Wings Over Scotland

We’re sure yesterday was a trying day for SFA chief executive Stewart Regan. Indeed, on the basis of the evidence you’re about to read below, it’s sent him stark raving mad. It’s a story which appeared briefly on the Scotsman website, only to vanish again minutes later. (EDIT: It’s back now, slightly edited where Regan claimed the Scotsman had misrepresented his position – most noticeably in the opening paragraph – and boasting a new and slightly less apocalyptic headline.)

It’s several steps past the sober, measured impartiality that might be reasonably expected of an administrator, some distance beyond outright dereliction of duty, and even wildly-irresponsible lunacy is just a tiny dot receding fast in the rear-view mirror as Regan hurtles off into the distance, towards the edge of a cliff.

Try as we might, we cannot see how he can possibly now remain in his position until the weekend and still have the universe make any sense at all. Judge for yourself.

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The current positions of all 41 professional football clubs in Scotland (plus Queen’s Park FC) on the future status of the club currently registered as Sevco Scotland. Where possible, direct links to the official club website are provided for verification, otherwise the most helpful news report is linked. Updated as the situation develops.

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We don’t like to write articles that are 70% adjectives, so let’s start with a disclaimer: it’s nigh-on impossible to exaggerate the naked, open contempt with which the Scottish football authorities are now treating their paying customers, so let’s just take it as read that any opinions we might offer in the following piece are understatements by a factor of around 1000 and get on with it.

Direct quotes from those who attended today’s meeting of the Scottish Football League are thin on the ground, with the main participants reluctant to be interviewed, so we’re going to have to rely on second-hand accounts from reporters outside Hampden. Seemingly, SFA chief executive Stewart Regan revealed that Charles Green’s new football company Sevco Scotland (which he intends to rename Rangers, but has not yet legally done) will not be admitted to the SPL no matter how the Premier League’s members vote at their own meeting tomorrow.

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We were struck by a thought this morning. Between them, measured by average attendances, Rangers and Celtic between them command more support than the other 40 clubs in senior Scottish football put together. They pull in somewhere over 100,000 paying customers at a time to their home games, (and could probably attract considerably more had they the stadium capacity to accommodate them), while the other 10 SPL clubs struggle to get half that many combined.

It’s a massive dominance, and obviously is particularly the case in Glasgow, where the vast bulk of Scotland’s media is located. So it’s weird that offhand we can’t think of a single print or broadcast journalist anywhere in the entire Scottish media that admits* to supporting either one of them. If every writer in the country who claimed to support Queen Of The South or Albion Rovers actually turned up to either of those sides’ games at once, they’d pack their stadia to the rafters rather than having crowds you can count on fingers and toes.

The question arose in our minds when pondering a couple of pieces in today’s papers.

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Right then. Around 14 hours after we first saw the SFL reconstruction proposals, we’ve just about coaxed our eyebrows back down off the ceiling and cranked our jaw shut again. Without further ado, let’s take a wild and wacky journey, line by line, through the tacky Powerpoint presentation comprising the most…

• stark-raving-bonkers
• howling-at-the-moon
• loopier-than-a-box-of-Fruit-Loops-looping-the-loop-over-the-Leeds-City-Loop-Road
• lights-are-on-but-the-hamster’s-got-the-house-keys
• ten-sandwiches-and-seven-cans-of-lager-short-of-a-picnic
• madder-than-a-suitcase-full-of-weasels-in-a-tumble-drier
• wasn’t-April-Fool’s-Day-three-months-ago?
• oh-my-God-they’re-actually serious

…document ever issued in the entire long and murky history of Scottish football.

We’re going to assume you know the fundamentals already, and will therefore get straight down to the analysis. Buckle up, readers, it’s going to be bumpy.

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The BBC is reporting today that the Scottish football establishment hasn’t yet resigned itself to a reanimated zombie form of Rangers playing in Division 3 of the SFL next season. Despite half-a-dozen SPL clubs having made it clear that they won’t allow Charles Green’s new company directly back into their league, and despite it being the overwhelming wish of almost 100% of the fans of every other team in Scotland – and a large percentage of Rangers fans too, for varying reasons – that any new club start at the bottom, the craven moneymen of the SPL are still trying to find ways to get the Ibrox side back into the top division with the absolute barest minimum of delay.

It’s a mindboggling plan, and one we find it hard to attach much credibility to for a whole raft of reasons. Let’s look at just a few of them.

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Inverness Caley Thistle, Aberdeen and St Johnstone join Hearts, Hibs and Dundee United in announcing their intention to vote “No to newco”. Police launch criminal investigation into Craig Whyte’s purchase of the club. Steven Whittaker and Steven Naismith walk away, following Sone Aluko and Rhys McCabe. Reports from the well-informed Alex Thomson of Channel 4 that Charles Green’s consortium is in financial trouble and looking to sell off Sevco 5088 aka the newco Rangers, amid ongoing doubts and speculation about their banking provisions.

And that’s just in the last 24 hours. What’s coming tomorrow?

The pendulum set to determine the presence or otherwise of Sevco Rangers in next season’s Scottish Premier League, which earlier in the week appeared to be conclusively stuck on the “No” side of the clock, seems to have swung back at least partially in favour of the Ibrox club in the last 48 hours.

First of all Aberdeen chairman Stewart Milne refuted an apparent suggestion that the club were certain to vote No to Charles Green’s application for the old club’s SPL share, and now Motherwell have released a document painting a dire picture of the Fir Park side’s prospects without Rangers in the top division, going so far as to threaten the possibility of insolvency, in advance of the Well Society’s decision about their vote.

The document, compiled by the Motherwell board, does contain some balancing views (noting, for example, the possibility of a boycott by both home and away fans in the event of voting Yes, which would damage revenues in that scenario too), but seems tilted in favour of persuading the Society to accept Sevco Rangers’ application. And that’s odd, because of all the “Other 10” SPL members outside the Old Firm, Motherwell are the ones best placed to gain massively from the absence of Rangers – a fact the document surprisingly fails to explore.

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The current issue of Private Eye (which also features a fascinating full-page piece on Craig Whyte) relates news of another Labour dividend for the people of Glasgow – the decades-long neglect and imminent destruction of a much-loved green space. We’ve attached the story below for your convenience.

On the upside, though, we’re pretty sure we know where another large green space, which already comes with goalposts, is about to become available.

We’re losing track of all the threats and counter-threats about next season’s SPL. Let’s recap on the latest positions as far as we can discern them:

– Rangers fans are going to boycott their own home games as long as Charles Green remains in charge of the club.

– Rangers fans are also going to boycott away games if penalties are imposed on the newco’s admission to the SPL. (Which seems to be an absolute certainty if they’re admitted at all.)

– Celtic fans are going to boycott away games at any club who votes Yes to admitting the newco (which would of necessity mean at least eight of the 12 teams in the league, possibly including Celtic).

– 54% of Celtic fans are going to boycott ALL games if New Rangers are admitted to the SPL. (A further 36% will boycott Rangers games only.)

– 56% of fans of the other 10 SPL teams will also boycott ALL games in those circumstances. (A further 34% will boycott Rangers games only.)

That seems to be pretty much everyone. As far as we can tell, if Rangers are playing in the SPL next season under Charles Green, the average 2012-13 SPL attendance is going to be about 250 people. We’re not sure Sky are going to be very happy.

We don’t even like the Doors, but we’re going to reference them twice in the first 30 words: this really is The End for Rangers FC. We’ve passed the evening absorbing and analysing the most recent developments in the saga, and as far as we can see they’re the last straw – there is now simply no remaining way back for the Ibrox club.

Tens of thousands of words have been written on the subject in newspapers and online this week alone, and tens of thousands more are going to follow, so we’ll make this as concise as humanly possible. These are the obstacles in the way of The (New) Rangers Football Club participating in Scottish football in season 2012-13 and beyond:

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New Rangers chairman (in both senses of that phrase) Malcolm Murray was fighting fire with petrol at the weekend as he embarked on a charmless offensive aimed at bullying other clubs into admitting the sort-of-new Ibrox club directly into the SPL. Murray (no relation, we think) has quickly rubbed everyone else up the wrong way with a series of boneheaded pronouncements portraying Rangers as victims and displaying not a hint of contrition, and it’s a tough call as to which has been the most crass.

We have a particular fondness for “There is no point in killing the patient while he’s trying to recover. Do that and the whole ward dies”, which shows a disturbing lack of knowledge about how hospitals work, on several levels. But it’s the sentence that came after it, in which Murray claimed that the other SPL clubs rejecting New Rangers would be a “suicide pact”, that’s perhaps the most eye-catching.

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