The Official Football Thread (Soccer)

**afroloq** · 05-08-2012, 05:07 AM

Bummer...the Chelsea v AC Milan game will be played now in Florida (and the Dolphins Stadium) instead of here in DC.

Now all we get this year is the Liverpool v Tottenham game in Baltimore.

**Weeto** · 05-08-2012, 05:50 AM

In Scotland, Hibernian beat Dunfermline 4-0 last night to send the Pars crashing into the First Division. That means Ross County will come up to the Scottish Premier League to replace them.

The league championship was clinched long ago by Celtic due to the various problems Rangers have had, such as a 10 point deduction and massive question marks hanging over the future of the club. Back in November it looked like a certainty that Rangers were going to be 4 in a row champions and now it isn't even 100% certain they will retain their SPL place as there is another vote about rule changes on the 30th of this month that could cause Rangers to be handed draconian punishments by the other clubs despite the club in general not being at fault but the current owner, Craig Whyte being the person responsible. The club is on the verge of being sold to US tow truck tycoon Bill Miller yet the Scottish Football Association and Scottish Premier League seem to determined to punish the club further despite the debt problems and financial irregularities being caused by a combination of the previous David Murray ownership and Craig Whyte who has been banned for life from being involved in Scottish football. If Bill Miller takes over, then the club should have a clean slate and anything that was caused by previous ownership should be on their shoulders and not the club staff, players and supporters. The Scottish Football League side Livingston had a tyrant owner a few years ago who was bought out by concerned fans and the SFL punished the clubs for the sins of the previous owner by relegating them to the Third Division despite the new owners having clean hands in regards to the club finances.

Bill Miller is talking about creating a 'cocoon' company to take over Rangers which would basically be a new company and there is talk about massive points deductions, the league taking 75% of Rangers' league payments for three years and maybe not even allowing the club to play in the SPL but Division Three of the SFL.

This a ludicrous way to encourage teams not to end up in financial difficulty. Several possible owners have walked away because of this crazy business and it just seems like spiteful bile from clubs like Celtic who feel they have something to gain from a weak Rangers.

Rangers are the most decorated club in the world, having won more trophies than anyone else, more league championships (54) and more trebles (7) than anyone else and a 140 year history of massive success.

Anyone would want to risk the future of the biggest club in the country is mad. Even the most Celtic crazy fan must surely see that without the 4 marquee 'Old Firm' games per season, the Scottish game has practically no selling points. If Rangers should disappear or leave the SPL then the current lucrative TV contract isn't worth the paper it is written on and it could cause the SPL to become some really weak Irish style league with 2,000 crowds and no decent players.

Without either Old Firm club, the competition would fall apart. Instead of 50 and 60 thousand crowds at the biggest games, you would be lucky to get 15 to 20 thousand for the most important games at Celtic Park if there were no Rangers. Less than 20 years ago it looked almost certain that Celtic were history but they were bailed out at the last moment. They weren't even going to get the luxury of a prolonged period of administration as the Bank of Scotland were going to immediately liquidate the club at the time.

**Prime** · 05-08-2012, 06:25 AM

Sigh,

Weeto, despite your "a big boy did it and ran away" defence you missed out a few key facts there.

For anyone that cares ( i'm sure not that's a lot of the rest of the board)

Rangers are currently under investigation for illegal registration of players going back 14 years, as well as awaiting the result of an appeal against a tax assesment from the revenue for circa £49m plus another £14m in unpaid taxes from this year alone, and an outstanding conceded £4m bill they haven't paid.

All in all their total liabiliaties for a club with a turnover normally circa £50m has been given by their adminstrators as round about £134m.

This has now got to the point where there is talk about walking away from these debts, and starting a new club.

At this point I should point out that rather than being "Spiteful" fans only wanting this, it's actually 95% of the other fans.
(source http://www.splsurvey.co.uk/)

So that's admitted non paying of tax this season (not paying payroll taxes), and seasons past with the "small tax case", the "big tax case" appeal pending on another 10 years+ of this. (they have been given a bill for this non payment they are disputing this)
On top of that the illegal registration of players with hidden 2nd contracts, contrary to league rules, means they have commited sporting fraud over these years as well, which means they really shouldn't have had any of those trophies during that time...

Yet as you can see somehow letting them walk away from the debts, come straight back in to to the top league with minimal punishments is seen as draconian by their supporters?

I don't quite get that.

Is it really sport if one team hasn't been following the rules that everyone else has?

Oh and Bill Miller has just walked away after all...

**Weeto** · 05-08-2012, 09:26 AM

There doesn't seem to be a massive amount of evidence to either side of the arguement in regards to the second contract thing (for 11 years, btw) and the club haven't payed tax bills THIS season (because of Craig Whyte) but the other 'bills' are disputed and no liability for these has been proven in court.

The fact is that the current owner, Craig Whyte has been judged 'unfit' to be involved with football and any punishments should be issued by a court and dealt with by HIS solicitors and not people involved in the club after the takeover period. He promised the club money which was not paid and he should be liable for the problems the club has run into on his watch.

As far as these fan polls are concerned, they're nearly always massively biased against the team involved. I remember similar polls conducted when Celtic were in trouble and they were hugely against Celtic. Not to mention it is likely that sockpuppet voting was used in both cases.

The thing is that any new owner should be able to run the club as a clean entity and any of the previous liabilities should be split between Whyte (in terms of the current tax bills and the money he stole from the club in regard to Ticketus giving him £28m that the club has to pay back to fund his takeover) and David Murray (if these previous tax cases have any foundation) rather than making the club face this as the fans and any new board should not have to face sanctions because of prior dealings.

Quite why fans of other clubs, especially Celtic, seem to think that the club should be thrown out of the league because of the actions of Craig Whyte, who should never have had control of the club in the first place and made a series of broken promises is a mystery to me? Any club could be targetted by a conman in the same way, heck even big continental sides like Marseille, AC Milan, Juventus, Inter Milan and Porto have been involved in far worse financial issues than this (in their cases match fixing and corruption) while Rangers have been involved in a questionable player tax scheme and haven't paid their way for a single season otherwise.

If this was ANY other club, including Celtic, I would feel the same way as I think the people involved in this financial mess should be the people forced to sort it out as the 50,000 people who attend home matches or the other clubs that get the huge travelling support at their stadiums and the TV money generated by Rangers should not have to suffer.

The money men should be the people hit by punishment, leave the fans, the players and the staff alone.

The other way to see this is that the TV contract with Sky and ESPN would be null and void if Rangers were out of the SPL, the Old Firm matches wouldn't happen, the cash generation potential would shrink massively and there would be a massive amount of ill will from Rangers fans (who are the biggest supported team in Scotland by a mile) which could sink the SPL anyway.

I've heard all this talk from Celtic fans that they would boycott any stadium of a team that voted to support Rangers in this dispute, well the thing is that Rangers fans could easily do the same thing the other way, more than nullifying any Celtic threat.

**afroloq** · 05-08-2012, 09:38 AM

...continue...

**Jim T.** · 05-08-2012, 09:41 AM

I like that we have our own Lil' Old Firm Derby going on here

**Prime** · 05-08-2012, 09:48 AM

Since there's probably not going to be any next season....

**Weeto** · 05-13-2012, 09:12 AM

Manchester City have won the English Premier League. They were trailing QPR 2-1 until they got an Edin Dzeko header and a Sergio Arguero winner in stoppage time for a 3-2 victory and their first title win. Manchester United's 1-0 victory over Sunderland was not enough and City win on goal difference.

In other news, Charles Green and his London consortium have agreed to buy Rangers and the deal is likely to go through fully on June 6th.

**Jim T.** · 05-14-2012, 03:22 AM

My condolences to Nick T. I was on the road to my Mom's as they were entering injury time and I nearly tweeted "congrats" to him, thinking there was no way City could find a way back.