BrahimHemdani

"A source close to LBG" tells me that a lot of the paperwork for the deal was signed overnight and could be done today or more likely Monday.

Gi's a job

You make some good points if I may say. Whilst I have always found Kenny Clark a bit humourless I have to admire him because he came back from an incident that would have ended many a referee's career as he was the one whom missed the Duncan Ferguson head butt at Ibrox in 1994 and yet went on to have an outstanding career as one of our top officials and a FIFA list referee. Perhaps he thinks he's the referees mouthpiece but in reality he's just another self publicist. I guess that makes it more pleasurable for me as someone who just about managed to run the line at Wembley on one occasion (and a certain Mr J Greig's Testimonial) that I knew why Diouf got off (well more or less got off) and he (KC) apparently didn't. As Willie Young is a supervisor and therefore can't comment publicly, it seems that KC and Stuart Dougal are the "go to" retired refs for comment but I do wonder when Hugh Dallas will assume that role.

"Why do I not find that hard to believe? " I just wanted to insert this but I had to use ten words

It was bit of hyperbole, I didn't mean it literally. But you are wrong about a player being "summoned", a referee has no such power and a player who stands his ground and makes the referee come to him would be perfectly within his rights. That is why most often you will see a referee make the first move towards the player concerned who then makes a move towards the ref; but I have seen numerous incidents of referees having to go a long way to caution a player typically if the player has retreated into the wall at a free kick. By the way you are right about me and referee committees, I was involved at Amateur level and was well known as a bit of hanging judge.

My understanding is that the night he was pictured sitting next to a certain night club owner, name of Mortimer, said Mortimer arranged a meet with other Chairman's Club members and the collective view was that they were not impressed. This is only rumour although it came from a good source, I don't know anyone who was at the meeting, perhaps someone here does. I think it is much more likely that some of the HNW's will be looking at picking up the Club for peanuts if it goes into administration than giving Whyte a helping hand to do the deal now and knowing that is why he's doing his damdest to get it sooner rather than later. I have not heard anyone suggest that Whyte has �£20m+ in cash so he has to borrow it against whatever assets he has, effectively Rangers end up in debt to him or his bankers (who are they?) and he or they do a debt for equity swap if the Club goes into administration.

Don't have mine yet but believe the increase is 2.1% for VAT only. I have it from a very reliable source that the season ticket money is being ring fenced in another company so that it would not be part of Rangers assets if the Club went into administration as a result of losing the tax case.

Seems I was right about Diouf anyway. There "ââ?¬Ë?is no rule to say a player has to leave the field when his red card was shown after play has endedââ?¬â?¢.

There ‘is no rule to say a player has to leave the field when his red card was shown after play has ended’. Exactly the point I have been making.

The fine would be proportionate to any player's earnings, what I am saying is that it is a fraction of a week's wages.

But wouldn't you be concerned about the auditors qualifying the accounts of one of his companies and the questions about the going concern basis of another? Wouldn't it cause you to worry about any other skeletons he might have in his cupboards?

He might have been "OK about it" under questioning from Rangers lawyers, as in "did you feel physically threatened or in fear of physical violence", answer NO. But that still doesn't make it right, Far from it. Every kid in the land, every amateur, junior and senior player, will now take the view that it's OK to hold the refs arm if he wants to pull a card on you or one of your team mates. That's bad enough but what next, where do you draw the line. No player should be anywhere near a referee in those circumstances. End of story. The SFA had an opportunity to make that point and failed to take it. No wonder the refs are upset especially after the pronouncements about protecting them only a few months ago.

Yes, he's probably still a member of the referees association and even if he's not, his voice would be respected. In fact the current refs may be using him as thier mouthpiece rather than one of their number risk the wrath of the SFA in calling for strike action.

The following is from this weeks edition of Private Eye, published tomorrow: BUSINESS NEWS SECTION PLANET FOOTBALL RANGERS The article begins with an explanation of the the reasons for Rangers tax problems which they estimate at Ã?£50 million including interest and penalties should Rangers lose the case. the article continues: Craig Whyte, who is 40 and lives in a Scottish castle, is a man of mystery for someone to whom others seems keen to confer billionaire status. He is a director of Pritchard Stockbrokers and a shareholder in the AIM-listed Merchant House corporate finance group. They are authorised by the FSA. Whyte is not. He was a director of LM Logistics Group, which was controlled by Merchant Corporate Recovery, where he is still a director, and Merchant House group is an investor. Warehousing group LM collapsed into administration in August last year. Whyte had resigned in March. The deficiency for creditors was Ã?£3.4m, threatening to wipe out Merchant Corporate Recoveryââ?¬â?¢s investment and, more importantly, a Ã?£661,000 loan. As a result of LMââ?¬â?¢s problems the January 2010 accounts for Merchant Corporate Recovery ââ?¬â?? filed late on 31 March this year ââ?¬â?? were qualified by the auditors Hazlewoods. The auditors disagreed about the accounting treatment of the companies in which it had invested, such as LM. Whyte said to include them would be misleading; Hazlewoods said that was required by both the Companies Act and accounting standards. Hazelwoods stated: ââ?¬Å?In our opinion due solely to the non-inclusion of the controlled investee companies... the financial statements do not give a true and fair view of the state of the companyââ?¬â?¢s affairs... have not been properly prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006ââ?¬Â. Hazlewoods also raised an ââ?¬Å?emphasis of matterââ?¬Â issue over the ââ?¬Å?going concernââ?¬Â basis upon which the 2009 accounts, filed only last February, for another investment, coach company Countryliner Group, had been prepared. Since the balance sheet date, one subsidiary had done a creditorsââ?¬â?¢ voluntary arrangement and another had collapsed into liquidation. The accounts for Tixway UK are overdue from last October and it faces a proposal to be struck off, as do two other Whyte companies; Merchant Interactive and Semfill, from which he resigned last year. Otherwise, Whyte seems an ideal saviour for Rangers whom Sir David Murray, HMRC and the fans can clearly rely.

No doubt about that, only question is when.

I think that so long as he said (which I think he did) that he was not speaking for Celtic or Mr Lennon, on this occasion, then he would be in the clear, although there might be an argument, as you suggest, that as he has been their advocate and spokesperson very recently, the public might reasonably believe that he was still acting on their behalf. In any event the statements are clearly defamatory and actionable as he made them in public, so my guess is he is going to be in a bit of soapy bubble on that score. There is also the argument that as a well known public figure and QC you can't just take those hats off and all of a sudden become Joe Public so that all comment is acceptable, seems to me that as an advocate a certain standard of conduct would be required and he might have fallen below that standard; that would be a matter for the Faculty of Advocates rather than a court to decide.

Craig is spot on. The second ban had to start 14 days after the judgement and Lennon was still serving the first ban at that time, thus he only served 5 matches in total. It is not that there is a rule that says bans must be served concurrently or consecutively it is just that the effect of the rule is that with the timing being as described it worked out that most of the second ban was concurrent with the first. You really can't argue with McBride or Celtic on that one , he did his job, and we would have done the same. Clearly it was never envisaged (why one might ask) that this situation would occur but it arises from the long drawn out appeals process. It is easily remedied by inserting something like "unless the person concerned is already serving another supsension, in which case the second suspension will begin at the end of the first".

Seems to me that an advocate, a QC to boot, calling into question the integrity of a public body such as the SFA of itself brings advocates into disrepute and no doubt that is the basis of the SFA's complaint to the Faculty. If it were to go to court he would need to prove that they were indeed dishonest and biased and that would be extraordinarily difficult but he might just defend himself for the publicity and no doubt a lot of future work from Mr Lennon and Celtic FC.

Whilst as Rangers supporters we all sigh with collective relief there is no question that in Bougherra's case it is an extrordinarily weak decision. I'd go so far as to say it is incomprehensible. The referee's person must be sacrosanct and Bougherra violated that code not once but twice and has escaped with a fine of what half or a third or less of a week's wages. As Kenny Clark says what kind of signal does that send out to other players at all levels of the game. If players are to be allowed to manhandle referees with more or less impunity, then there won't be many games taking place because there won't be many referees and this time I doubt foreign officials would step in. I am less sure about Diouf. KC reached far greater heights as a referee than I ever did, so I would normally bow to his knowledge but I am not certain that a player can be physically ordered off the field of play once the full time whistle has gone. In my belief, he could only be reported for such an incident on the basis that if it had taken place during the 90 minutes of play then it would have resulted in a second yellow card and hence a red. Also throwing his jersey into the crowd would be reportable but given it was at the Rangers end, it wasn't the crime of the century either in a footballing sense or a criminal sense, presumably why he wasn't arrested for ignoring the Match Commander's "advice". (Obviously if he had been arrested at the time there would have been a riot but the police could have taken action later if they had deemed it sufficiently serious and clearly they did not.)

In the UEFA case it was a charge laid by one committee being decided by another so the first committee appealed the decision to the Appeals Committee. In the SFA the players are charged on the basis of the referee's report and I doubt if the referee could appeal the decision (they certainly couldn't in my day as a referee), which is why they are moaning about it.

RST spent months last year working behind the scenes to try to bring various parties together but couldn't get past first base, of course that may have had as much to do with RST as the HNW individuals.

Not a chance.

I don't think Lloyds care about that so long as THEY aren't the lenders. They are really scared about the bad press they are getting, which is why they agreed to allow Whyte to finance the �£1m interest rate differential so they could say there were no obstacles to the deal from their side.