Straightening the record
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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Kilmarnock chairman Michael Johnston abstained from the SPL vote as only 36% of shareholders and season-ticket holders instructed him to vote No.
Mr Johnston’s statement clearly attempts to imply that 64% of shareholders voted Yes. But read carefully:
“The result of the consultation process (36% of all shareholders and all season ticket holders aged 18 or over in favour of “NO” to “Newco”) was far removed from the mood of the supporters’ meeting but of course involved almost 2,500 shareholders and adult season ticket holders, as opposed to the 150 or thereby at the meeting.”
What that tells us is that Kilmarnock sent out 2,500 letters about the consultation, and got 900 replies saying “No”. What it conspicuously doesn’t say is how many replies the club got in total. From the information we’re given, it could have been exactly 900, or perhaps 901 with the last one being from a “Mykael Jonztone” with no postmark and suspiciously familiar handwriting.
Of course, one could argue that if 60%+ didn’t care enough to reply at all, an abstention was a fair reflection of the Killie fans’ position. But this was a consultation undertaken at very short notice, with very little time in which to reply, in summer when a lot of people will be on holiday. Until Mr Johnston specifies how many “Yes” responses he got so that we can compare them to the number of “No” replies, his statement is meaningless.
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If SFL clubs don’t admit Sevco FC directly into Division 1, the SPL will immediately form an SPL2, leaving the SFL2 and SFL 3 clubs isolated.
So many things wrong with this one. Firstly, as we’ve learned over the weeks and months of this entire farce, the SPL couldn’t decide how many sugars it wanted in its tea within two weeks, not even if you dosed it with amphetamines and put a gun to the head of its favourite child. We’re expected to believe, however, that it could set up an entire breakaway new league between July 13 (when the SFL meets to decide on Sevco’s admission) and July 28 (when the Scottish season is due to begin).
The SPL would have more credibility telling us that if we don’t let Sevco FC into SFL1 we’ll all be impaled on the horns of rollerskating unicorns ridden by the bogeyman.
Secondly, it wouldn’t actually even have those two weeks. The SPL has of course just rejected Sevco FC’s application for membership. To allow it to play in SPL Division 2 the club would clearly have to be a member of the SPL, which would need another meeting to be called, at which two thirds of member clubs would have to vote Yes, having voted No just days before on pain of having all their fans walk out on them.
Which brings us to the third problem: who would play in this league (and therefore be the members voting on Sevco FC’s second application for membership)? The SFL’s Constitution is a vague document that doesn’t lay down firm cut-and-dried rules about many things, but one of the few it’s unequivocal on is Rule 12:
“No Member shall resign, retire or otherwise cease to be a member of the League unless it shall have given not less than two full seasons prior written notice so to do, unless with the approval of not less than two-thirds (66%) of the votes cast at a general meeting of the League.”
Any SFL club seeking to leave and join SPL2 could not do so without giving two seasons’ notice. The legal wranglings that would result from any attempt to do so would involve the SFA, UEFA, FIFA and quite possibly the civil courts, and paralyse the entire Scottish game. SPL2 is an empty threat, a complete nonsense. It will not happen – certainly not this year, and any later will be too late for Sevco FC.
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If SFL clubs don’t admit Sevco FC to SFL1, the SPL will refuse to pay the settlement agreement, the sum of £1.8m payable by the top division to the lower leagues every year as a condition of the SPL’s formation.
This has been cited by Stenhousemuir as their main reason to agree to admitting Sevco to Division 1, and strangely hasn’t been challenged anywhere in the media (that we’ve seen). Yet the liquidation of Rangers changes absolutely nothing in the contract between the SPL and the SFL. The SPL still exists, and therefore is still contractually obliged to pay the settlement agreement.
If the SPL’s sponsorship revenues collapse because it was stupid enough to negotiate contracts which were expressly dependent on the presence of Rangers, that’s not the SFL’s problem. Presumably nobody can seriously be putting forward the idea that the SPL couldn’t scrape together £1.8m even with its sponsorship money severely reduced? If that leaves it short, again, it’s not the SFL’s problem.
Any attempt to renege on the settlement agreement would again see the whole of Scottish football tied up in court for months or years. It’s another empty threat.
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If Sevco FC aren’t admitted to Division 1, and by implication promoted to the SPL in their first season, Scottish football will suffer a complete and catastrophic financial meltdown.
If this is true, why would the SFA be taking the massive risk of Sevco FC failing to gain promotion in 2012-13? After all, that can’t possibly be taken for granted, given that the club currently has (by its own reckoning – see image 3) just EIGHT full-time playing staff, three of them youth players, and is subject to a transfer embargo preventing it from signing anyone over 18 for the next year.
Teenage Rangers All-Stars is highly likely to struggle against experienced SFL1 sides – especially with its entire schedule of pre-season friendlies now cancelled, which will see the squad start the campaign lacking match fitness – and winning promotion at the first time of asking seems a doubtful prospect.
So we’re being expected to believe that the SFA is willingly sacrificing all sporting integrity, trampling over its own lower divisions and turning Scottish football into a laughing stock worldwide, all for a long-odds gamble? The notion is absurd. If the presence of “Rangers” in the top division with no more than one season’s gap was so absolutely, non-negotiably critical to the survival of the Scottish game, it would be a massive dereliction of duty for the SFA to leave it to chance. Sevco FC would have had to be admitted directly to the SPL, come what may.
With even the pretence of integrity abandoned anyway by the plan to parachute them into SFL1, there would be nothing to lose by doing so – eg fan boycotts – that won’t happen anyway if the SFL1 proposal is accepted.
(Of course, this does assume that the SFA don’t already have a plan to guarantee “Rangers” in the top flight next season, whether it be expanding the SPL to however many teams is necessary to include them or by instructing referees to make certain that they secure the required number of points. But hey, let’s not be cynical.)
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So there’s a start. More to come as we get to them.
The root of the whole newco saga lays equally at the door of the oldco and the Media and sponsorship deals set up by the SPL. It is these deals that are the root of the newco placement problem. The SPL should have the decency to withdraw all threats and free gift offers, apologise to the SFL for dumping this in their lap, agree to honour their pittance guilt payments to the lower leagues in good faith and admit they took unacceptable risks in the first place. Without the old firm get out clauses Rangers to div3 would go through on the nod. The SPL accepted all the risk in signing these deals and should shoulder all the burden. As for the SFA, their role as guardians of integrity and fair play in our game is utterly ruined. Take your lumps. Rangers to div3.
In regards to who would join the SPL2, it’s far more simple than the legal wranglings such a move would trigger. There simply aren’t enough teams in favour of this to make it a goer.
Presumably the idea is that SPL2 would effectively be the first division plus Sevco 5088. Well, that’s torpedoed by the fact that over half those clubs have already declared themselves to be against the idea of Sevco 5088 entering the first division, and it stands to reason they are also against setting up a new first division including Sevco 5088.
There can be no credibility in a second-tier league that does not feature Dunfermiline/Dundee, Raith Rovers, Morton, Falkirk, Partick and Cowdenbeath. It’s a laughable proposal. This SPL2 would currently consist of Sevco 5088, Stenhousemuir, and Albion Rovers (link to eveningtimes.co.uk). Wow, can’t wait for that one.
It’s interesting to note that the majority of the confirmed “NO” votes are 1st and 3rd division sides – the 1st division sides clearly see no benefit in possibly giving up their single promotion spot for a season, and the 3rd division sides clearly understand that a couple of home games against Sevco 5088 will boost the koffers far more than the settlement they current get from the SPL. That leaves Sevco 5088 looking to the 2nd division for support, yet Airdrie United are having to abstain since the vote affects which league they’ll play in next season and East Fife have already proven themselves to have far more balls than Henhousemanure or Albion Rovers by declaring themselves against Sevco in the 1st division.
It’s simply not going to happen. Out of those still to declare, I simply cannot see Livingston voting to allow Sevco to avoid the fate they suffered when they went bust, and I believe it requires just one other team after them to declare “NO” in order to make it impossible for Sevco to get the number of votes they require. Surely Queen’s Park will be eyeing up the possibility of filling up Hampden for a home game?! If not them, then one of Elgin, Berwick, Montrose or East Stirling will. Even that is assuming we don’t see a clean sweep of “NO” votes from the 1st division teams, and again, I really don’t see what Hamilton or Dumbarton have to gain from allowing Sevco to steal next season’s promotion spot.
“that’s torpedoed by the fact that over half those clubs have already declared themselves to be against the idea of Sevco 5088 entering the first division, and it stands to reason they are also against setting up a new first division including Sevco 5088.”
I’m not entirely sure that does stand to reason. I think the prospect of a juicy share of SPL revenues (protected by the continued presence of Rangers) would tempt at least some of those clubs, if not all, to suddenly reconsider their principles, for the same reasons the eight non-OF clubs submitted to the crooked rules of the SPL in the first place.
I could be doing them a terrible disservice by that suspicion, and I very much hope I’d be wrong, but I fear that’s how it would be. Luckily it’s a moot point, for all the other reasons noted.
“Out of those still to declare, I simply cannot see Livingston voting to allow Sevco to avoid the fate they suffered when they went bust, and I believe it requires just one other team after them to declare “NO” in order to make it impossible for Sevco to get the number of votes they require. Surely Queen’s Park will be eyeing up the possibility of filling up Hampden for a home game?!”
Ooh, that’s an excellent point. Two capacity home crowds would revolutionise QP’s finances, especially as an amateur team with no wages to pay.
Ayr United’s chairman has said in the Record today that Rangers should go to SFL3 – though stopped short of explicitly saying that’s how they’d vote – which would mean that Livi OR Queen’s Park would now be enough to tip the balance.
“I’m not entirely sure that does stand to reason. I think the prospect of a juicy share of SPL revenues (protected by the continued presence of Rangers) would tempt at least some of those clubs, if not all, to suddenly reconsider their principles, for the same reasons the eight non-OF clubs submitted to the crooked rules of the SPL in the first place.
I could be doing them a terrible disservice by that suspicion, and I very much hope I’d be wrong, but I fear that’s how it would be. Luckily it’s a moot point, for all the other reasons noted.”
Yeah, I thought about that, but if clubs have just voted against Sevco being in the 2nd tier for reasons of sporting integrity, only to turn round and agree to join them in a new version of the 2nd tier, they’ll look even more daft than the Killie chairman. And considering some of the comments we’ve seen – particularly from Raith Rovers – I get the feeling these guys really ARE concerned about sporting integrity, whereas most SPL clubs were arguably just worried about losing season ticket money.
Hi
Re counting Albion Rovers as a “YES TO SFL1”. Did Frank Meade actually say that, or is this based on him agreeing when asked if he thought “Lokomotiv Sevco in Div 3 would be a disaster?”
Not technically saying “Yes” by the Rovers
From the Evening Times (which has been running a plethora of ridiculous scare stories, mind…):
“FRANK MEADE, ALBION ROVERS CHAIRMAN
WE have to find a mechanism where an appropriate sanction is applied, but also we have to be very careful that a short-term decision doesn’t destroy the long-term, commercial viability of our game.
There are a number of positives of Rangers in the First Division. Grounds are more capable of accommodating bigger crowds, the television exposure could have an added spin-off to the SFL and the possibility of play-offs being introduced is a big incentive.
If Rangers were in the Third Division, the potential economic benefit is less. It makes sponsorship much more difficult to attract and more difficult for media deals to be retained. I think there is a lot of smoke and mirrors going on.
If Rangers were in the Third Division, there is no reconstruction and the sporting integrity aspect, however that is defined, would be tarnished for the next couple of years.
I think people are being naive if they think that sending Rangers to the Third Division isn’t going to affect every club.”
The ET have him down as a YES, and reading that, I don’t see how what he’s saying can possibly translate into a NO. He would have to end it with “despite all that, it’s a NO from me.”
As Erchie says, that “Yes” is specifically in answer to the question “Will relegating Rangers to the Third Division mean the end for Scottish football as we know it?”
It could conceivably be argued that agreeing with that proposition does not necessarily equate to voting Sevco FC into SFL1.
Doug
It’s the answer Frank Meade gave, but it’s not, I think having spoken to a couple of the active Rovers fans, the actual answer the club will give.
Since that came out Frank Meade has been hearing the disquiet
Well for once in my life, I look forward to being proven wrong!
“With wee Eck’s separatist referendum looming and battle about to commence, the last thing Scotland needs is upwards of 50,000 committed Unionists with nowhere to go, no team to support, looking for a cause.”
Pasted from a now defunct Rangers supporting blog. Scary wee arra peepil or what?
““With wee Eck’s separatist referendum looming and battle about to commence, the last thing Scotland needs is upwards of 50,000 committed Unionists with nowhere to go, no team to support, looking for a cause.”
Pasted from a now defunct Rangers supporting blog.”
Blimey, even their blogs are going bust?
It is odd, is it not, that the replacement team for Sevco FC hasn’t yet been nominated into the SPL? What is going on there?
If the SFL does as your voters would urge, then the SFL will vote against automatic admission of Sevco FC into the lower leagues. Indeed they may be excluded completely. Are the SPL then willing to allow Sevco FC back into the Premier League, for the ‘sake of Scottish Football’? What other reason do they have for not filling the vacancy?
I would have thought that that might be disasterous mistake for Scottish Football, but then again, I am not a highly paid football administrator.
Perhaps getting Turnbull Hutton a knighthood before we blow all that away would be an excellent final riposte to the Union?
It is sad that Rangers got themselves in this mess, but like the banking crisis, nobody seems to have been blamed. surely that aspect needs to be finalised, including the roles of current SFA directors, before a decision is made.
An explanation on EBT’s is needed, and a full FIFA investigation.
Rangers should not play at all this year in my view now, until the above is completed, and if they clean the house out and people are brought to bear for previous actions then a place in SPL or SFL1 may be the right outcome. Minus the trophies of course.
they are tainted and rangers need to finish bottom in each of these years in the record books if proven.
If FIFA rules games 3-0 when unregistered players play, I do feel to knowingly get the club 140 mill in the crap and then hide the books makes trading whilst insolvent a real likelihood.
For SDM to throw Airdrie out for a figure a FIVE HUNDREDTH of what Rangers potentially owe, as a “business” decision, is what really irks.
Does anyone know the exact wording of the resolution they’ll be voting on? Kind of important to understand the question before giving an answer. Or are they still undecided about that as well?
I hope it was an unfortunate, chance meeting
But if you look at Robert Flrence’s twit stream, looks like Ally McCoist was at the Stirling Orange Walk.
That’s not helpful, if true
Alan Mearns @ 11:46am
This has gone up on Alex Thomsons blog. Does it answer your question?
link to blogs.channel4.com