longmuir and their parcel of rogues, a piss artist's impression.
It might be that we're moving closer to knowing what we're going to be watching.
The current options seem to extend to the status quo and the little heralded 12+12+18 format, the Hampden zinger that was the only method they could devise that would leave fans feeling nostalgic for the "race for the top six."
I don't know how many clubs are already selling season tickets.
I hear that sales at Easter Road are going well, although I think that particular barometer will be a better gauge when the current interest free payment offer runs out and the real extent of Pat Fenlon's underachievement becomes clearer.
But something really stinks here.
When we're not being kept in the dark we're being told that we have to accept the medicine proscribed by a vacuous leadership that insists we don't know what's good for us.
Maybe I don't know what's good for me. But if football needs fans and football keeps treating fans with contempt then football is fooling itself.
I chuckled on Sunday when a tabloid reported that David Cameron was ready to force the issue of the Old Firm moving to England.
Not only had the paper run with such an obvious howler but they'd alighted on one of the few high profile leaders whose current form matches Scottish football's heid bummers for donkey-ness.
Where there is dischord they bring more dischord. Or apathy, which threatens to be even more damaging.
"We need you fans. Ignore the fans. We need the fans. We don't care what the fans want."
It's an odd attitude to adopt. Sometimes I think George Orwell could have done a job on Scottish football. Then I remember that the pigs of Manor Farm at least started out with good intentions.
Maybe we'll be surprised. 12+12+18 will be agreed this week, the benefits will become clearer, the excitement will return. The dreams of the suits will become a fanfare for the common fan.
Or maybe it will be another failure on the road to ruin.
And my muppetry is partly to blame. For the price of a week in an unfinished hotel in Benidorm I've legitimised the idiocy of the men who are failing to save the game.
There's no hope for me, undisputed muppet of the West Stand.
Hopefully Scottish football isn't such a lost cause.
Real life stomped through the door uninvited, turned 2013 into a big bundle of rubbish and left even a little light blogging a stretch too far.
Beyond turning up at Easter Road and groaning quite a lot at what I've been watching, Scottish football has been a care too much.
I have, however, found the time to sign up for a season ticket renewal.
Which makes me a muppet.
Muppetry, some will say, is a particular requirement for life on what nobody should ever call the Hibee highway.
But there we are. On that score muppetry courses through my veins.
I'm well beyond the stage of buying a season ticket with high hopes for a summer of constructive, yet prudent, spending that lays the foundation for a season of thrilling accomplishment.
Far easier to expect a summer of underwhelming transfer market dealings, a panicked spate of loan signings and a season of distinct underachievement. It deadens the heart to the disappointments that follow.
That's the strange thing about season tickets. If you're not just buying out of habit, you're leaping before you have a chance to look at the squad that might break the pain of your fall.
"Here's my money Mr Petrie, I'd like you to spend it on a decent squad but I've noticed your jacket buttons are a bit strained of late so if you want to fire up to Slaters and blow the lot on suits then go for it, nowt I can do about it anyway."
That's usual.
As my justification for getting a season ticket is "it keeps me out of the pub" I can hardly complain.
Except this year I probably can. And so can fans of any other club in the country who have taken delivery of their club's annual begging brochure.
Because this year they really are doing little more than mug fans.
"Renew your season ticket. And we're offering a special deal for all our loyal fans this year.
"For the same price, or more, as last season you can watch an as yet unsigned team play in an as yet undecided league structure under the auspices of an as yet unconfirmed organisation.
"And if you sign up before 1st April you'll get a fiver off our as yet unreleased new fifth shirt."
Bargain.
(I should say that my season ticket renewal cost the same as last year but this time I've got a "cup top up" as well.
Obviously the cup top up might be worthless. But still - it's the same price as I paid for the dull, run of the mill league games this season.
Is £405 for a seat at Easter Road value for money?
The answer is both entirely subjective and completely obvious.
Of course it's not value for money.
But think of the cost of the pints I might drink, the legal fees that I might run up during my short descent into alcoholism if I wasn't at the football every fifth Saturday and every third Friday/Sunday/Monday.
It's an expenditure on the bigger picture.)
I used to tune into Watchdog to see Lynn Faulds Wood feign sympathy as daft folk looked mournful because the hotel they stayed at in Benidorm didn't look like it did in the brochure.
Then they'd hold up the brochure and show a lovely drawing of a nice hotel.
"It's a drawing," I'd think. "What did you expect?"
Now I've joined them. I've bought a season ticket to watch an artist's impression of a league structure.
Or, as we're dealing with Neil Doncaster, David Longmuir and their parcel of rogues, a piss artist's impression.
It might be that we're moving closer to knowing what we're going to be watching.
The current options seem to extend to the status quo and the little heralded 12+12+18 format, the Hampden zinger that was the only method they could devise that would leave fans feeling nostalgic for the "race for the top six."
I don't know how many clubs are already selling season tickets.
I hear that sales at Easter Road are going well, although I think that particular barometer will be a better gauge when the current interest free payment offer runs out and the real extent of Pat Fenlon's underachievement becomes clearer.
But something really stinks here.
When we're not being kept in the dark we're being told that we have to accept the medicine proscribed by a vacuous leadership that insists we don't know what's good for us.
Maybe I don't know what's good for me. But if football needs fans and football keeps treating fans with contempt then football is fooling itself.
I chuckled on Sunday when a tabloid reported that David Cameron was ready to force the issue of the Old Firm moving to England.
Not only had the paper run with such an obvious howler but they'd alighted on one of the few high profile leaders whose current form matches Scottish football's heid bummers for donkey-ness.
Where there is dischord they bring more dischord. Or apathy, which threatens to be even more damaging.
"We need you fans. Ignore the fans. We need the fans. We don't care what the fans want."
It's an odd attitude to adopt. Sometimes I think George Orwell could have done a job on Scottish football. Then I remember that the pigs of Manor Farm at least started out with good intentions.
Maybe we'll be surprised. 12+12+18 will be agreed this week, the benefits will become clearer, the excitement will return. The dreams of the suits will become a fanfare for the common fan.
Or maybe it will be another failure on the road to ruin.
And my muppetry is partly to blame. For the price of a week in an unfinished hotel in Benidorm I've legitimised the idiocy of the men who are failing to save the game.
There's no hope for me, undisputed muppet of the West Stand.
Hopefully Scottish football isn't such a lost cause.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Scottish football: Reinventing the wheel
12 + 12 + 18 = 8 + 8 + 8 + 18 = 36 + 36 + 36 + 34.
With such simple equations are Scottish football resurrections secured.
If the SPL is about to die, the dictators of the ancien regime are going to get their way before the peasants storm the castle.
12 + 12 + 18.
We could carve it in granite on the SPL's tombstone if an unmarked grave didn't seem more appropriate.
The SPL's Neil Doncaster has often been characterised on this blog as providing much of the deficit in Scottish football's leadership.
His stock fell further during the bloodletting of the summer and recently it has been his Scottish Football League counterpart, David Longmuir, who has been seen by many to better articulate the views of the ordinary punter.
Longmuir has been gazumped on the critical issue of reconstruction though. Step aside Donkey-caster, this was Don King-caster, persuading enough clubs that his dream was actually their dream too.
In the time honoured Scottish football tradition this was done with sticks and carrots, bribes and threats. Our change or no change and did we mention a redistribution of wealth? Our way or the highway and how about increasing the number of potential promotion spots?
In such ways can dreams be sold.
Fair to say that many fans have been less enamoured to the SPL's grand compromise. Never convinced by the split in the first place, supporters are unlikely to find appeasement in a further level of splittage.
This apparent disregard for the paying punter might be nothing more than some club chairmen judging that their support has been reduced to a loyal rump who will remain forlornly in attendance whatever the divisional machinations.
Or it could be that they can't quite escape playing matron. They know we don't like the idea of a three way split cabbage but it will help us grow strong and healthy so they'll force feed us it anyway.
The guardians of the game guarding the game against the romantically suicidal notions of supporters.
It's not unreasonable for directors to think that is simply a case of them doing their jobs.
Risky though. A wild stab in the demographic dark would lead me to surmise that few Scottish football fans grew up with Listen With Mother or accepting that nanny knew best.
In difficult times we might decide that paying for the privilege of eating cabbage is a miserable luxury we can forego or that the time has come to find a restaurant where the menu is more entertaining and less cabbage centric.
(And while I am throttling this cabbage nonsense to death, full disclosure: I am a fan of the Cabbage who will likely perservere with that support no matter the method of shredding the leaves in mid season. Part, as it were, of Rod Petrie's cabbagey rump.)
If clubs are prepared to gamble that 12 + 12 + 18 minimises destruction in the court of public opinion, do they have the same confidence in the corportate world?
However the cards fall on reconstruction, the model will require a title sponsor and media partners will need to be satisfied they are getting value for their investment.
Last week there were rumours that ESPN were either looking at ditching their Scottish football coverage or ditching all their remaining assets and pulling out of the UK market.
Would Sky want a monopoly? Could BT's new kid on the televised sport block be persuaded to intervene?
Has anyone even asked them?
Part of the problem with the SPL's vision is what remains unsaid.
On sponsorship and TV deals. On how a fairer distribution of money would work. On how the leagues below the SFL will be persuaded that this is a pyramid system that can actually work for them. On what exactly increasing access to promotion will mean in practice. On how willing the SPL will be to give up their rotten borough of a voting system within a single league body.
We don't know enough. Is it any surprise that fans are taking a lot of convincing when the known knowns seem so needlessly complicated and the known unknowns seem so plentiful?
Rangers have offered a counter proposal a 14 + 14 + 14 structure. That 14 team top flight was the model favoured by Rangers and Celtic a couple of years ago. It was also the model, probably quite coincidentally, outlined by Jim Traynor in 2011.
It has merits. It has flaws. Given how steadfastly a majority of SPL clubs have been in their desire to do anything but expand the top flight it seems unlikely, as Charles Green is no doubt aware, to find favour. Having kicked up a fuss about 12 + 12 + 18 and been challenged to deliver an alternative, Green was perhaps lucky to have Jim Traynor's back catalogue lying around Ibrox.
And clearly there are already SFL clubs persuaded by the 12 team second tier, that SPL2 by any other name.
Are we closer to reconstruction in time for next season?
I'd think so. But for it to happen in the next few months it will be along the 12 + 12 + 18 model.
That is the model that preserves the number of home gates the SPL clubs need to sustain their often hand to mouth existence, the model that gives clubs in the current First Division that tantalising prospect of access to the top flight and the model that seems to have found a degree of acceptance among the remaining SFL clubs.
If it's not agreed, we will be back to various brains trusts banging together in the corridors of Hampden. Again.
It's far from perfect.
It's already been branded a failure in Austria and the Swiss - who successfully sold the world cuckoo clocks, multi functional penknives with little apparent functionality and Sepp Blatter - couldn't make it work.
Fans are resistant and it seems quite an emotional resistance, one not easily countered by bland marketing and "here's the maths" spreadsheets.
That's a hard sell for an imperfect product.
Maybe honesty would be best the option:
"We want 12 + 12 + 18 for reasons of self-preservation. We're not sure the football will improve, the games will be more exciting or the blot of meaningless game will be forever erased from the top two divisions.
"But we're all skint and this is the best way we can find to try and maximise revenues, the best way to keep the greatest number of clubs alive.
"Perfect? No. A quick fix? Probably not. But if you've been watching Scottish football through the years you'll know that the problems are too deep for a change in the size of the top flight to make the game an overnight success.
"We're taking a risk that 12 + 12 + 18 will give us the stability to build something a bit better. We kind of need your help to do it."
It might not persuade a lot of fans but it could prove quite cathartic for all involved.
It might also help to rebuild trust between clubs and fans, a trust that has been eroding for too long, making it trickier to sell any reconstruction idea to the majority.
That this reconstruction has been framed as the last act of a collapsing SPL hasn’t helped - people are less keen to grant your last wish if you’ve been universally derided for most of your life.
If pushing ahead with 12 + 12 + 18 erodes that trust further, fails to improve what we see on the pitch, leaves yet more fans choking on their cabbage then we'll be chasing down yet another dead end.
And with every passing season we're getting less and less room for manoeuvre.
With such simple equations are Scottish football resurrections secured.
If the SPL is about to die, the dictators of the ancien regime are going to get their way before the peasants storm the castle.
12 + 12 + 18.
We could carve it in granite on the SPL's tombstone if an unmarked grave didn't seem more appropriate.
The SPL's Neil Doncaster has often been characterised on this blog as providing much of the deficit in Scottish football's leadership.
His stock fell further during the bloodletting of the summer and recently it has been his Scottish Football League counterpart, David Longmuir, who has been seen by many to better articulate the views of the ordinary punter.
Longmuir has been gazumped on the critical issue of reconstruction though. Step aside Donkey-caster, this was Don King-caster, persuading enough clubs that his dream was actually their dream too.
In the time honoured Scottish football tradition this was done with sticks and carrots, bribes and threats. Our change or no change and did we mention a redistribution of wealth? Our way or the highway and how about increasing the number of potential promotion spots?
In such ways can dreams be sold.
Fair to say that many fans have been less enamoured to the SPL's grand compromise. Never convinced by the split in the first place, supporters are unlikely to find appeasement in a further level of splittage.
This apparent disregard for the paying punter might be nothing more than some club chairmen judging that their support has been reduced to a loyal rump who will remain forlornly in attendance whatever the divisional machinations.
Or it could be that they can't quite escape playing matron. They know we don't like the idea of a three way split cabbage but it will help us grow strong and healthy so they'll force feed us it anyway.
The guardians of the game guarding the game against the romantically suicidal notions of supporters.
It's not unreasonable for directors to think that is simply a case of them doing their jobs.
Risky though. A wild stab in the demographic dark would lead me to surmise that few Scottish football fans grew up with Listen With Mother or accepting that nanny knew best.
In difficult times we might decide that paying for the privilege of eating cabbage is a miserable luxury we can forego or that the time has come to find a restaurant where the menu is more entertaining and less cabbage centric.
(And while I am throttling this cabbage nonsense to death, full disclosure: I am a fan of the Cabbage who will likely perservere with that support no matter the method of shredding the leaves in mid season. Part, as it were, of Rod Petrie's cabbagey rump.)
If clubs are prepared to gamble that 12 + 12 + 18 minimises destruction in the court of public opinion, do they have the same confidence in the corportate world?
However the cards fall on reconstruction, the model will require a title sponsor and media partners will need to be satisfied they are getting value for their investment.
Last week there were rumours that ESPN were either looking at ditching their Scottish football coverage or ditching all their remaining assets and pulling out of the UK market.
Would Sky want a monopoly? Could BT's new kid on the televised sport block be persuaded to intervene?
Has anyone even asked them?
Part of the problem with the SPL's vision is what remains unsaid.
On sponsorship and TV deals. On how a fairer distribution of money would work. On how the leagues below the SFL will be persuaded that this is a pyramid system that can actually work for them. On what exactly increasing access to promotion will mean in practice. On how willing the SPL will be to give up their rotten borough of a voting system within a single league body.
We don't know enough. Is it any surprise that fans are taking a lot of convincing when the known knowns seem so needlessly complicated and the known unknowns seem so plentiful?
Rangers have offered a counter proposal a 14 + 14 + 14 structure. That 14 team top flight was the model favoured by Rangers and Celtic a couple of years ago. It was also the model, probably quite coincidentally, outlined by Jim Traynor in 2011.
It has merits. It has flaws. Given how steadfastly a majority of SPL clubs have been in their desire to do anything but expand the top flight it seems unlikely, as Charles Green is no doubt aware, to find favour. Having kicked up a fuss about 12 + 12 + 18 and been challenged to deliver an alternative, Green was perhaps lucky to have Jim Traynor's back catalogue lying around Ibrox.
And clearly there are already SFL clubs persuaded by the 12 team second tier, that SPL2 by any other name.
Are we closer to reconstruction in time for next season?
I'd think so. But for it to happen in the next few months it will be along the 12 + 12 + 18 model.
That is the model that preserves the number of home gates the SPL clubs need to sustain their often hand to mouth existence, the model that gives clubs in the current First Division that tantalising prospect of access to the top flight and the model that seems to have found a degree of acceptance among the remaining SFL clubs.
If it's not agreed, we will be back to various brains trusts banging together in the corridors of Hampden. Again.
It's far from perfect.
It's already been branded a failure in Austria and the Swiss - who successfully sold the world cuckoo clocks, multi functional penknives with little apparent functionality and Sepp Blatter - couldn't make it work.
Fans are resistant and it seems quite an emotional resistance, one not easily countered by bland marketing and "here's the maths" spreadsheets.
That's a hard sell for an imperfect product.
Maybe honesty would be best the option:
"We want 12 + 12 + 18 for reasons of self-preservation. We're not sure the football will improve, the games will be more exciting or the blot of meaningless game will be forever erased from the top two divisions.
"But we're all skint and this is the best way we can find to try and maximise revenues, the best way to keep the greatest number of clubs alive.
"Perfect? No. A quick fix? Probably not. But if you've been watching Scottish football through the years you'll know that the problems are too deep for a change in the size of the top flight to make the game an overnight success.
"We're taking a risk that 12 + 12 + 18 will give us the stability to build something a bit better. We kind of need your help to do it."
It might not persuade a lot of fans but it could prove quite cathartic for all involved.
It might also help to rebuild trust between clubs and fans, a trust that has been eroding for too long, making it trickier to sell any reconstruction idea to the majority.
That this reconstruction has been framed as the last act of a collapsing SPL hasn’t helped - people are less keen to grant your last wish if you’ve been universally derided for most of your life.
If pushing ahead with 12 + 12 + 18 erodes that trust further, fails to improve what we see on the pitch, leaves yet more fans choking on their cabbage then we'll be chasing down yet another dead end.
And with every passing season we're getting less and less room for manoeuvre.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Scottish football: Reconstruction rivals
"The battle lines were drawn months ago and the main players have been digging the trenches.
"But listen closely and you will hear the first volleys being fired as Scottish football edges closer, yet again, to civil war."
So spake the BBC's Chris McLaughlin as the latest contributions emerged in the eternal "reconstruction of Scottish football" debate.
The Scottish Football League will announce its plans first: a top league of 16, a 12 team second division and 18 teams in the bottom tier. Celtic and Rangers will be invited to enter "colt" teams. And the SPL will be disbanded, the "big" clubs returning to the SFL fold.
"Haud yer wheesht" say the SPL. They've their own plans and they don't include being disbanded. Rather: a top flight of 16, an SPL2 of 12 teams and a third flight of 12 teams.
Forget our romantic notions of a pyramid structure, of a constructive dialogue involving all stakeholders - including fans.
Where are we after our strange summer, the McLeish Report before that and the hints that the SFA were building up to bang heads together to get things moving forward?
We're nowhere. It seems hot air doesn't fuel the engines of change.
On one side the SPL, as defensive of its territory as ever, on the other a newly emboldened SFL.
And never the twain shall meet.
Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals - The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is a brilliant study of how Lincoln weaved different points of view into his presidency, to shape the America he wanted to emerge from its most tumultuous period.
From Barack Obama down many have adopted the book as a leadership guide, towering narrative history as self help manual.
Lincoln strengthened his grip on the White House and the country by drawing opponents of different hues into his inner circle.
Now I've no idea of reading habits inside Hampden and it is a churlish habit of football - this blog included - to hurl military descriptions at events on and off the field.
But for the same to happen at Hampden we must rely on the leadership of Campbell Ogilvie and Stewart Regan.
We must rely on those with different views to air them openly, without agendas, and be prepared to sacrifice their own ambition to build a better future for Scottish football.
What we're likely to get is the SFA abdicating responsibility for as long as possible as an increasingly bitter argument between the SPL and the SFA results in either the status quo or a bad fudge, our promised utopia replaced by the worst of both worlds.
A leadership vacuum filled by selfish bickering, the fans ignored, the hope of lasting, positive change ever more forlorn.
It wouldn't take Lincoln and his team of rivals to sort out Scottish football.
Unfortunately Screaming Lord Sutch would be an improvement on the current mob masquerading as "guardians of the game."
Scottish football is not doomed. Too many people care too much.
But nor does constructive change look likely any time soon. And the longer the spectacle remains bald men fighting over a comb, the harder the recovery will be.
"But listen closely and you will hear the first volleys being fired as Scottish football edges closer, yet again, to civil war."
So spake the BBC's Chris McLaughlin as the latest contributions emerged in the eternal "reconstruction of Scottish football" debate.
"Haud yer wheesht" say the SPL. They've their own plans and they don't include being disbanded. Rather: a top flight of 16, an SPL2 of 12 teams and a third flight of 12 teams.
Forget our romantic notions of a pyramid structure, of a constructive dialogue involving all stakeholders - including fans.
Where are we after our strange summer, the McLeish Report before that and the hints that the SFA were building up to bang heads together to get things moving forward?
We're nowhere. It seems hot air doesn't fuel the engines of change.
On one side the SPL, as defensive of its territory as ever, on the other a newly emboldened SFL.
And never the twain shall meet.
Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals - The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is a brilliant study of how Lincoln weaved different points of view into his presidency, to shape the America he wanted to emerge from its most tumultuous period.
From Barack Obama down many have adopted the book as a leadership guide, towering narrative history as self help manual.
Lincoln strengthened his grip on the White House and the country by drawing opponents of different hues into his inner circle.
Now I've no idea of reading habits inside Hampden and it is a churlish habit of football - this blog included - to hurl military descriptions at events on and off the field.
But for the same to happen at Hampden we must rely on the leadership of Campbell Ogilvie and Stewart Regan.
We must rely on those with different views to air them openly, without agendas, and be prepared to sacrifice their own ambition to build a better future for Scottish football.
What we're likely to get is the SFA abdicating responsibility for as long as possible as an increasingly bitter argument between the SPL and the SFA results in either the status quo or a bad fudge, our promised utopia replaced by the worst of both worlds.
A leadership vacuum filled by selfish bickering, the fans ignored, the hope of lasting, positive change ever more forlorn.
It wouldn't take Lincoln and his team of rivals to sort out Scottish football.
Unfortunately Screaming Lord Sutch would be an improvement on the current mob masquerading as "guardians of the game."
Scottish football is not doomed. Too many people care too much.
But nor does constructive change look likely any time soon. And the longer the spectacle remains bald men fighting over a comb, the harder the recovery will be.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Your game needs you
What do Scottish football fans want?
Ask 100 people. Get 99 different answers.
We're not short of opinions. Events this summer showed that there are times when clubs are forced to listen.
Too often though clubs feel able to ignore the paying punter.
Partly that's the arrogance of a game that wants to run itself as a business while ignoring its "customers."
And partly it's because the channels for constructive communication between fans and clubs have simply not existed.
It's too easy for chairmen and chief executives to write off forums and social media sites as a playground for the overly opinionated or the crazily disaffected.
They latch on to the most extreme views, claim the tail is wagging the dog and give themselves an excuse to ignore anything that might be considered constructive. And there is a lot of constructive opinion out there.
And those fans with something constructive to say might be about to find a collective voice with the launch of new initiative from Supporters Direct Scotland.
A 'Fans Parliament' is to be launched across Scotland giving fans of every club a vehicle to air their views - and have those views collected and reported to Scottish football's overly complicated governing bodies and the Scottish Government.
Launched at the Scottish Parliament yesterday the initiative builds on the recommendations made in the McLeish Report that fans were recognised as key stakeholders in the game with a role to play in shaping the future of Scottish football.
The author of that report, Henry McLeish, said:
"It has been a unique year for football fans in Scotland, on a local as well as national basis, with ordinary fans’ voices being heard loud and clear in a way they’ve never been heard, or listened to, before. Now there is a drive and determination to ensure that the momentum that was gained isn’t lost.
"The new 'Fans Parliament' initiative will provide a platform for fans to continue the debate in the knowledge that it will be reported back to the Scottish Government and to the organisations running football in Scotland."
Fans will be encouraged to get involved through a series of roadshows, at matches, using social media and at www.scottishfans.org.
Paul Goodwin, head of Supporters Direct in Scotland, said:
"Fans voices are being listened to more than ever before and we know that in recent months there has been an unprecedented debate about the game in Scotland.
"Through Supporters Direct Scotland fans have a direct route into government and policy makers and we want the new ‘Fans Parliament’ initiative to be the conduit for the debate and discussion between fans across the country and, in effect, be the voice of Scottish football fans.
"As an organisation funded by the Scottish Government we have the ability to present supporters views directly to them as well as to the SPL, SFL and the SFA. Talks have already started at Hampden Park looking at how we formalise this relationship with the governing bodies."
An interesting scheme this. Football fans are not a homogeneous bunch. I've probably got no more in common with the chap who sits next to me at Easter Road than a shared love of Hibs and some subconscious masochism.
Our views on the future of our club probably diverge. Our views on the future of Scottish football almost certainly do.
Football fans don't necessarily do consensus.
So surveying fans, pulling together those opinions and turning those findings into something positive and focused enough to influence the SFA, SPL and SFL is likely to be a mammoth undertaking.
Not an impossible undertaking though. And a very worthwhile one.
I've met with some of the people involved and I can vouch for their enthusiasm in seeing this through.
And given that most of us should agree that a sustainable future for Scottish football is an absolute must, there is common ground to build on.
There's also a simple message for the men stalking the corridors of power at Hampden and ruling clubs like their own private dominions.
140 years of autocracy has got us where we are today.
There has to be a better way.
The first roadshow will be held in Edinburgh on 28th October with Pat Stanton and Gary Mackay in attendance.
Register by email: roadshows@supporters-direct.org with your name and date of birth.
www.scottishfans.org
Ask 100 people. Get 99 different answers.
Too often though clubs feel able to ignore the paying punter.
Partly that's the arrogance of a game that wants to run itself as a business while ignoring its "customers."
And partly it's because the channels for constructive communication between fans and clubs have simply not existed.
It's too easy for chairmen and chief executives to write off forums and social media sites as a playground for the overly opinionated or the crazily disaffected.
They latch on to the most extreme views, claim the tail is wagging the dog and give themselves an excuse to ignore anything that might be considered constructive. And there is a lot of constructive opinion out there.
And those fans with something constructive to say might be about to find a collective voice with the launch of new initiative from Supporters Direct Scotland.
A 'Fans Parliament' is to be launched across Scotland giving fans of every club a vehicle to air their views - and have those views collected and reported to Scottish football's overly complicated governing bodies and the Scottish Government.
Launched at the Scottish Parliament yesterday the initiative builds on the recommendations made in the McLeish Report that fans were recognised as key stakeholders in the game with a role to play in shaping the future of Scottish football.
"It has been a unique year for football fans in Scotland, on a local as well as national basis, with ordinary fans’ voices being heard loud and clear in a way they’ve never been heard, or listened to, before. Now there is a drive and determination to ensure that the momentum that was gained isn’t lost.
"The new 'Fans Parliament' initiative will provide a platform for fans to continue the debate in the knowledge that it will be reported back to the Scottish Government and to the organisations running football in Scotland."
Fans will be encouraged to get involved through a series of roadshows, at matches, using social media and at www.scottishfans.org.
Paul Goodwin, head of Supporters Direct in Scotland, said:
"Fans voices are being listened to more than ever before and we know that in recent months there has been an unprecedented debate about the game in Scotland.
"Through Supporters Direct Scotland fans have a direct route into government and policy makers and we want the new ‘Fans Parliament’ initiative to be the conduit for the debate and discussion between fans across the country and, in effect, be the voice of Scottish football fans.
"As an organisation funded by the Scottish Government we have the ability to present supporters views directly to them as well as to the SPL, SFL and the SFA. Talks have already started at Hampden Park looking at how we formalise this relationship with the governing bodies."
An interesting scheme this. Football fans are not a homogeneous bunch. I've probably got no more in common with the chap who sits next to me at Easter Road than a shared love of Hibs and some subconscious masochism.
Our views on the future of our club probably diverge. Our views on the future of Scottish football almost certainly do.
Football fans don't necessarily do consensus.
So surveying fans, pulling together those opinions and turning those findings into something positive and focused enough to influence the SFA, SPL and SFL is likely to be a mammoth undertaking.
Not an impossible undertaking though. And a very worthwhile one.
I've met with some of the people involved and I can vouch for their enthusiasm in seeing this through.
And given that most of us should agree that a sustainable future for Scottish football is an absolute must, there is common ground to build on.
There's also a simple message for the men stalking the corridors of power at Hampden and ruling clubs like their own private dominions.
140 years of autocracy has got us where we are today.
There has to be a better way.
The first roadshow will be held in Edinburgh on 28th October with Pat Stanton and Gary Mackay in attendance.
Register by email: roadshows@supporters-direct.org with your name and date of birth.
www.scottishfans.org
Thursday, July 19, 2012
SFL to patch up Rangers
With Rangers entry into Division Three now all but confirmed, football shirt expert Steven Dow takes a look at an unexpected consequence - and identifies some winners - from Scottish football's summer of uncertainty:
On the face of it, they are just two thin pieces of material that heat seal onto a football shirt. No great shakes and barely noticed beyond the confines of the normally elusive Scottish Football League coverage seen in Scotland.
But now (and I won’t go into the details) the team formerly known as Rangers and all that sail with them have just docked in Division 3 of the SFL and the Irn Bru sleeve patch has just taken off.
Not all that long ago we didn’t have sponsors on football shirts but the financial demands soon saw to that and a further addition to the corporate hold on football was the league sleeve patch. At every senior level of the game it is commonplace to see the league sponsor’s name in some form on the sleeve of each team at home or abroad.
Whether it’s global brands such as Coca Cola or Barclays, they all strive for maximum coverage and it’s no different for Scotland’s very own Barr’s Irn Bru. The difference here is that Irn Bru just struck gold!
The sudden arrival of Ranger’s into Division Three will mean a huge surge of interest in the league and pictures that formerly showed the silver and red Clydesdale Bank logo on the sleeve of the blue shirt will be replaced by the vivid blue and orange of Irn Bru.
For a retailer such as us demand for the sleeve patches has surged. The irony that the colours of the new sleeve patch sit perfectly with Govan’s finest is not lost on anyone and this will also feed the demand. Irn Bru's owners AG Barr will be delighted with the extra coverage that they will receive globally, tempered only by the fact that this is the last season of their current sponsorship deal.
I certainly hope the kitman didn’t jump the gun in May and start applying the Clydesdale patches to the various Rangers kits in the Ibrox dressing room. I can assure you that those bad boys don’t come off if properly applied.
So it’s the fizzy pop patches for Rangers now along with official SFL numbers. Names on the back of the shirt? That’s also a thing of the past. Due to the tighter finances at the lower end of the senior game in Scotland, it’s one set of shirts numbered 1-16, no names and a few spare shirts in case of a laundry accident.
All change but not for the worse, every cloud has a silver lining and the demand for authentic Rangers shirts adorned with the correct personalisation will certainly mean good business for Barr’s Irn Bru and, of course, forward thinking independent football retailers.
Steven Dow is the co-owner of Football Nation, an independent football retailer based in Edinburgh and online at www.thefootballnation.co.uk
On the face of it, they are just two thin pieces of material that heat seal onto a football shirt. No great shakes and barely noticed beyond the confines of the normally elusive Scottish Football League coverage seen in Scotland.
But now (and I won’t go into the details) the team formerly known as Rangers and all that sail with them have just docked in Division 3 of the SFL and the Irn Bru sleeve patch has just taken off.Not all that long ago we didn’t have sponsors on football shirts but the financial demands soon saw to that and a further addition to the corporate hold on football was the league sleeve patch. At every senior level of the game it is commonplace to see the league sponsor’s name in some form on the sleeve of each team at home or abroad.
Whether it’s global brands such as Coca Cola or Barclays, they all strive for maximum coverage and it’s no different for Scotland’s very own Barr’s Irn Bru. The difference here is that Irn Bru just struck gold!
The sudden arrival of Ranger’s into Division Three will mean a huge surge of interest in the league and pictures that formerly showed the silver and red Clydesdale Bank logo on the sleeve of the blue shirt will be replaced by the vivid blue and orange of Irn Bru.
For a retailer such as us demand for the sleeve patches has surged. The irony that the colours of the new sleeve patch sit perfectly with Govan’s finest is not lost on anyone and this will also feed the demand. Irn Bru's owners AG Barr will be delighted with the extra coverage that they will receive globally, tempered only by the fact that this is the last season of their current sponsorship deal.
I certainly hope the kitman didn’t jump the gun in May and start applying the Clydesdale patches to the various Rangers kits in the Ibrox dressing room. I can assure you that those bad boys don’t come off if properly applied.
So it’s the fizzy pop patches for Rangers now along with official SFL numbers. Names on the back of the shirt? That’s also a thing of the past. Due to the tighter finances at the lower end of the senior game in Scotland, it’s one set of shirts numbered 1-16, no names and a few spare shirts in case of a laundry accident.
All change but not for the worse, every cloud has a silver lining and the demand for authentic Rangers shirts adorned with the correct personalisation will certainly mean good business for Barr’s Irn Bru and, of course, forward thinking independent football retailers.
Steven Dow is the co-owner of Football Nation, an independent football retailer based in Edinburgh and online at www.thefootballnation.co.uk
Friday, July 13, 2012
Scottish football: Destiny delayed?
The time has finally come for Scottish football to greet the future.
What should happen when the Scottish Football League clubs meet at Hampden today?
Problems and issues should be fully discussed. Threats made by other bodies should be retracted. Fears over the sustainability of the current incarnation of the newco Rangers should be allayed.
Any lingering ambiguity on the resolutions laid in front of the clubs should be resolved.
When the votes are counted Rangers newco should be free to start life in Division Three.
That should be an end to it. For better or for worse we'll all need to embrace what that means for the future.
Scottish football will need to be proactive, people in positions of influence will need to overcome the fear that has undermined the game these last few weeks and be brave, inventive and resilient.
That shouldn't be too much to ask. With the power of being a "guardian" of the game comes the responsibility of building a sustainable model for everyone involved in the game.
Plans for reconstruction should be put in place. Those plans should be borne from rational, constructive discussion rather than panic and self-interest.
The SPL experiment - a 14 year exercise in greed, delusion and failure - should be disbanded.
The governance of the game - the governance that allowed cowardice to leave the SFL clubs with this decision and then allowed bullying and threats to try and influence that decision - should be revolutionised.
The new business model, whatever hardships it might bring, must involve all clubs in all divisions. We've tried thinking only about the elite. It's ended in debt, anger on the terraces and a whopping corporate collapse.
The fans who have shown commendable passion - whatever some might think of their motives - should be engaged, not disregarded as an inconvenient revenue stream.
That's what should happen.
It probably won't though.
The last few days have had the feel of a bizarre list of classified results as clubs hailing from what Jonathan Meades called "football pools towns" have declared their voting intentions.
There has been an avalanche of statements favouring the Division Three option. It says much for the unpredictability of recent events that I'm far from convinced the actual votes will be cast quite as decisively as that.
I'm tired and weary of the whole thing now. But am I alone in thinking that today is just another staging post, another day labelled historic that probably won't resolve very much at all?
Whatever happens it's unlikely that the uncertainty, the vitriol, the self-immolation of the last few weeks will end.
Expect the interchangeable malevolent cop-incompetent cop double act of the SPL's Neil Doncaster and the SFA's Stewart Regan to continue.
Expect this grubby chapter in the history of both those organisations to continue.
Expect SPL chairmen, silently hiding behind the contrived integrity of their "no to newco" vote, to continue to exert influence in the search for the outcome they want.
Expect them to pretend these are principled actions, the actions of men who know that the only way to save the game is to save the fans of all clubs from themselves.
Expect their very vocal supporters to champion them as the real heroes, the brave few doing their best to protect football from the wishes of the majority.
Expect them to ignore their own failings and the remarkable failure of the last 14 years, an intolerable status quo that they are determined to preserve even as they try and cover the unmentionables behind a fig leaf of "positive change."
Expect all that and more.
Expect to be enraged over and over again.
Expect this miserable story to run for a few more days or weeks yet, with a little more of what Scottish football should mean to fans dying with every hour.
But don't expect Regan, Doncaster or their organ grinders to meekly accept the outcome of today's meeting at Hampden if it doesn't end with the result they want.
Like this? Like the Scottish Football Blog on Facebook.
What should happen when the Scottish Football League clubs meet at Hampden today?
Problems and issues should be fully discussed. Threats made by other bodies should be retracted. Fears over the sustainability of the current incarnation of the newco Rangers should be allayed.
Any lingering ambiguity on the resolutions laid in front of the clubs should be resolved.
When the votes are counted Rangers newco should be free to start life in Division Three.
That should be an end to it. For better or for worse we'll all need to embrace what that means for the future.
Scottish football will need to be proactive, people in positions of influence will need to overcome the fear that has undermined the game these last few weeks and be brave, inventive and resilient.
That shouldn't be too much to ask. With the power of being a "guardian" of the game comes the responsibility of building a sustainable model for everyone involved in the game.
Plans for reconstruction should be put in place. Those plans should be borne from rational, constructive discussion rather than panic and self-interest.
The SPL experiment - a 14 year exercise in greed, delusion and failure - should be disbanded.
The governance of the game - the governance that allowed cowardice to leave the SFL clubs with this decision and then allowed bullying and threats to try and influence that decision - should be revolutionised.
The new business model, whatever hardships it might bring, must involve all clubs in all divisions. We've tried thinking only about the elite. It's ended in debt, anger on the terraces and a whopping corporate collapse.
The fans who have shown commendable passion - whatever some might think of their motives - should be engaged, not disregarded as an inconvenient revenue stream.
That's what should happen.
It probably won't though.
The last few days have had the feel of a bizarre list of classified results as clubs hailing from what Jonathan Meades called "football pools towns" have declared their voting intentions.
There has been an avalanche of statements favouring the Division Three option. It says much for the unpredictability of recent events that I'm far from convinced the actual votes will be cast quite as decisively as that.
I'm tired and weary of the whole thing now. But am I alone in thinking that today is just another staging post, another day labelled historic that probably won't resolve very much at all?
Whatever happens it's unlikely that the uncertainty, the vitriol, the self-immolation of the last few weeks will end.
Expect the interchangeable malevolent cop-incompetent cop double act of the SPL's Neil Doncaster and the SFA's Stewart Regan to continue.
Expect this grubby chapter in the history of both those organisations to continue.
Expect SPL chairmen, silently hiding behind the contrived integrity of their "no to newco" vote, to continue to exert influence in the search for the outcome they want.
Expect them to pretend these are principled actions, the actions of men who know that the only way to save the game is to save the fans of all clubs from themselves.
Expect their very vocal supporters to champion them as the real heroes, the brave few doing their best to protect football from the wishes of the majority.
Expect them to ignore their own failings and the remarkable failure of the last 14 years, an intolerable status quo that they are determined to preserve even as they try and cover the unmentionables behind a fig leaf of "positive change."
Expect all that and more.
Expect to be enraged over and over again.
Expect this miserable story to run for a few more days or weeks yet, with a little more of what Scottish football should mean to fans dying with every hour.
But don't expect Regan, Doncaster or their organ grinders to meekly accept the outcome of today's meeting at Hampden if it doesn't end with the result they want.
Like this? Like the Scottish Football Blog on Facebook.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Rangers newco: Berwick say Division 3
And yet another statement.
Many clubs have embraced verbosity. Not so Berwick.
Less than 100 words.
The crucial line: "directly into SFL Division Three."
Berwick Rangers Board tonight agreed unanimously that should the new Rangers FC be admitted to the SFL for the new season, that they would support a move directly into SFL Division Three. The Club has also taken on board the feelings of their Supporters Club, Supporters Trust and the countless individual fans who have contacted them directly. There will be no further statement from the club on this matter.
From www.berwickrangersfc.co.uk
STV Sport has the latest on declared voting intentions
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Many clubs have embraced verbosity. Not so Berwick.
Less than 100 words.
The crucial line: "directly into SFL Division Three."
Berwick Rangers Board tonight agreed unanimously that should the new Rangers FC be admitted to the SFL for the new season, that they would support a move directly into SFL Division Three. The Club has also taken on board the feelings of their Supporters Club, Supporters Trust and the countless individual fans who have contacted them directly. There will be no further statement from the club on this matter.
From www.berwickrangersfc.co.uk
STV Sport has the latest on declared voting intentions
Like this? Like the Scottish Football Blog on Facebook.
Rangers newco: Clyde comment
Devoid as we are of international success it might be heartening that Scottish football is now head and shoulders above any other country when it comes to releasing statements.
Today it was the turn of Clyde.
Quite explosive this one. It seems to nail as hollow some of the threats that have been made, it questions the continued silence of most SPL clubs and draws attention once more to the uncertainty that still surrounds the Charles Green owned Rangers newco.
And it also suggests - perhaps more explicitly than any other club statement - that based on the information so far provided to the SFL the Rangers newco should not actually be admitted at any level.
It certainly seems to me that, whatever the outcome on Friday, it is going to be difficult for Scottish football to keep either Neil Doncaster or Stewart Regan in positions of such influence.
The board of Clyde Football Club met last night to consider how it might approach the resolutions (see below) to be voted on at the SFL meeting on Friday 13th July. This update is to inform our owners and supporters and hopefully explain some of the complexities that face the club when carefully and objectively considering how we might vote. We hope that by being as clear as possible about the difficulties surrounding this situation that the people able to support the process act swiftly to do so.
The overwhelming reality is that we are being asked to make one of the most important decisions for Scottish Football in a vacuum devoid of factual information, that vacuum having been filled with unhelpful rhetoric and scaremongering by the chief executives of the SFA and SPL.
We therefore looked at what we were being asked to vote on, how it fitted with the principles of the sport, and what information we might need to inform a logical decision in context of the current reality.
It was clear that the resolutions marked a clear departure from all previous process and custom and practice when considering admitting a team to the SFL, albeit operating within the rules of the SFL. It was in that context which we considered the resolutions. In reality, the customary principles of sport were not at the forefront of the resolutions.
We first concluded that there was limited risk to the SFL from the 'Armageddon' theory, as depicted in the detailed presentation by Neil Doncaster and supported by Stewart Regan, which had prompted fears of cash flow loss to the SFL next season. We have obtained a copy of the Settlement Agreement signed up to by the SPL and the SFL in April 1998 - it is clear that the agreement is not ambiguous in this regard and there is no scope for the SPL to fail to meet the obligations to the SFL except by deliberately breaching the agreement. Neil Doncaster was unequivocal when he said that there would be no payment under the agreement and stressed that it was not the board of the SPL that made big decisions, it was the clubs themselves. We have concluded that it defies credibility that the SPL clubs would instruct the SPL to deliberately breach a legal agreement. To assist the SFL clubs to take decisions in the right manner then the external threat should be removed by the SPL clubs, confirming to the SFL that they have not and will not instruct the SPL to breach the Settlement Agreement.
Consideration was then given to Resolution 1 which we concluded required to be reworded to be explicit that entry was to SFL3. The reason for this is that once entered to the SFL in the manner proposed under Resolution 1, we understand that it is within the power of the Board of the SFL to place a club into any league of their choosing. We believe that, due to the intolerable pressure placed on the SFL board to date by external parties, this resolution should be explicit to avoid the Board coming under pressure from either the SFA or SPL in the event that Resolution 2 is rejected. It is also our opinion that Resolution 1 being explicit sits more appropriately with Resolution 2 which in itself is explicit about where any club might play.
In terms of Resolution 1, whether reworded or not, it seemed inconceivable to the Board of Clyde that absolutely no information whatsoever has been provided to support the resolution. This is clearly a matter of haste and again driven by an external agenda, perhaps because Sevco have not lodged an application to join the SFL then they have not submitted any information. Whilst we have accepted that this is being treated as a special case and we are willing to run with this, it simply was not possible to conclude that we could make any decision at this time. The matter is made worse because of the extent of uncertainty which hangs over Sevco. There is no need to prepare an exhaustive list of the issues as they are well publicised, however the extent of outstanding sanctions that may or may not be levied against a club which has yet to obtain SFA membership, together with the increasing number of possible commercial and legal challenges to the transactions to date simply presents a significant risk to the ability of the club to fulfil its fixtures in any league. Given that some of these matters are in the hands of the governing bodies it seems inexplicable that they are left hanging. We are clear that for the good of the game that we would want a swift and positive conclusion that would see Rangers Football Club taking part in the game again and we would wish to be able to support a Resolution that saw them entered to SFL3. However, until we receive enough information to inform such a decision then we are being pushed into a corner which would actually leave any club making a logical decision arrive at the conclusion that Resolution 1 should not be supported. The SFA could assist the process by transferring the SFA membership to Sevco prior to the Friday meeting if they have satisfied themselves of fit and proper tests and have carried out their own diligence on the viability of the club and the various legal challenges.
Resolution 2 suffers from the same issues as Resolution 1, in that no information of any sort about Sevco, not even whether it will obtain SFA membership, leaves no possibility of making a decision about entry to the SFL based on facts or logic. Clearly it is incumbent on all the governing bodies to make available all factual information they have available if they truly want this process to have any chance of being recovered from the current chaos. At the very least the business plan for Sevco and any other information that led the SPL clubs to arrive at a decision should be made available to the SFL clubs, and not with inappropriately short notice, although that point has as good as passed. Resolution 2 was where the challenge to sporting integrity arose. It was impossible to engage with this concept without continually bearing in mind that the SFA had already undermined the prospects for any integrity to be maintained by making it clear that failure to deal with the admission of a newco to SFL3 would be a dereliction of duty. In effect posting notice that no matter what decision is taken by the SFL clubs to administer their league, the SFA would not tolerate anything other than SFL 1, an equivalent point having been made by Neil Doncaster on behalf of the SPL clubs. The stated position of the SFA and SPL chief executives means that, whilst this club can have faith in David Longmuir to do all in his power to deliver a new combined structure that meets the objectives of Resolution 2, we have no faith in the parties that the new arrangements would be negotiated with. Their behaviour to date is evidence enough for us. We should not be disingenuous on our own position in terms of the question of trading sporting integrity for transformational change to the way the game is governed that is posed by Resolution 2. We have said previously that there would be no winners and that compromise would be required at some point. With this in mind, had we worked through this process and seen positive collaborative behaviour from the leaders of the SFA and SPL and we were challenged with backing Resolution 2 in exchange for revolutionary change that would truly benefit the game as a whole, then we would have engaged with that. As it stands, we have no information on the proposals other than that distributed in advance of the meeting last week and no confidence in the parties that will control the process outside of the SFL. As such we would vote no to Resolution 2.
Resolution 3, as many have pointed out this resolution seems presumptuous as no invitation has been issued from the SPL to either club. Again, this arises because of the external pressures, the haste and the failure of other bodies to complete their own processes. As things stand, whilst Sevco/Newco was not voted into the SPL, it seems that the SPL still has 12 members based on the reported voting at the SPL meeting last week, albeit one of whom is in liquidation. It seems to make more sense that the SPL complete their processes and make the appropriate invitation for a club to join the SPL. We would seek to support whichever of our member clubs are invited to join the SPL to make that move, however, at the moment there is no certainty that Sevco will be entered into the SFL and the SFL should not risk leaving itself short of a team.
In summary, the complete absence of information on Sevco Scotland Ltd renders it impossible to vote with any logic in favour of any of the Resolutions. The default in these circumstances would unfortunately be to vote against. We hope and trust that this unacceptable situation will be resolved swiftly and will allow Clyde Football Club to support Resolution 1 from an informed position and will see Rangers Football Club playing in SFL3. We see Resolution 2 as a matter of trust and it would take a change of personnel and attitude for us to be confident that David Longmuir would be entering discussions with a group of people committed to a collaborative process in a spirit of genuine partnership. In the current circumstances our only decision could be to vote against Resolution 2. Subject to a satisfactory outcome on Resolution 1 we would support Resolution 3.
The three resolutions presented to the club are as follows:-
(i) That the Scottish Football League Members agree to admit Sevco Scotland Limited as an Associate Member and agrees to permit Rangers F.C. to play in the League during Season 2012/13.
(ii) That the Scottish Football League Members direct the Board of Management of The Scottish Football League (the “Board”) to provide that Rangers F.C. shall play in the Third Division of the Scottish Football League during Season 2012/13 unless the Board shall have to its satisfaction negotiated and reached agreement with The Scottish Premier League and The Scottish Football Association on a series of measures which the Board shall consider to be in the best interests of the game, how it is structured, how it is governed and how it is financed, whereupon the Board shall be authorised to provide that Rangers F.C. shall play in the First Division of the Scottish Football League during Season 2012/13.
(iii) That the Scottish Football League Members in terms of Rule 12 approve the resignation of either Dundee F.C. or Dunfermline Athletic F.C., whichever shall be admitted to join the Scottish Premier League for Season 2012/13, such resignation to take effect as at the date of admission of such club to the Scottish Premier League, notwithstanding that the requisite notice under Rule 12 shall not have been given.Details of the series of measures referred to at (ii) above shall be made available to the Members in advance of the meeting and an opportunity for full discussion of those measures will be given prior to the proposals being put to the meeting.
From www.clydefc.co.uk
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Today it was the turn of Clyde.
Quite explosive this one. It seems to nail as hollow some of the threats that have been made, it questions the continued silence of most SPL clubs and draws attention once more to the uncertainty that still surrounds the Charles Green owned Rangers newco.
And it also suggests - perhaps more explicitly than any other club statement - that based on the information so far provided to the SFL the Rangers newco should not actually be admitted at any level.
It certainly seems to me that, whatever the outcome on Friday, it is going to be difficult for Scottish football to keep either Neil Doncaster or Stewart Regan in positions of such influence.
The board of Clyde Football Club met last night to consider how it might approach the resolutions (see below) to be voted on at the SFL meeting on Friday 13th July. This update is to inform our owners and supporters and hopefully explain some of the complexities that face the club when carefully and objectively considering how we might vote. We hope that by being as clear as possible about the difficulties surrounding this situation that the people able to support the process act swiftly to do so.
The overwhelming reality is that we are being asked to make one of the most important decisions for Scottish Football in a vacuum devoid of factual information, that vacuum having been filled with unhelpful rhetoric and scaremongering by the chief executives of the SFA and SPL.
We therefore looked at what we were being asked to vote on, how it fitted with the principles of the sport, and what information we might need to inform a logical decision in context of the current reality.
It was clear that the resolutions marked a clear departure from all previous process and custom and practice when considering admitting a team to the SFL, albeit operating within the rules of the SFL. It was in that context which we considered the resolutions. In reality, the customary principles of sport were not at the forefront of the resolutions.
We first concluded that there was limited risk to the SFL from the 'Armageddon' theory, as depicted in the detailed presentation by Neil Doncaster and supported by Stewart Regan, which had prompted fears of cash flow loss to the SFL next season. We have obtained a copy of the Settlement Agreement signed up to by the SPL and the SFL in April 1998 - it is clear that the agreement is not ambiguous in this regard and there is no scope for the SPL to fail to meet the obligations to the SFL except by deliberately breaching the agreement. Neil Doncaster was unequivocal when he said that there would be no payment under the agreement and stressed that it was not the board of the SPL that made big decisions, it was the clubs themselves. We have concluded that it defies credibility that the SPL clubs would instruct the SPL to deliberately breach a legal agreement. To assist the SFL clubs to take decisions in the right manner then the external threat should be removed by the SPL clubs, confirming to the SFL that they have not and will not instruct the SPL to breach the Settlement Agreement.
Consideration was then given to Resolution 1 which we concluded required to be reworded to be explicit that entry was to SFL3. The reason for this is that once entered to the SFL in the manner proposed under Resolution 1, we understand that it is within the power of the Board of the SFL to place a club into any league of their choosing. We believe that, due to the intolerable pressure placed on the SFL board to date by external parties, this resolution should be explicit to avoid the Board coming under pressure from either the SFA or SPL in the event that Resolution 2 is rejected. It is also our opinion that Resolution 1 being explicit sits more appropriately with Resolution 2 which in itself is explicit about where any club might play.
In terms of Resolution 1, whether reworded or not, it seemed inconceivable to the Board of Clyde that absolutely no information whatsoever has been provided to support the resolution. This is clearly a matter of haste and again driven by an external agenda, perhaps because Sevco have not lodged an application to join the SFL then they have not submitted any information. Whilst we have accepted that this is being treated as a special case and we are willing to run with this, it simply was not possible to conclude that we could make any decision at this time. The matter is made worse because of the extent of uncertainty which hangs over Sevco. There is no need to prepare an exhaustive list of the issues as they are well publicised, however the extent of outstanding sanctions that may or may not be levied against a club which has yet to obtain SFA membership, together with the increasing number of possible commercial and legal challenges to the transactions to date simply presents a significant risk to the ability of the club to fulfil its fixtures in any league. Given that some of these matters are in the hands of the governing bodies it seems inexplicable that they are left hanging. We are clear that for the good of the game that we would want a swift and positive conclusion that would see Rangers Football Club taking part in the game again and we would wish to be able to support a Resolution that saw them entered to SFL3. However, until we receive enough information to inform such a decision then we are being pushed into a corner which would actually leave any club making a logical decision arrive at the conclusion that Resolution 1 should not be supported. The SFA could assist the process by transferring the SFA membership to Sevco prior to the Friday meeting if they have satisfied themselves of fit and proper tests and have carried out their own diligence on the viability of the club and the various legal challenges.
Resolution 2 suffers from the same issues as Resolution 1, in that no information of any sort about Sevco, not even whether it will obtain SFA membership, leaves no possibility of making a decision about entry to the SFL based on facts or logic. Clearly it is incumbent on all the governing bodies to make available all factual information they have available if they truly want this process to have any chance of being recovered from the current chaos. At the very least the business plan for Sevco and any other information that led the SPL clubs to arrive at a decision should be made available to the SFL clubs, and not with inappropriately short notice, although that point has as good as passed. Resolution 2 was where the challenge to sporting integrity arose. It was impossible to engage with this concept without continually bearing in mind that the SFA had already undermined the prospects for any integrity to be maintained by making it clear that failure to deal with the admission of a newco to SFL3 would be a dereliction of duty. In effect posting notice that no matter what decision is taken by the SFL clubs to administer their league, the SFA would not tolerate anything other than SFL 1, an equivalent point having been made by Neil Doncaster on behalf of the SPL clubs. The stated position of the SFA and SPL chief executives means that, whilst this club can have faith in David Longmuir to do all in his power to deliver a new combined structure that meets the objectives of Resolution 2, we have no faith in the parties that the new arrangements would be negotiated with. Their behaviour to date is evidence enough for us. We should not be disingenuous on our own position in terms of the question of trading sporting integrity for transformational change to the way the game is governed that is posed by Resolution 2. We have said previously that there would be no winners and that compromise would be required at some point. With this in mind, had we worked through this process and seen positive collaborative behaviour from the leaders of the SFA and SPL and we were challenged with backing Resolution 2 in exchange for revolutionary change that would truly benefit the game as a whole, then we would have engaged with that. As it stands, we have no information on the proposals other than that distributed in advance of the meeting last week and no confidence in the parties that will control the process outside of the SFL. As such we would vote no to Resolution 2.
Resolution 3, as many have pointed out this resolution seems presumptuous as no invitation has been issued from the SPL to either club. Again, this arises because of the external pressures, the haste and the failure of other bodies to complete their own processes. As things stand, whilst Sevco/Newco was not voted into the SPL, it seems that the SPL still has 12 members based on the reported voting at the SPL meeting last week, albeit one of whom is in liquidation. It seems to make more sense that the SPL complete their processes and make the appropriate invitation for a club to join the SPL. We would seek to support whichever of our member clubs are invited to join the SPL to make that move, however, at the moment there is no certainty that Sevco will be entered into the SFL and the SFL should not risk leaving itself short of a team.
In summary, the complete absence of information on Sevco Scotland Ltd renders it impossible to vote with any logic in favour of any of the Resolutions. The default in these circumstances would unfortunately be to vote against. We hope and trust that this unacceptable situation will be resolved swiftly and will allow Clyde Football Club to support Resolution 1 from an informed position and will see Rangers Football Club playing in SFL3. We see Resolution 2 as a matter of trust and it would take a change of personnel and attitude for us to be confident that David Longmuir would be entering discussions with a group of people committed to a collaborative process in a spirit of genuine partnership. In the current circumstances our only decision could be to vote against Resolution 2. Subject to a satisfactory outcome on Resolution 1 we would support Resolution 3.
The three resolutions presented to the club are as follows:-
(i) That the Scottish Football League Members agree to admit Sevco Scotland Limited as an Associate Member and agrees to permit Rangers F.C. to play in the League during Season 2012/13.
(ii) That the Scottish Football League Members direct the Board of Management of The Scottish Football League (the “Board”) to provide that Rangers F.C. shall play in the Third Division of the Scottish Football League during Season 2012/13 unless the Board shall have to its satisfaction negotiated and reached agreement with The Scottish Premier League and The Scottish Football Association on a series of measures which the Board shall consider to be in the best interests of the game, how it is structured, how it is governed and how it is financed, whereupon the Board shall be authorised to provide that Rangers F.C. shall play in the First Division of the Scottish Football League during Season 2012/13.
(iii) That the Scottish Football League Members in terms of Rule 12 approve the resignation of either Dundee F.C. or Dunfermline Athletic F.C., whichever shall be admitted to join the Scottish Premier League for Season 2012/13, such resignation to take effect as at the date of admission of such club to the Scottish Premier League, notwithstanding that the requisite notice under Rule 12 shall not have been given.Details of the series of measures referred to at (ii) above shall be made available to the Members in advance of the meeting and an opportunity for full discussion of those measures will be given prior to the proposals being put to the meeting.
From www.clydefc.co.uk
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Saturday, July 07, 2012
Rangers newco: Hamilton hit back
Another day, another statement.
Hamilton this time, again capturing the anger that SFL feel about the position they've been put in. And still no response from the SPL "no to newco" majority that could help allay these fears.
Coupled with the earlier statement from Raith might we be moving to a position where the SFL clubs refuse to take any vote on admitting the Rangers newco? That would certainly heap the pressure back on the SPL and SFA.
The full statement:
As you all know I attended the SFL meeting earlier this week to discuss the various proposals put to us by the SFA/SFL/SPL. We have subsequently had a board meeting to discuss the consequences of each of these scenarios. It is also now apparent that Rangers Newco will not play in the SPL next season.
As you are aware the proposal being favoured by the governing bodies is that Rangers Newco are parachuted into the Irn Bru SFL Division 1, contrary to Scottish Football League rules. If our Governing bodies ever get round to tabling any firm proposal to vote on it is unlikely in our opinion that this proposal, in isolation, would be acceptable to the members.
We believe that a complete overhaul of the game is required for the good of Scottish Football. League Reconstruction, play-offs, a fairer financial distribution model and a more effective Corporate Governance are some of the major issues which require to be addressed. The current circumstances we find ourselves in have created an opportunity for these changes to be implemented.
We believe the problems facing the game are not of the SFL’s making and as such would strongly suggest that the SFA, our governing body, take immediate ownership of the current situation in tandem with the two League bodies, and table a set of proposals at next week’s meeting providing a solution for the way forward in the best interests of Scottish Football.
In the meantime the situation changes daily and it is our view that HAFC and the other SFL clubs should not be put in the position to vote on something which may destroy Scottish Football.
Thank you for your support in these most challenging of times.
Les Gray
Chairman HAFC
From www.acciesfc.co.uk
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Hamilton this time, again capturing the anger that SFL feel about the position they've been put in. And still no response from the SPL "no to newco" majority that could help allay these fears.
Coupled with the earlier statement from Raith might we be moving to a position where the SFL clubs refuse to take any vote on admitting the Rangers newco? That would certainly heap the pressure back on the SPL and SFA.
The full statement:
As you all know I attended the SFL meeting earlier this week to discuss the various proposals put to us by the SFA/SFL/SPL. We have subsequently had a board meeting to discuss the consequences of each of these scenarios. It is also now apparent that Rangers Newco will not play in the SPL next season.
As you are aware the proposal being favoured by the governing bodies is that Rangers Newco are parachuted into the Irn Bru SFL Division 1, contrary to Scottish Football League rules. If our Governing bodies ever get round to tabling any firm proposal to vote on it is unlikely in our opinion that this proposal, in isolation, would be acceptable to the members.
We believe that a complete overhaul of the game is required for the good of Scottish Football. League Reconstruction, play-offs, a fairer financial distribution model and a more effective Corporate Governance are some of the major issues which require to be addressed. The current circumstances we find ourselves in have created an opportunity for these changes to be implemented.
We believe the problems facing the game are not of the SFL’s making and as such would strongly suggest that the SFA, our governing body, take immediate ownership of the current situation in tandem with the two League bodies, and table a set of proposals at next week’s meeting providing a solution for the way forward in the best interests of Scottish Football.
In the meantime the situation changes daily and it is our view that HAFC and the other SFL clubs should not be put in the position to vote on something which may destroy Scottish Football.
Thank you for your support in these most challenging of times.
Les Gray
Chairman HAFC
From www.acciesfc.co.uk
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Rangers newco: The wrath of Raith
In a football story jammed with villains, Raith Rovers have offered up one of the few men to be hailed as a heroe.
Director Turnbull Hutton has consistently called out the SFA and the SPL on their bullying and their half truths.
It was Hutton spoke of "corruption" on the steps of Hampden, the parish councillor taking the fight to the doors of Westminster.
On Friday evening Raith released a statement regarding next week's SFL vote.
It should make the SPL and the SFA - and anyone who does actually care about Scottish football - uncomfortable.
Note the focus on the question of Rangers' ownership. As far as I'm aware this is the first time any other club has expressed concern about the medium term viability of the Duff and Phelps/Charles Green carve up of the oldco's assets.
Perhaps nothing more than conjecture. But as I mentioned last week Stewart Regan and Neil Doncaster are taking an even bigger risk in so heavily pushing for the First Division compromise if they are not absolutely certain of the sustainability of the new Rangers ownership.
Attention is also brought - as it should be by each and everyone of us - to the essential cowardice of the SPL voting "no" and then shutting up shop, refusing to disown their own chief executives tactics and offering no support to the SFL clubs.
The Raith statement in full:
The club has this evening received the notice of resolutions to be voted on next Friday and we are told to expect an information pack at some time next week. We hope that this pack will present a more balanced report to SFL member clubs than they have so far received.
At last Tuesday’s meeting, financial information provided by Neil Doncaster showed an unrealistic worst case scenario. It showed the impact of potential total loss of 3 TV contracts, all of which had been inexplicably agreed on the basis that the broadcaster could walk away if either Rangers or Celtic were not in the SPL. His information did not, however, set out the potentially positive impact of negotiating replacement contracts with other broadcasters or alternatively the much mentioned possibility of launching SPL TV (which we understand could have been launched within a matter of months).
Mr Doncaster warned SFL members that if these contracts were indeed lost, this would mean the annual payment to the SFL under the Settlement Agreement would either be greatly reduced or not paid at all. Raith Rovers FC believes this not to be the case, and that the SPL would remain both contractually obliged and able to pay the £1.9m – £2m annual sum, even in that worst case scenario. We call upon the SFL Board to clarify its view on this vital point urgently, before club boards finalise their positions on these important votes.
We are also concerned that there has not as yet been an opportunity for clubs to receive legal advice from the SFL and/or debate the potential consequences on the smooth running of our league in the event that the Courts are asked to annull/strike down any of the corporate transactions that have led to the current position of Sevco Scotland Ltd as owners of certain assets of the Rangers oldco. Indeed, the position as regards the potential sanctions to be applied by the Scottish FA via its Appellate Tribunal has also still to be bottomed out. In summary, we remain concerned that the SPL clubs have overwhelmingly voted to pass on this potential time bomb, which may yet explode once passed to the SFL’s jurisdiction, and we are being asked to accept this new company into membership, worse still in our top division.
Without all of this information, and the opportunity for clubs to further discuss these issues on a fully informed basis amongst themselves before the formal SGM, in a similar format to last Tuesday’s meeting, we are concerned that the fairness and transparency of the process itself is at risk of being compromised.
Raith Rovers FC will consider its stance with regard to attendance at this meeting once we receive the information from the SFL.
From www.raithrovers.net
Director Turnbull Hutton has consistently called out the SFA and the SPL on their bullying and their half truths.
It was Hutton spoke of "corruption" on the steps of Hampden, the parish councillor taking the fight to the doors of Westminster.
On Friday evening Raith released a statement regarding next week's SFL vote.
It should make the SPL and the SFA - and anyone who does actually care about Scottish football - uncomfortable.
Note the focus on the question of Rangers' ownership. As far as I'm aware this is the first time any other club has expressed concern about the medium term viability of the Duff and Phelps/Charles Green carve up of the oldco's assets.
Perhaps nothing more than conjecture. But as I mentioned last week Stewart Regan and Neil Doncaster are taking an even bigger risk in so heavily pushing for the First Division compromise if they are not absolutely certain of the sustainability of the new Rangers ownership.
Attention is also brought - as it should be by each and everyone of us - to the essential cowardice of the SPL voting "no" and then shutting up shop, refusing to disown their own chief executives tactics and offering no support to the SFL clubs.
The Raith statement in full:
The club has this evening received the notice of resolutions to be voted on next Friday and we are told to expect an information pack at some time next week. We hope that this pack will present a more balanced report to SFL member clubs than they have so far received.
At last Tuesday’s meeting, financial information provided by Neil Doncaster showed an unrealistic worst case scenario. It showed the impact of potential total loss of 3 TV contracts, all of which had been inexplicably agreed on the basis that the broadcaster could walk away if either Rangers or Celtic were not in the SPL. His information did not, however, set out the potentially positive impact of negotiating replacement contracts with other broadcasters or alternatively the much mentioned possibility of launching SPL TV (which we understand could have been launched within a matter of months).
Mr Doncaster warned SFL members that if these contracts were indeed lost, this would mean the annual payment to the SFL under the Settlement Agreement would either be greatly reduced or not paid at all. Raith Rovers FC believes this not to be the case, and that the SPL would remain both contractually obliged and able to pay the £1.9m – £2m annual sum, even in that worst case scenario. We call upon the SFL Board to clarify its view on this vital point urgently, before club boards finalise their positions on these important votes.
We are also concerned that there has not as yet been an opportunity for clubs to receive legal advice from the SFL and/or debate the potential consequences on the smooth running of our league in the event that the Courts are asked to annull/strike down any of the corporate transactions that have led to the current position of Sevco Scotland Ltd as owners of certain assets of the Rangers oldco. Indeed, the position as regards the potential sanctions to be applied by the Scottish FA via its Appellate Tribunal has also still to be bottomed out. In summary, we remain concerned that the SPL clubs have overwhelmingly voted to pass on this potential time bomb, which may yet explode once passed to the SFL’s jurisdiction, and we are being asked to accept this new company into membership, worse still in our top division.
Without all of this information, and the opportunity for clubs to further discuss these issues on a fully informed basis amongst themselves before the formal SGM, in a similar format to last Tuesday’s meeting, we are concerned that the fairness and transparency of the process itself is at risk of being compromised.
Raith Rovers FC will consider its stance with regard to attendance at this meeting once we receive the information from the SFL.
From www.raithrovers.net
Friday, July 06, 2012
Rangers newco: Understanding "no"
This post isn't aimed at any one club.
It's not aimed at any one director, chief executive or chairman.
It's written more in bemusement and sadness than in anger.
If there is an overarching theme it won't be a profound one. It will more likely be "what the hell is happening to our game."
Rangers won't get into the SPL.
We know that. We know it emphatically because 10 out of 12 SPL votes made it so.
Kilmarnock, for reasons that their explanation didn't quite explain, abstained.
Charles Green, owner of the new Rangers but dispatched to Hampden as a proxy vote for the old Rangers, voted yes. The Rangers fans might not trust him but at least he voted for the right side.
So I'm confused.
The SPL clubs overwhelmingly thought they could survive without the newco Rangers.
But Neil Doncaster, the SPL's missionary among our footballing natives, and Stewart Regan, chief executive of the neutral Scottish Football Association, are arguing that not just the SPL but Scottish football itself "WILL DIE" unless Rangers get back to the SPL in just one year.
Rangers need to be admitted to the SFL and pushed straight into the First Division.
Anything else would be madness, a living death or a painful suicide.
I'm still confused.
To get Rangers into the First Division the SPL and the SFA - still a neutral governing body until they declare themselves not to be - will try and persuade the clubs that make up the Scottish Football League.
By persuade they mean bully and threat.
And if they blow and they blow and they blow and they still don't blow the SFL house down?
Then they'll build their own house. With a moat. And a drawbridge.
And they'll raise that drawbridge. And they'll never, ever let the peasants in. Even if they're starving to death.
Let them eat cake.
So I'm still confused.
What does "no" mean in Scottish football?
When ten SPL chairmen say "no" to Rangers in the SPL what do they mean?
Do they just mean "no?"
Or do they mean "no, obviously that's no to the top flight but yes, yes, yes to getting them back in to the First Division. Or failing that the newly created SPL2?"
Do they mean "no, 'cause that's the best thing to do for football. As long as we can still whore ourselves to the corporate sponsors who like us to be trapped in a duopoly?"
Do they mean "no, just like our fans wanted to hear, so we can sell season tickets even though we meant yes to the SFL1 and cunningly side stepped that issue with our oh, so clever linguistic mastery?"
It would be nice to know more about "no."
Because right now it looks like people are taking the piss.
Until somebody defines "no" Kilmarnock's vote looks a totem of principle simply because it didn't hide behind a false righteousness.
It makes me doubt everyone.
What does a First Division chairman mean when he says "no?"
Does he mean "no is no but we'll agree to join the SPL2 if the diddy teams vote no as well?"
Confusion extends my befuddlement beyond the complexities of a simple "no."
What is a governing body?
Is the SFA supposed to govern every level of the game in Scotland and build the foundations for our national team to thrive?
Or are they supposed to send their chief executive out into the lower leagues with a suitcase full of used notes in one hand and a gun in the other?
Is that how the SFA dispenses justice "without fear or favour?"
What is a league competition if it can't survive without one of it's participants?
What would happen to competition in next season's First Division if Rangers didn't win it?
Would the SFA step in, without fear or favour, and promote them anyway? For the good of the game?
It's all very confusing.
It doesn't have to be.
The SPL chairmen who said "no" could sack Neil Doncaster today.
They could announce plans for a vote of no confidence in Stewart Regan.
They could disown the tactics of the men who have led us here, who have dragged the game to this stage.
They won't though. And that stinks.
It's wrong when a club says "we're being bullied but we have to say "yes" or we'll go out of business."
It's even worse when so many people hear that cry for help and say "screw you, spineless bastards" instead of condemning the bullies.
A sell out SPL Saturday?
That's a sell out.
Don't let them get away with it.
Shout and scream at your club. Write, email, phone and petition the SFA.
Don't give up until they stop this madness and apologise for the bullying, for the threats, for sheltering under the myth that they're doing what the fans want.
Demand they apologise to each and everyone of us for their complete lack of imagination when it comes to rebuilding this exasperating game of ours.
Until they do, there's only really one option:
Just say "no."
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It's not aimed at any one director, chief executive or chairman.
It's written more in bemusement and sadness than in anger.
If there is an overarching theme it won't be a profound one. It will more likely be "what the hell is happening to our game."
Rangers won't get into the SPL.
We know that. We know it emphatically because 10 out of 12 SPL votes made it so.
Kilmarnock, for reasons that their explanation didn't quite explain, abstained.
Charles Green, owner of the new Rangers but dispatched to Hampden as a proxy vote for the old Rangers, voted yes. The Rangers fans might not trust him but at least he voted for the right side.
So I'm confused.
The SPL clubs overwhelmingly thought they could survive without the newco Rangers.
But Neil Doncaster, the SPL's missionary among our footballing natives, and Stewart Regan, chief executive of the neutral Scottish Football Association, are arguing that not just the SPL but Scottish football itself "WILL DIE" unless Rangers get back to the SPL in just one year.
Rangers need to be admitted to the SFL and pushed straight into the First Division.
Anything else would be madness, a living death or a painful suicide.
I'm still confused.
To get Rangers into the First Division the SPL and the SFA - still a neutral governing body until they declare themselves not to be - will try and persuade the clubs that make up the Scottish Football League.
By persuade they mean bully and threat.
And if they blow and they blow and they blow and they still don't blow the SFL house down?
Then they'll build their own house. With a moat. And a drawbridge.
And they'll raise that drawbridge. And they'll never, ever let the peasants in. Even if they're starving to death.
Let them eat cake.
So I'm still confused.
What does "no" mean in Scottish football?
When ten SPL chairmen say "no" to Rangers in the SPL what do they mean?
Do they just mean "no?"
Or do they mean "no, obviously that's no to the top flight but yes, yes, yes to getting them back in to the First Division. Or failing that the newly created SPL2?"
Do they mean "no, 'cause that's the best thing to do for football. As long as we can still whore ourselves to the corporate sponsors who like us to be trapped in a duopoly?"
Do they mean "no, just like our fans wanted to hear, so we can sell season tickets even though we meant yes to the SFL1 and cunningly side stepped that issue with our oh, so clever linguistic mastery?"
It would be nice to know more about "no."
Because right now it looks like people are taking the piss.
Until somebody defines "no" Kilmarnock's vote looks a totem of principle simply because it didn't hide behind a false righteousness.
It makes me doubt everyone.
What does a First Division chairman mean when he says "no?"
Does he mean "no is no but we'll agree to join the SPL2 if the diddy teams vote no as well?"
Confusion extends my befuddlement beyond the complexities of a simple "no."
What is a governing body?
Is the SFA supposed to govern every level of the game in Scotland and build the foundations for our national team to thrive?
Or are they supposed to send their chief executive out into the lower leagues with a suitcase full of used notes in one hand and a gun in the other?
Is that how the SFA dispenses justice "without fear or favour?"
What is a league competition if it can't survive without one of it's participants?
What would happen to competition in next season's First Division if Rangers didn't win it?
Would the SFA step in, without fear or favour, and promote them anyway? For the good of the game?
It's all very confusing.
It doesn't have to be.
The SPL chairmen who said "no" could sack Neil Doncaster today.
They could announce plans for a vote of no confidence in Stewart Regan.
They could disown the tactics of the men who have led us here, who have dragged the game to this stage.
They won't though. And that stinks.
It's wrong when a club says "we're being bullied but we have to say "yes" or we'll go out of business."
It's even worse when so many people hear that cry for help and say "screw you, spineless bastards" instead of condemning the bullies.
A sell out SPL Saturday?
That's a sell out.
Don't let them get away with it.
Shout and scream at your club. Write, email, phone and petition the SFA.
Don't give up until they stop this madness and apologise for the bullying, for the threats, for sheltering under the myth that they're doing what the fans want.
Demand they apologise to each and everyone of us for their complete lack of imagination when it comes to rebuilding this exasperating game of ours.
Until they do, there's only really one option:
Just say "no."
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Thursday, July 05, 2012
Rangers newco: Looking for a revolution
A drookit summer has seen Scottish football drowning in uncertainty and indecision.
We finally got a decision yesterday. The SPL chairmen voted against letting the Rangers newco into the top flight.
That was hardly surprising. Some of the chairmen - 10 said "no" - might have voted with a heavy heart and some might very well be daft.
But not daft enough to risk losing the core of their own support.
A predictable decision and not one that removed much uncertainty.
Too many clubs - the Rangers newco among them - don't yet know what league they will be playing in when the season kicks off in just a few weeks.
That the SPL saying "no" would force Rangers into the Third Division seemed the most plausible outcome until a few days ago.
Then the argument that the only way for Scottish football to survive was to parachute Rangers into the First Division was unleashed.
If the SFL clubs didn't agree then the SPL - whose role in all this should have ended yesterday when they said an emphatic "no" - would engineer a breakaway SPL2 to accommodate the newco.
Last night that theme was picked up by the SFA's Stewart Regan in a series of quotes that should - in a game governed by any sanity - disqualify him from holding office.
He has certainly destroyed any lingering hope that the SFA will adopt a neutral stance in any of this.
I don't really care that Regan diminishes himself with every utterance. I do care that he diminishes our game when he's doing it.
When a director of a First Division club stands on the steps of Hampden and denounces our game as "corrupt" then something is rotten to the core.
And for what?
Regan is giving up. Aided and abetted by the SPL's Neil Doncaster - who should really be run out of Hampden forthwith - he's surrendering.
He's seeking comfort in a broken business model. His vision of Scottish football is one where any real change is possible only if it suits the needs of television companies whose commitment to Scotland is half hearted at best.
He's saying that we can only thrive if we fix the game to allow a quick route back to the top flight for a club that has seen the most gargantuan mismanagement in Scottish football history.
A quick fix that most fans of that club seem to reject themselves.
He's saying that it's OK to bully lower league clubs if it provides solace for all the SPL clubs who have mismanaged their own finances.
And he's turning this cowardice on it's head and painting himself as some sort of hero.
He sees something heroic in saying that he's worked out a way to return as quickly as possible to a flawed status quo.
We deserve more. More than Regan and Doncaster, a couple of middle ranking marketing men who have fallen into the trap of believing their own lies.
More than footballing authorities who care not a jot for moving the game forward.
What could we learn from this long, bleak summer?
We know that fans care about the future, that they're prepared to speak up and show their passion.
Would the future of the Scottish game be better served by harnessing that passion or by allowing Regan to disenfranchise more and more supporters?
We've seen that the SPL experiment has failed. It's failed to create a sustainable model for its clubs, failed to create an environment that could predict or halt a huge corporate collapse in its midst.
The SPL was the game's attempt to hitch a lift to a promised land, to the riches of unfettered sporting capitalism. Scottish football didn't get there. It got run over and left behind.
Greed, chasing the quick buck, canoodling with corporate sponsors and ignoring the fans hasn't worked.
But the fans are still there. They still care.
Could we not take the positives from that and create a more sustainable game, a more sensible game?
A new football model for Scotland that has fans and communities at its heart? A game that we could again be proud of?
It won't be easy. Of course it won't.
But if Dundee United or Hibs, Hearts or Aberdeen, Kilmarnock or Elgin, Cowdenbeath or Stranraer are surviving only on the back of four Old Firm games a season and 30 pieces of Sky's silver then we need to make hard decisions.
We need to reinvent. We need to involve the fans in that reinvention.
And we need to do it quickly.
It will take vision though. It will take inspiration.
When we look for vision or inspiration at Hampden what do we find?
Stewart Regan and Neil Doncaster.
Their vision condemns us to relive the mistakes of the past. Their vision won't halt the "slow, lingering death" of Scottish football it will only perpetuate it.
Don't believe them, stand up to them. Tell your club how you feel, shout it from the rooftops.
Every fan of every club should have had enough of being let down by non entities like this.
It's our game and they are our clubs.
Now is the time to prove it.
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Friday, June 29, 2012
Rangers newco: A cowardly compromise
Scottish football has had a sickly pallor for some time. An anaemic game, given to petty squabbles and entrenched self preservation.
A game that at times looked determined to throttle itself to a slow, painful death.
A game with only one real talent: an unerring ability to make a bad situation worse.
This propensity for own goals, for punching itself repeatedly in the face, for encouraging ridicule surfaced again yesterday.
The Rangers saga had appeared to be drawing to something of a conclusion.
A conclusion that was never going to satisfy everyone but a conclusion nonetheless.
Against what might have been their better financial judgement the SPL clubs were gradually declaring their voting intentions.
If sporting integrity was becoming an increasingly weary phrase, the intent was at least clear: Rangers had erred on a grand scale, the Rangers newco could not be readmitted to the SPL and other clubs appreciated that they had to vote not for TV contracts or sponsors but for their own fans.
With the SPL route cut off Rangers would have to apply to join the SFL.
Most of us expected that application to be accepted. Rangers would join the third tier and work their way up. Much like we'd expect any club to do if they'd been so warped by greed, hubris and misguided ambition that they'd spent themselves into oblivion.
And then something changed.
Suddenly the SFL clubs wouldn't be asked to vote on the new Rangers entering the bottom division.
Now they'd be asked to OK Rangers entering the First Division. The SPL would give the SFL a million quid for TV rights, bring in play-offs after next season and the two organisations would be merged.
If the SFL clubs refused to agree to this fait accompli then there were dark hints of a breakaway SPL2 lifting the drawbridge on promotion and relegation.
Comply or die.
Let us cling to the positives if we can.
Are there any? Perhaps. Many of us have long agitated for some kind of league reconstruction, we've argued for a merger of the failed SPL and the SFL.
But we wanted these things to help shape the long term future of the game.
We didn't want them because Rangers had died. We didn't want them rushed in just four weeks before the league gets underway. We didn't want them to shaft every club in the Second Division and every club in the Third Division.
Who's behind all this?
The SFA's Stewart Regan and the SPL's Neil Doncaster?
Some SPL clubs are already trying to distance themselves. If it is indeed the case that Doncaster has gone off message, waging a guerilla war then there is a simple solution: when the newco vote is taken next week the meeting can end with a request for his resignation and with an apology issued to the SFL clubs.
Don't hold your breath.
The tragedy - one of the tragedies, this whole affair is now an avalanche of tragedy - is that nobody has stopped to ask what they're trying to preserve.
They want to keep Rangers because that will sustain and protect the current SPL business model.
But that they're going to such lengths is because Rangers failed - a failure that surely condemns that business model to history.
We need to reinvent the wheel. Instead Doncaster, Regan and whoever else - and there are undoubtedly SPL clubs up to their necks in this ridiculous salvage operation - are rummaging in their sheds to find bits of string to tie it back together again.
They're also putting a hell of a lot of faith in Charles Green, current owner of the newco Rangers. More faith than a - belatedly - suspicious Rangers support seem keen to invest.
They're going to be in trouble if it turns out they've prostituted themselves and gerrymandered the Scottish game for another purveyor of bullshit.
And the sheer cack handedeness of it. The document circulated to the SFL clubs is flimsy on detail, big on unsubstantiated claims and quite stunning in its naivety.
It's most telling line might just be this perceived benefit of the plan, an opportunity, say the authors, to:
The author of that line doesn't just fail to understand Scottish football, they're a very real danger to Scottish football.
Where does this end up?
With Rangers in the First Division I suspect. Or an SPL2 - a concept that was basically rubbish when Rangers weren't liquidated and remains rubbish today.
A miserable compromise that seems to please almost nobody aside from a few men in power. A bullying fiddle dreamt up by cowards and charlatans.
When did we get to this stage?
When did we wake up one day and realise that the idiots we despised at school were somehow running the game we love?
How have we let that happen?
Is it our fault for not doing enough to hound these folk, not doing enough to get the game we wanted rather than the game that some marketing confidence trickster who was crap at Norwich and has been even crapper up here wanted?
Maybe it is.
So why not just get on with it Neil? Take it away Stewart.
Get Rangers into the First Division. Enjoy the benefits of your preserved TV deal and accept the congratulations of your sponsors the next time you meet them at a hospitality lunch.
When Rangers get promoted back to the SPL next season allow yourself some satisfaction and think: "I did that."
But when our stadiums empty, when clubs that have acquiesced in a culture that defines them as bottom feeders lose sponsors, when players refuse to sign for teams that not only didn't object to a duopoly but actually craved that domination, when people laugh at Scottish football, chuckle at this backward game that only felt safe in the embrace of a bankrupt club, when every Scottish child asks for an EPL replica shirt from Santa.
Then you can think: "Yeah, I did that as well."
STV is the place to be for coverage of this unmitigated disaster
Wings over Scotland demolishes the SFL document
A game that at times looked determined to throttle itself to a slow, painful death.
A game with only one real talent: an unerring ability to make a bad situation worse.
This propensity for own goals, for punching itself repeatedly in the face, for encouraging ridicule surfaced again yesterday.
The Rangers saga had appeared to be drawing to something of a conclusion.
A conclusion that was never going to satisfy everyone but a conclusion nonetheless.
Against what might have been their better financial judgement the SPL clubs were gradually declaring their voting intentions.
If sporting integrity was becoming an increasingly weary phrase, the intent was at least clear: Rangers had erred on a grand scale, the Rangers newco could not be readmitted to the SPL and other clubs appreciated that they had to vote not for TV contracts or sponsors but for their own fans.
With the SPL route cut off Rangers would have to apply to join the SFL.
Most of us expected that application to be accepted. Rangers would join the third tier and work their way up. Much like we'd expect any club to do if they'd been so warped by greed, hubris and misguided ambition that they'd spent themselves into oblivion.
And then something changed.
Suddenly the SFL clubs wouldn't be asked to vote on the new Rangers entering the bottom division.
Now they'd be asked to OK Rangers entering the First Division. The SPL would give the SFL a million quid for TV rights, bring in play-offs after next season and the two organisations would be merged.
If the SFL clubs refused to agree to this fait accompli then there were dark hints of a breakaway SPL2 lifting the drawbridge on promotion and relegation.
Comply or die.
Let us cling to the positives if we can.
Are there any? Perhaps. Many of us have long agitated for some kind of league reconstruction, we've argued for a merger of the failed SPL and the SFL.
But we wanted these things to help shape the long term future of the game.
We didn't want them because Rangers had died. We didn't want them rushed in just four weeks before the league gets underway. We didn't want them to shaft every club in the Second Division and every club in the Third Division.
Who's behind all this?
The SFA's Stewart Regan and the SPL's Neil Doncaster?
Some SPL clubs are already trying to distance themselves. If it is indeed the case that Doncaster has gone off message, waging a guerilla war then there is a simple solution: when the newco vote is taken next week the meeting can end with a request for his resignation and with an apology issued to the SFL clubs.
Don't hold your breath.
The tragedy - one of the tragedies, this whole affair is now an avalanche of tragedy - is that nobody has stopped to ask what they're trying to preserve.
They want to keep Rangers because that will sustain and protect the current SPL business model.
But that they're going to such lengths is because Rangers failed - a failure that surely condemns that business model to history.
We need to reinvent the wheel. Instead Doncaster, Regan and whoever else - and there are undoubtedly SPL clubs up to their necks in this ridiculous salvage operation - are rummaging in their sheds to find bits of string to tie it back together again.
They're also putting a hell of a lot of faith in Charles Green, current owner of the newco Rangers. More faith than a - belatedly - suspicious Rangers support seem keen to invest.
They're going to be in trouble if it turns out they've prostituted themselves and gerrymandered the Scottish game for another purveyor of bullshit.
And the sheer cack handedeness of it. The document circulated to the SFL clubs is flimsy on detail, big on unsubstantiated claims and quite stunning in its naivety.
It's most telling line might just be this perceived benefit of the plan, an opportunity, say the authors, to:
Allow fans to engage in the bigger picture
The author of that line doesn't just fail to understand Scottish football, they're a very real danger to Scottish football.
Where does this end up?
With Rangers in the First Division I suspect. Or an SPL2 - a concept that was basically rubbish when Rangers weren't liquidated and remains rubbish today.
A miserable compromise that seems to please almost nobody aside from a few men in power. A bullying fiddle dreamt up by cowards and charlatans.
When did we get to this stage?
When did we wake up one day and realise that the idiots we despised at school were somehow running the game we love?
How have we let that happen?
Is it our fault for not doing enough to hound these folk, not doing enough to get the game we wanted rather than the game that some marketing confidence trickster who was crap at Norwich and has been even crapper up here wanted?
Maybe it is.
So why not just get on with it Neil? Take it away Stewart.
Get Rangers into the First Division. Enjoy the benefits of your preserved TV deal and accept the congratulations of your sponsors the next time you meet them at a hospitality lunch.
When Rangers get promoted back to the SPL next season allow yourself some satisfaction and think: "I did that."
But when our stadiums empty, when clubs that have acquiesced in a culture that defines them as bottom feeders lose sponsors, when players refuse to sign for teams that not only didn't object to a duopoly but actually craved that domination, when people laugh at Scottish football, chuckle at this backward game that only felt safe in the embrace of a bankrupt club, when every Scottish child asks for an EPL replica shirt from Santa.
Then you can think: "Yeah, I did that as well."
STV is the place to be for coverage of this unmitigated disaster
Wings over Scotland demolishes the SFL document
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Rangers: Miller's tale leaves SPL adrift
"It's Miller time."
If I had a pound for every time I've heard that since Tennessean truck tycoon Bill Miller was confirmed as the preferred bidder for Rangers I'd...
Well, I'd have a sizeable amount of money and I wouldn't even consider piling it all into a wager that Rangers will now avoid liquidation.
It turns out that Miller time is no time at all. Just days separated the announcement that his bid had found favour and the announcement that he was, after all, not going to bother.
Reasons? That he cited the treatment he received from Rangers fans might have brought a wry smile to the faces of those who have felt that, in recent weeks, certain supporters have taken an unjustly scatter-gun approach to spreading the blame for this financial farce.
My exposure to the tow truck industry in the United States is limited. I imagine, however, it breeds a deal of earthy characters. The sort of chaps that might not take too kindly to Miller's profits through austerity business model.
I'm unconvinced that even advancing years will have turned him into the shrinking violet that his statement hinted at. In which case one must conclude either a degree of insincerity at play or such a level of abuse from fans that some supporters are themselves are an obstacle to finding a saviour. Prudence should dictate that the more bombastic supporters are now encouraged to shut up.
Perhaps more telling was the suggestion that he'd swallowed the false optimism of administrators Duff & Phelps only to discover that reality was somewhat harsher.
The legacy of years of mismanagement combined with a ban on European participation, as yet unknown domestic sanctions and the possibility that his hybrid newco and liquidation by any other name scheme wouldn't stop the demands from creditors.
It all added up to more than - an admittedly naive - Miller either had or was willing to risk.
So he was gone. Turns out his unconditional bid had a secret condition attached after all: if the mess was bigger than he thought he could bugger off with indecent haste.
And Rangers, it appears, are no closer to a resolution than they were when the administrators were appointed back in February.
Not that Paul Clark and David Whitehouse of Duff & Phelps are likely to admit that.
Like a happily drunken Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee the pair of them have somehow conjured up three new bidders over the bank holiday weekend, a weekend when they were apparently working on Miller's bid.
Who these mysterious people are we don't yet know. It's expected that Paul Murray and Brian Kennedy's Blue Knights will climb once more onto their trusty steeds.
Will they have found the money now that they didn't have last week?
Certainly they don't seem to have the ability to pull off a CVA in the traditional way, a route that the administrators announced as closed last week.
Are we to accept that the three bidders have heard Miller's reasons for turning his back on the deal and not questioned just what it is they will find when they begin their own due diligence?
And what comfort should fans take from the suggestion that one of these bids comes close to matching Miller's bid just hours after Miller has let it be known that his own offer wasn't enough to carry out the necessary salvage work.
Duff & Phelps-land seems like a jolly pleasant place to be but there is an increasing wariness about its apparent disconnect from reality.
There's a risk, given the exposure we've all had to this sorry saga over the past few months, that laymen start pontificating like experts.
I'm a layman. My non-expert opinion is that Rangers are now doomed.
Liquidation seems a racing certainty. The whens, ifs and buts of that will be dictated by the timing of contract deadlines and by how jumpy the creditors are getting at the unerring ability of Duff and Phelps to bring further disharmony where there is already plentiful discord.
There might yet be further grenades ready to explode. The big tax case, the second contract stramash, the next move of Craig Whyte, a police investigation.
I'm not sure how a route to survival can be navigated through that lot. I'm not sure that pleading mitigation because football is a strange industry and Rangers are a special case can really work much longer.
I'm not sure where any good fortune is going to come from.
Certainly the clock seems to be ticking. If Miller's claims of earning limitations and legacy expenses are true then each day makes things worse.
And since Valentine's Day - maybe even over the course of the last decade - nobody has arrived on the scene with clout, the determination or the wit to save the situation.
The window for last gasp heroics is getting ever smaller.
Throughout it all the fans remain helpless, agog like the rest of us as the club awaits its fate.
The other SPL clubs and the SFA are also left to watch from the sidelines.
It seems that representatives of the SPL did get drawn into hypothetical discussions with Bill Miller over the future.
Hypothetical discussions with a hypothetical owner.
That was a misjudgement that shouldn't be repeated with any other potential buyers.
SPL football needs to kick off next season with or without Rangers. Contingency plans for every eventuality need to be put in place.
Neither the administrators nor any future owner are in a position to dictate the terms of those plans, the crisis has now stretched on too long for that, the club is too stricken and too many unanswered questions remain.
Shutting their eyes and hoping it all blows over is no longer an option for the league.
Someone has to take responsibility for planning the future. Rangers will just need to fit into those plans when and if they're ready to do so.
How can the SPL grab the initiative?
Given the cack-handedness of the last few weeks it won't be easy.
Here's an idea though: if we've been taught anything by this imbroglio it is that the SPL experiment has been completely flawed.
It's delivered our clubs not into riches but into a state of beholden servitude, prostrate at the feet of their TV or Glasgow masters.
So kill the league.
Vote it out of existence. Tighten belts, swallow pride and return to the SFL fold.
Give every Scottish senior club a chance to shape the future. And, a convenient benefit this, let every club shoulder the collective responsibility of deciding just what to do with a problem like Rangers.
A single structure would also increase the options for negotiating the entry of what is increasingly looking like a Rangers newco into the league structure.
It would be an odd irony if the SPL's Neil Doncaster was the first redundancy of Rangers' collapse. It might console him that he would likely not be the last.
For an organisation so adept at snatching humiliation from the jaws of defeat this would be a dramatic move but an audacious suicide pact might just allow them to salvage enough respect to give the game some sort of positive future.
It's unlikely to happen.
But five years ago many people would have thought it unlikely that Rangers would today stand on the brink, the possibility of the gates being locked at Ibrox looming ever larger.
Like this? Like the Scottish Football Blog on Facebook.
If I had a pound for every time I've heard that since Tennessean truck tycoon Bill Miller was confirmed as the preferred bidder for Rangers I'd...
Well, I'd have a sizeable amount of money and I wouldn't even consider piling it all into a wager that Rangers will now avoid liquidation.
It turns out that Miller time is no time at all. Just days separated the announcement that his bid had found favour and the announcement that he was, after all, not going to bother.
Reasons? That he cited the treatment he received from Rangers fans might have brought a wry smile to the faces of those who have felt that, in recent weeks, certain supporters have taken an unjustly scatter-gun approach to spreading the blame for this financial farce.
My exposure to the tow truck industry in the United States is limited. I imagine, however, it breeds a deal of earthy characters. The sort of chaps that might not take too kindly to Miller's profits through austerity business model.
I'm unconvinced that even advancing years will have turned him into the shrinking violet that his statement hinted at. In which case one must conclude either a degree of insincerity at play or such a level of abuse from fans that some supporters are themselves are an obstacle to finding a saviour. Prudence should dictate that the more bombastic supporters are now encouraged to shut up.
Perhaps more telling was the suggestion that he'd swallowed the false optimism of administrators Duff & Phelps only to discover that reality was somewhat harsher.
The legacy of years of mismanagement combined with a ban on European participation, as yet unknown domestic sanctions and the possibility that his hybrid newco and liquidation by any other name scheme wouldn't stop the demands from creditors.
It all added up to more than - an admittedly naive - Miller either had or was willing to risk.
So he was gone. Turns out his unconditional bid had a secret condition attached after all: if the mess was bigger than he thought he could bugger off with indecent haste.
And Rangers, it appears, are no closer to a resolution than they were when the administrators were appointed back in February.
Not that Paul Clark and David Whitehouse of Duff & Phelps are likely to admit that.
Like a happily drunken Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee the pair of them have somehow conjured up three new bidders over the bank holiday weekend, a weekend when they were apparently working on Miller's bid.
Who these mysterious people are we don't yet know. It's expected that Paul Murray and Brian Kennedy's Blue Knights will climb once more onto their trusty steeds.
Will they have found the money now that they didn't have last week?
Certainly they don't seem to have the ability to pull off a CVA in the traditional way, a route that the administrators announced as closed last week.
Are we to accept that the three bidders have heard Miller's reasons for turning his back on the deal and not questioned just what it is they will find when they begin their own due diligence?
And what comfort should fans take from the suggestion that one of these bids comes close to matching Miller's bid just hours after Miller has let it be known that his own offer wasn't enough to carry out the necessary salvage work.
Duff & Phelps-land seems like a jolly pleasant place to be but there is an increasing wariness about its apparent disconnect from reality.
There's a risk, given the exposure we've all had to this sorry saga over the past few months, that laymen start pontificating like experts.
I'm a layman. My non-expert opinion is that Rangers are now doomed.
Liquidation seems a racing certainty. The whens, ifs and buts of that will be dictated by the timing of contract deadlines and by how jumpy the creditors are getting at the unerring ability of Duff and Phelps to bring further disharmony where there is already plentiful discord.
There might yet be further grenades ready to explode. The big tax case, the second contract stramash, the next move of Craig Whyte, a police investigation.
I'm not sure how a route to survival can be navigated through that lot. I'm not sure that pleading mitigation because football is a strange industry and Rangers are a special case can really work much longer.
I'm not sure where any good fortune is going to come from.
Certainly the clock seems to be ticking. If Miller's claims of earning limitations and legacy expenses are true then each day makes things worse.
And since Valentine's Day - maybe even over the course of the last decade - nobody has arrived on the scene with clout, the determination or the wit to save the situation.
The window for last gasp heroics is getting ever smaller.
Throughout it all the fans remain helpless, agog like the rest of us as the club awaits its fate.
The other SPL clubs and the SFA are also left to watch from the sidelines.
It seems that representatives of the SPL did get drawn into hypothetical discussions with Bill Miller over the future.
Hypothetical discussions with a hypothetical owner.
That was a misjudgement that shouldn't be repeated with any other potential buyers.
SPL football needs to kick off next season with or without Rangers. Contingency plans for every eventuality need to be put in place.
Neither the administrators nor any future owner are in a position to dictate the terms of those plans, the crisis has now stretched on too long for that, the club is too stricken and too many unanswered questions remain.
Shutting their eyes and hoping it all blows over is no longer an option for the league.
Someone has to take responsibility for planning the future. Rangers will just need to fit into those plans when and if they're ready to do so.
How can the SPL grab the initiative?
Given the cack-handedness of the last few weeks it won't be easy.
Here's an idea though: if we've been taught anything by this imbroglio it is that the SPL experiment has been completely flawed.
It's delivered our clubs not into riches but into a state of beholden servitude, prostrate at the feet of their TV or Glasgow masters.
So kill the league.
Vote it out of existence. Tighten belts, swallow pride and return to the SFL fold.
Give every Scottish senior club a chance to shape the future. And, a convenient benefit this, let every club shoulder the collective responsibility of deciding just what to do with a problem like Rangers.
A single structure would also increase the options for negotiating the entry of what is increasingly looking like a Rangers newco into the league structure.
It would be an odd irony if the SPL's Neil Doncaster was the first redundancy of Rangers' collapse. It might console him that he would likely not be the last.
For an organisation so adept at snatching humiliation from the jaws of defeat this would be a dramatic move but an audacious suicide pact might just allow them to salvage enough respect to give the game some sort of positive future.
It's unlikely to happen.
But five years ago many people would have thought it unlikely that Rangers would today stand on the brink, the possibility of the gates being locked at Ibrox looming ever larger.
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Thursday, March 08, 2012
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.
Sunday, October 02, 2011
Friday night football: Maybe ask the fans
How was the Friday night experiment for you? Partick Thistle fan Tom Hogg has his doubts:
According to the papers, the Scottish Football League will examine the attendance at the Partick Thistle v Greenock Morton match in its trial slot of Friday evening, against last season’s equivalent Saturday fixture as a measure of whether to extend Friday night football to other matches.
The Telegraph claims that David Longmuir, the SFL Chief Executive has expressed the view that “providing more than 2,436 fans turn up at Firhill (the attendance for the corresponding game last season) then other clubs will be given permission to bring fixtures forward. “
This looks to be a shoogly peg on which to base any theory, given that football attendances are all over the place, for all sorts of reasons, many weather related and most based on the amount of cash rattling around in supporters’ pockets.
A higher attendance at this match looks (at the time of writing), to be a bit of a nap bet.
It’s payday, the weather’s great, it’s something new and interesting (until it becomes tedious and mundane), Morton are at the top of the league, Thistle are playing attractive football and so on. So I’d be willing to bet that Mr Longmuir will be in Monday’s papers telling us all about the success of this trial run and rubbing his hands at the prospect of more Friday games between the likes of Hamilton Accies and Livingston, both of whom have expressed interest.
Now I’m no expert, but I reckon that if you used Mr Longmuir’s example of empirical evidence to measure the speed of a neutrino, you’d not exactly be in the running for a Nobel prize in physics. Would it not be more scientific, more fair in fact, to ask the supporters what they think of the idea?
I have to admit a vested interest. As an Edinburgh based Jags fan, this game is a monumental pain, but I will always try my best to follow the team, regardless of where and when they are playing. By going to the game, I’m helping to confirm Mr Longmuir’s view that fans would like this change. Talk about turkeys voting for Christmas?
The subtext is that the SFL are trying manfully to grab more of BBC ALBA’s football budget and like a pushy parent, they are prodding Thistle and Morton towards centre stage as an example of how great a live SFL match could be for ALBA’s flagging figures. It’s all about money of course, and whilst folk like me moan and gnash their teeth, the SFL will have their day, the club boards will get their TV money and another nail will be battered into the coffin of Scottish football.
On the upside, at least I’ll get a decent curry before the game.
According to the papers, the Scottish Football League will examine the attendance at the Partick Thistle v Greenock Morton match in its trial slot of Friday evening, against last season’s equivalent Saturday fixture as a measure of whether to extend Friday night football to other matches.
The Telegraph claims that David Longmuir, the SFL Chief Executive has expressed the view that “providing more than 2,436 fans turn up at Firhill (the attendance for the corresponding game last season) then other clubs will be given permission to bring fixtures forward. “
This looks to be a shoogly peg on which to base any theory, given that football attendances are all over the place, for all sorts of reasons, many weather related and most based on the amount of cash rattling around in supporters’ pockets.
A higher attendance at this match looks (at the time of writing), to be a bit of a nap bet.
It’s payday, the weather’s great, it’s something new and interesting (until it becomes tedious and mundane), Morton are at the top of the league, Thistle are playing attractive football and so on. So I’d be willing to bet that Mr Longmuir will be in Monday’s papers telling us all about the success of this trial run and rubbing his hands at the prospect of more Friday games between the likes of Hamilton Accies and Livingston, both of whom have expressed interest.
Now I’m no expert, but I reckon that if you used Mr Longmuir’s example of empirical evidence to measure the speed of a neutrino, you’d not exactly be in the running for a Nobel prize in physics. Would it not be more scientific, more fair in fact, to ask the supporters what they think of the idea?
I have to admit a vested interest. As an Edinburgh based Jags fan, this game is a monumental pain, but I will always try my best to follow the team, regardless of where and when they are playing. By going to the game, I’m helping to confirm Mr Longmuir’s view that fans would like this change. Talk about turkeys voting for Christmas?
The subtext is that the SFL are trying manfully to grab more of BBC ALBA’s football budget and like a pushy parent, they are prodding Thistle and Morton towards centre stage as an example of how great a live SFL match could be for ALBA’s flagging figures. It’s all about money of course, and whilst folk like me moan and gnash their teeth, the SFL will have their day, the club boards will get their TV money and another nail will be battered into the coffin of Scottish football.
On the upside, at least I’ll get a decent curry before the game.
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
SFA: The Ayes Have It
"There was an overwhelming desire to follow and be led. There was a real desire among the members for someone to take the game by the scruff of the neck and say 'let's change'.
"There was a recognition that we needed to do things differently and there was a real frustration and dissatisfaction with how we were. People hated seeing Scottish football being dragged through the gutter, if you like, for some of the things that were happening. They just wanted a solution, they wanted a way out, they wanted to get to a better place.
"It was a great opportunity for Campbell and I, who spent a lot of time travelling the country to outline the proposals, to hear what these people had to say and give them some confidence that what we were trying to do would hopefully get them some way towards that new, better place.
"Campbell is a very well respected administrator on the international stage as well as domestically and he and I make a great team. He is very personable, amiable and able to consult. He can influence the government and be a great lobbyist. I'm much more practical. I can drive hard and deliver change and deal with difficult situations. I'm not afraid to deal with conflict. I think together we can actually build Scottish football for the future.
"I am just eight months into the job and I think I have an awful lot to offer Scottish football and an awful lot I'd like to achieve in the game. It's a big day for me and a big day for Scottish football." (Scotsman)
A new day, a new dawn.
Stewart Regan, chief executive of the SFA, was positively gleeful as he welcomed the decision of that traditionally change-resistant organisation to embrace his plans for the future.
His reaction, eight months into the job, almost sounded like he was selling himself for the role once again. No coincidence either that he's so keen to build up his relationship with incoming president Campbell Ogilvie.
It's been eight months of misery for Regan. He clearly, rightly, feels that he inherited an organisation that was failing Scottish football. He also paid a fulsome tribute to outgoing president George Peat. It's probably kindest for me to say that a day of change came the day Peat departed. Let's leave it at that.
Now Regan's cleared the ground for real change. The committee structure is gone, the labyrinthine disciplinary procedure has been put out to pasture. He can now, finally, start to do his job properly.
So his joy is understandable. He delivered all this without a dissenting vote, a unanimity that Sepp Blatter probably couldn't buy.
A note of caution is needed. Votes, proposals, new structures, consensus. These are all steps forward. But meaningless if they are poorly executed.
The cathartic value will be lost if yesterday is seen as victory in itself.
And strip away the rancour and controversy of last season and we're still left with problems.
An under performing national team - you probably need to be in your twenties to remember a Tartan Army march on a major finals - is shadowed by an often ineffective and disjointed attitude to youth development.
An arrogant, unlistening and floundering SPL remains a threat to the SFA's ability to dictate change, our national cup competition struggles to attract a sponsor, the state of the SFL would drive a prudent accountant to drink.
The game has been left to rot for too long, let down and betrayed by an SFA that glorified the cult of the bungling amateur, an SFA that belligerently refused to accept change when it was obvious to all that the game was withering.
There's a big mess to be cleared up and some of the progress will be slow, some will remain resistant, agendas and vested interests will need to be either negotiated or stamped out.
Problems not of Stewart Regan's making. But he's now positioned himself as a force for change. He needs to deliver on that.
He has the McLeish Report to help him - one up on Blatter again, our political Henry has already committed to the cause and was never embroiled in the carpet bombing of Cambodia - and a new strategic plan labouring under the bile raising title of Scotland United: A 2020 Vision.
Delivery is everything now. Even slow progress, as long as it is measurable and obvious, will do much more than one meeting to convince football fans that an organisation guilty of the grotesque mismanagement of our game for so long is now the body can provide the impetus for change.
Regan is still a man with a lot on his plate. It augurs well that yesterday he also looked like someone who has rediscovered his appetite.
Good luck to him. The cynic in me suggests he'll need it.
The optimist in us all needs to hope he succeeds.
> Yesterday's changes in full (via STV)
- The Board would be reduced from 11 to 7, incorporating an independent board member and becoming a more strategic, rather than representative, Board. The Board will focus on matters of corporate strategy and top-line decision-making.
- The committee structure will be collapsed - including Disciplinary, General Purposes, Emergency - and an audit committee will be formed to ensure we act in line with best practice from a corporate governance perspective.
- The Disciplinary Procedures will be rewritten and a new Judicial Panel will be convened, led by a new Compliance Officer, to deal expediently with all disciplinary matters across SFA jurisdiction. This will be semi-autonomous from the SFA for purposes of transparency.
- The Articles of Association will be rewritten.
- Two new operational Boards will be created underneath the main Board - the Professional Game Board and Non-Professional Game Board. This will enable greater efficiency of decision and allow those involved in Professional and Non-Professional game to focus solely on matters under their umbrella.
- These changes will form part of a new SFA strategic plan: Scotland United - A 2020 Vision. This will be founded on the following strategic pillars: Performance – with focus on elite talent and coaching development including National Teams qualification for major championships and world class coaching and refereeing, Strong, Quality Growth - broadening the game at grassroots level across the spectrum of football, including referee recruitment, Greater Financial Returns, Trusted and Respected to Lead.
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