The Very Sorry Song
The last five months summed up in a single cartoon strip, there.
This could (we hope) be the last blog we ever write about the Rangers Saga. (At least until around November, when Charles Green’s new club almost inevitably goes bust.) Doggedly protecting their hard-won reputation for rank incompetence and cynical contempt for Scottish football fans, the involved parties made the announcement of Sevco Scotland Limited’s conditional acceptance into the SFA last night on the first bell of the Olympic opening ceremony, in a desperate and pointless attempt to minimise the reaction while the world’s eyes were on the east end of London.
It was pointless because it was the outcome most sensible people were expecting anyway. As we predicted days ago, the SFL agreed to sell media rights to the Ibrox club’s games to the SPL, so that they could protect their TV deal with Sky and ESPN, and Charles Green backed down over the SPL’s right to investigate the dual-contracts issue and apply any punishments to his newco, in exchange for them being allowed to take over Old Rangers’ SFA membership in order to play immediately in the SFL, rather than having to wait four years to apply for their own.
Within minutes, the announcement was followed by the public release of a statement from Ally McCoist, in which he raged intemperately at just about everyone involved in the fiasco. Bizarrely, he asserted that “Rangers were badly mismanaged for 10 months”, referring to the reign of Craig Whyte, apparently unaware of the 10 YEARS preceding that period which are in fact the subject of the SPL’s inquiry.
Perhaps the most remarkable section of the statement was this one:
“our right to past titles will be challenged. They want what we and our fans bring, yet seem determined to strip us of every bit of our dignity. It has to stop”
Just so we’re clear: the dual-contracts inquiry seeks to establish whether Rangers FC won somewhere in the region of 20 trophies illegally over the course of a decade by systematic, deliberate cheating designed to let the club field players it couldn’t otherwise afford. Mr McCoist apparently wants this matter swept under the carpet on the grounds that the new club he manages has, for completely unconnected reasons, found itself out of the top division and deposited in SFL Division 3.
Extraordinarily, rather than wishing to discover the truth, publicly disassociate himself from any wrongdoing and attempt to rebuild Rangers’ reputation from a bedrock of honestly-won honours, the popular manager seemingly considers the notion that the team – his team – may have been blatantly cheating for that entire period to in fact be an embodiment of “dignity” which none should have the temerity to even doubt.
We’re still not quite sure what name Charles Green’s new club will play under in the coming season, which starts tomorrow with a Ramsdens Cup tie against Brechin City. With strangely coincidental timing, the BBC and SFL websites were both updated yesterday afternoon with information about the new season, and both of them refer to “The Rangers FC”, listing the club alphabetically after Stirling Albion.
But what we can now seemingly confirm is that the club will be considered a continuation of the old Rangers FC so far as its official record of honours is concerned, and that its fans will therefore and with some justification consider it to be the same club. Legally it isn’t, but when it comes to football the game’s governing authorities can redefine reality and it’s ultimately their word that counts in such matters.
What we DON’T know is how many of those fans will still turn out to watch the team. Green’s ownership remains deeply unpopular, and we’ve previously documented the Ibrox support’s tendency to vanish swiftly when a steady supply of trophies dries up. Some sort of Blitz spirit will likely prop up attendances for a while, as will the slashed season-ticket prices, but we suspect the novelty of a diet of games against Montrose and Elgin City will wear off quite quickly.
It also, as noted above, very much remains to be seen if Green can possibly balance the Edmiston Drive books on an SFL3 income. Neil Alexander’s wages alone are likely to far exceed the entire annual running costs of any other SFL3 club, and the rates and utility bills for Sevco’s two big bricks-and-mortar properties will swallow up the revenue from 10,000 season tickets by themselves, should that many ever be sold. The newco is already in the red to the tune of millions of pounds, having agreed to be bound by Old Rangers’ football debts of over £3m as well as its £160,000 fine for bringing the game into disrepute.
But none of that is of any particular concern to a Scottish political blog. Yesterday we highlighted in a series of tweets why the ultimate fate of Rangers is an extremely significant topic of interest to supporters of Scottish independence, but any subsequent collapse of New Rangers is empty speculation until it happens, so those of you who wince at the very mention of football can relax for a few months at least.
(Of course, with politics still being essentially on holiday, that means you might be looking at a lot of pictures of cats on the blog for the next few weeks.)
It’s abundantly plain that neither Ally McCoist nor the bulk of the Rangers support feels any real humility over the events of the club’s fall from grace, whether over cheating their way to trophies or robbing unfortunate creditors – including every single person reading this article – of tens of millions of pounds that should have been spent on schools and hospitals and fire engines and paying small businesses what they were owed, rather than sending it out of Scotland in the pockets of millionaire footballers.
Instead, they’ve adopted a mentality of grudge, a paranoid persecution complex and a seething, burning desire for vengeance. It may be successful – such a strategy was one of the foundations of Alex Ferguson’s breaking of the Old Firm stranglehold in the 1980s. But we have a feeling there are more major events in this timeline to come long before Autumn 2014. If it happens, and we have to start blogging about Rangers again, be assured in advance: we’re very sorry.
You know something, I would go back to buying a paper if it contained articles written as accurately and sans-spin as the above…
It truly is a shame that all of our newspapers have taken the tack of reprinting press releases, sensationalism and partisan spin rather than true and factual (and maybe even investigative) reporting.
A nice summation above Rev.
No need to apologize for carrying news and providing analyses of the twists and turns of this saga. Truth is that this political blog has provided more useful information and considered insight into this uniquely Scottish passion play than most of the MSM.
The purists who come here for wholly unadulterated political news and opinion need only pass these “unwelcome diversions”, by. Since it has been made clear that the health and safety of no (purely political) article been compromised in the making of these Rangers-related efforts, it is unclear to me what the objectors beef may be.
Great summary, Rev.
‘Rangers’ or The Rangers FC are following one of the golden rules of political lying. “if you are going to lie, make it a big one. And keep on repeating it till everybody believes it”.
By taking the attitude of supposed ‘victims’ and by trying to cling on to honours they cheated to obtain they are devaluing Scotish football. But most of all they are destroying their own reputation. By trying to bully the footballing authorities they expose themselves as without honour. McCoist is exposed for what he is. If they had a shred of honesty they would be ashamed of themselves. As a suporter of football, I am ashamed of them and their club. The prospect of The Rangers FC (forever cheats?) representing Scotland in European competitions sometime in the future is offensive.
Great analysis Stu, McCoist is completely over-reacting to the trophies scandal, what is he thinking? Sorry but going off topic but did you watch the opening ceremony Stu? I’m completely opposed to London Olympics as it is a scandalous waste at Scotland’s expense but watched a large part (couldn’t bring myself to watch the whole thing!) of the opening ceremony anyway to see how it compared to Beijing. Not even close to China’s standards it was absolutely awful crap, honestly I have seen better school plays.
Please, not the cats!
It would be odd, would it not, if popular culture weren’t at least a consideration in the political arena? When I discussed this with friends a few months ago we assumed that newco would be fitted into the SPL, somehow (we are cynics). How wrong we were!
It seems to me that from the point of view of a political blog there is something a bit deeper going on here. I think it is fair to say that the decision of fans of other clubs not to buy season tickets was co-ordinated using new media. The outcome of that is that ‘The Rangers’ were not able to use their influence in smoke filled rooms in quite the way that would have been possible before t’internet age. People power, if you will. Another consequence is that the influence of MSM on what people actually think and do has been substantially diminished. Indeed the reputations of some media commentators have been trashed.
It is that aspect of this whole sorry saga that suggests to me that things have changed and will never be the same again.
Andy Cameron was on ‘Off the Ball’ displaying all the sense of entitlement and belief that the last 10 years were fine and only the Craig Whyte months were dodgy and in any case it was all SOMEONE ELSE’S FAULT!
so, this new media angle….this football stushie is Scotland’s Arab Spring? that’s a sad indictment of our society.
Domhall Dods,
Hardly an Arab spring. It is, however, argueably, an awareness of what individuals can do. Without the constraints of MSM. If you like, a step on a path, no more…..
Excellent piece of writing. That cartoon, is so very apt, that every person involved in the sham hypocrisy of ‘new old new ‘I can’t believe it’s not rangers’, we’ll pay no taxes, but take the trophies, sevco, gie’s a brek, rangers football club’, should receive a copy.
I do hope the taxman is going to make double sure they actually pay their taxes this time.
Where can I buy one of these cats and how much are they roundabouts?
Nice Caturday pic!
Regards
This is completely off topic, so I hope you don’t mind.
If anyone would like to decorate their Firefox web browser with a YesScotland logo and a Saltire which could possibly represent a cross on the ballot paper, you can get one for free at https://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/476989
Just done it. I don’t know if I’ll keep it, because it looks so unfamiliar, but I’ll stick with it for a bit and see how we get on.
Just watched the opening Olympic thingumyjig. I tend to agree with Lallands Peat Worrier:
http://lallandspeatworrier.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/aidan-burley-mps-alternative-olympics.html
It is all enough to make you a card carrying member of the opposition. As Lallands Peat Worrier nearly says. He is besides himself.
Just saying.
The opening ceremony was, in my view, excellent.
It included a parade of over 200 nations a fair chunk of which had achieved independence from colonial or other rule. I can’t remember seeing any of them clamouring to get back under any other nation’s flag.
It gave me hope for Rio 2016 when we might just see another country under ‘S’ in the parade.
I was thinking the same. All these positive and upbeat comments about how many medals these countries had won since independence. I couldn’t imagine a one of them wanting to join with a larger neighbour for a bigger team and more aggregate medals.
I’d seriously like to know how many Scots watching that were swelling with pride in being “British” (mis-spoken as “English” starting about five minutes into the Games) and not caring about a Scottish identity, and how many were wishing Chris Hoy was holding a Saltire and leading a proud and independent Scottish team?
McCoist is an eejit. He doesn’t need to be bumping his gums before he’s had his own hearing. I see green has decided everyone else is a bigot too. Well my healthy respect for a business man who seemed to be calmly striding forward through difficult times to a bright new future started to erode when he refused to acknowledge the rights of employees to NOT be forced into a knew company is now gone. I hope, in a world were daft you lads can go to jail for flippant remarks on Facebook and the government stomps on sectarianism in football with hobnailed boots on, I hope these words are neither unnoticed nor unpunished.