The guessing game
We’re really hoping that there’s going to be some proper Scottish-politics news when we get down to scouring the newspapers today. But in the meantime, just for a quick bit of Monday-morning fun and to offer up an entirely unnecessary hostage to fortune by sticking our heads on the chopping block purely for the thrill of it, we’re going to have a go at predicting the outcome of the imminent negotiations between Sevco Scotland Limited and the Scottish football authorities.
The clock is ticking, so it won’t be long until we find out if we’re right or wrong.
We already know that Sevco has agreed in principle to accepting the deferred transfer embargo and, apparently, the £160,000 fine imposed on the old Rangers by the SFA for bringing the game into disrepute in numerous ways last season. So the two main issues yet to be resolved are those of TV rights and possible future punishments in respect of EBTs/dual contracts, with a wee side order of Ally McCoist. Let’s go.
1. The SFL will NOT grant the SPL media rights to Sevco FC matches.
At least, not automatically. The SPL must know that ultimately it doesn’t have a leg to stand on in demanding these rights – the SFL’s commercial arrangements are its own business, and the SPL simply can’t make any sort of case for effectively holding Charles Green’s club hostage as a bargaining chip. We’re not even sure it wouldn’t be illegal, since the SPL hasn’t offered any actual reasons why it should get to take over the rights, other than that it really really wants to.
Like the threat to withhold payment of the settlement agreement, the suggestion that the SPL might block the transfer of Old Dead Rangers’ SFA membership to Shiny Fresh Rangers on those grounds is ultimately empty posturing. Attempting to do so would bring the hounds of Hell down on the SPL by casting the entirety of Scottish football into the abyss of the law courts, and FIFA would just nuke Scotland from orbit to be on the safe side.
What will happen is that the SPL will be invited to bid for the rights like anyone else, which means one of two things: either (a) they’ll make a sensible and reasonable bid that’s higher than anyone else’s (which surely means a minimum of £2m, and perhaps a maximum of £3m, a year for three years), or (b) Neil Doncaster will defy all known human science by proving himself to be an even more incompetent and witless idiot than we currently think he is.
(And seriously, we really can’t overstate what an achievement that would be.)
The SPL’s current unsigned deal with Sky is worth £16m a year. If “Rangers” games are included, even the hopelessly-inept negotiators of the League will have a strong hand to play and ought to be able to hold onto the vast bulk of that cash, especially as Sky don’t want to pull out unless they absolutely have to. Given that Doncaster has spent the last five months telling us that the SPL’s product is worthless without “Rangers” and that we’d lose every last penny if they were banished from the telly in Division 3, clearly it’s worth giving a £2m or £3m slice to the SFL in order to salvage the rest of the money.
In business terms that’s a no-brainer, and as we really can’t see any possibility of someone else showing up and offering more than £3m a year for SFL rights, it’s in everyone’s best interests. Problem solved.
2. Sevco, not the SPL, will back down over investigating dual contracts.
The SPL simply can’t. It’s absolutely unthinkable that, having decided there was a prima facie case, the League could then crumble. They would be even more of a laughing stock than they are now, FIFA and UEFA would be enraged, and every other team in the league would be given carte blanche to cheat in future.
Sevco, on the other hand, have nothing of any real significance at stake. Their objection was at best a piece of wildly optimistic, “you can’t win the raffle if you don’t buy a ticket” kite-flying, and at worst a cynical sop to the Rangers support to make it look as if they were at least trying to stand up for the club’s honour. (No sniggering at the back, there.)
As we noted at the weekend, if Sevco can come out of this whole affair with a club called “Rangers” with 90% of its trophy history intact, it will have pulled off a miracle. There’s not a chance, in this blog’s opinion, that Charles Green will sacrifice the newco’s ability to play professional football for the sake of something as essentially trivial as having 54 titles officially credited to its name rather than 49 – especially as Rangers fans will refuse to acknowledge the fact anyway and will continue to insist it’s 54 no matter what the record books say.
Green, as we’ve previously pointed out, doesn’t really want to be running a football club in the medium or long term, but killing “Rangers” stone dead at this precise moment in time isn’t in his business plan. He certainly wants it to survive at least long enough to flog off the remaining players who are worth anything, and he also probably doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder in fear. If the newco collapses through lack of funds at some point in mid-season – particularly if it does so because not enough fans turn up – he can say “Hey, I did my best, but YOU made the club fail, not me”.
3. Ally McCoist will remain as manager.
This is the prediction we’re least confident about. McCoist seems to have rather painted himself into a corner with his strident assertion that he’ll never accept the possibility of titles being stripped, and many people have plausibly speculated that the outburst was designed to give himself an escape route. But at the end of the day, we think there’s nothing in the world Ally McCoist wants to be more than the manager of Rangers, even if it’s in SFL3.
The deferral of the transfer embargo ought to mean that New Rangers can cobble together enough journeyman pros to comfortably secure promotion in their first season. (A frankly dubious report in today’s Herald suggests that the newco will still be offering wages 25 to 35 times the SFL3 average, but even if we take that as a wild exaggeration it seems reasonable to assume that they’ll be able to afford 10 times as much even if Ibrox is half- or two-thirds empty.) McCoist is accustomed to winning, and despite what will be a tricky initial period of adjustment, any fan of a relegated club will tell you that at the end of the day winning is winning no matter what league you’re in.
It’ll be an embarrassing climbdown, but a swift adoption of the Dr Jekyll-style loveable-cheeky-chappy Ally persona, and a generous dose of fake humility in front of a sympathetic media, will deal with that easily enough. Even the coldest-hearted of Old Firm haters will be hard-pressed to deny that McCoist’s had a stressful few months, and any sort of remotely convincing “Och, I’m awfy sorry, it was the heat-of-the-moment stuff, said out of love of my club” performance will save enough face to carry on.
So that’s how we see the next couple of days panning out. There are any number of possible ways in which we could be wrong, and the way things have gone until now we’re not absolutely ruling out an invasion of 900-FOOT TITANIUM SPACE DINOSAURS FROM MARS! playing some part in proceedings. But hey, at least we’ve stuck our heads above the parapet and taken a shot.
To comment on a couple of these points:
Should ‘dual contracts’ be proven title stripping is only the start of it. Ben Johnson was stripped of his gong. That was a consequence, the punishment was ban from athletics. ‘Rangers’ in its original guise, if guilty of 11 years of cheating, will be cast from the game. Certainly the SPL. Where does that leave Sevco when they come knocking in 3 years, or whenever? UEFA are likely to stand for nothing less than such a punishment.
Where does it leave the SFA who presided over Rangers competing and winning their FA cup over that period. What about UEFA for CL and UEFA participation? What about FIFA? Did Scotland play players not properly registered with the FA. Did Holland and others for that matter play players whose FA (in Scotland) illegally registered them?! Bloomin’ eck.
Where does it leave the SFL where Rangers competed and won their League Cup over those years? Well actually the SFL may in fact stand up well here. They have granted associate membership as far as I can see, not eligible for full membership for 4 years. Surely this is genuinely a ‘new club’ stance. Will be interesting to know the SFL’s stance on the history of Sevco.
The only way out of this is for the SFA to bend just one rule as opposed to the 3 and a half thousand they are current subverting. Admit Sevco on the same associate basis as the SFL. A brand new start up club. The illegal registration debacle can then play out with no future consequences for new Rangers or Scottish football. Is that so hard? Are we grinding the game into oblivion to save the near-satanic worship of one club’s history? If so let’s start asking questions of the likes of Jonas Thern and Joachim Bjorkland about their pay. I hear the answer will mean ’30-odd’ titles would be the sum total of ‘history’.
Second minor point is on Div 3 Sevco/Rangers. An easy run of victories and the title in the bag will see crowds struggle to 5,000. A cashflow disaster to run such a huge operation as Ibrox and MP. A competitive league with a fair smattering of defeats will be worse!
I see the whole thing changing hands again soon.
I can’t understand why Charles Green isn’t just saying this is a new entity and not responsible for the sins of the old. As you say, Rangers fans will still claim those 54 titles anyway, so why not start again at 0 with zero penalties and let your fans count league wins +54? From a business (Or money making) point of view exposing yourself (steady!) to future risk for the sake of claiming a history that ultimately means nothing is stupid! I could see the point if being able to claim those 54 trophies allowed you into an elite market place like the champions league or something, but it doesn’t. Will it make any difference to the number of fans through the turnstyles? I doubt it. Most of them will ignore what the record books say and turn up anyway.
To be honest, fixing the Global economy and putting more money in your average punters pocket will have a bigger influence on wether or not people go to Ibrox than 54, 49 or 0 will.
“I can’t understand why Charles Green isn’t just saying this is a new entity and not responsible for the sins of the old.”
It seems that that’s chiefly because he couldn’t then use Old Rangers to get around the requirement for three years of audited accounts, and the SFA would have a much harder time making an exception for a completely new club.
I predict Newco will NOT win the league, and Mr Green will bugger off elsewhere.
What really annoys me is the constant whining from Rangers and some of their fans that it is all one big conspiracy.
Perhaps it is time to remind one and all about the amount of tax that was not paid. Money that could have gone to much better use.
“Ben Johnson was stripped of his gong. That was a consequence, the punishment was ban from athletics.”
Indeed, removing these titles is not a punishment, but a case of setting the record straight. It would be like a burglar complaining he had been “punished enough” by having the goods he stole from someone returned to their rightful owner. Many Rangers fans don’t seem to be too good at this concept of what constitutes a punishment and what doesn’t – entering division 3 was no punishment, in fact they’re getting favourable treatment.
Two sides missing from the Communities League Cup draw on the SFL website. the other is East Fife.
http://www.scottishfootballleague.com/football/league-cup/fixtures/
but yet: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/scotland/18938989
Seems the SFL are not yet convinced.
This page:
http://www.scottishfootballleague.com/news/article/sclc-first-round-draw-40/
lists “Rangers vs East Fife”.
Maybe they are waiting for a TV offer before fixing the date, or unsure of the venue if Ibrox has not been seen to be in the control of the new club?
That makes sense then Rev, Thanks.
So if that’s the case, those accounts must show that they still owe Loads of people loads of money. Even in only the last three years they mst owe Hearts and Rapid Vienna off the top of my head and I’m sure there are others. If not Those ccounts aren’t worth the paper they’re written on and therefore shouldn’t be permissable.
So aren’t we just back to Square one? Or even square minus one cause Rangers have lost lots of sellable assets in the plyers that walked for free?
While we’re waiting for ‘Coisty’ to jump ship to present Question of Sport full-time, could we have something on why Tory MPs hate wind farms but have no problem with pylons? You can do it Stu 😉
Cheers
Charlie
You may be correct, Rev. I hope you are
However, I fear the worst and all we get is an unprincipled trade off. ‘Rangers’ will agree to give up their TV rights in return for the dropping of EBT investigations. The SPL could be so short of money that it will be willing to sell out their commitmernt to ‘integrity’. And ‘Rangers’ could be so committed to their previously ‘bought’ titles that they are willing to ‘buy’ them for a second time. The thief (‘Rangers’) will be allowed to keep the cash from the robbery by bribing the police (SPL). Nothing would surprise me but it would be a shameful day for all involved in a shabby deal if it did turn out that way