Article in the Times: Rangers

[ian1964 10,472]

If Rangers are punished, it really means hurting the fans â?? and destroying Scottish football with it

 

Are Alex Salmond, Sepp Blatter and Angela Merkel conspiring to destroy the UK? If a reborn Rangers left Scotland to play in England, Fifa could claim that Scotland and England were really a single nation for the purposes of football and put an end to the four home nations. That would delight Mr Blatter, Fifaâ??s President. The abolition of the Scottish football team within the UK would be enough to give Mr Salmond a majority in a referendum on independence. And with the UKâ??s dissolution, Chancellor Merkelâ??s Germany would be a natural candidate for the vacant seat on the UN Security Council.

 

Far-fetched? Quite possibly, but no more Byzantine than the hurly-burly surrounding the liquidation and rebirth of Rangers. First, a few facts.

 

1. Rangers, like most â??football clubsâ?, was not a club at all, but three different things: a limited company owned by businessmen that ran a football team and owned a stadium; an entity licensed by the Scottish Football Association to play football in Scotland; a cultural icon fervently supported by hundreds of thousands of Scots. (While hated by the rest of the Scots, Rangers command the support of more than a quarter of all Scottish football fans.)

 

2. From about 2001 onwards Rangers found a way to pay players that avoided tax â?? arguably this advantage enabled Rangers to fund a team that dominated the Scottish Premier League (SPL) for a decade and even had some success in Europe. HMRC said that this was an abuse and claimed back taxes of about £60 million, and the realization that the courts would agree with the taxman precipitated the liquidation of the limited company.

 

3. A new company has been created to buy the stadium from the liquidator and relaunch the team. The debate has focused on where it should play: should it continue in the SPL or a specially designed spin-off league; or be punished for its financial misdeeds by being demoted to a lesser division in the Scottish Football League (SFL); or even escape over the border to join the English Football League.

 

The outcome sheds light on that old pub debate, is football a business? On Friday, the SFL gave its answer by saying that Rangers must start in its third division. In a fit of self- destructive, self-righteousness the Scottish clubs put a rough form of justice ahead of business sense.

 

Everyone wants Rangers to be punished for their misdeeds. Really, this means punishing Rangers fans, since the executives responsible have already been punished by losing their jobs and the owners by losing control, together with various sanctions and severely damaged reputations. One might argue about the fairness of punishing the fans, who were only guilty of celebrating when their team won, but the main point is that the punishment could cause the entire edifice of Scottish football to collapse.

 

Normally in business destroying a competitor benefits its rivals through reduced competition for customers. But Rangers fans will not suddenly become Celtic or Cowdenbeath fans. They will either stay with the club or renounce football altogether; either way the income for clubs at the top will fall. Sky will be reluctant to pay the sums it has done up until now without Old Firm matches to broadcast. And the rest of the clubs are already on the verge of bankruptcy, having tried to compete with Rangersâ?? spending.

 

If football is a business, then the answer is relatively simple. Rangers should enter the English Football League Championship with a view to being promoted to the English Premier League, where their status will boost the English game while ensuring them a viable financial future. Celtic should join too. This move would be profitable enough for all concerned for any losers (displaced Football League teams, Scottish teams bereft of the Old Firm) to be compensated.

 

Everybody wins, commercially speaking at least. But as the conspiracy theory suggests, the political fallout would be dramatic. Football is not quite yet an American-style business with franchise relocations and league expansions, so Rangers will likely have to stay in Scotland. The club has said, with humility, that it will go wherever it is given a licence to play.

 

Scottish football would be best served commercially by allowing Rangers to continue in the SPL. The Scottish football authorities, however, preferred to show the world that they are not yet totally in thrall to commercial pressures.

 

By punishing Rangers the penalty they impose upon themselves will be at least as great.

 

Stefan Szymanski is Professor of Sport Management at the University of Michigan and co-author of Soccernomics

 

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinio...cle3476304.ece

[Blue Moon 1,133]

Good to see an article from an outsider unaffected by the malice, bitterness and hatred that is Scottish football.

[der Berliner 3,310]

On Friday, the SFL gave its answer by saying that Rangers must start in its third division. In a fit of self- destructive, self-righteousness the Scottish clubs put a rough form of justice ahead of business sense.

 

Nope. The SPL and the SFA pushed the self-destruct button and handed the SFL the task to right this. Yet, the SFL essentially did as their rules and precedence (i.e. factual sporting integrity) demanded, put a new applicant where it belongs. IMHO, pre the admin fiasco, 90% of the SFL clubs (i.e. all bar the usual SPL-contenders) would simply not care where Rangers would be playing. Now, the 3rd division clubs would vote us down not only by rules, but also because they'd gain massive monetary revenue with us being their "neighbours". Pretty natural, of course, and going hand in hand with the "actual sporting intergity" explained above.

 

NB: Nice that he noted a "relaunched team" rather than "club".

[Thinker 887]

A few minor inaccuracies, but the best even-handed write-up I've seen of the situation. And the fact that it's from The Times adds a lot of weight.

 

This should be circulated as much as possible. I'll be using it to shut a few people up.

[calscot 0]

I thought the Times makes it pretty lightweight and unlikely to have credibility? I don't see the Times as being much different from the Sun.

[Tannochsidebear 2,322]

Apart from "Fact" 2 not being a fact at all, that article is pretty decent. And there is the problem that will affect history.

 

It is now being believed that Rangers DID cheat the taxman, where no evidence or court convictions are in existence of such action taking place. We have had court cases and investigations aplenty and no court or HMRC tribunal has said the words guilty to anyone at Rangers plc. Why this is taking so long I dont know, but we really do need to get the FTT decision published at some point to either have something tangible to go for Murray with, or to ensure our detractors cannot use this line any further.

[Guest Dutchy]

I certainly don't want the Scotland team to be integrated into a UK team. I defend our right to be a crap footballing country and wallow in in our own misery forever. lol

 

Also, a moot point, but the SFL didn't talk of 'sporting integrity', but 'sporting fairness'. Longmuir claims it was/is part of their rules, to be fair.