Rangers set to be stripped of titles after secret document leaked

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A secret plan has been produced by football chiefs that will strip four Scottish Cups and five SPL titles from Rangers. The Daily Record saw the bombshell document after it was drafted following talks between the Scottish Football League, SFA, SPL and Sevco representatives.

A range of punishments are outlined in the plan for dodging Employment Benefit Trust tax, which the club did during Sir David Murray’s regime in order to pay players. If penalties are enforced they would be the harshest seen in football. They not only include stripping five league titles from the club and wiping out four Scottish Cup triumphs; but an a one-year transfer embargo will be upheld and Green’s newco will be forced to pay the clubs old football debts.

Clearly the plan has been drafted by the football authorities to force Rangers to drop to Division One in the SFL and protect the TV and marketing revenues of Scottish football. Chairmen from the SFL overwhelmingly voted to drop Rangers to Division Three last Friday, however it is understood that the punishments in the secret plan may be imposed at a later date.

On August 10 the SPL will decide whether or not Rangers broke rules by using ‘dual contracts’ and EBTs, the document simply shed light on what could be used as penalties for the club. An agreement on the document is yet to be reached, although it appears that Green’s firm would be willing to accept some of the draft

The list of penalties will horrify the club’s supporters, many believing that the document undermines the judicial process of the SFA. Possible the worst part in that the club could lose the status of Champion Club, which is defined in the rules of the Scottish Premier League.

The placement of Rangers next season could have serious repercussions for the SFL

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Following in the aftermath of Charlie Green’s application for top flight entry being rejected by the clubs in the Scottish Premier League, Regan, the chief executive of the SFL, has made a claim that social unrest would be the result of Rangers fans being deprived of their team.

Regan has said that the only viable solution now for Rangers was to come into the SFL in the first division, as if they played anywhere else it would result in the game as a whole losing around £15.7m in revenue.

He also made it clear that the Scottish Football League couldn’t allow Rangers to start right at the bottom, which effectively means that the SPL clubs are facing the prospect of a breakaway and an SPL2 if the plan for Rangers to join the first division is also rejected.

He added that for big clubs that were at the top of the league, that amount equated to half of their annual distribution, and for clubs at the bottom is would basically wipe out their entire distrbution, and for the even smaller clubs it was a large proportion of their annual turnovers.

Regan went onto say that even if the Ibrox club did go into the first division, there would still be a loss of income to other SPL clubs of £5m, and as the game isn’t self sustaining it would mean a slow and lingering death for football in Scotland. This would then trickle down through the SFL and he considered that from their perspective, being the governing body, they simply can’t allow this to happen.

Regan has also confirmed that a real threat as arisen pertaining to TV contracts and said that they had had conversations with broadcasters and understood what the stakeholders from Sky, Sport 5, ESPN and various other commercial partners of the SPL were likely to do if Ranger were not a part of the top two tiers of the SFL, and it wasn’t pretty.

 

Rangers demotion could lead to Sky pulling out of SPL TV deal

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Sky is ready to pull out of the £110million deal to show SPL games should Rangers plunge to Division Three, causing terror and stress in the boardrooms. However, it may not be such a bad thing. Matches were traditionally played from 3pm on a Saturday but now times differ according to TV air time, putting many supporters off.

Club chairmen are dreading the thought of the SPL without the funding that Sky gives. Stephen Thompson, of Dundee United, said that they day the club has to go without satellite cash could be described as Armageddon; Michael Johnston from Kilmarnock is not too pleased about the idea either.

If the game went back to the old days, kicking off at 3 o’clock on Saturday afternoon, the clubs would be taking a huge gamble. However the management teams do not want to ignore what the supporters want. They understand that a club needs supporters to survive, however they also need large injections of cash flow, which is one thing that Sky TV coverage regularly brings.

They have a difficult decision ahead of them on how to find the balance. Generally the two main revenue streams are TV money and sales of season tickets, but smaller clubs need the TV money to remain in business.

A huge 30% of the SPL income received by Dundee United this season came from television contracts. With clubs such as Kilmarnock in considerable debt it is important to have a regular income, which is promised with the Sky deal. Kilmarnock FC have tried a number of ways to pull more crowds in, however they remain unconvinced that a return to the traditional kick off times would help bring punters in. He described the idea as “a step into the unknown”.