Wings Over Scotland

As we predicted a few days ago, Sevco Scotland Limited has accepted the SFA’s condition of a 12-month transfer embargo in return for the company being allowed to take over the Association membership of the old Rangers Football Club PLC. In a novel twist, though, the SFA will not enforce the sanction until AFTER the closure of the summer transfer window on September 1st, allowing the Ibrox club to sign new players for the next six weeks, despite the embargo having been imposed in May.

Despite some of the wilder conspiracy theories circulating on the internet in recent days, the agreement was always going to happen, although we’re a little surprised (only a little, mind) at how blatantly the SFA has gone easy on the club – with over 40 players available to manager Ally McCoist even with the embargo in place, the deferral makes a mockery of the notion of punishment.

(An alert reader points out to us that the club will also be able to sign players, albeit briefly, in next summer’s transfer window, because a quirk of the calendar means it’ll be open for a day after Sevco’s embargo expires. There’s nothing to stop “Rangers” negotiating transfers next summer, then doing all the actual signings on September 2nd, so the punishment only really applies to the January 2013 window. In effect, rather than a 12-month ban it’s actually a four-week one.)

But Charles Green was never going to kick up much of a fuss about the embargo anyway, because it suits him fine. A clause in his sale agreement with Duff & Phelps allowed him to back out of the purchase of the Rangers assets if the club wasn’t playing in the top division of Scottish football, but he showed no interest in activating it even after Sevco FC was sent to SFL Division 3. The embargo does him no harm, because Mr Green doesn’t want to spend a penny more on New Rangers than he has to – he’s looking to sell it for a nice profit at the first available opportunity.

Still, putting off the punishment should enable Green to add a little strength and depth to the playing squad, with a few seasoned old pros good enough to do a turn in SFL3, at pretty minimal expense. He can still plead financial circumstances as an excuse for not making any major signings, and the ruling should minimise the chances of Sevco FC failing to get out of the bottom division at the first time of asking.

That said, we still wouldn’t actually put any money on the newco club completing the season. Our view remains that Green would be perfectly happy to see a second insolvency event and sell up, either to John Brown’s fantasy consortium or to a property developer. (There’s some fascinating new information on the latter here.)

As we’ve said for weeks, he can’t lose either way – if he somehow balances the books and gets the club on a firm financial footing, he can make a fortune selling it as a going concern or by punting shares to investors and fans. If he can’t – and in our view that’s still the more likely outcome – he can make plenty of money in a fire sale, given the ludicrously low price he was allowed to pay for the assets.

Basically, today’s agreement just postpones the ultimate decision day for Sevco Scotland to a few months down the line. There are still EBTs and dual contracts to worry about, and a whole raft of other potential issues. But 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. For how long, and how many people will be watching it, are questions still awaiting answers.

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EDIT 8.02pm: The SFA has contacted us to state that in fact the summer 2013 transfer window WILL close on August 31st, despite that being a Saturday, and that Rangers will NOT be able to sign players on the following Monday.

As you can see, we’ve sought absolute clarification, and await further response.