Why do they want to go to division 3, is it just to spite the SPL clubs through loss of revenue?
I don’t necessarily think so. There’s some perverse self interest in that they don’t want to see their youth players getting hammered in Division One and they can more gradually build up the new club from the lowest level. I’d say a minority acknowledge that a new club should rightfully have to start at the bottom tier too.
Scottish bloke in work was just telling me that FIFA have given Rangers newco an exemption from Goal Line technology as its too hard to implement when your goalposts are two jumpers on a bit of wasteland.
:rolleyes:
I’d prefer small talk to this
This is a very good article on the SFL vote about to take place from rangerstaxcase - interestingly retweeted by a director of Livingston FC who says he can’t disagree with any of it.
The Last Drink In The Last Chance Saloon
It is roughly seventeen months since this project started. Despite all of the revelations from this blog, and from other ‘new media’ outlets, little has changed in the world of Scottish football. This might seem a strange claim given that the largest football club in the country has become insolvent and now sits on corporate death-row awaiting its execution. However, the major institutions that feed on the blood of Scottish football fans: the SFA; the SPL; and the newspapers- appear to have learned little from events in this time.
They still believe that the people who pay their wages are imbeciles. They still dish out fatuous lies and peddle disinformation as if Sir David Murray was still in his heyday. The hysterical exaggerations and tales of impending financial doom should be transparent to the businessmen who fill most of the Chairman roles at Scottish football clubs. Anyone with even a few minutes of business experience will see through the lies of the Scottish football establishment. These scare stories are not the issue. It is the dangling of long requested changes in the structure of the Scottish game that will present clubs from both the Scottish Premier League and the Scottish Football League with a dilemma.
From their public statements, it is clear that the driving forces behind this attempt at league-rigging are SFA Chief Executive Stewart Regan and SPL Chief Executive Neil Doncaster. Despite being paid to promote the Scottish game, they have spent recent weeks trying to convince advertisers and TV companies that their product is worthless without someone representing Rangers’ legacy playing in the SFL1 next season. It is as if Sevco Ltd was a panacea and that this new club will be guaranteed promotion to the SPL within a single season.
Let us be in no doubt. Scottish football faces a period of turmoil and some financial belt-tightening regardless of what happens in any of the upcoming votes. (If Servco Ltd are forced to start in SFL3, the nattering nabobs of the mainstream Scottish sports press will doubtless blame every player transfer and setback on ‘internet bampots’ and shortsighted fans of so-called ‘diddy teams’). The Scottish game became unsustainable and unhealthily unbalanced towards just two clubs. In an era when it is easy to watch the best football from every country all week long, we need to extract the cancers that have been devouring our game for over twenty years rather than battling to preserve them. Among the assorted symptoms of the illness facing our game are:[list]
[]Scottish football has failed to develop a single stand-out talent since the early 1980s
[]Scottish football has been spending more than it takes in for far too long
[*]Scottish football has fallen far behind global standards in the quality of entertainment it offers
[/list]
Scottish football had become dull and uninteresting for all but the fans of the two clubs that could entertain thoughts of ever winning the league.
There is a now a golden opportunity for creative minds to remake the game. Instead, we have intellectual pygmies telling us that everything in Scottish football is fantastic and must be saved at all costs. What is worth saving? Declining attendances? A terrible set of TV contracts that do not realise the full value of the Scottish game? A national team that cannot qualify for any international competitions? We have a game that is viewed with universal contempt for both its lack of technical quality and the lopsidedness of its top division. This is where our game finds itself almost three decades after the “Souness Revolution” started at Rangers. The false economies started by David Holmes, and placed on steroids by David Murray, eventually devastated all around it. Rangers embodied the ideas that financial might made right and reckless spending was the key to success. Their demise should be a cautionary tale to others to get their house in order. Instead, the Scottish football establishment wants to send the signal that if you are going to fail, make sure you do it on a spectacular scale: we will make everyone else carry you if it goes wrong.
Mr. Doncaster trained as a lawyer and has an MBA. If Scottish football was a case study at a business school, anyone submitting a paper that recommended crushing the last remnants of fairness in the game to prop up a failed old-order would not get a passing mark. Doncaster in particular is failing. (Funny that Messers Doncaster & Regan find it so easy to predict the effects of Sevco Ltd playing in SFL3, but could not use these same skills to anticipate Rangers’ implosion. Even when the aforementioned ‘internet bampots’ had warned years earlier of a crisis brewing at Ibrox, the men with the crystal ball today were unable to see something that was so obvious). When the dust settles on this disaster one way or another, one can only hope that Doncaster and Regan have absented themselves. It is clear that they lack the imaginations required to improve our game. Our hopes for restoring the thrill of Scottish football now rests on the men who run the clubs in the SPL and the SFL. We must hope that they have the backbone to stand-up to being bullied and the foresight to realise that all that is being dangled by Regan & Doncaster can be obtained anyway- without sacrificing the game and without the hired hands for whom this all appears to be just a job.
If fairness fails and Sevco Ltd is able to field a team in the SFL1 next season, it is for each fan to make an individual decision on whether it is worth returning to watch a game played with loaded dice. For those who do decide to go back (I am still undecided), something will still be missing in the game. An unfillable void will have opened. The men who will vote on this decision have to realise that they are not just voting on short-term revenues. They are going to irreparably alter the Scottish game whatever happens. Money will ebb and flow in football in proportion to the excitement and quality of the competition. If fans believe that there is no competition because a winner is preordained, money will leave and it will stay gone.
SFL vote is today.
Very good article on the meeting in the Telegraph today which I unfortunately can’t access now so can’t copy and paste. The more “popular” Scottish media still have a lot of catching up to do because they continue to print scare stories and openly campaign for Sevco to be treated favourably.
Alex Thomson has another good blog out too. He has an email from Stewart Regan (SFA Chief Executive) on the 23rd June which sets out a timeline for getting his way with Sevco.
[indent=1]D) DL (David Longmuir SFL boss) to organise SFL Board Meeting w/c 25th June to gain buy-in to the plan…
E) ND (Neil Doncaster) to gain support from SPL Clubs 28th June
F) SFL Clubs Meeting to be planned for 3rd July
G) SPL Club Meeting to be planned for 4th July
H) Scottish FA Board to sign off on the final plan post July 4th[/indent][indent=1]
The email goes on to say that Charles Green should be briefed “confidentially by Rod Petrie [Hibs chairman] so that there are no surprises and a general acceptance of the plan.”
The first part of the plan - getting them into the SPL didn’t work. So they’re trying Plan B. Regan’s position is completely untenable at this point. He’s supposed to be independent and has done everything imaginable to try and bribe, influence and apply pressure to secure the vote he wants.[/indent]
Here’s that Telegraph article actually:
By Ewing Grahame
Ostensibly, they will convene to decide whether to allow Charles Green’s reanimated Rangers to join their organisation in the First Division or, which is looking increasingly likely, the bottom tier. There is much at stake.
At the last count 17 clubs had expressed their intention not to catapult the newco into the First Division.
That is not an outcome favoured by Stewart Regan and Neil Doncaster, the chief executives of the Scottish Football Association and the Scottish Premier League respectively.
For weeks now they have attempted, with threats and bribes, to persuade the lower orders to comply with their opinion. Which is that, according to Regan, Scottish football will die “a slow, lingering death” (presumably opposed to a fast, lingering death) if Green’s Sevco Scotland Ltd is forced to begin life in the Third Division.
One would have expected Regan, as the figurehead of the ultimate governing body, to have remained neutral on this issue.
Instead, following the SPL’s decision to refuse to allow the oldco’s membership share to be transferred to I-Can’t Believe-It’s Not-Rangers, he opined: "In the event there wasn’t a Rangers, that’s got dire consequences for the game and for Scottish society, generally.
“The economic impact and social unrest are all things that could result as an impact of having no Rangers. That matter will be considered next week by the Scottish Football League and, hopefully, there’ll be an outcome whereby Rangers will be accepted into Division One of the SFL; which would allow some financial stability for clubs in the country.”
It could be argued that the possibility of social unrest (a risible claim, at best) should be of little concern to a man who lives in Yorkshire. However, Regan’s statement to the SFL clubs last week, that “we have to put the rule book aside” on the subject of the reborn Rangers was truly breathtaking.
For a man charged with maintaining the probity of the national game to disregard the Scottish League’s constitution with such contempt was quite staggering.
His stance would also appear to remove two of the options remaining for the SFA’s independent Appellate Panel. On May 29, at the Court of Session, Lord Glennie upheld Rangers’ appeal against a 12-month transfer embargo, ruling it to be unlawful and returning the issue to the Tribunal.
Richard Keen, QC, acting for Rangers, argued successfully that the embargo was outwith the powers of the Tribunal, pointing out that a fine, suspension or expulsion from Scottish Football or a ban from entering the Scottish Cup were the sanctions open to them.
With Regan clearly of the belief that the fabric of society would collapse should Green’s newco suffer suspension or expulsion from the game (and a fine having already been imposed), that would leave only a ban from the tournament Rangers have failed to win in each of their last three attempts.
Incidentally, the Judicial Panel handed out its punishment on April 23, the Appellate Tribunal upheld their decision on May 16.
Lord Glennie’s decision came just 36 days after the Judicial Panel delivered their verdict. Since then 45 days have elapsed with no sign of the Appellate Tribunal meeting again.
Then again, it’s now 25 days since Rod McKenzie, of Harper McLeod, the SPL’s lawyers, deduced that there was “a prima facie case to answer” in respect of improper registration of players. That investigation, too, appears to have been kicked into the long grass.
Regan and Doncaster, meanwhile, have cobbled together a set of promises in order to persuade SFL clubs to do their bidding and install the club formerly known as Rangers directly into the First Division.
These incentives include a 16-team top tier with play-offs, a one-off payment of £1 million for First Division broadcasting rights and a merged, restructured body renamed the Scottish Professional Football League.
In a joint statement by the three ruling bodies on Wednesday announcing this brave new world, it was claimed that these discussions have been taking place for over two years.
However, only 12 months ago Doncaster and SFL chief executive David Longmuir were telling a Supporters Direct conference at the national stadium that there was no prospect of a 16-team SPL in the foreseeable future because it would cost the game £20 million.
On Friday, in what is likely to be a long and heated meeting, the choice facing the clubs is effectively between short-term financial pragmatism and that much-maligned concept, sporting integrity.
Sevco is not a football club. It is an off-the-shelf company which has never been a member of any league or association, cannot provide audited accounts or even details of their backers.
There also remains the possibility that Rangers’ liquidators, BDO, may seek to annul the transaction which saw the Green party take control of the Light Blues.
Yet Doncaster, who faces the awkward task of renegotiating the TV deal with Sky after making it clear how woeful the SPL will be without Rangers, is keeping his fingers crossed that greed will prevail.
The SFL clubs must ensure that it does not. Should they admit Sevco into the First Division Scottish football will become a global laughing stock, its credibility extinguished.
Green’s newco could cleanse itself of the sins of the fathers by beginning at the bottom. Rangers’ demise also provides a valuable opportunity to restructure the Scottish game. In the happy event that justice is done on Friday, then Regan and Doncaster should have no part to play in that rebuilding.
That’s a smashing piece by Ewing Grahame.
So reports from BBC that SFL clubs have voted to admit the new company to Division 3. SFA due to make a statement shortly, don’t think they’re happy.
Has the buffet lunch been served yet?
[color="#0084b4"]Frankie Boyle[color="#66b5d2"]@[color="#0084b4"]frankieboyle
Rangers to Division 3. Every other Saturday one if Scotland’s smaller towns will get to learn what life was like in the time of the Vikings.
The SFA / SPL must be seething.
The statement should be good. Fair play to the smaller clubs in not allowing themselves to be bullied into accepting the new huns into Div 1
:lol: :lol: :lol:
It’s a shame this verdict didn’t come on the Glorious Twelfth but at least there’s the compensation of seeing an evil monster slaughtered on Friday the 13th.
Yes. 
:guns: :guns: :guns:
On the back of this I 100% guarantee Rangers will be playing in England next season.
Really?
They expect to stroll through the divisions but they won’t even have the biggest stadium in Division 3 next season.
I’m guessing it’s a Berwick-themed joke.