The town of Footballing Cliché is a strange place. It is a coastal town, where the tides are constantly turning. In the town centre there is a square, simply known to locals as ‘Square One’, where the best way of getting to the square is to take Route One. Public transport is good within the town, however complaints are ongoing as to the frequency with which some choose to park the bus. Then, once every so often, things get quite exciting in the town. The managerial merry-go-round starts to spin a bit faster, the transfer windows creak open and players look to put themselves in the shop window. It is that special time of year, Silly Season.
Things have gotten silly early this year, and for that we can thank the SPL’s talking point of the year, Glasgow Rangers FC. Just when you thought it was safe to talk about something else, Rangers come racing back into the forefront, waving their arms, "Hold on, hold on, we’ve got more of this crap".
The BBC expose ‘The Men Who Sold The Jerseys’, and even before we knew its contents, was always likely to get people talking. However what was contained in the show took some simmering embers and doused them with gallons of petrol. Now, as we move closer to various deadlines for voting and decisions to be made, we should not expect this story to disappear anytime soon.
While others were analysing and discussing potential outcomes, we should have been paying attention to the Daily Record, as they came up with a solution to all the woes. They reckon that Rangers should be looking to ‘cut a deal’ with the SFA:
“However, a Rangers offer to cop a six-month transfer ban could allow both parties the chance to step back from the brink.
It would mean the club could avoid the risk of being suspended – which would seriously affect their chances of surviving in the SPL next term – or expelled.
It would also give the SFA the chance to get FIFA off its back.”
So it is sorted then, win-win. Of course the SFA is looking to achieve is to step back from the brink and get FIFA of their backs, nothing else. Cut a deal, Rangers can live on, SFA can breathe easy, we are all happy.
No, wait a second, that is total rubbish, and the Daily Record are insulting journalism standards as well as their reader’s intelligence. You do not ‘cut deals’ on punishments.
On BBC Radio Scotland’s Saturday Sportsound, Rangers was unsurprisingly the main topic of conversation. The conversation was made all the more enjoyable without Rangers’ cheerleaders Young and Traynor present. Jim Spence had been in discussions with an unnamed Chairman (obviously Stephen Thompson as who else would speak to Spencey?), and revealed that the consensus amongst chairmen was firmly against Rangers, stating that if they made the vote on the New-Con yesterday (Friday) then they definitely would not have got in. There definitely would seem to be a growing feeling against Rangers, when we hear the normally unheard Inverness Caley Chairman venting his frustrations on the matter it suggests feeling are strong, and Rangers are running out of allies.
But yet the Rangers sympathisers are still out in force. The Daily Record, a popular daily editorial in this country, is clearly writing with blinkers on. Darren Jackson was expressing his concerns on the radio that this summer clubs would come in to try to “steal” players from Rangers, with the negotiated release clauses in their contracts.
"Steal" should not really be the word. Perhaps if you were talking about offering to pay £1.5m for a rival team’s international player, and then only deliver approximately half that amount, such as Rangers did with Lee Wallace at Hearts, I would be more sympathetic to the term stealing. Whereas signing players under terms that have been negotiated into their contracts as a result of gross financial mismanagement, is evidently not stealing.
But, we are dealing in hypotheticals here. The important thing is that everyone should stop picking on Rangers, who are clearly the victim in all of this. Not my words, but those of a club spokesman:
“Rangers fully accept there should be a sanction but it ought to be proportionate given the circumstances the club was in i.e. it was the victim of misdeeds of individuals who are no longer at the club.”
I do not consider Rangers to be the victim in all of this. The individuals may no longer be at the club, but that is not to say that the club has not benefited greatly from these misdeeds. These misdeeds were carried out with blatant disregard for the rules, and with a recklessness that has had knock-on effects for other clubs as well.
While Rangers accept that there should be a sanction, perhaps they should be remember that it should be proportionate given the nature of the crime, i.e. it gave them a huge edge over their competitors for many years, and there was full awareness (or at least should have been) that what was being done was wrong and against the rules that were in place.
The punishment should be made on the basis of the crime. How the league, or the other teams, or even Rangers themselves move on from this should be an irrelevance. Corruption should never be allowed to be prosperous.
Now we find ourselves in an almost petty situation where people seem to be getting bogged down in the semantics of the administration and appeals within the process. Rangers were legally allowed to go to the Civil Court, but not according to the laws of the game. That does not really matter anyway as, according to Charles Green (who at time of writing still remains as perspective buyer), neither his people nor the administrators wanted to take the matter to the Civil Court. Who exactly made this decision is unclear, but it certainly is not the fault of anyone involved in the running of the club.
The whole situation is getting a bit messy now. The revelations drew everyone in, but now we are just getting bogged down in the admin (no pun intended).
Suspension would seem a possibility now, and quite a real one. Though Charles Green said that this would provide “a major setback to our plans to take Rangers forward”. Well, that is not of the concern of the SFA or whoever actually gets to make the decision.
Plus, rather worryingly, FIFA is now circling the situation. I suppose they are a G8 type figure to ‘Football Cliché town’, only more corrupt. FIFA seems to have a drive for financial fair play at the moment, and could well be looking for someone to make an example of. Will Rangers have to go back to Square One? Will the SFA need to go back to the drawing board? Everything remains open-ended at the moment. With pre-season plans getting drawn up, and the fixture lists soon to be announced, it would be nice to see some assertiveness and definite decisions soon.
simpson_1903
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