The connivance of the SPL Board:
Dear all,
Many thanks for your contribution and support over the last two weeks in trying to deliver a programme of change that will move Scottish football forward whilst addressing the need to deal with the Rangers matter with integrity and in line with our own values as an organisation.
I was hugely encouraged with where we got to last night on a long and tiring phone call and I thank all of you for your efforts to move this issue forward.
I thought it would be helpful if I summarised where I think we are:
1. The Rangers Football Club will be relegated to the 1st Division of the SFL with immediate effect and will be replaced in the SPL by Dundee FC.
2. The television rights for Rangers FC matches in the SFL will be purchased by the SPL for the sum of A£1m as a one-off fee for the season 2012/2013.
3. The two leagues will merge into a single league body - The Scottish Professional Football League - effective season 2013/14 - with a working party set up immediately involving representatives from the SPL, SFL and (if required) the Scottish FA to plan the integration of the two bodies - people, rules, rebranding, commercial considerations and so on.
4. A new Board of Directors will be appointed to govern the single league. The make up of this Board will consist of an Independent Chairman, CEO, 3 representatives from the Premier League, 2 representatives from the Championship/Leagues 1 & 2 and 2 Independent Non-Executive Directors.
5. Play-offs will be introduced immediately with the first matches taking place at the end of the coming season 2012/2013.
6. Enhanced parachute payments will be implemented from the end of the season 2012/2013 to soften the landing for club(s) relegated from the Premier League.
7. A revised all-through distribution model will be put in place to provide: a) An all-through distribution model for clubs 1-22 and a minimum guarantee for 20 clubs in Leagues 1 & 2, equivalent to what they would earn under the current settlement agreement.
8. A Pyramid System will be put in place which open up the bottom of League 2 effective from the end of season 2013/2014 with the first opportunity for promoted clubs to enter the league being 2014/15 thus allowing for licensing to take place.
9. Consolidation below the Third Division to take place to create a Lowland & Highland League structure effective 2014/15 with appropriate play-offs and promotion/relegation to be put in place. Clubs to be briefed that the previous season 2013/2014 will involve the opportunity to enter play-offs for the first time.
In terms of actions/timings I think the following needs to happen in this coming week:
A) A joint statement today from all 3 bodies confirming that productive discussions have taken place on a new blueprint for Scottish football. Consultation will continue over the next two weeks with a view to clubs getting together week commencing 2nd July to try and agree the way forward. (D Broadfoot to provide this and circulate to DL/ND for approval)
B) Rod P / Jim B to finalise the all-through financial model by Wednesday this week latest.
C) Neil / David to finalise the detail on Governance, Commercials and Play-Offs (ideally Monday/Tuesday) and incorporate these, plus the financials in B) above into a legally binding Heads of Terms 'draft' for presentation to each league body w/c 2nd July.
D) DL to organise SFL Board Meeting w/c 25th June to gain buy-in to the plan and also arrange an all club meeting w/c 2nd July
E) ND to gain support from SPL Clubs 28th June
F) SFL Clubs Meeting to be planned for 3rd July
G) SPL Club Meeting to be planned for 4th July
H) Scottish FA Board to sign off on the final plan post 4th July. Subject to approval all bodies (including Newco) to sign legal documentation.
I) Agree joint communication strategy
J) In parallel to A-D above, could Rod Petrie please brief Charles Green confidentially on the discussions from a Scottish FA perspective so that there are 'no surprises' and there is a general acceptance of the plan plus all of the other conditions discussed e.g. transfer embargo, fines, repayment of football debt, waiving rights to legal challenge, acceptance of relegation and so on.
K) Andrew to ensure our check list of disclosures relating to Newco and Fit & Proper Person criteria are delivered by 2nd july. The Board will need these plus the Heads of Terms above in order to complete this plan.
The Scottish FA Board have agreed to provide a one-off restructuring budget of £1m on condition the above plan is delivered.
I hope this covers everything.
Speak soon...now off to the airport!
Regards
Stewart
Stewart - Stewart Regan, SFA Chief Exec
Rod P - Rod Petrie, Hibs Chairman
Jim B - Jim Ballantyne, Airdrie Chairman
Neil/ND - Neil Doncaster, SPL, Chief Exec
David/DL - Daid Longmuir, SFL Chairman
Andrew - Andrew Dickson, Rangers' Head of Football Admin (?)
---------- Post added 15.07.2012 at 03:43 ----------
SFL chairmen bestow a new, if fragile, sense of optimism
Perhaps football isn't the most corrupt sport on the planet after all. Last week it was revealed that the former Fifa president João Havelange and executive committee member Ricardo Teixeira had pocketed "commissions" worth millions. Neither of them, though, will face criminal charges because of another obscene backroom deal in world football's equivalent of Tammany Hall. Two days later, on Friday the 13th, a young Scottish football administrator called David Longmuir stepped reluctantly into the spotlight, licked his lips nervously and began the task of giving the game back its soul.
Longmuir is chief executive of the Scottish Football League and a few minutes earlier his members – the bakers and candlestick-makers who run Scotland's lower-league clubs – had decided by a 25-5 majority to put "newco" Rangers into the Scottish Third Division. Longmuir duly stepped forward, delivered the clubs' verdict and spoke eloquently about integrity and sporting fairness being the cornerstones of Scottish football's creaking edifice. "The balancing act was the cash value of sporting fairness versus the cash value of the sporting economy. I think you can recover from financial failure, but it is very difficult when you start hindering the process of fairness," he said.
Thus Rangers, winners of more domestic league titles than any other club in world football, will kick off the new season on 28 July in the Ramsdens Cup, against Brechin City. As this is an away tie for Rangers, they will be visiting a ground, Glebe Park, that holds 3,960 souls and has a nice wee hedge running around part of its perimeter. It will be the start of at least a three-year spell in purgatory for Rangers, in which they will have an opportunity to purify themselves of a decade of financial doping during which they stand accused of breaking every significant rule in the Scottish FA's articles of association. The evidence against them has yet to be examined by the appropriate authorities. What happened to them on Friday was not a punishment; it was simply a consequence of them having been liquidated.
In a rare outbreak of biblical exegesis, words such as "Armageddon" and "Apocalypse" were being deployed indiscriminately in the Scottish press to describe what might happen to the game north of the border if Rangers were banished to the bottom tier.
Numbers were materialising from some of Scotland's more febrile imaginations suggesting Scottish football would be driven to bankruptcy if the SPL was to be deprived of Rangers for more than one season. Sky Television and its Scottish football broadcasting partners ESPN were on the brink of pulling the plug on their TV deals because of the prolonged absence of a Celtic v Rangers fixture on the schedules. This, we were told, could result in several heavily indebted SPL clubs going to the wall.
The message to the chairmen of the lower-league clubs ahead of Friday's meeting was clear: if you vote Rangers into the Third Division rather than the First, you will wreak a terrible financial pestilence upon our game. The people who run these clubs, however, are men and women who know what it is like to cajole a local business through straitened financial circumstances. So they ignored the predictions of fiscal meltdown and voted with their consciences. Thus far there have been no sightings of a man on a pale horse.
The only official responses from Sky and ESPN have been prudent and statesmanlike. Neither of them would be walking away from the game and each intended to be a long‑term partner of Scottish football.
It would be foolish not to acknowledge that some downward recalibration of existing broadcasting contracts will occur. After all, for three years at least there will be no Old Firm league meetings, the fixture that adds the zeros to the deals. But the Scottish Cup and League Cup will provide ample opportunity for everyone to receive their Old Firm fix. Celtic and Rangers have met on 12 occasions in various cup encounters since 2000. Is it beyond the scope of the dealmakers' imaginations to find a way of reviving the old Glasgow Cup as a means of ensuring the Old Firm battle of the ages continues uninterrupted? This could take the form of an annual pre-season tournament, bolstered by a couple of major continental clubs, and act as a sweetener to the main broadcast deal.
Scotland, a nation of 5.5 million, has four senior football leagues comprising 42 clubs. England has 10 times Scotland's population but barely twice the number of clubs. The unpalatable truth is that Scotland is carrying a lot of ballast and some of it can easily be offloaded. At least four SPL clubs are carrying crippling debt burdens. Administration and liquidation, followed by a few years contemplating their financial incontinence, will not be the worst thing to hit Scottish football.
Rangers' demise may also allow Scottish football to breathe a little more by providing opportunities to our native young talent. Celtic, free from the need to be ahead of Rangers, will have the opportunity to blood many more of the players emerging from its lauded Lennoxtown academy, which has become Scotland's de facto national centre of excellence. A cursory glance at the player rosters of most of Scotland's main clubs reveals at least one player whom Celtic have reared. Rangers, of course, will simply have to field more homegrown talent.
In total, 36 of Scotland's 42 clubs listened to their fans and acted against their own instincts. It is probably the first time in modern football history that the game's grassroots have felt their concerns were heard and duly acted upon. There is a new, if fragile, sense of optimism abroad.
There will, of course, be attempts this weekend by a rump of the SPL's most badly run and indebted clubs to obliterate this by engineering SPL2 and accommodate newco Rangers in it.
Such a move would damage Scottish football much more than the mere absence of Rangers or Celtic. For once trust is lost it is lost forever.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/jul/14/sfl-rangers-optimism
Oh, look, journalists are now writing articles about how Scottish football can survive without Rangers.
One would almost think they weren't willing to do any real journalism before for fear of getting of the wrong side of Rangers....
Cunts.
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