â??On Planet Charles, everything is somebody elseâ??s faultâ??

[ian1964 10,416]

Tom English

 

 

IT WAS one thing for Charles Green to torch the Rangers creditors, but quite another to dance as the debt mountain went up in flames.

 

 

As a hard-nosed Yorkshireman who says what he likes and likes what he says, Greenâ??s recent comments about player recruitment and what life might look like for the club after his (ill-fated) CVA were typically robust, the only problem being that they were also desperately arrogant, whether he realised it or not.

 

There have been some surreal moments throughout this Rangers saga and Green provided another one when he started banging on about Rangersâ?? transfer targets, presumably on the basis that his CVA was going to be ratified and the transfer ban for being in administration duly lifted. It was a confidence that was to prove hopelessly misplaced.

 

Green didnâ??t just talk about signing players, he got the trumpet out and positively blasted out a tune. The club had 19 targets, he said. Of the 19, five are currently performing in the European championship. The message was that Rangers, once they left their debt behind, were in the market for some proper footballers who would, presumably, be earning proper money in this nirvana he was hoping to create.

 

Add to this the flirtation with Rino Gattuso, the meetings with his representative, the publicised phone calls between Gattuso and Ally McCoist, the impression that they were serious about signing the former World Cup winner once they moved heroically out of administration and into the promised land. Gattusoâ??s wage at Ibrox was speculated on in the papers. Maybe the £10,000-£12,000 a week salary wasnâ??t accurate but the important detail is that the number was not disputed by Green or anybody else. Even if they knew they could never afford him, they allowed the impression to be formed that they were genuinely interested. This is a club that already owes more than £50m and might owe closer to £100m (hey presto, the debt will soon vanish) and yet Green carried on talking about his signing targets at the Euros like the CVA was all done bar the ceremonial bonfire of a thousand invoices.

 

Not paying your creditors is one thing â?? it happens in business all the time â?? but rubbing their noses in it is another thing and that is what Green did with his comments earlier in the week. Talking about their future as he saw it, he spoke of £30m sitting in the Rangers bank account by the end of July. In mentioning the supposed riches coming their way, and ignoring what the creditors might have made of his comments, Green was about as subtle as a punch in the face. No doubt, the â??19 targetsâ? line was not intended as an insult and had more to do with trying to reel in the support and make them part with their season ticket money but, whatever the motive, it was objectionable stuff.

 

HMRC would have rejected the CVA proposal regardless of what Green said or didnâ??t say about spending lots of money on new players, but it did nothing to address the question of the clubâ??s remorse. Maybe we have missed it but has there been a public expression of sorrow for the massive non-payment of taxes, among other things, in the Craig Whyte era? Has there been any regret about putting the domestic game into convulsions over David Murray and the did-they or didnâ??t-they saga of the dual contracts which is now the subject of an SPL investigation and which will also be examined by the insolvency experts, BDO?

 

This is where Rangers have made matters worse for themselves. The deflection of blame has been rampant, the gist of the argument being: â??Why should we apologise for the acts of two men?â? Namely, Whyte and Murray. Because the sorry plight of Rangers is down to more than just two men, albeit the actions of Whyte brought on administration and now liquidation. Ironically, for all the talk of the big tax case, it was the more recent defiance of HMRC that brought the club to its knees.

 

BDO plan to investigate the behaviour of many directors at the club. If they havenâ??t already read the crushing report of the SFAâ??s judicial panel into the Whyte affair then theyâ??re surely going through it now. It shows in forensic detail that there were other men at that club who had cases to answer. This study, of course, has been rubbished at Rangers. The panel may have acted wrongly in imposing a transfer embargo, in Lord Glennieâ??s view as opposed to Lord Carlowayâ??s, but both of these distinguished legal minds were in agreement that Rangersâ?? offences were not simply down to Whyte, but were vast transgressions and deserving of heavy sanction, possibly the heaviest sanction, the revoking of their SPL licence. That threat still hangs in the air above newco land even if the debt does not.

 

Green, himself, has not taken long in embracing the culture of the blame game. His reaction to HMRC rejecting his CVA was a textbook case of deflection, a mind-boggling and utterly skewed assessment. Green blamed HMRC for misleading the club, he railed against them for giving the fans false hope of the CVA being accepted and said that HMRC have â??got a lot to answer forâ?.

 

Wouldnâ??t it be nice to live on Planet Charles where everything is somebody elseâ??s fault? Green said he never got any feedback that HMRC might reject the CVA on the grounds of policy. He never saw it coming. â??No. Not at all,â? he said. For months and months the dogs in the street have been barking about HMRC not settling and Green never heard it? On April 20, at the Rangersâ?? Creditors Meeting, HMRC nominated Malcolm Cohen and James Bernard Stephen of BDO as joint liquidators and this move didnâ??t alert Green that liquidation was possibly on the cards?

 

Maybe he heard what he wanted to hear. From the outset, Duff & Phelps â?? and most recently Greenâ??s own people at Deloittes â?? have spoken of their dealings with HMRC. Time after time they have said that HMRC had no intention of shutting the club down or being â??belligerentâ?, as Paul Clark, co-administrator, put it.

 

Letâ??s be clear, Duff & Phelps thought HMRC would cut a deal because a deal meant they would get something and no deal would mean they got nothing. They have been consistent with this line from the beginning. Even when you hit them with HMRCâ??s policy of not agreeing to CVAs, they said they felt pretty confident that they would, reminding the doubting minds that they were â??in dialogue constantly with HMRCâ?. Duff & Phelps got it monumentally wrong. It will be intriguing to see what BDO make of the way they have performed when they get stuck into their forensic analysis of this labyrinthine shambles. This is part of why HMRC turned down the CVA, you fancy. They wanted to go after Whyte. After he gave them the runaround and almost laughed in their face with his non-compliance they now want an opportunity to examine what he has done at Rangers and see if they can nail him for it.

 

And Green? Well, his shock and amazement is unconvincing, his apparent unawareness that HMRC might revert to policy on the CVA front is positively Smudgeresque. When he was talking about his myriad transfer targets a few days back he also said he understood if people had reservations about him, which is good, because they do and in rising numbers. There are doubts about the financial wherewithal of his consortium and, now that BDO are on-board, doubts about him successfully executing the (bargain) purchase of the clubâ??s assets without challenge.

 

Green is now looking to transfer all player contracts over to the newco, a lovely piece of business for him if he can pull it off and then perhaps sell some of these guys for a million or two, instantly recovering the £5.5m investment with profit on top should the fire-sale occur. And it might. If the newco is rejected by the SPL then these players are not going to hang around. Even the very threat of SPL rejection might be enough to drive them into the arms of other clubs. They have already made a big sacrifice in Rangersâ?? name. They did their bit when taking massive pay cuts. Nobody could fault them if they wanted to walk away now.

 

Of course, the playersâ?? union completely, and convincingly, dispute Greenâ??s interpretation of the contracts and argue that there is no obligation on them to move to the newco. The union says the players can leave for nothing and so another spat is breaking out at a club that a few days ago was talking fancifully about signing players from the European championship and is now threatening to treat the ones they have as footballing hostages.

 

Today, Rangers will be liquidated. You would say that their ultimate nightmare is now upon them, but this story has shown all along that it has hidden depths. Just when you think they could not fall any further the trapdoor opens and down they go again. The only certainty in all of this is that the uncertainty will continue for a while yet.

[pete 2,499]

Read the first few lines and almost spewed. A load of crap.

[smile 0]

A Rangers Hater writes another silly article.

[the gunslinger 3,366]

its actually quite a good article.

[Bears 0]

Watching Tom go from a fairly credible balanced journo to a nasty hated filled met has been the most spectacular fall of all journos during this

[54andcounting 0]

I've no idea who Tom English supports or doesn't support but what he is saying cant be argued with.

[the gunslinger 3,366]

tom English is Irish. that said he seem to have little time for the yahoos and zero for the IRA loving element.

 

I can't see what's wrong with this article.

[biggordy 0]

Yes, I blame Charles Green for everything.

 

 

 

FFS.

[GovanAllan 0]

its actually quite a good article.

 

...............

 

Only if you also hate Green.

Edited June 14, 2012 by GovanAllan

[andy steel 0]

Noticeable how much this 'lack of remorse' line is being used this week. Odd. If we're guilty of anything, then we should be punished according to the rules and no amount of remorse can change that. Can't understand why other people are so keen to see some soul-baring.