A Blog for Scottish Football Monitor by Stuart Cosgrove
At the height of summer of discontent I was asked to contribute to a BBC radio show with Jim Traynor and Jim Spence. ‘Armageddon’ had just been pronounced and if the media were to be believed Scotland was about to freeze over in a new ice-age: only a cold darkness lay ahead.
To get the radio-show off to a healthy and pretentious start I began by saying that Scottish football was experiencing an “epistemological break”. It was an in-joke with Jim Spence, who I have known since we were both teenage ‘suedeheads.’ I was a mouthy young St Johnstone fan and Jim was an Arabian sand-dancer. But even in those distant days, we shared a mutual distrust of the ‘old firm’ and in our separate ways wanted a better future for our clubs. We both grew up to become products of the fanzine era, Jim as a writer for Dundee United’s ‘The Final Hurdle’ and me as a staff writer for the NME. Without ever having to say it, we had both engaged in a guerrilla-war against what Aberdeen’s Willie Miller once characterised as “West Coast Bias”.
The term ‘epistemological break’ was shamelessly borrowed from French Marxist philosophy. It means a fundamental change in the way we construct and receive knowledge and although I used it on air as a wind-up to test Spencey’s significantly less-reliable Dundee schooling, deep down I meant it.
Social Media has proved to be one of the greatest disruptions in the history of the football supporter – greater than the brake clubs of the 19th century, the football specials on the 1970s; or the fanzine movement of the post-punk era. The pace of change in the way we send, receive and interrogate information has been so dynamic that it has wrong-footed administrators, asset strippers and sports journalists, alike. No matter who you support we are living through media history.
2012 had just witnessed an unprecedented summer of sport. The Olympics provided a snapshot of how sudden and pervasive the shift to social media has become. Over 40% of UK adults claim to have posted comments on websites, blogs or social networking about the Olympics and in younger age-groups that figure tips conclusively to a majority – 61% of 16-24’s posted Olympic comments. Think about that figure for a moment. Well over half of the young people in the UK are now participants in social media and pass comment on sport. The genie is out of the bottle and it will never be forced back. That is the main reason that Armageddon never happened: we no longer live in an age where the media can guarantee our compliance.
On the first day of the 2012-13-season, Rangers were in the deep throes of administration and facing certain liquidation. With no accounts to meet the criteria for SPL membership, one among a body of rules which the old Rangers had themselves been an architect of, the new Rangers could not be granted entry without a wholesale abandonment of the rules. It was not to be.
St Johnstone launched their new season at Tynecastle so I travelled with misplaced hope. We were soundly beaten 2-0 and both Hearts goals were entirely merited. On the day, I did a quick if unscientific survey of two supporters’ buses – the Barossa Saints Club, a more traditional lads-bus and the ‘208 Ladies’ a predominantly female and family-friendly bus. On both buses, over 75% of fans had mobile phones with 3G internet access and the majority of them posted updates or pictures before, during or after the match. They mostly posted via micro-blogging sites such as Facebook or Twitter, many commenting on the game, their day-out and the surroundings. Most were speaking to friends or rival fans. Some were publishing pictures and updating forums or blogs. And when he second a decisive goal went in some were undoubtedly taking stick from Gort, Webby DFC and DeeForLife, the pseudonyms of prominent Dundee fans, who as the newly promoted ‘Club 12’ were suddenly and very temporarily above St Johnstone in the SPL.
By my rough calculations, well over half the St Johnstone support was web-connected. I have no reason to think the Hearts supporters were any different. This small experiment reflects an unprecedented shift in the balance of communication in Scottish football and in the truest sense it is an ‘epistemological break’ with past forms of spectatorship. Social media has been widely misrepresented by old-style radio ‘phone-ins’ and by journalism’s ancien regime. The presumption is that people who are connected to the web are at home, in dingy rooms where they foam at the mouth frustrated by loneliness and mental illness. The term ‘internet bampots’ (coined by Hugh Keevins) and ‘keyboard warriors’ (Gordon Strachan) speaks to a world that is fearful of the web, irked by alternative opinions, and the threat that the new media poses to the traditional exchange of knowledge.
It further assumes that opinion from social networks is naïve, ill-informed, or unreasonable. Whilst some of this may be true, mostly it is not. No one would dispute that there are small enclaves of truly despicable people using social networks and comment sites, but they are overwhelmingly outnumbered by the multitude of fans who simply want to talk about their team and share their dreams and memories.
Social media is porous. By that I mean it has cracks, lacunae and fissures. This inevitably means that information leaks out. It can be shared, released and in some cases becomes so energetic it becomes a virus. It is no longer possible to ‘keep secrets’, to withhold information and to allow indiscretions to pass unnoticed. Newspapers have been caught in a whirlwind of change where views can be instantly challenged, authority quickly questioned and pronouncements easily disproved. Many papers – almost all in decline – have been forced to close down their comments forums. Undoubtedly some of that is due to breaches of the rules, the cost of moderation, and the rise in awareness of hate crimes. But another significant factor is that ordinary fans were consistently challenging the opinions and ‘facts’ that newspapers published.
Talking down to fans no longer works and we now have evidence – Armageddon did not happen. The beast that was supposed to devour us all was a toothless fantasy. In the more abrasive language of the terraces – Armageddon shat-it and didn’t turn up.
In one respect the myth of Armageddon was an entirely predictable one. Tabloid newspapers make money from scaring people – health scares, prisoners on the run, fear of terrorism, anxiety about young people, and most recently ‘fear’ of Scottish independence is their stock in trade. Almost every major subject is raised as a spectre to be fearful of. Most newspapers were desperate to ‘save Rangers’ since they themselves feared the consequences of losing even more readership. It was easier to argue that a hideous financial catastrophe would befall Scottish football unless Rangers were fast-tracked back into the SPL. Newspapers found common cause with frightened administrators who could not imagine a world without Rangers, either.
So we were invited to endorse one of the greatest circumlocutions of all time – unless you save a club that has crashed leaving millions of pounds of debt, the game is financially doomed. You would struggle to encounter this bizarre logic in any other walk of life. Unless Rick Astley brings out a new album music will die. That is what they once argued and many still do. That is how desperately illogical the leadership in Scottish football had become.
Armageddon was a tissue of inaccuracies from the outset. It tried to script a disaster-movie of chaotic failure and financial disaster and at the very moment when senior administrators should have been fighting for the livelihood of the league, they were briefing against their own business.
Armageddon was a big inarticulate beast but it faced a mightier opponent – facts. One by one the clubs published their annual accounts. Although this was against the backdrop of a double-dip recession and fiercely difficult economic circumstances it was not all doom and gloom. The arrival of Club 12 (Dundee) meant higher crowds and the potential for increased income at Aberdeen, Dundee United and St Johnstone. To this day, this simple fact remains unfathomable to many people in the Glasgow-dominated media. The arrival of Ross County meant an exciting new top-tier local derby for Inverness Caley Thistle and a breath of fresh air for the SPL. St Johnstone insisted on the first ever SPL meeting outside Glasgow to reflect the new northern and eastern geo-politics of the Scottish game.
European football meant new income streams for Motherwell. Of course times were tight, football is never free from the ravages of the economy and some clubs predictably showed trading losses. But the underlying reasons were always idiosyncratic and inconsistent never consistent across the board. Inverness had an unprecedented spate of injuries and over-shot their budgets for healthcare and so published a loss £378,000.
Meanwhile Dundee United published healthy accounts having sold David Goodwillie to Blackburn. Celtic reached the Champion’s League group stages with all the new wealth it will bequeath. St Johnstone – led by the ultra-cautious Brown family – had already cut the cost of their squad, bidding farewell to the most expensive players Francisco Sandaza and Lee Croft. The club also benefited from compensation for their departed manager, Derek McInnes and player-coach, Jody Morris. Paradoxically, Bristol City had proven to be more important to the club’s income than Rangers. Again this was not part of the script and proved unfathomable (or more accurately irrelevant) to most in the Glasgow media.
Hearts failed to pay players on time due to serious restraints on squad costs and internal debt. They were duly punished for their repeated misdemeanours. Motherwell and St Mirren despite the economic challenges were navigating different concepts of fan ownership. By November most clubs – with the exception of Celtic – were showing increased SPL attendance on the previous season. Far from the scorched earth failure that we were told was inevitable what has emerged is a more complex eco-system of financial management, in which local dynamics and a more mature cost-efficient reality was being put in place.
It may well be that Armageddon was the last desperate caricature of a form of media that was already in terminal decline. Flash back to 1967 when Scottish football had a so-called ‘golden age’. There was European success, we tamed England at Wembley and names like Law and Baxter brightened dark nights. Back then access to knowledge was a very narrow funnel. Only a small cadre of privileged journalists had access to the managers and players, and so fans waited dutifully for the Daily Record to arrive at their door to tell them what was happening. That system of ‘elite access to knowledge’ was in its last decadent throes nearly thirty years later, when David Murray would dispense wisdom to his favoured journalists. We now know they drank fine wine and ate succulent lamb in Jersey and the most loyal attended Murray’s 50th birthday party at Gleneagles. One journalist was so proud of his invite he danced round the editorial office mocking those who had not been invited. This was the early height of the Rangers EBT era but it is now clear that difficult questions went unasked by either journalists or by football administrators.
Although it may not suit the narrative of this particular blog my first realisation that David Murray’s empire was living on leveraged debt was from a small cadre of Rangers fans. It was around the early years of the Rangers Supporter’s Trust (RST) and they were determined to shake more democracy from the Ibrox boardroom. Whilst real fans of the club argued from the outside, the press took Murray at his loquacious word. He was in many respects their benefactor, their visionary – their moonbeam.
By the 1990s onwards, football journalism had ritualised and festered around the inner sanctums at Ibrox. This was an era where relevance meant being invited to a ‘presser’ at Murray Park, having Ally’s mobile or playing golf with ‘Juke Box,’ ‘Durranty’ or ‘Smudger’. Many journalists, showing a compliant lack of self-awareness, would use these nicknames as if conveyed closeness, familiarity or friendship. It is desperately sad that careers have been built on such paltry notions of access and such demeaning obsequiousness.
Around this period I had become a freelance radio-presenter and was presenting Off the Ball with my friend Tam Cowan, a Motherwell fan. We both wanted to fashion a show which saw football not trough its familiar narratives, but through the lens of the ‘diddy’ teams, a term so demeaning that we tried to reclaim it. Refusing to peddle the inevitability of ‘old firm’ power we sensed that journalistic compliance at Ibrox was now so ingrained that it was ripe for satirising. This was the main reason that Off the Ball branded itself as ‘petty and ill-informed.’ It was a self-mocking antidote to those journalists that could ‘exclusively reveal’ breaking stories from ‘impeccable sources,’ which usually meant they had heard it on the golf-course, from Walter, a man who needed no surname.
Many fans are astonished when I tell them how the journalism of this era actually functioned. On Champions League nights, journalists from opposing papers gathered together to agree what to write. Circulation was in decline, money was tight, agency copy was on the increase and foreign trips were under-scrutiny. No one dared miss the ‘big story’. So sports journalists who commonly boasted about their toughness and who ‘feared no one’ were often so fearful of returning home having missed an angle, that they agreed by consensus to run with variations of the same story. Celtic fans may wish to recoil at the image – but journalists would go into a ‘huddle’ at the end of a press-conference to agree the favoured line.
So the summer of 2012 witnessed an ‘epistemological break’ in how knowledge and information was exchanged. But let me go further and taunt Jim Spence one more time. It was the summer we also witnessed an ‘amygdala-crisis’ exposing the way the media works in Scotland. Amygdala is the nuclei in the brain that manages our tolerance for risk and is the key that often unlocks creative thinking. Many people in relatively high places in the media – a creative industry – demonstrated that they could not conceive of change, nor could they imagine what football would look like if Rangers were not playing in the SPL. They not only resisted change but lacked the imagination to think beyond it. A common language began to emerge that tried to ward off risk and an almost a childlike fear of the dark. ‘Scottish football needs a strong Rangers,’ ‘But there will no competition’; ‘other clubs will suffer’; ‘Draw a line in the sand’; ‘It was one man – Craig Whyte’, ‘They’ve been punished enough’ and of course, the daddy of them all – ‘Armageddon.’
The biggest single barrier to change was the lingering and outmoded notion that Rangers subsidised Scottish football. As a supporter of a club that had spent seven economically stable years in a league that Rangers have never played in made me deeply suspicious and I was in the words of the we-forums ‘seething’ that St Johnstone were portrayed as somehow ‘dependent’ on a club that was already fatefully insolvent. Because so little is known about the experience of the fans of smaller clubs, they are often misrepresented. For seven years my friends and I, travelled home and away in the First Division, often narrowly missing out on promotion as rival clubs like Gretna, Dundee and Livingston all used money they did not have to ‘buy’ success. It remains an incontrovertible fact that St Johnstone FC has been among the most consistent victims of fiscal misdemeanour in Scottish football. That is the irreducible issue. Several clubs have very real reasons to loathe financial mismanagement, rogue-trading and those that gain unfair advantage on the back of unserviceable debt.
Social media has allowed these smaller incremental versions of history to be told when the established media had no interest in telling them. Blogs can dig deeper than the back pages ever can and fans are now more likely to meet on Facebook than on a supporter’s bus. Many players now bypass the press completely and tweet directly with fans. Rio Ferdinand’s recent attack on racism in English football has been conducted entirely via social media, over the heads of the press. In the Rangers Tax Case context, restricted documents are regularly shared online, where they can be analysed and torn apart. Those with specialist skills such as insolvency, tax expertise or accountancy can lend their skills to a web forum and can therefore dispute official versions of events.
Not all social media is good. Open-access has meant a disproportionate rise in victim culture. The ‘easily-offended’ prowl every corner of the web desperate to find a morsel that will upset them but that is a small price to pay for greater transparency and even the most ardent bore is no excuse for limiting the free exchange of information.
We have witnessed a summer of seismic change. A discredited era that largely relied on ‘elite access to knowledge’ has all but passed away and information, however complex or seemingly unpalatable, can no longer be withheld from fans. The days of being ‘dooped’ are over.
It has been a privilege to participate in the summer of discontent and I yearn for even greater change to come. Bring it on.
Stuart Cosgrove
Stuart Cosgrove is a St Johnstone fan. He was previously Media Editor of the NME and is now Director of Creative Diversity at Channel 4, where he recently managed coverage of the Paralympics, London 2012. At the weekend he presents the BBC Scotland football show ‘Off the Ball’ with Tam Cowan. He writes here in a personal capacity.
Should we not issue a warning for certain MSM journalists when quoting articles or paragraphs from articles. For example.
“Incoming Jabba Jobby read at your peril”.
Charlie Brown says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 18:10
Mikey as great a result as Celtic achieved on wednesday i don’t think it matters a jot to Celtic’s chances of ever getting to play in England. There is simply more clubs down there with ambitions and votes to dine at the top table themselves that would always vote to keep you (and any Scottish team) out. It would be additional competition they would neither welcome nor want imo.
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Completely agree. It would be the geese that lay the golden eggs voting for Christmas (to mangle a metaphor but you get the gist I hope)
I personally do not believe that Celtic will play in a league outside of Scotland in my lifetime. Neither do I want them to. A Scottish club playing in Scotland suits me just fine.
However if people have not learned through the Rangers case that conventional beliefs can be wrong, or that situations can change then maybe they should re-think things a bit.
Rangers will never go into administration.
HMRC will agree a CVA
They will take something rather than nothing.
Rangers will never go into liquidation, people would simply not let it happen.
We have seen all of that to be wrong. Rangers were sold for £1, they went into administration within a year and have now been liquidated.
Things change.
http://sport.stv.tv/football/video/1957731163001/
Pretty candid interview on the Hearts situation (apologies if posted already). Kind of encouraging.
Agrajag says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 18:41
I agree , I do not want Celtic to play outside Scotland but if it is true that Armageddon is upon us what other options would our major teams have. They will need to look to another format either within Scotland or Europe and as you say “Things Change”
You can forget Celtic or any other Scottish club playing in England at any level
Only special circumstances are taken into consideration by Uefa when allowing clubs to play
outwith their national borders, and the desire to make more money isnt one of them.
Personally even if it was feasible I would hate to see it happen
Agrajag says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 18:29
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From KDS in June:
Bravheart Promotions is run by Barry Hughes, the notorious “boxing promoter”.
The guy offering to pump £1million-plus into Brown’s takeover bid is “boxing promoter” Jonathan Hope.
Hope was spokesman for failed takeover bids for Raith Rovers and Queen of the South that were linked to Media Pro Sports and notorious “boxing promoter” Stevie Vaughan.*
*see Curtis ‘Cocky’ Warren.
timtim says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 18:48
Would the fact that Scottish football had imploded and the Scottish game was no longer be a “special case” At no time did I mention moving to England for financial reasons. I do however agree I would rather have Celtic playing in Scotland, however if that is not possible under the situation I describe , as I said previously all the major clubs left would need to look to see where they could play. The SFA is a dead man walking !!
TallBoy Poppy (@TallBoyPoppy) says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 18:53
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I think it’s censorship time again. Only some conspiracy theories allowed. Ones with proven links and evidence of those links don’t seem to be acceptable.
Even if all they are doing is posting material freely available on the net. Including videos made by the people themselves, and posed photographs.
iceman63 on Friday, November 9, 2012 at 16:00
35 3 Rate This
Rangers trust thing absolute desperation – SEVCO can’t float on the AIM – they don’t meet the criteria – they can’t raise enough in a private share issue from those with 500 quid to spend so now they are trying to squeeze the pennies out of those fans with least money. The end is nigh – this will raise less than a million – the share issue 4-5 mill tops – not enough. They have expenses of twenty million income of 11 -12 mill – SEVCO are going down!!!!
I will say by February at latest
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Another valentines day special?? <3 🙂
Mike there really would need to be Armageddon before it was entertained by Uefa
ie: the inability to form a pro league or serious security issues
but we are talking Lichtenstein Andorra or Derry City situations
I hope we are a long way away from that
In any case, Leeds United were never liquidated. Middlesbrough were and changed their badge and added “& Athletic Club” to their title. Charlton seem to have reformed in 1984.
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Puzzled at the number of TUs, were the facts wrong?
Charlie Brown says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 15:06
Charlie, speaking from personal and very much past experience, Tyncastle, for all the abuse, is one of my favourite places to visit as a Celtic fan; a proper, scary, intense, football ground (wonderful place to win; horrible place to lose 🙂 ). Don’t think you’ll have too many probelms selling the tickets.
Agrajag says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 15:34
So we think that the SFA / SPL / SFL will re-structure and will re-introduce a rule to suit one club and all of the other clubs, including any being disadvantaged will agree to this.
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I don’t believe they can manage it one one go. They will be forced to make them stay in the lower divisions for at least one more year.
Consider: there are 12 teams in the SPL who fulfill all the requirements. Then there are the following teams in division 1: Airdrie; Dunfermline; Fakirk;Hamilton; Livingstone; Raith Rovers; Thistle.
That’s 7 teams in a higher position than T’Rangers, all who have seating for 6,000 plus.IN fact apart from Hamilton the rest (except Falkirk who are very nearly there) have the 10,000 or more capacity required under the old rules (which BTW caused some clubs big financial efforts to comply with) and some even have stuff like under soil heating.
So that would mean they’d have to either introduce ridiculous rules like “wearing blue shirts with a TRFC crest” and “being managed by dog-whistle McCoist” or else have a division of 20 clubs. That would leave 22 clubs for the other division.
Yes, you could do it but it would be such an obvious fix (done with no consideration at all of what would be good for the game) it would have all the (non TRFC) fans up in arms. And there are other more pragmatic reasons against it.
First such a big division would mean surely only one Celtic/TRFC game a season, half what they had in the old setup. Then big TV money would be spread amongst more clubs, less for everyone.
And then the 2nd division clubs would be up in arms at not getting their chance at the TRFC bonanza (whether it really is or not many probably believe the propaganda).
And on top of that, though many clubs voted for the right thing last time because of fan pressure, a good number did because they believed it the right thing. They would vote against this and some of the others would too if only because of their fans.
This time some of those clubs likely to benefit – the ones mentioned above – would be sorely tempted to agree but one is Raith Rovers and the others had significant fan pressure to vote to put TRFC into the lowest division. I think there are enough who for selfish reasons or who do want reformation (sorry you ‘tic guys) to only have it done if it’s done properly.
Finally I’m not saying the guys like Regan, Ogilvy, Doncaster and some club chairmen wouldn’t like to put the fix in, just that they’ll probably know they can get away with it – at least with not as much as they’d like to.
Danish Pastry says: Friday, November 9, 2012 at 18:41
http://sport.stv.tv/football/video/1957731163001/
Pretty candid interview on the Hearts situation (apologies if posted already). Kind of encouraging.
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It was a decent interview with some good questions, but I think Fedotovas was pretty evasive with his answers and I didn’t get any great encouragement from it.
I noticed he was keen to separate the football club and its fans from the woes of the business. (where have I heard that one before).
He also alluded to Hearts debt to UBIG being £24M, today, but he issued the share offer with the debt figure given as £22M quoting the number from the June 2011 accounts. You would have to ask why. I still think that there remains more information that is not being disclosed.
easyJambo says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 19:32
Could the other £2m be the money for HMRC now and enough to cover the tribunal if you lose.
Agrajag says: Friday, November 9, 2012 at 19:37
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No, the club was still running at a substantial loss last season, but the accounts haven’t been issued as yet, and are unlikely to be issued before April / May 2013 based on recent experience.
The appeal for £2M is just the shortfall is cash to cover normal running costs this season, so the club is still losing money. Fedotovas believes that the club can break even next season, but it needs to get to the end of this one first.
yourhavingalaugh says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 17:03
Iceman63
You think Feb 2013 for that Duff&Duffer will be back in,
——
Personally, I think it’ll be Deloitte this time.
ordinaryfan says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 12:35
Did anyone hear Cosgrove mention to Jabba within the last couple of weeks on air that Ibrox could become a casino? Hearts could end up playing at Murrayfield, Tynecastle may well have been earmarked for re-development, casino, sports centre, as far back as 2003/2004. As could Ibrox. Corsica couldn’t put his finger on the money cleansing side of things, He thought maybe it was Dave King as he was the only one involved at RFC who had the level of wealth, he was looking in the wrong place, it is all to do with Las Vegas Sands, Las Vegas Sands intened on building a Super Casino in Europe, Madrid being the now chosen place, they need multiple laundries spread out across Europe. Lithuania, Scotland and England the most likely. Even good old Banstead in Surrey looks to be in their sights for a new Casino-Leisure Centre. I know how outlandish this all sounds. However I would like to hear RTC and Barcabhoy’s opinion on this, I doubt they will deny this is all correct. The missing link was Las Vegas Sands, I stumbled across it and all roads lead there. Believe it or not guys.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Banstead? Banstead?
Where have we heard of this place before?
Nah, couldn’t be, could it?
Agrajag says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 19:12
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I followed up on the Media Pro Sports story because I have an interest in QoS.If you remember, at the time there was talk of Sevco possibly buying up a team like Cowdenbeath in the event of there being no other parachute available, However I don’t think this particular bunch of chancers were ever connected in any other way. However, the ‘Barry Hughes photo op’ news management
episode was quite interesting.
http://www.rangerssupporterstrust.co.uk/item/rst-question-the-postponement-of-spl-investigation.html
Agrajag says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 18:41
Rangers will never go into administration.
HMRC will agree a CVA
They will take something rather than nothing.
Rangers will never go into liquidation, people would simply not let it happen.
——
And … the SFA will never make up new Rules to ease a TRFC upward trajectory through the Leagues.
Lord Wobbly says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 19:51
http://www.rangerssupporterstrust.co.uk/item/rst-question-the-postponement-of-spl-investigation.html
==============
“…Many Scottish clubs are in financial trouble yet thousands of pounds are being spent on a vendetta against Rangers Football Club.”
Why do we bother…? :furiouslybangingheadagainstbrickwall: 🙄
easyJambo says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 19:46
So where will the additional tax money come from, if the appeal is just for normal running costs.
easyJambo says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 19:32
1 1 Rate This
Danish Pastry says: Friday, November 9, 2012 at 18:41
http://sport.stv.tv/football/video/1957731163001/
Pretty candid interview on the Hearts situation (apologies if posted already). Kind of encouraging.
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It was a decent interview with some good questions, but I think Fedotovas was pretty evasive with his answers and I didn’t get any great encouragement from it …
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I can understand your pessimism but he didn’t come across as someone who was predicting a Tynecastle Armageddon. The encouraging bit I picked up was that they had been in contact with Romanov’s companies who understood the problem, gave a good response, and who promised to help out – although any funding would be a loan. I thought it was forward-looking but indicated the desire for greater fan involvment, financially. Could it all be brinkmanship to make sure fans put their hands in their pockets – and to prime them for leaner times ahead?
Agrajag says: Friday, November 9, 2012 at 20:04
easyJambo says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 19:46
So where will the additional tax money come from, if the appeal is just for normal running costs.
==================================
I’ve been asking the same question, but all you get is that they are confident of winning their appeal to the FTT. (seem to have heard that onbe before too)
There was a meeting of the Directors and John Robertson with Highland Hearts supporters groups in Inverness tonight where I assume the question was asked.
The response from Hearts official tweeter 🙁
Heart of Midlothian@JamTarts
Sergejus: Pretty confident of winning £1.75m tax case. Difficult to say how long case will take. #saveourhearts
SF: I would not rely on VR’s companies helping us out.
Danish Pastry says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 18:41
2 3 i
Rate This
http://sport.stv.tv/football/video/1957731163001/
Pretty candid interview on the Hearts situation (apologies if posted already). Kind of encouraging
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Sad to say it but the manner of the questioning there was more aggressive in that short 7 minutes than we have seen over the last 2 years since Rangers problems have entered the MSM.
That one single interview provides all the evidence required that we have a media who are afraid to dig holes in the wrong postcode, I could be wrong but I have never seen anyone connected with Rangers being questioned that directly.
That is the way everyone should be treated when a major item of public interest comes to light.
For the record, I thought he handled himself quite well.
Danish Pastry says: Friday, November 9, 2012 at 21:06
………. I thought it was forward-looking but indicated the desire for greater fan involvment, financially. Could it all be brinkmanship to make sure fans put their hands in their pockets – and to prime them for leaner times ahead?
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Strange, but I thought the reverse, i.e. that it was all short term. All they seem interested in is to get the immediate tax bill out the way then somehow limp through to the end of the season when the wage bill can be brought down further (Webster, Zaliukas, Driver & McGowan are all out of contract).
There was no information on how a big tax bill would be paid, other than a vague suggestion that funds may be available from one of Vlad’s companies. (contradicted this evening with a tweet quoting Feotovas “SF: I would not rely on VR’s companies helping us out.”
There was no indication of how the existing debt will be managed going forward. Interest alone is greater than £1M per annum.
What the fund raising effort needs to make it successful are assurances from Vlad that 1) any liability for the big tax case will be met. 2) he guarantees that the main part of the debt will not be called in anytime soon and that further write offs will resume as soon as it is economic for Vlad to do so.
In return, Hearts would agree to trading at no worse than a break even basis from next season onwards.
easyJambo says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 21:07
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As I understand the assessment for tax it goes something like this.
1, The amounts relate to players on loan from a Lithuanian club.
2, Hearts claim that they were not paying those players salaries, they were actually paying invoices raised by a Lithuanian club.
3, That club was actually paying the players wages, however it was in Lithuania, so no UK PAYE or NIC due. Any income tax would be due in Lithuania.
4, I have read someone trying to draw analogies with players on loan from one UK club to another. With it being the “donor” club paying PAYE and NIC.
I don’t think it’s an open and shut case, however given that the players are earning the money in the UK, by playing football for a UK team I would be surprised if you won it.
Jack Jonson for Caledonian Mercury defends succulent lamb churnalism.
http://caledonianmercury.com/2012/05/07/opinion-succulent-lamb-the-old-firm-and-scottish-journalism/0033077
Move along! Nothing to see here !
Agrajag says: Friday, November 9, 2012 at 21:38
======================
I haven’t heard anything about invoices previously. My understanding is that it it is a fairly straightforward case of Hearts paying a small salary to the “loanee” players in the UK while the players received the bulk of their income from Kaunas.
I don’t know if the Kaunas part was funded by Hearts via some internal transaction via UBIG or other party. If HMRC have evidence of Hearts paying the Kaunas element, then I don’t think Hearts will have a leg to stand on.
As you say, Hearts claim that the loan deals were similar to that widely used where the parent club pay part of their player’s wages while he is on loan to another club.
Some things that may help shed some light on it are the players contracts as lodged with the SFA/SPL. If they just cover the small salaries paid by Hearts then they are probably in the clear with the footballing authorities here, if not the taxman. I think Hearts offered themselves up for scrutiny in April following the SPL’s request for clubs to reveal any possible non contractual payments in the wake of the RFC debacle, and that their explanation was accepted by the SPL.
The other point is that some of the players allegedly involved, were signed by Kaunas but never played for them and in some cases never even set foot in Lithuania.
HMRC will contend that there is evidence of it simply being a tax dodge and have deemed that the players should be liable for full tax liablity as they only ever “worked” in the UK.
Just a thought,would the financial troubles of our football clubs have unintended consequences?
Maybe it would take football back to the fans rather than the prawn sandwich brigade “as Roy Kean called them ” I personally feel that we need a sort of revolution .How this revolution has to
begin I’am not sure but continueing down the road with the status quo is not an option would it …maybe ?
easyJambo says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 22:23
HMRC won’t contend anything, mate. It’s an appeal. It will be up to Hearts to prove (balance of probabilities) that no tax is due.
If this is true “The other point is that some of the players allegedly involved, were signed by Kaunas but never played for them and in some cases never even set foot in Lithuania.” it really doesn’t help that.
If Kaunas signed players, never played them and never even brought them to Lithuania but moved them to Hearts and they then plied their trade in the UK then it’s difficult to see how tax wasn’t due.
EJ,
What is the state of play in the Lee Wallace transfer fee money? TTasWell was saying the other day that no bank would lend on the strength of that debt anyway. So the immediate need is for £450k, is that right? 9,000 HoM fans x £50, is surely possible.
I’d even throw in a wee bit even though I can’t forget Willie Bauld’s blonde napper sticking in no 3 at Hampden in 1956, just when it looked to me that we might nick a draw. Is there an account set up? Put up the number.
willmacufree says: Friday, November 9, 2012 at 23:08
============================
Hearts are still due £500K, but aren’t scheduled to be paid until June or July 2013.
Chuckles Green is on record as having said that Hearts had offered him a discount of £100K if he paid up now. He turned down the request. I guess Hearts must be one of the teams in his little black book.
I think raising £450K will be achieved relatively easily, however, the club needs up to £2M to get through the season. I am less certain about achieving that figure, without some of the guarantees from Vlad that I mentioned in an earlier post.
willmacufree says: Friday, November 9, 2012 at 23:08
============================================
One of the Hearts directors said earlier this evening that an account for donations has been set up, but details haven’t been posted on the official site as yet.
The Hearts message board, Jambos Kickback has set up an appeal for funds that will be used to purchase shares. Details can be found here.
http://www.hmfckickback.co.uk/index.php?/topic/119854-jkb-collective-share-purchase/
I’ve worked here and abroad, within and across tax years, I’ve always had to take the responsibility myself that periods outside UK are taxable/non-taxable and that periods elsewhere are taxable/ non-taxable. Sometimes it works, sometimes all parties get it wrong, but it’s always me that ends up paying for it, but never anymore than I should have under either system. I’ve had to do this so often I’d say it’s normal that any countries tax autorities will help you stay within the law. Only once did I feel the heat, and, it was ‘cos I was in the wrong. Usually, HMRC will help to identify and correct ant anomally – I have been repaid by them once for tax taken at source in a south american country on the basis that they have a reciprocal with that country even though could not find any details of this agreement.
I can not abide this arguement that football players need to rely on others to sort this out for them. Enough dodgery please, work where you will ,pay what your due and live life and be happy. Too many tax accountants on here are being given oxygen – just pay the taxman, man!
assuming we can survive the immediate winding up order there really are only limited options for Hearts/UBIG if the tax case is lost and depending on whether HMRC seek only the tax payment or full interest and penalties added?
This investigation has been going on for some considerable time. It is referred to in at least the last 2 or 3 sets of published accounts so the nature of it and the approx amount could probably be guessed and provision made for it. Now we know thus far Hearts don’t seem to have made provision for that albeit the next due accounts might altho i doubt it. So it really boils down to does UBIG advance all or some of the money for it or does ST money get used to pay it and we have another funding crisis next season or do we simply go into administration as it’s a bill we simply cannot pay in the due timescales?
Regards Hearts chances of winning well there was an interesting Scotsman article a fortnight ago in which polish player Adrian Mrowiec who was twice loaned from Kaunas to Hearts said he could confirm and verify with wage slips and bank statements that he was simultaneouly paying taxes in both Lithuania and Ednburgh on the 2 parts of his overall wages. It really depends what happens with the likes of Bednar, Aguiar, Goncalves, Jankauskas, Barasa etc who signed from foreign clubs for Kaunas but flew straight to Edinbugh to play for Hearts but were paid the bulk of their cash via Kaunas. It will no doubt all come out in the wash but if i was a betting man then i’d say we’ll either win the taxcase or face another crisis if we don’t possibly even administration. It all depends on whether UBIG can advance more debt or would rather crystalise a thumping loss on the debt but agree a CVA that essentially gives them tynecastle in lieu of unpayable debt? We shall see soon enough.
How much is the Hearts first team worth?
I counted 32 players on their website.
if they were all sold for an average of 100K, that’s £3,200.000
Am I missing something?
Is the Rangers model of not liquidating your assets now the way to avoid paying your debts?
What a stramash!
And another thing. Fair amount of whataboutery going on re difference in treatment of HMFC & RFC ( fuds ), but given how corrupt SDM & CW were, do any of you know whether HMRC had the same information from either business at the same point on the same curve??Doubt it, but can we please focus on the nuclear stuff, it’s still there, I do feel sorry for HMFC, but do not let the real catch off the hook guys.
Charlie Brown says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 23:58
assuming we can survive the immediate winding up order there really are only limited options for Hearts/UBIG if the tax case is lost and depending on whether HMRC seek only the tax payment or full interest and penalties added?
================================
Interest is not discretionary, it is commercial restitution and will be what it is. HMRC will not change that amount.
Penalties will be dependent on the level of co-operation Hearts provided HMRC with when they were calculating tax due.
easyJambo says:Friday, November 9, 2012 at 23:31
“Chuckles Green is on record as having said that Hearts had offered him a discount of £100K if he paid up now. He turned down the request. I guess Hearts must be one of the teams in his little black book.”
==============
OR, he hasn’t enough readies to avail of 20% discount. My guess is the latter. S. F. was impressive I thought, and as madbhoy24941 says, an interviewer had suddenly learned how to ask searching questions.
Who other than VR has put such sums into a Club in these parts? (Oh yes, D. King). Let’s assume Vlad’s motivation is all above board. He obviously wants out.
Excuse me for teaching my granny how to suck eggs, but £2m over 6 mos = £350k pcm., 10,000 x £35 pcm. That should be OK for HoM fans. Could I suggest that you open an account, put up the number, and see what happens? I would bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised. But of course, mind the wide boys.
Only then do you have to worry about a share issue. You’re more au fait with this than I am, but I think you’ll succeed.
Simplistic? Maybe.
Agrajag says:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 21:38:
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 21:07
=============================
As I understand the assessment for tax it goes something like this.
1, The amounts relate to players on loan from a Lithuanian club.
2, Hearts claim that they were not paying those players salaries, they were actually paying invoices raised by a Lithuanian club.
3, That club was actually paying the players wages, however it was in Lithuania, so no UK PAYE or NIC due. Any income tax would be due in Lithuania.
4, I have read someone trying to draw analogies with players on loan from one UK club to another. With it being the “donor” club paying PAYE and NIC.
I don’t think it’s an open and shut case, however given that the players are earning the money in the UK, by playing football for a UK team I would be surprised if you won it.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Its as open and shut as you get in the tax world of International Secondments. They will lose.
Why are we crying for Hearts. They lived well beyond their means. Ryan Stevenson could be doing a job for Motherwell right now if the Hertz had not taken him back with the promise of a big salary. If you can’t pay they can’t play.
What do the Hearts contracts look like? Any hint of duality? Is Campbell on the case?
on more mundane matters mcoist365/adam? has been on the hearts forum again within the hour noising up the natives.
His latest belter is it doesn’t matter what Charles Green said in June about 140 years of history vanquished by the CVA failure.
Apparently he was wrong then but correct now as he simply misunderstood the process. Duff n Phelps were right the history transfers and continues and Ogilvie at the SFA and Longmuir and Ballantyne at the SFL were correct, strange that eh? Anyway the proof that green was wrong then and right now is on the SFL website. Founded 1872 league titles 54 and tnere you have it the SFL says it so that’s it OFFICIAL.
On a separate note i was reading a fifty year old article about Killie’s last win at Parkhead yet on the same page was an article that a number of league clubs were outraged that the first ever official SFL badges were almost identical with the traditional Rangers badge of the crested lion that adorns the main stand at Ibrox. No wonder they love the SFL guys eh!
bogsdollox says: Saturday, November 10, 2012 at 00:11
Why are we crying for Hearts. They lived well beyond their means. Ryan Stevenson could be doing a job for Motherwell right now if the Hertz had not taken him back with the promise of a big salary. If you can’t pay they can’t play.
What do the Hearts contracts look like? Any hint of duality? Is Campbell on the case?
==========
I haven’t seen any tears shed. I have seen attempts at solutions. There are a lot of decent HoM fans on here trying to save their club. It looks to me like they’re accepting the situation and trying to put it right. Until skullduggery is proven, I’ll do what I can to help. I might even throw in a few bob, although I still can’t forgive Conn, Bauld and Wardhaugh.
willmacufree says:
Saturday, November 10, 2012 at 00:32
==========
I haven’t seen any tears shed. I have seen attempts at solutions. There are a lot of decent HoM fans on here trying to save their club. It looks to me like they’re accepting the situation and trying to put it right. Until skullduggery is proven, I’ll do what I can to help. I might even throw in a few bob, although I still can’t forgive Conn, Bauld and Wardhaugh.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I didn’t say the Hearts fans on here weren’t decent. To be honest they are amongst the best posters on here.
However, getting back to the truth. I ask again – are we in a dual contracts situation?
Answer is we must be if two clubs are involved with the same players – one contract with Hearts and the other in Lithuania. What was declared to the SFA as regards the remuneration split between the two? I’m begininng to understand why Vlad has been so quite when the Rangers related corruption, he always suspected, was unveiled.
Interesting parallel. I’ve read more posts on here in 48 hours from Hearts fans desperate to save their club than from RFC fans trying to save their club in all the time that RTC was going.
Speaks volumes.
bogsdollox says: Saturday, November 10, 2012 at 00:56
I didn’t say the Hearts fans on here weren’t decent. To be honest they are amongst the best posters on here……………..
I’m begininng to understand why Vlad has been so quite when the Rangers related corruption, he always suspected, was unveiled.
==================
I know what you’re saying. I agree that the HoM fans are among the best posters.
Dual contracts? I don’t know. You’re talking specifics, I’ve been talking generalities. Maybe you’re right about VR. But why would he pick the SPL?
Also, as somebody said, this could be a diversion.
bogsdollox i think the hmrc assessment on hearts is as simple as which tax jurisdiction had precedence? The UK tax rate was 40%+ whilst iam fairly certain that Lithuania had a relatively low flat rate imcome tax of 15 or 20% hence it was thought to be tax efficient and more enticing for the players to earn the bulk of their wages in Kaunas not Edinburgh but what tripped Hearts up is the Edinburgh proportion was really low ie stupidly low that raised Hectors attentions. If we take £1.75m tax assessment x 20% tax difference it works out at just under £2M gross wages per year for the 4 or 5 years the practice ran from approx 2005-2010 when we had literally a couple of dozen players come via kaunas in one form or another. Some of these players also got club rented cars and accommodation and there is also some question if those benefits were taxed correctly?
The SPL has already decided that Rangers were the only SPL club with undeclared dual contracts? The Hearts players as loanees did actually have dual contracts but then all loanee players do at every club. I’d put this down to incompetence or stupidity rather than deliberate cheating of hmrc and football authorities that Rangers seem to have engaged in.
tomtomaswell says: Saturday, November 10, 2012 at 01:04
Dead on, and more power to their elbows. Even if there is foul play afoot, they’ll save their club, without throwing tantrums and threats at the rest of the world and his uncle.
exiledcelt: I think Green is involved through Kevin McCabe, Scarborough might be worth looking at.
The situation with regard to “dual contracts” specifically pertains to a club having made undeclared payments to a player for their services as a footballer. If Hearts or any other club pay another club as agents on behalf of players (in the case of loan deals), then the SPL criteria would be satisfied as long as no undeclared additional payments were made to the player BY HEARTS.
I do agree with bogsdollox in that it is a perfectly legitimate question to ask.
I disagree with his conclusion though. I don’t see how you can shoehorn a Rangers type situation into the facts regarding Hearts as we know them. The more pressing moral priority appears to be the non-payment of VAT and PAYE, which is just as reprehensible as CW’s tactics.
However, despite the anguish that Hearts fans, like Rangers fans before them must be feeling, I detect no mass victim mentality here. Perhaps that is informed by the knowledge that liquidation will likely not come about, but it seems to me that the fans are looking to help get the VAT and PAYE paid, and that is commendable. I wish them well in their efforts to assist their club.
ordinaryfan says:
Saturday, November 10, 2012 at 01:34
———————————————————————————————————————————
The Stadia Group, founded by former Bank of Scotland treasurer and deputy general manager Gavin Masterton before his retirement from the bank in 2001, collapses into receivership owing the bank a reported £28m. Kevin McCabe’s Scarborough Development Group steps in to mop up the mess, prompting complaints to the FSA about the bank’s abuse of off-balance-sheet vehicles to massage its bad debt position (see Keane’s last stand).
http://www.ianfraser.org/the-worst-bank-in-the-world-hboss-calamitous-seven-year-life/
A man in charge of corporate lending racking up losses of millions of pounds in his own private ventures in four years would’ve been a major embarrassment had it not been for the Scarborough Development Group – a company that used Jack Irvine’s Media House for its PR – setting up a new company:
http://www.scottishmediamonitor.com/features2.cfm?ID=34
http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/spl/hearts-confident-over-tax-bill-1-2626595
http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/spl/vladimir-romanov-reign-brings-hearts-full-circle-1-2626596
Dear sir/madam.
Hello.
I am emailing every club in Scotland to ask if they are happy with the way the game is administered in this country.
I am sure you are aware of the growing displeasure felt by fans of all clubs at the way the rules and regulations are bent, broken, amended, ignored and invented by the SFA, SPL & SFL, particularly in relation to RFC and its recent offspring TRFC. Never have i seen a more outwardly biased application by a supposedly impartial hierarchy. The game in this country is slipping away, a lot of clubs have severe financial problems caused by trying to compete with a financialy doped RFC and being loaded with debt as the global economy took a monstrous nosedive. The full story will slowly emerge over the coming years and will not be stopped in this new age of internet bampottery and information sharing and analysis, the revelations will leave no room for doubt that we have lived the last decade+ amidst fraudulent and criminal individuals who have taken honours and finances from our clubs, with scant regard for the consequencies to anyone.
Now that the taxman has liquidated the club and is going after the perpetrators, we should be returning to a more stable environment in which we can rebuild and restore some honour. Sadly, the summer months showed us the depths that certain individuals will plumb in attempting to have us accept new Rangers into the league structure, to the point that we were to believe that football clubs with no holding company can miraculously float away from its debts and misdemeanours and start again in the top flight without a care in the world. Fortunately, scottish football fans dont button up the back and would not allow this disgraceful proposition to come to fruition, but sadly we had to watch as SPL membership termination cancelled out SFA membership but was left floating in the breeze until the laughably invented temporary membership scheme was thought up before full membership was granted on an embarrassingly quick schedule, despite the mysterious five way agreement being, well, disagreed with.
All we want as fans is a clean game, played fairly, and with rules applied fairly. I am afraid that we have lost confidence in all three (3???) bodies and we would like to see these bodies broken up. There may be individuals in each organisation who are fit and proper and who can fill positions of power in new governance but this would require a more democratic process.
Campbell Ogilvie must be removed immediately, i mean come off it, how has this man remained as president given RFC’s and his own EBT scandal, never mind the disintegration of the game under his regime. Regan, Doncaster, longmuir and Ballantyne ( i am emailling Airdrie United anyway ) have either fudged issues, ignored them, made misleading statements or shown certain leanings that do not inspire impartiality and have lost all confidence that was once afforded them.
Do you as a Club have a desire to change the status quo, are there moves behind the scenes to address this problem with other like minded clubs. A reticence to change indicates a contentedness with the situation which would be very disappointing indeed.
A governance restructure that includes league reconstruction will only be acceptable if teams remain in their previously earned league position and no team is jettisoned to make way for any new club who happens to have a large, though dilapidated stadium. I am sure the fans will be quick to let you know in terms of season tickets if improper favouritism is voted through.
I will keep individuals and club names secret and any other sensitive information you send back, due to the recent threats and intimidation being banded about, but i will post my email and maybe statistical analysis on the general response on The Scottish Football Monitor blog and may i recommend that your club follows this site for quick, accurate and detailed information regarding Scottish footballs future.
Thank you.
Sent from Samsung Mobile
Thanks Tallboy Poppy. I appreciate the post. If I was paranoid I might have said “they’re all at it!”.
Im a busy man these days and it may take a while to complete this process and it will probably be ignored by most clubs anyway
But i will report my findings as and when they are complete.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/football/mccoist-hearts-plight-a-dire-warning.19385467
http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/football/mccoist-supplies-lesson-in-crisis-management.19379079
http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/football/driver-admits-squad-may-have-to-accept-wage-cuts.19381758
stunney says: Saturday, November 10, 2012 at 03:17
http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/football/mccoist-supplies-lesson-in-crisis-management.19379079
=====================
“…McCoist said “Going into administration on February 14 was a savage blow…I was probably kidding myself on, thinking it wouldn’t happen even though I was told there was a possibility of it happening…”
=====================
I’m sure McCoist was recently quoted as stating that the first he knew that RFC was going into Administration was on February 14 – i.e. that he was supposedly oblivious to what wee Craigie was up to prior to that date.
Perhaps McCoist has spent too much time in Charlie’s company – and is now forgetting what he said previously ?
Iceman63
Totaly agree if Sevco can stumble through to Feb 2013. Been hearing whispers of ‘star’ players already being touted in English lower leagues for January. On another note very strange young Templeton only played 1 game and now has a hamstring was his registration ratified? I wonder when he next plays January I expect. So might be 0-3 reverse of game he played in if only MSM would ask Hmmmm
Morning All,
Anyone know if Charlie issued his prospectus yet.He said it would be out at the end of this week or soon after.To be fair I suppose he’s still got a few days to come up with the goods.
Maybe he ran out due to the world record demand from the pension funds represented at his Glasgow roadshow this week and is waiting on new stock for the Edinburgh gig this week.How many he’ll need for the seven shows in London is anyones guess(I’ll guess none).
willmacufree says:
Saturday, November 10, 2012 at 00:04
Excuse me for teaching my granny how to suck eggs, but £2m over 6 mos = £350k pcm., 10,000 x £35 pcm. That should be OK for HoM fans.
===================
Please allow me to ask for clarification here. Are you suggesting 10,000 Hearts fans should pay 200 quid each over the next six months? For what? What magical thing happens in month 7?
I am sorry but I do not think anything like that number would choose to pay that sort of money. And this is not a pop at Hearts fans, I cannot imagine any set of fans (from a “diddy” club) doing this.
This is wrt staff at Ibrox.i don’t know if true but lifted of an RFC supporters blog.
From KDS: seemingly some wee woman whos worked there all her life is being made redundant as they are shutting the main stand except match days.
looks like green n co are cutting expenditure already.
Sorry if anyone loses their job,especially at this time.
Does this show,however,that if true,CG might be worrying about the pennies?.
Rab,
Whilst admiring the sentiment of your e-mail, I will be stunned if you get any response to it.
I don’t want to be critical, but the tone of it is far too partisan, and the language is a little informal at times – clubs would be wary of responding to such a request, mainly because they have no idea who it is from – it could be anyone, lest they be accused of taking sides, and suddenly find an arson attempt on their main stand!
I think the fact that you mention this blog as the ultimate repository for this disclosure doesn’t help either. Unfortunately, I think having Cosgrove write on here has gone to our heads and we’re drunk on power!
However we view ourselves, we’re still portrayed in certain quarters as some sort of nutty fringe group, and it’ll be interesting to see the response to Cosgrove today for daring to engage with us. I think Radio Scotland this afternoon may be one of the pivotal moments in our game.
I see a lot of talk that Hearts need £2m to get to the end of the season. Surely what they really need to do is get to the January transfer window, then offload any players they can get a decent price for, preferably high earners? As has already been posted, they can probably get a 45 day stay on Revenue action by applying to the court. It’s not ideal, the second half of the season would be difficult to say the least with a team of reserves and youth players, but surely a better bet than Administration and a 15 point deduction?
Depending on what they get for the players they sell, £500k might see them through to the summer, especially if they receive the money due from TRFC in March.
It then comes down to the Tax Case. On the facts as described here (thanks Agrajag), this is a purely technical issue, so penalties are unlikely, but interest is running automatically. I’m really very surprised that this has ended up with the Tribunal, this is exactly the type of case where HMRC would normally cut a deal. What Hearts need to do is what RFC didn’t do, and face facts. They might lose, so work on that basis. That is why they need to cut to the bone in January. If they can do that, and raise £2m from the fans, then they might just make it. Maybe.
To be fair to Charlie, I think the 20 pension funds he was referring to were his own and the other 19 guys in his consortium.
I fully expect the prospectus to be issued by Thursday of next week. Monday he is signing the Adidas deal, Tuesday it’s Dallas Cowboys and Wednesday it’s Apple. Only so many hours in a day, you know.
With Hearts it’s probably easier to have sympathy and offer support, because they and their support are manning up about it. There’s no defiance, no ‘too many people with too much money’ expectation that someone else will do something about it.
Even old Sergei F (F because I don’t want to risk his surname on my tiny phone keys!) Has been upfront with the fans. I would also guess that his contradiction on twitter should also be viewed as a correction when he realised that what he said was being taken as a certainty.
Ultimately, where Hearts fans have been lucky is that they had their owner portrayed as a buffoon in the press, so at least they’ve been primed for this. Imagine if they’d spent decades being told that their owner was wonderful and that the tax liability didn’t exist – right up until it ran over the top of them. Lucky that could never happen here, eh?
torrejohnbhoy says:
Saturday, November 10, 2012 at 07:46
Anyone know if Charlie issued his prospectus yet
________________________________________________
On Leggoland yesterday he claimed he had been given preview of prospectus which I doubt. He also urged fans to buy shares through RST.
However – I was amazed by the MSM coverage of the RST share story in swallowing the PR spin hook, line and sinker about this good things whilst ignoring the virtual civil war taking place in the Rangers support over the RST and shares and even worse the fact that not one journo posed the vital question: Do the AIM shares have any voting rights?
areyouaccusingmeofmendacity.
You make a fair point and i may tweak the content before sending the emails, though having re-read the draft this morning im happy enough with it, dilapidated stadium notwithstanding.
I am stunned that our clubs have not pushed for change given the way things have been allowed to pan out and rules implemented. I may be drunk sometimes but the power does lie with the fans, we can make the changes we want even if our clubs show no desire for it.
I dont expect any responses, but maybe others will be inspired to contact their own clubs and use more temperate language to express similar sentiments to mine, if enough join in we may get somewhere. Either way, i wanted to express my own thoughts on the matter.
Well said Rab 🙂
Rab, like I said, I agree with the sentiments, and I do hope you get a response, because it does seem at the moment that everyone just wants to kick the can further down the road.
More power to you!