I shall do that presently.
In the meantime, here is the “dossier.”
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_JAFXxXWrNxSKMllzx25T0KuLjUcKnkX/view
So here is my summary of what has happened, apologies for it being extremely boring.
Background
The SPFL put a resolution to its members after the leagues were suspended proposing that the Board would be given the power to end the season of each division, with a delay on the decision for the top flight until after UEFA meetings at the end of April.
The likelihood for this vote would be that teams who would be relegated or would miss out on probable promotion would vote against the resolution and everyone else would vote in favour.
Scotland is much more heavily dependent on gate receipts than other leagues (I think it’s the highest number in Europe by quite a distance) so most clubs would struggle to pay their players to end the season without any revenue to support it.
The resolution needed 75% approval to pass, so it came down to how many clubs in a precarious position for promotion or relegation would reject it. Dundee are one such club who could get promoted to the top division via playoffs but would not gain automatic promotion in this proposal.
Dundee emailed to say they were rejecting the proposal. Instead of indicating their response in the body of the email, they attached a PDF with their vote on it. This was rejected by the firewall at the SPFL.
The SPFL contacted Dundee to say they had not received their vote on the Friday evening. Dundee sent a follow up message to say that the SPFL were to ignore their original “no” vote. The SPFL subsequently found the original email from Dundee later that evening. Apparently this has all been reviewed by Deloitte who confirmed the order of events and nobody disputes that.
Company Law in the UK seems to be quite clear on Board resolutions. If you accept a resolution, your vote is binding. There is no such thing really as a negative vote. You either accept the resolution or you don’t. Therefore silence and a negative vote or the same thing. And silence or a negative vote can be changed into a positive vote but not the other way around.
Dundee reviewed their position, knew they were the casting vote and decided to consider their options further. They got assurances that there would be talks about restructuring the league structure and after some deliberations they decided they would accept the resolution. So now it passed.
Sevco, while only retaining an outside chance of catching Celtic, while also having dug up their pitch even if football was to come back soon, and while not wanting to say the league should be voided (which might undermine their assertions that they could conceivably win it) voted against the resolution.
"The Dossier"
Sevco then alleged serious wrongdoing from the SPFL, said they had evidence of serious misconduct and demanded for the chair and CEO of the SPFL to resign. They declined to say what the evidence was but that they would reveal all at an EGM.
All the other clubs basically told them they needed to release the evidence in advance. That was supposed to be last week, then it was supposed to be on Monday and eventually they released it today.
They have some really boring questions in it around corporate governance:
The Briefing Paper
Why did the briefing paper that was sent to clubs as background info for the resolution not highlight the fact that there was £10m at risk from Sky if the 2019/20 season was not completed?
- [My comment: the bigger risk I think for the SPFL is not starting the 2020/21 season on time because there is more money due from Sky for 2020/21 than for 2019/20. So handing back £10m to get £20m next year seems logical. Anyway it’s hardly a smoking gun worthy of all this attention]
There is a whole series of boring arguments about why the clubs weren’t told they could ask the SPFL for a loan or an advance instead of just ending the season to get their prize money.
- There is some nuance from the SPFL about an advance incurring VAT and a loan not or something but it’s pretty tedious. There is likely a more fundamental question about how the SPFL would possibly have money to loan to Rangers for example and whether they should do that even if they had the money to spend.
The briefing note said that there would be “a number of difficulties” with league restructuring if they were to go down that route. Sevco are adamant that it’s actually “substantial difficulties” that they should have cited.
The Dundee Vote
Why was the firewall not checked earlier?
- This hardly warrants a response. It’s not really a legitimate complaint you would think, yet it’s top of the list in the Dundee section.
Dundee say they didn’t know until after the SPFL had given the results of the vote that Dundee’s vote had not been received.
- Sevco are saying that Dundee knew 4 minutes before the statement was issued. 5.39pm versus 5.43 pm. I don’t know this makes much of a difference given Dundee could always have changed their mind and the timing just seems like they were told pretty much as the statement was released so it didn’t make any difference.
The Sevco Charirman (Douglas Park) made allegations to the SPFL that evening. Not sure what exactly. The SPFL asked him not to make them again. Sevco are saying this was bullying.
- Apparently the SPFL said 4 times that the allegations should not be made again. Without Sevco actually making any new allegations, this doesn’t seem particularly heinous either. It just seems like they defended themselves against those allegations.
Corporate Governance Stuff
I’m very bored now. These are, in summary:
-
There was a delay in approving minutes of Board meetings
-
There was insufficient time to read the information before voting on the Resolution
-
The Board didn’t approve the briefing paper, only the Executive did
-
There wasn’t long enough to debate
-
Sevco submitted an alternative resolution. It was rejected for legal reasons. That seems to be accepted by everyone. But clubs asked the SPFL about it on Thursday and were told it would be rejected before it was actually rejected on the Friday.
-
The QC opinion on the alternative resolution was given to the Board on the Friday at 0920 but was dated the Thursday. WHY???
-
Some stuff about the SPFL’s legal adviser. Basically Sevco feel he could have been more helpful.
-
The SPFL said to UEFA that the majority of clubs wanted to end the season early. But they said this before the clubs had voted to end the season early. Was this to influence the clubs to end the season early?
Threats
Were Dundee and Alloa threatened by other clubs about how to vote?
- Not sure why Sevco are up in arms about this. Again it seems to be more about did the SPFL investigate these “threats” as opposed to how material the threats were
Apparently Brechin City said that Inverness were going to vote yes but Inverness actually voted no
- This is really scraping the bottom of the barrel now. Not sure how any of this affects Sevco, but they just want to throw around as many allegations as they can.
3 Likes
The Sevco statement basically boils down to this:
“Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”
5 Likes
Thank you.
So the resolution was basically to allow the board to end the season, if required?
And this would crystallise prize money and help clubs heavily reliant on gate income to stay afloat?
Think that’s Uncle Tom English referenced on page 8.
Yes. That’s true. Poor Tom backed the wrong horse a few years ago and won’t budge since. I think he’s bitter since that smack he got in Limerick years ago.
There is really nothing of substance in the dossier. It was claimed to be smoking gun evidence, all it amounts to is a series of questions. Some of them seem like reasonable questions on administration but they hardly warrant the fanfare, the calls for resignation or even allegations of anything other than casualness.
The best example is the bullying allegation that Douglas Park made, which amounts to:
And just in case you’d be worried reading it that you’re missing some other point that prompted him to make those claims, they even go on to say that this is what drove them to those allegations.
1 Like
Could you expand on that loans/advances and prize money element? The huns wanted their league prize money as an advance without the league being taken as finished? In other words, get the money for 2nd and then agitate to null and void the league afterwards. What was the SP(F)L’s reason for denying this other than the huns were trying to be sneaky?
So the prize money is linked to tv rights.
The league wanted to pay out the prize money to clubs and they were doing this on the basis of the finishing positions. This prize money was effectively a payment of the tv money received from BT and Sky for 2019/20.
The SPFL considered that there was a risk involved in paying out that money because BT, in particular, were making noises about wanting 2019/20 money back if the league wasn’t completed. But the SPFL decided that because the 2020/21 tv rights are higher and because Sky would be paying that soon, then that money could be used anyway to fund any repayments of 2019/20 revenue to BT/Sky.
SPFL opinion to their QC:
Sevco are saying that because they paid money to lower league clubs first that these were treated preferentially to higher league clubs if money had to be given back (though that ignores the fact that the SPFL were going to use the 2020/21 money to fund it if money does have to go back).
So that’s the procedural disagreement they have. The other debate is about the huns wanting the prize money to be paid independently of the season being declared over.
The SPFL said that they can’t pay out prize money without the season being declared over.
Sevco say that might be true (they didn’t concede that at the time) but they could have paid it a different way via a loan or advance.
Hearts and Tom English (an unholy alliance) claimed that there were loans given to Scottish clubs in 2016 so the SPFL should have told the clubs they could do the same this year and so there would not be a rush to declare the season over.
(As an aside, this line of argument assumes there is only a revenue issue at stake here, but many lower league clubs have explained that they can’t continue to pay costs (player wages) for 3 months longer than anticipated). So getting them the prize money but compelling them to pay more costs than they had anticipated for the season was unlikely to be the preferred option for (m)any lower league clubs.
The SPFL have since explained anyway that Tom and Hearts are incorrect and there were no loans given to clubs in 2016. There was a fixtures anomaly with Sevco getting promoted to the top division and that meant three clubs didn’t get three home games against Celtic and Rangers that season which affected their finances. Celtic agreed to forego £300k of early fee payments that season and two of the affected clubs received £150k ahead of schedule as compensation for their lack of gate receipts.
They weren’t loans, they were fee payments and they had VAT etc. on them and no repayment.
So ultimately, there is no precedent for loans being given to SPFL clubs since the days of Gretna if you believe the SPFL.
Then you have the question of if you can have an advanced fee payment - and that’s back to the Sevco resolution that means they would get second placed prize money but the season would not be declared over. And nobody at all seems to support that idea and it’s not really floated again by Rangers - they just muddy the waters and talk about loans and advances and there should have been other options explored.
And ultimately that all boils down to the fact that the SPFL didn’t believe that they could loan money to all 42 clubs to continue the season indefinitely and that all 42 clubs would survive and be capable of paying the money back. And that’s what they all discussed before the Resolution and that’s why the Resolution was introduced in the first place.
And the Sevco grievances about their own resolution are really strange. So they were told on the Friday that their resolution was not legally viable and had to be rejected. They have a big problem with being told this on the Friday when the opinion was dated as Thursday. But beyond that, it’s a complaint that the SPFL weren’t helpful enough in coming up with a resolution that Sevco liked that was legally viable:
So they drafted a resolution, (with Hearts and Inverness), found it wasn’t feasible, then they tried to come up with a resolution that would work and would satisfy Rangers but couldn’t come up with one so that’s the SPFL’s fault.
That whole episode is a farce. There was no real support for their strange resolution, it had no validity anyway and they felt that it was the duty of the SPFL to redraft one that would suit everyone, even though the SPFL already had proposed a resolution that had 80% support.
1 Like
Have they decided what they are actually going to do with the league?
They have ended the lower 3 divisions. Highly probable that they will declare top flight over and Celtic will win comfortably on points per game. I think most Celtic fans would like to see the league completed but the UK is so far behind Germany it’s not very realistic. And whatever about England where the tv revenue can support clubs, that won’t be the case in Scotland who are much more dependent on gate receipts so no chance of smaller Premier League clubs in Scotland wanting to play out the season.
Then they will fudge relegation probably by expanding the top division.
So have rangers a case?
And poor Tom English has made an awful fool of himself. The MD of Sevco, Stewart Robertson, was on the radio last night and said that Rangers never alleged any bullying. This is despite:
- Rangers making a statement about being bullied on 19th April
- Rangers retweeting said statement yesterday
- Rangers referring in “the dossier” to those bullying claims and explaining what they were in relation to.
Tom, unfortunately, backed the wrong horse from the start and won’t change now. So he’s been supporting the view today that Rangers never alleged bullying. And the more sensible Scottish journalists are ripping him apart for it, referencing the above Sevco statements but also Tom himself asking about it last week!
1 Like
Uncle Tom English is a laughing stock.
1 Like
Poor Uncle Tom English.
1 Like
It looks like he threw in the towel after Britney’s last tweet.
2 Likes
He is stuck in his house now, in lockdown, absolutely stewing.
2 Likes
What ended up happening here?
There was an EGM today after the huns called for an independent investigation into the board/executive in the wake of their dossier and calls for the SPFL CEO and legal adviser to be removed. They lost it 13/27 with 2 abstentions.
The league’s resolution had already passed a couple of weeks ago so the lower leagues are finalised and the top league will be settled on a points per game basis if they can’t resume games.
Essentially the huns were obfuscating and distracting and trying to get the league null and voided. It was revealed in the press yesterday that they had a useful idiot doing their bidding, the Caley Thistle CEO. He’s a hun supporter and 6 other second tier clubs confirmed that he had privately been campaigning for a vote against the board’s recent resolution. His alternative, in the event of that being a success, was to null and void all 4 leagues. It’s all about trying to stop Celtic making it 9 in a row.
As that would have meant there would have been no official standings, prize money would have been shared equally. It would have meant that Caley themselves who are up near the top of the Championship would have foregone around £175k, which is massive for a club like them.
Uncle Tom English is still windmilling.
2 Likes
The ICT stance was ridiculous.
It was lovely to see Iain McMenemy taking a break from his role with as Advisor to the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland to support the Sevco resolution on behalf of Stenhousemuir.
1 Like
That Sevco discussion board on follow follow is gold, they are nuts.