Wings Over Scotland

It looks as though we spoke far too soon when we suggested late last week that The Rangers Saga was effectively over. It had seemed that, with Charles Green having accepted the imposition of a deferred 12-month transfer embargo as a condition for assuming the old Rangers’ membership of the SFA, there were no remaining obstacles (in the short term, anyway) to his new club taking its place in SFL Division 3.

We know. We’re embarrassed too. What can we have been thinking? Yesterday saw a fresh outbreak of chaos and insanity which could yet derail the entire fiasco and see SFL3 kicking off with just nine teams, as Sevco Scotland manager Ally McCoist decided to act the chimp and launch a hefty pile of shit right at the fan(s).

It has emerged over the last 24 hours that there are still two significant points of dispute to be overcome in the five-way negotiating process that much reach its conclusion before this coming weekend. The SFA, SPL, SFL, oldco Rangers and newco Rangers must all come to an agreement before the transaction transferring the SFA membership can go ahead, and it seems that several of the parties just won’t play nicely with each other.

The SPL is apparently demanding that the SFL sells it the broadcast rights to Sevco Scotland’s matches in Division 3, in order that the SPL will have a more attractive package to offer Sky and ESPN, as it desperately tries to protect its actually-not-that-lucrative TV deal. To add muscle to this demand, once again the big-boys’ league is waving the empty threat of refusing to pay the SFL the “settlement agreement” fee of roughly £2m a year that it is contractually obliged to hand over.

We can see no earthly reason why the SFL would roll over and meekly give up such rights, with TV companies already showing a keen interest in following The Great New Rangers’ Diddy-League Odyssey. The SPL offered a derisory £1m bribe for the rights as part of its craven attempt to get Sevco FC parachuted into SFL 1 and got told where to shove it, and we can’t think of anything that’s happened to make the lower leagues change their mind unless a lot more money suddenly appears on the table.

But the far more interesting new quirk in the story is McCoist’s rush-of-blood-to-the-head proclamation that there is simply no question of the Ibrox club accepting the possibility of the SPL stripping any of the titles it won during the period in which Rangers FC is alleged to have fielded ineligible players through the use of EBTs and dual contracts, a crime which would normally see the forfeiture of all games in which said players appeared, and therefore also of any trophies won as a result.

McCoist is already facing SFA punishment for a previous ill-judged outburst against the SFA’s judicial panel which originally imposed the transfer embargo, later overturned at the Court of Session. Yet he now appears to be attempting to lay down the law to the SPL and SFA, like an accused murderer warning the judge that he might be prepared to accept a community service order if found guilty, but will refuse to be sent to jail.

At this point, we must confess that we have no idea who Mr McCoist is labouring under the apprehension that he is. If Rangers FC is found guilty of using dual contracts, then there is not the slightest scintilla of grounds for debate that the club was cheating when it won the titles and cups in question. If you have high-quality players on the field who have no right to be there under the rules of the governing body, that’s cheating, and it’s cheating in the most direct and obvious way imaginable.

If Hearts were found to have borrowed Lionel Messi from Barcelona for last season’s Scottish Cup final, sent him out onto the pitch in a fake beard and moustache disguised as Craig Beattie and got caught, there can be no doubt whatsover, under clear SFA precedents, that the Tynecastle club’s 5-1 victory would have been annulled and the Cup given to Hibs. McCoist has offered no justification whatsoever for why Rangers should be retrospectively exempted from the same rules.

The motivation for the SPL demanding the TV rights is entirely understandable, even if it’s without merit. (It’s one thing for the SPL to attempt to buy the rights from the SFL, by making a fair and reasonable bid and inviting the SFL to accept it, quite another to try to extort them by effectively taking an SFL member club hostage.) But this new development is bewildering, because it seems an absurdly trivial thing to be staking the newco’s entire existence as a football club on.

The trophies in question are barely 10% of those won by the old Rangers. If Sevco FC manages to come out of this affair trading as “Rangers”, with the same badge and 90% of the historical honours of the old club, it will have pulled off an escape trick that Houdini would have doffed his hat to, and created an illusion David Blaine or Derren Brown would have been proud of. Putting that at risk on an all-or-nothing ultimatum makes no kind of sense on any level.

So why has McCoist done it? Perhaps he simply can’t bear that the stripping of five titles would reduce Rangers’ total to 49, denying them the five stars they wear on their shirts and seeing them tied with Celtic, with the Parkhead side all but certain to overtake them and reach the magical (legitimate) 50 mark this season. One commenter on Twitter suggested that he’s laying the ground to give himself an excuse to walk out on the thankless task he faces over the next few seasons, while being able to claim that he’s “walking away” to protect Rangers rather than abandoning it.

We have no idea. But in an extraordinarily competitive field, the manager’s comments are probably the most suicidally stupid thing anyone connected with Ibrox has done since the Pyrrhic victory at the Court of Session. We humbly retract our previous statement that “finally we can state with a reasonable degree of certainty that there WILL be a football club, trading under the name ‘Rangers’ and laying claim to that club’s history, playing professional football in Scotland next season”. The ball is instead, once again, up on the slates. Rangers FC’s tea may yet be oot.