John Clark Meets “The SFA”

Regular posters and contributors to the SFM may remember that in October last year I wrote to Mr McRae, President of the SFA.

I posted the text of my letter on 28th October http://www.sfmonitor.org/whose-assets-are-they-anyway/?cid=20786

I had not received a reply or acknowledgement by 12th December, so I sent a reminder. I received a reply to that reminder, dated 16 December 2015, in which Mr McRae apologised for not having responded to my previous letter, and invited me to come and see him. We arranged that I should visit him at Hampden on 19 January 2016 at 2.00 p.m. Continue reading

Two wrongs and a right

The John James blog has of late thrown up many hooks to hang our theories on and provided much food for thought on the Rangers issue.

His casual invective against individuals, particularly Dave King, and often members of the Bench is not particularly SFM-like in its approach, but despite the industrial nature of much of the discourse, the value of his work cannot be denied. Continue reading

LNS – A Summary

 

cropped-sfmSquare.pngLNS is currently back in the headlines. It might therefore be a good time to try to set out a timeline describing correspondence we had with the representatives of the authorities over discrepancies and anomalies that appeared to have arisen. None of this is necessarily predicated upon the recent findings of the CoS in the Big Tax Case, but stands on its own.

Back in February 2014 The Scottish Football Monitor wrote to Harper MacLeod, the law firm that the SPL had engaged to gather evidence for the Lord Nimmo Smith (LNS) Commission investigating the full and proper registration of players paid by Rangers Football Club under Employee Benefit Trust (EBT) arrangements.

Continue reading

Whose assets are they anyway?

It has recently been suggested to me quite strongly by two separate Finance Industry experts that no matter the outcomes of the forthcoming criminal trials into the sale of Rangers and the subsequent disposal of the liquidated assets, it is highly unlikely that the sale will be reversed. In fact BDO (the liquidators of Rangers) see the path of least resistance to any remedy (if guilty verdicts are returned) through the professional indemnity insurance held by organisations involved (I am choosing my words carefully here to comply with the rules surrounding the court case). Continue reading

SFM Podcast #6: Dave King & Oldco

davidLowDavid Low spoke to SFM today about the latest focus on Rangers Oldco, but thinks that Dave King’s words about Oldco being the real Rangers matters less to King than the increasingly improving health of the Oldco, now in liquidation.

In the last week it has emerged that HMRC may have lost their appeal against the improper use of EBTs, and that coupled with Dave King’s £20m claim being thrown out, has reduced liabilities so dramatically that Oldco could be solvent – especially if the asset sale from Oldco to Sevco Scotland is overturned as a consequence of current criminal proceedings involving all parties to that sale. Continue reading

Redistribution of Football Income – The Human Dilemma

“Anyone read Michael Grant’s article in The Times? Only saw a pull-quote but the headline is about not everyone cheering for Celtic to European success since the financial windfall will put them too far ahead of the other clubs. It’s that old UEFA distribution thingy. Auldheid had a sensible alternative a while back.”

Thanks Danish Pastry for giving Big Pink the opportunity to nudge me (over a coffee I paid for – so how’s that for redistribution of income? 🙂 ) to blog again on the issue of redistribution of UEFA money whilst he was advocating gate sharing as an alternative. Continue reading

Why We Need to Change

Over the past couple of years, we have built a healthy, vibrant and influential community which recognises the need to counter the corporate propaganda spouted by the mainstream media on behalf of the football authorities.

The media have, not entirely but in the main, been hostage to the patronage of those in charge of the club/media links, and to the narrow demographic of their readership. Despite a continuing rejection of the media’s position by that readership (in terms of year on year slump in sales) there is an obstinate refusal to see what is by now inevitable – the death of the print media. The lamb metaphor in fact ironically moving to the slaughter. Continue reading