scottish fitba'

[Paul ™]

Can't say I'll lose any sleep if Rangers or Celtic vanished off the face of the earth as it won't effect me as a fan of a lower league club one bit.

[Donkey]

Nothing better than laughing at the Old Firm.

[Kowalski]

Maybe I'm just a thick Hun but what exactly has this ''statistic'' actually ''blown wide open''?They just look like three completely random games with nothing linking them what so ever.I'm sure I could find similar ''statistics'' if I really wanted.

[Kowalski]

This is how the current SPL income is distributed, note the small gap between 1st and 2nd, and the large gap between 2nd and 3rd.

1 - 4% + 13% = 17%

2 - 4% + 11% = 15%

3 - 4% + 5.5% = 9.5%

4 - 4% + 4.5% = 8.5%

5 - 4% + 4.0% = 8.0%

6 - 4% + 3.5% = 7.5%

7 - 4% + 3.0% = 7.0%

8 - 4% + 2.5% = 6.5%

9 - 4% + 2.0% = 6.0%

10 - 4% + 1.5% = 5.5%

11 - 4% + 1.0% = 5.0%

12 - 4% + 0.5% = 4.5%

I don't know if that includes TV money or not, but TV money is based on who is shown in each game. As the Old Firm are shown just about every week and some other clubs only about 4 times per season, it would suggest that Celtic would be the big loser if Sky pulled the plug (should Rangers end up outside the SPL). In saying that, I think Rangers might get away with this and remain in the SPL. Depends how far the HMRC take things, as they may not get much out of the administrators which would mean that us tax payers would end up paying for Rangers cheating - and £49M would pay the salary of 2000+ nurses.

Edited February 15, 2012 by Kowalski

[Paul ™]

Depends how far the HMRC take things, as they may not get much out of the administrators which would mean that us tax payers would end up paying for Rangers cheating - and £49M would pay the salary of 2000+ nurses.

[Kowalski]

They let Vodafone off with £5billion or so, £49M is peanuts

[Paul ™]

I don't know if that includes TV money or not, but TV money is based on who is shown in each game. As the Old Firm are shown just about every week and some other clubs only about 4 times per season, it would suggest that Celtic would be the big loser if Sky pulled the plug (should Rangers end up outside the SPL). In saying that, I think Rangers might get away with this and remain in the SPL.

[Paul ™]

All of the Board of DAFC would like to express their concern and shock that a giant football club such as Rangers FC has gone into administration. The impact of this will be felt throughout Scotland, the UK and Europe and the Board and club would wish to convey their support to Rangers FC and hope that the club can find a way through this terrible time.

However, the direct impact to DAFC is not insignificant: Rangers FC are due DAFC in the region of £80,000 of gate receipts from Saturday's fixture which is obviously of extreme concern. This payment is no longer expected to be received by next Tuesday which would have been due to the club. This is a significant amount of money for a club such as DAFC to lose especially after losing £50,000 due to our game against Kilmarnock being postponed and will create some challenges for us over the coming months, these challenges are not insurmountable.

Edited February 15, 2012 by Paul ™

[Kowalski]

http://www.bbc.co.uk...otball/17047957

[Paul ™]

The deal also includes 4 Old Firm games per season, which is daft as well. God knows what happens (in the unlikely situation) if one of the Old Firm fails to make the top 6 one season.

[Kyelo]

That just shows you what a stupid deal the TV deal is. The deal also includes 4 Old Firm games per season, which is daft as well. God knows what happens (in the unlikely situation) if one of the Old Firm fails to make the top 6 one season.

Hopefully this is an opportunity to make things a little fairer so teams like Dunfermline can get a better share of money. I don't think the EPL TV deal has anything specific in place for the Top 4 - I've no doubt La Liga has a similar set up to the SPL though.

[Donkey]

Mad rumour going about that Rangers are going to buy out Doncaster and take their place in the FA Leagues. Sort of like what Airdrie did to Clydebank.

[Kowalski]

Why Scotland doesn’t need Rangers

Scottish politics seems to be having a wee holiday this week. The First Minister has a little chat with the Scottish Secretary over the referendum, deciding nothing, the Unionists demand “answers” to questions on a completely different subject, Jim Sillars witters on about something or other in yet another bitter rage about how well the SNP’s doing without him, and the Scotsman quietly admits that some of its previous scare stories (this time the ones about Scottish membership of the EU) were cobblers and hopes nobody notices. In other words, business as usual.

The reason everyone’s putting out a skeleton service operating on auto-pilot is, of course, that they’re all transfixed with the goings-on at Ibrox. And rightly so, because it’s an enormous story which reaches out and touches the entire population in a way that politics almost never does. For fans of Rangers, their entire world has fallen in. For fans of other clubs it’s either hilarious, or a time for rising above petty rivalries and showing solidarity with their fellow supporters, ie it’s secretly hilarious. For Rangers employees it’s a worry, for battered wives, social services and hard-pressed A&E staff it’s a blessing and for booze retailers it’s a catastrophe.

We also can’t ignore the possible political consequences. For decades Rangers FC has served as a weekly indoctrination service for the defenders of the Union – you can’t spend a large proportion of your leisure time waving Union Jacks and singing “Rule Britannia” with thousands of fellow loyal subjects of Her Majesty (she of the Revenue and Customs) without it having some sort of effect on your worldview.

But for the media, which for months on end has largely turned a blind eye to the scale of Rangers’ problems and left the blogosphere to pick up the slack, it’s a time of panic. If Rangers fall they’ll probably take half the circulation (and pagecount) of the Daily Record with them, and the tabloid media in general is desperate for the club to survive in something as close to its present form as possible.

So the story, told loudly and relentlessly, is that Scottish football couldn’t live by Celtic alone. Rangers, it’s insisted over and over, are vital to the continued health – nay, the very survival – of the domestic game. Their friendly, loveable fans, we hear, are the lifeblood of every other club in the league as they turn up twice a season to swell the stands and consume the Scotch pies and Bovril that pay the wages of the home side’s gangly centre-half. The TV riches that pour into SPL coffers would vanish too, without the juicy prize of four Old Firm games a year to tempt Sky into opening their gold-plated chequebook. All in all, take Rangers away and you might as well padlock the turnstiles from Inverness Caley Thistle to Queen Of The South and call it a day.

But is it true? No. It’s a load of balls.

This blog loves nothing more than a good delve in some stats, so we’ve been wading waist-deep in them this week. And the conclusion we’ve reached is that the collapse of Rangers would in all probability be the best thing to happen to Scottish football this century. Along with its Parkhead twin, the club is a giant vampire squid choking the Scottish game to death, and history strongly suggests that Scottish football can ONLY flourish if one or both of the Gruesome Twosome is in poor health.

Firstly, let’s look at some of the myths.

We’re told that the smaller clubs need the influx of cash generated by home games against the Old Firm every year. But how much is that really worth? Under the current SPL structure, there’s no guaranteed number of such fixtures each season. Aberdeen, for example, got just three last year (two against Rangers, one against Celtic), because they were in the bottom six of the league at the time of the “split”.

In season 2010/11, the Dons had an average attendance at Pittodrie of just under 9,000. For the three Old Firm games, the average attendance was 13,378. That’s 4,504 extra punters through the gates per match, or a total for the season of 13,512. In other words, having Rangers and Celtic come to visit was effectively worth the equivalent of about 1.5 extra home games a year. (1.52, if you want to be picky.)

Now, for a club on a tight budget like Aberdeen, 1.5 extra home games a season is a handy bit of cash. If we assume that the average spectator spends £40 on their ticket, programme, refreshments and whatnot, it’s over half a million quid in (gross) revenue. But it’s not the difference between life and death. It could be achieved just as easily by an extended cup run or qualification for Europe – things which are significantly more likely to happen if you take one or both of the Old Firm out of the picture.

Indeed, just a modest amount of progress in Europe can effortlessly eclipse a season’s worth of Rangers and Celtic ties. In season 2007/08 Aberdeen reached the last 32 of the Europa League, which is very much the poor relation of UEFA’s club competitions compared to the cash cow of the Champions’ League. Getting to the last 32 of it isn’t exactly spectacular success, but it nevertheless brought the Dons four extra home games that season, which drew a total of 74,767 paying customers.

Alert viewers will have noticed that even this humble adventure was therefore worth almost SIX TIMES as much to the Pittodrie club as an entire season of Old Firm fixtures, and that’s before you factor in the not-inconsiderable matter of extra TV money and participation bonuses, which would surely boost that multiplier to 10 or more. (It’s perhaps also worth noting that even the first-round first-leg tie against the unglamorous FC Dnipro of Ukraine attracted a larger crowd than any of 2010/11′s games against Rangers or Celtic, despite having thousands fewer away fans.)

From this we can see that if a team like Aberdeen qualified for Europe just fractionally more often, as as result of the demise of one or both of the Old Firm making places more easily attainable – maybe once every five or six years – the rewards could easily eclipse the losses. But there’s more to it than that, because the Europa League jaunt had a knock-on effect on domestic attendances too.

When Hearts came to Pittodrie in the middle of the Europa run, the gate was 14,000. The corresponding fixture in 2010/11, at roughly the same time of year, saw just 9,100 show up. In other words, a tiny glimpse of success saw attendance over 50% higher – exactly the same sort of boost delivered in a normal season by the visits of the Old Firm. Even two months after the Dons were knocked out of the tournament by Bayern Munich, a home game against Falkirk could pull a crowd of 11,484 – a comparable late-season match (vs Hibernian) in 2010/11 managed just 7,400.

Of course, you could argue that the higher attendances in 2007/08 were a result of a better season in general (Aberdeen finished 4th that year, compared to 9th in 2011). But then, that’s the point – fans are much more likely to turn up to watch games in a competition where their team has a fighting chance of achieving something than in a league where they’re just making up the numbers. Take one or both of the Old Firm out of the league and you instantly make it far more competitive, which makes it far more exciting, which makes it far more attractive for people to come and watch.

This isn’t just an idle theory. Within living memory, Scottish football has actually experienced an extended period where one or other of the Old Firm was in dire straits, and the result was a far more competitive league with substantially bigger attendances for the non-OF clubs. While this era is often dismissed as a brief Alex-Ferguson-inspired flicker in the mid-80s, it in fact lasted for almost 20 years.

The first phase was around the creation of the old Scottish Premier Division, running from the tail end of the 1970s and right through the 1980s, before David Murray and his bottomless wallet turned up at Ibrox around the turn of the decade. Rangers were in a woeful state at the time, winning the league just once in a 10-season spell between 1979 and 1988, and with home crowds at Ibrox regularly dropping below 10,000.

(One 1979 league game against Partick Thistle brought fewer than 2,000 loyal Gers fans to the stadium, and no, that’s not a typo – we really mean TWO thousand.)

But it wasn’t just Celtic who took advantage – in four of the other nine seasons of that decade the league title went to the smaller clubs (Aberdeen three times, Dundee Utd once), and it would have been five if not for the most infamous last-day implosion in Scottish football history robbing Hearts of the 1985/86 flag.

In other words, in a 10-team division fully 50% of the participants were mounting realistic challenges for the title – a feat probably never replicated anywhere else in the world in the history of football. The Scottish Premier Division was almost certainly the most competitive club league on the face of the planet, and such a healthy state of affairs was reflected on the broader stage.

Aberdeen won the European Cup-Winners’ Cup (with an all-Scottish team) in 1983, defeating Bayern Munich and Real Madrid to secure the trophy, and also beat that year’s European Cup champions SV Hamburg to join the illustrious list of winners of the Super Cup. The next season Dundee United got to the semi-final of the European Cup (with the Dons making the Cup-Winners’ Cup semis), and three years later Jim McLean’s men reached the final of the UEFA Cup, knocking out Barcelona along the way but losing the final 2-1 to IFK Goteborg.

The nature of Old Firm weakness changed between the late 1980s and the mid-1990s. David Murray had arrived at Rangers and was pouring money into the club, attracting big-name England internationals with the promise of European competition after English clubs were banned in the aftermath of Heysel. But while Rangers grew stronger Celtic weakened, and the Parkhead side hovered on the brink of bankruptcy for several years before being rescued by Fergus McCann in 1994.

As a result, the Scottish Premier Division remained competitive. Although that sounds a daft assertion in the wake of Rangers’ nine-in-a-row of league triumphs (1989-97), the fact remains that four different teams finished in second place over the period, with Celtic not managing to do it until 1996. Rangers’ average margin of victory in the league race during the nine-season run was under 7 points, which contrasts sharply with the typical modern-day gap between the Old Firm and the rest of 30+ points.

Indeed, over the entire 22-season lifespan of the old Premier Division, the Old Firm (in either order) took the top two spots just seven times, and five of those comprised the first two and last three seasons of the competition. Over a 17-year stretch in between, the Old Firm secured the 1 and 2 positions just twice. (Celtic-Rangers in 1978/79, and Rangers/Celtic in 1986/87.) In nine of the 22 seasons, the Old Firm couldn’t even both get into the top 3.

The SPL era, on the other hand, has seen Tweedlehun and Tweedlydee cosily slice up first and second place in 12 of its 13 seasons (the only blip being Hearts pipping Rangers to the runner-up spot by a single point in 2005/06). Where the Scottish Premier Division was the most competitive league in the world, the SPL is now the least competitive, and therefore one of the least healthy.

(During the life of the old SPD the Scotland international side qualified for World Cups in 1978, 1982, 1986 and 1998, and for European Championships in 1992 and 1996. Since the advent of the SPL in 1999, with the Old Firm hurling most of their money at foreign players, the national side hasn’t reached a single tournament finals.)

Of course, the game has changed since the Premier Division. The SPL, Sky TV, Champions League and Bosman have all conspired – entirely by design – to make life harder for the smaller teams and cement the dominance of the bigger ones who can command higher TV audiences. Even this, though, is a slightly misleading picture.

Media pundits are fond of pointing out that Sky’s interest in the SPL would plummet if it no longer had Old Firm games to offer its subscribers, and this is undoubtedly true. What nobody points out, however, is that the OF hog so much of the Sky money for themselves that even a massively-reduced deal from terrestrial broadcasters would be more evenly distributed in a notional post-Rangers world, and so would likely end up with the smaller teams seeing fairly similar amounts of money to what they get now.

By way of illustration of the sort of sums involved, we examined the 2010 public accounts of Motherwell, who finished 6th in the SPL in 2010/11. Their total income from TV and radio was just over £1.2m. We’d imagine the bulk of that came from the Sky deal, but some will also be from elsewhere, eg the BBC rights to highlights packages and radio coverage. Arbitrarily, then, let’s say Sky is worth £1m a year to Motherwell, out of the total £16m that Sky pay the SPL every year.

A typical home game at the average 2010/11 Fir Park attendance of 5,660 will generate something very roughly in the region of £225,000. If Sky disappeared and nobody took up the live-TV rights at all, the club would need to either play four extra home games OR attract an extra 1300 fans to each game to compensate, OR reduce its annual wage bill of a startling £3.3m, or some combination of the three.

In a more competitive league with more chance of European football, that’s hardly an impossible dream – for reference, in 2007/08 when Motherwell finished 3rd their average attendance was around 1000 higher, at 6,600. The further 300 extra was achieved as recently as 2004/05.

But even beyond that, the data in the early part of this feature (which is broadly reflected for all other Scottish sides, not just Aberdeen, but we’d be here all day if we were to list every one) proves that the crucial core principle remains the same – a team with a better chance of even the mildest definition of success, eg qualifying for Europe or reaching a domestic cup final, will see a large upshoot in its attendance figures, and more than enough to compensate for the less-frequent visits of Rangers/Celtic fans or a drop in TV money. And the prime driver of that increased prospect of success is the weakness (or absence) of at least one of the Old Firm.

For all the commentators asserting that Scottish football would collapse – either in footballing terms or economic ones – should Rangers FC not make it out of season 2011/12 alive, the numbers simply don’t add up.

[Kowalski]

[eFestivals]

it looks like Whyte has done a runner with £24M

the £24M he got from Ticketus for selling the season ticket rights can't be found according to the administrators.

[Kowalski]

Ticketus seem to have been incredibly stupid, I'm not sure they'll get much of their money back.

[eFestivals]

Here's a picture of Craig Whyte passing through an airport earlier today:

so it looks like we now know why he was flying out of the country.

[Kowalski]

http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/4135658/Craig-Whyte-advisor-is-a-porn-star.html

You couldn't make this stuff up!

[metallimuse]

There was something in today's Metro about a £25 milliion loan not going through the clubs books,how can Whyte still claim he's done nothing wrong?

[metallimuse]

Someone just told me to take the 1st letter of the top four teams in ascending order from 4th in the SPL and look what it spells...the bastard.

Fair play,was quite funny though.

[Kowalski]

THE administrators running Rangers said today the expected announcement on job losses at the club has been delayed until tomorrow.

They had been set to chop 11 players. And Record Sport revealed that those who survive the cull will have their wages slashed by half.

But discussions over how to cut costs at Ibrox have continued into today and several players who were on international duty were still making their way home to Scotland.

Manager Ally McCoist met with the administrators from Duff and Phelps, who issued a statement saying the job cull had been postponed.

The statement read: "Duff and Phelps, the administrators of Rangers Football Club, advise there will be no announcement today in relation to staffing levels in any department of the club.

"Discussions are ongoing regarding potential cost-saving measures and announcements will be made at the earliest opportunity, most likely tomorrow."

It’s believed all the Rangers players agreed to the wages cut in advance of the hitlist being drawn up to avoid even more heads being put on

the chopping block.

It is also understood McCoist will demand his own salary be reduced dramatically but club sources stressed he was struggling to come to terms with the numbers.

The cuts are much more swingeing than he or anyone else had thought and by the time all the players on the list have been tapped on their shoulders, it willbe one of the blackest periods in the club’s long history.

This is the time everyone connected with Rangers has been dreading but the club’s administrators insist the wage bill must be cut savagely now if the club are to struggle on.

Fear has been stalking the corridors of the training complex and Ibrox since the club slipped into administration and although chief operating officer Ali Russell and director of football Gordon Smith were axed last week, the cull begins in earnest today.

It remains to be seen if McCoist will also lose valuable and trusted members of his backroom staff.

The manager couldn’t be contacted last night but he’s said to be "devastated" by the cuts and the loss of people he considers friends.

The reduction means McCoist will be left with barely enough players to come up with a match-day squad and although he’d wanted to distance himself from the process he’s had to accept that he can’t step back.

He is aware of the list and it’s believed one of the names on it is that of Lee McCulloch, who has been a stalwart for Rangers.

McCulloch has always put this club first and although all the job losses will come as severe blows to every player his will be one of the unkindest cuts of all.

A player of many positions McCulloch’s departure will have a massive effect on dressing-room morale. That, of course, will leave McCoist with a seemingly impossible task.

He will have to work wonders if he’s to talk the remaining players around in time for Saturday’s match against Hearts because a thick cloud of depression will fall like a heavy shroud over Murray Park as the players are called in to be told that for them it’s time up.

They will have their contracts torn up and be told to pack their belongings.

Then they’ll say their goodbyes and drive out through the Murray Park gates for the final time.

Other players, Sasa Papac and Dorin Goian, have already spoken of their fears that they’ll be part of the Ibrox exodus and it has also been suggested reserve keeper Neil Alexander, striker David Healy and Kirk Broadfoot could also be on the list.

The fact is only those players with high residual values, players like Steve Davis, Allan McGregor and Steven Naismith, can be certain of avoiding the axe when it falls this morning.

Duff and Phelps have started legal action in London in an attempt to persuade a judge to force Collyer Bristow to open up their books and release money they insist belongs to Rangers.

It’s believed there could be as much as £4million of the club’s money in the Collyer Bristow client account which Craig Whyte set up last year when putting together his takeover strategy.

The client account is also where the £24m Whyte raised through his deal with Ticketus was deposited and this arrangement is also likely to become a court case.

It’s been shown Whyte’s plan was flawed from the very beginning and serious questions about the legality of the entire process are being asked.

Some sources close to what is a rapidly developing as a scandal believe Whyte and Rangers’ company secretary Gary Withey must be called to account for the mess into which Rangers have descended since the takeover was signed and sealed on May 6 last year.

And late last night it was reported that Withey, a partner with Collyer Bristow, might no longer be in position. If so, that’s one loss no Rangers fan will lament.

The administrators have been pursuing Withey since they took over but have been disappointed and angered because they believe he could have been more co-operative.

[Kowalski]

Duff and Phelps statement

1. "We are announcing today we are accelerating the sale of Rangers Football Club. The club is in a perilous financial situation and that should not be under-estimated. Regrettably, we have been unable to agree cost-cutting measures with the playing staff on terms that will preserve value in the business. We understand the players' position as the scale of wage cuts required to achieve these savings without job losses were very substantial indeed...

2. "In view of this, we are faced with a situation of making redundancies within the playing staff on such a scale that would materially erode the value of the playing squad. We are striving to strike a balance where cost-cutting measures can be implemented but do not destroy the fabric of the playing squad to the extent that it will inhibit the prospect of a sale...

3. "However, no one should be in any doubt that in the absence of sufficient cost-cutting measures or receipt of substantial unplanned income, the club will not be able to fulfil its fixtures throughout the remainder of the season...

4. "As a result, we are expediting the sale process and over the next few days we will be holding discussions with prospective purchasers who have declared their interest. The Manager, Ally McCoist will play an integral part in these discussions. If, however, it becomes apparent that the sale process cannot be accelerated there will be no choice but to implement very severe cost cutting measures at the club."

[Kowalski]

Rangers owner Craig Whyte 'not fit and proper' person, rule Scottish FA

The Scottish FA have stated that Rangers owner Craig Whyte is “not considered to be a fit and proper person to hold a position within association football”.

In a statement, Scottish FA chief executive Stewart Regan said: “I can confirm that the Scottish FA convened a Special Board Meeting at Hampden Park today to discuss the findings of the Independent Inquiry into Rangers FC, prepared by the Chair, The Right Honourable Lord William Nimmo Smith.

"Principally, it is the belief of the Board, taking into account the prima facie evidence presented today, that Mr Craig Whyte is not considered to be a Fit and Proper person to hold a position within Association Football.

"We will be writing to Mr Whyte in relation to those findings and shall seek a response within seven days.

"The report submitted by Lord Nimmo Smith, having been considered fully by the Board, highlights a number of other potential rule breaches by the club and its owner. The report will now be used as evidence and forwarded to a Judicial Panel for consideration and determination as per the protocol.

"As such, the report’s contents will not be published at this time. Nevertheless, I can confirm that the club is facing a charge of bringing the game into disrepute."

[eFestivals]

Well, it's a step forwards I suppose, even if it's a year too late.

It stops the c**t buying it back from admin which was always his plan.

When they going for Murray who only sold out to Whyte cos he knew he'd run the club into an unsustainable position by taking the money and running?

And the other directors & ex-directors who are lining themselves up to be the saviours when they hold no less responsibility?

And of course the adminstrators themselves, who are the ones who colluded with both Whyte & Murray and had their hands in the till by doing so?

[Paul ™]

News that Kilmarnock player Liam Kelly's dad, who had a suspected heart attack just after the final whistle went, where Killie beat Celtic in the League Cup has sadly passed away.

Sad weekend for football