CONTEMPLATING THE once-mighty Rangers, reduced yesterday to pleading for acceptance into the Scottish Football League’s First Division, you can take your pick of the high point which best illustrates the depth of their fall.
Many people think automatically of 20 years ago, when Walter Smith’s Scottish title winners beat England’s Leeds United, in the Champions League, and came within one goal of the final, losing to a Marseille, later convicted of match-fixing in their own league.
Or just four years ago, when Rangers, again managed by Smith, competed in the Uefa Cup final, their fans descending on Manchester in tens of thousands to see a 2-0 defeat by Zenit St Petersburg.
At home, there was the procession of Scottish Premier League championships, shared seven each with Celtic since the country’s top clubs mounted their financially driven breakaway from the SFL in 1998.
The Glasgow football institution collapsed into administration in February owing a possible €124 million, nine months after a disastrous sale of the club for £1 by former owner David Murray to the now-disgraced Craig Whyte.
That takeover is the subject of an investigation by Strathclyde Police, in conjunction with the British Serious Fraud Office, to examine if criminal offences of dishonesty were committed.
The SFL clubs are meeting at Hampden Park today to consider whether even to accept the bones of a newly-formed Rangers, perhaps into its Third Division of threadbare crowds, which many fans and clubs believe to be just.
The chief executives of the SPL and Scottish Football Association, and David Longmuir, the SFL chief executive, have urged the clubs to accept Rangers into the First Division. They warn that the SPL’s TV and sponsorship deals, which financially maintain Scottish professional football, will collapse if Rangers are exiled from the SPL for too long.
Rangers’ grand name has landed in this historic embarrassment because of the way its assets – essentially Ibrox and the Murray Park training ground – were sold by the insolvent club’s administrators, Duff and Phelps. The Yorkshire businessman Charles Green, formerly chairman of modestly performing minor plcs, backed by a consortium including offshore trusts not yet fully identified, bought the bones of Rangers for €7 million. That acquisition was not approved by 75 per cent of creditors, in a company voluntary arrangement, the mode of post-insolvency salvage preferred by the football authorities north and south of the border.
Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, beyond tolerance of football clubs leaving millions unpaid in tax, and particularly Rangers, with whom it was already in major dispute, refused to approve a CVA which would deliver a fraction of the amount owed – €25 million unpaid under Whyte. So Green then bought the assets with a newly-formed company, Sevco, the €7 million barely stretching beyond the administrators’ fees.
Neil Doncaster, the SPL chief executive, argues this distinction should not mean the “newco” Rangers have to start in the Third Division.
He has repeatedly stated that BSkyB and ESPN, who have committed €100 million to a five-year TV deal from 2012-17, the Clydesdale Bank and other SPL sponsors, require as a condition of their financial commitment that Rangers and Celtic, the two box office names, both be in the SPL.
Doncaster told the SFL clubs the broadcasters and sponsors could live with Rangers out of the SPL for a minimum of one season, but are not interested in broadcasting the Third Division and would walk away or seek greatly reduced renegotiations.
The SFL clubs, without bumper attendances or a TV deal, rely on a payment from the SPL agreed when the top clubs broke away, now around €2.5 million. Doncaster has made himself extremely unpopular warning that it, too, would fall away if the SPL collapsed into financial chaos.
Doncaster argues that risking this level of financial meltdown over the difference between a sale of assets via a CVA or to a new company, is disproportionate.
Guardian Service
