Wings Over Scotland

Dear Chairman,

You are, it appears, being placed under almost intolerable pressure to do Scottish football’s dirty work for it. You’ve been handed the responsibility for dealing with a farcical mess of a situation despite having had no part in creating it. You’ve been threatened, cajoled and bullied into doing what the SFA and SPL didn’t have the guts to do for themselves. Over recent days you’ve been fed a great deal of misinformation, scaremongering and outright abuse designed to intimidate you into going along with a course of action that undermines every principle of sporting integrity.

I understand, however, that as chairman your job is to take hard-headed business decisions in your club’s interests, rather than to uphold lofty ideals even where doing so would lead your club into bankruptcy. So I hope you’ll consider the following facts before you decide how to vote at the SFL’s Special General Meeting on July 13.

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It’s becoming impossible to keep track of all the lies, disinformation, smoke and mirrors surrounding the Rangers fiasco at the moment. We’ll try to update this page with at least the more egregious ones as they arise. Let’s get started.

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For any of you sick of football talk (to be honest, that includes us) and questioning this blog’s oft-stated belief that the fate of Rangers FC (IL) and the fate of the independence campaign are intertwined, we attach below the minutes of the Rangers Fans’ Fighting Fund meeting held earlier this week at Ibrox Stadium. As far as we’re able to ascertain they’re genuine, and we thank the alert reader who sent us the link. The entire document is below, but we’ll highlight the relevant passage right here:

“A representative from Denny then informed the panel that he had four reasons why we should go into Division 3. First he believed it would test Charles Green resolve; secondly he believed it would show the benefit of Auchenhowie and allow the management team to gain experience. Third, it would galvanise and unite the Rangers support, and lastly it would allow us to move on and concentrate on defeating the SNP’s fight for independence.”

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Sky TV has somewhere in the region of 1 million subscribers in Scotland, of whom approximately 50% will also be Sky Sports subscribers.

Assuming all subscribers, both Sports and non-Sports, have the most basic package available (£21.50/month without Sports, £42.50/month with), that means Sky’s gross domestic-viewer revenue in Scotland is roughly £32m/month, or £384m/year.

The deal Sky signed with the Scottish Premier League for live broadcast rights over the next five years will see it pay the SPL around £1.3m/month, or £16m/year.

Should Sky pull out of the TV deal entirely in the event of Sevco Rangers FC being placed in SFL3 (or worse), and some subscribers cancel their service – either in anger or simply because it no longer includes Scottish football – the proportion of Scottish customers leaving which would lead to Sky making a net loss is just over 4%.

If we restrict ourselves to Sky Sports subscribers alone, and assume that they only cancel their Sports package (keeping their other channels), the figure is 13%. Or put another way, if Sky completely abandon Scottish football they need to still hang onto almost 90% of their Sports subscribers in Scotland in order not to lose money.

Simplified, obviously. Just thinking out loud.

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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