Victor Wanyama: Should He Stay Or Should He Go?

Jock Stein famously said the Celtic shirt doesn’t shrink to fit inferior players.

That much is true, but there is a magical quality to the green and white hoops. Sometimes they can make inferior players grow to fit them.

Celtic makes great players, but once that green and white shirt is removed, the magic often wears off and very few players go on to greater success when they leave.

Ask Charlie Nicholas – one time darling of Celtic Park who burst onto the scene as a teenager in the early 1980’s.

The Cannonball Kid was the hottest property in British football at the age of 21 in the summer of 1983. He could have signed for Liverpool or Manchester United, but chose to head for the bright lights of London instead, to sign for Arsenal.

The British football landscape had a very different look to it back then. Arsenal was not the dazzling, inventive purveyor of the beautiful game it would become under Arsene Wenger.

Arsenal was not even a particularly successful club back then either.

They were a stuffy, defensive outfit and the young Nicholas soon found his natural exuberance curbed to the extent he once found himself tasked with man-marking Bryan Robson in a match at Old Trafford.

After four decidedly average years at Highbury, he found himself returning to Scotland with Aberdeen in late 1987, a 26 year old whose career was on the slide.

The Cannonball Kid was gone, and a slower, bulkier Nicholas, despite still showing flashes of the old outrageous skills he once possessed in abundance, never again hit the heights of those early years at Celtic.

Charlie Nicholas returned to Celtic at age 29 in 1990 for the swansong of his career and left without winning a trophy in 1993.

His was a career that never came near to fulfilling that early promise.

As Victor Wanyama ponders his options this summer, he would do well to remember another Celtic midfielder who once had the world at his feet, only to see his career nosedive on leaving.

Liam Miller joined Celtic as a teenager and made his debut at the end of season 1999-2000 against Dundee United.

A series of injuries curtailed his appearances, and after a loan spell in Denmark, his next league appearance came in August 2003.

Breaking into a Celtic team that had appeared in the UEFA Cup Final the previous season, Miller was a revelation in the first half of the season, the highlights being a barnstorming performance in 1-0 win at Ibrox against the now-defunct Rangers FC, where he dominated his opposite number, Mikel Arteta, now of Arsenal.

He followed this with a scoring appearance as a substitute in the group stages of the Champions League, scoring in a 2-0 win over Lyon and a hugely impressive display in a 3-1 win over Anderlecht where he opened the scoring after 17 minutes.

Miller was forced to from the field through injury during that match against Anderlecht in the 75^th minute and left to thunderous applause from the packed stands.

By that point, Miller had made himself an indispensable member of a team that included luminaries such as Paul Lambert, Neil Lennon, Stilyan Petrov, Henrik Larsson, Chris Sutton and John Hartson.

He was a star in the making, but looking back, he must surely acknowledge that it was both the high point of his career, and the night his career went into a downward spiral.

Sitting in the directors’ box that November night was Sir Alex Ferguson, who had come to run the rule over a 17 year old Anderlecht defender by the name of Vincent Kompany.

Ferguson would not in the end pursue his interest in the Belgian, but Miller had very definitely caught his eye.

Two months later, in January 2004, Liam Miller signed a pre-contract agreement to join Manchester United at the end of the season.

After just 26 league appearances, at the age of 23, Miller was swapping the green and white hooped shirt that had made him a star for the red of Manchester United.

Things would not work out for Miller at Old Trafford and after just nine league games in two seasons, the second spent on loan at Leeds United, he was moved on to Sunderland on a free transfer in 2006.

From Sunderland he moved to Queens Park Rangers in January 2009, but was released at the end of the season.

Miller returned to Scotland so join Hibernian in August 2009. After two moderately successful seasons he left in June 2011 to sign for Australian side Perth Glory and earlier this year moved on to Brisbane Roar.

Now at the age of 32, Miller can look back on a career during which he has gained one SPL championship medal in Scotland, and one Championship medal in England.

He could, and should, have won so much more.

The stories of Charlie Nicholas and Liam Miller should serve as cautionary tales for Victor Wanyama this summer.

Very few players have ever left Celtic Park and gone on to reach greater heights with other clubs.

Only two in the last 40 years can truly claim to have done so – Kenny Dalglish and Henrik Larsson (an honourable mention should also go to Brian McClair, although he never came close to the heights scaled by the other two).

The other thing Dalglish and Larsson have in common, as opposed to Nicholas and Miller, is that they left Celtic as mature, established professionals, well-equipped to handle the pressures of playing for huge clubs in pressure-cooker environments.

Dalglish was 26 years old and had scored over 100 league goals by August 1977. He had also appeared in two European Cup semi-finals for Celtic, and represented Scotland at the 1974 World Cup Finals.

Perhaps the most important factor in Dalglish’s post-Celtic success, was that he joined Ian Paisley’s all-conquering Liverpool, a trophy-winning machine of which he was to become the lynchpin.

Larsson was almost 26 by the time he joined Celtic and left after seven trophy-laden seasons and a UEFA Cup Final appearance. At the age of 32, he joined Barcelona and would win the Champions League two years later, making a decisive contribution from the bench as Barca came from behind to defeat Arsenal.

So what of Wanyama? Should he leave Celtic this summer?

My advice to Victor would be to choose his next step wisely.

At 22 years old, he has a decade or more in front of him as a top level footballer. Time is very much on his side.

Should he leave now, he will undoubtedly earn far more money than Celtic can offer (although he’ll hardly end up a pauper if he stays), but what will he have to show for it at the end of his career?

Right now, his options seem to be mid-table EPL at best. Even if the rumours of Liverpool interest are true, the Merseyside club are a shadow of their former selves, and he would be unlikely to win many trophies there.

His best move may be to stay with Celtic for another two-three seasons, winning trophies and competing in the Champions League, before making that next step as a player at his peak. By then, should his development progress as expected, he would have his pick of the top clubs and be better equipped to flourish there.

Above all, Wanyama should be aware that the magic often wears off when you remove those green and white hoops. Leaving Celtic is, in only very exceptional circumstances, an upward step.

 

 

UEFA, the BBC, Derry City and The Rangers

It has been an interesting week in the Great Sevco Same Club/NewClub debate. Of course it is a metaphysical reality that the club currently playing out of Ibrox is not the club founded in 1872, but that has not prevented Rangers fans from inventing all sorts of imaginative ways to claim they are the same club.

First of all, there was quite a stir amongst Rangers fans online about a decision by the BBC's editorial standards committee, which upheld a complaint that the BBC's referring to "old" and "new" Rangers was inaccurate. The trust was guided in its decision by Lord Nimmo Smith's report, which concluded for the purposes of the SPL dual contracts investigation that Rangers "the club" can be separated from its corporate identity (then Rangers Football Club plc).

This is entirely incompatible with Scots Law as BBC Scotland made clear in its statement on the ESC ruling.

We should bear in mind though that LNS was not ruling on Scots Law, but on the SPL definition of "football club," specifically as to whether The Rangers Football Club Ltd (formerly Sevco Scotland Ltd) had an interest in the case and a right to representation at the hearing.

LNS concluded that for the purposes of the SPL investigation, a "football club" is "an undertaking capable of being bought and sold."

Crucially, but usually overlooked though, LNS stated he was satisfied the "football club" has no legal personality separate from its owner and operator.

Which brings us to UEFA.

As we all know by now, UEFA define "football club" as "a legal entity responsible for the running of a football team," a much clearer definition than that of the SPL, which rather ineptly boils down to "a football club is a football club."

To meet the criteria for a UEFA license, the applicant must be a legal entity which is a member of a national association (12.1a), or has a contractual relationship with a member (12.1b).

In addition, this membership must have lasted for at least three consecutive years (12.2).

If we accept that Rangers is the same club (by the LNS definition), then "Rangers FC" will never qualify for a UEFA license.

It fails on three counts:
i) It is not a legal entity
ii) It is not a member of a national association
iii) Lacking legal personality, it cannot have a contractual relationship with a member.

The legal entity is The Rangers Football Club Ltd (formed May 2012).

The SFA member is The Rangers Football club Ltd.

"Rangers FC" does not have and cannot have a contractual relationship with The Rangers Football Club Ltd.

When The Rangers Football Club Ltd does eventually qualify for UEFA competition, the UEFA license will be issued to the club - The Rangers Football Club Ltd, which is a different legal entity to the previous club playing out of Ibrox.

Last week, UEFA issued co-efficient points to those clubs which will be playing in the qualifying rounds of their competitions this summer.

Derry City, a different legal entity to the old Derry City which went under in 2009, were awarded the FAI base co-efficient points and these were not added to the points gained by the old Derry City.

It is now looking more likely than ever that under Article 12 of UEFA's Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play rules, they can only regard The Rangers FC as a brand new club.

Do the SFA's rules on player registration apply to The Rangers?

The Rangers FC accepted a one year registration embargo as a condition of SFA membership in August last year.

The intention was that the new club would be unable to register players until January 2014 (albeit after giving them the summer 2012 window to build up their squad for the assault on Division 3).

We have since been treated to the unedifying sight of The Rangers gloating about an alleged loophole in the rules that allows them to register free agents on September 1st, and they have this week unveiled Cammy Bell and Jon Daly, whom they intend to register on September 1st. There has even been speculation that they can play as trialists from the start of the new season.

The basis for this belief is that clubs can register "free agents" from September 1st, and that as Bell and Daly's contracts with their previous clubs expire on June 30th, they will be free agents.

But let's look at what the SFA's registration procedures actually say.

The key point is article 1.2, 

0. "A professional player who has failed to find employment during a registration period may sign and be registered for a club outwith the registration periods."
   
   
   
   The rule applies not to "free agents," but to players who have failed to find employment in the registration period.
   
   
   
   We must assume that any player signed by The Rangers before 1st September has found employment in the registration period therefore should not be able to be registered outside of the registration period.
   
   Over to you, SFA.
   
   Although it should not be beyond Sandy Bryson to come up with a labyrinthine explanation as to why Daly and Bell can play from September 1st...
   

Scottish Football Needs a Bigger Top League

St Mirren and Ross County have today ended hopes for the setting up of a 12-12-18 structure and a single governing body for Scottish football.

The ending of reconstruction hopes for the moment has been met with widespread dismay and it looks as though there could be a period of recriminations to follow, with Aberdeen and Hearts criticising St Mirren in particular, while Scotland’s newest club, Rangers, appear to be very happy with the day’s news.

Personally, I am glad that the particular structure proposed will not now be happening.

It involved a quite ridiculous split of the top two divisions into three groups of eight, and would have been a dog’s dinner of a set up.

The rationale behind it was to ensure “meaningful” games throughout the season, which it was hoped would attract more television money and interest to the Scottish game.

Fundamentally though, the problem with Scottish football is not that there are too many meaningless games, or that the league is not competitive enough.

The problem Scottish football faces is a chronic lack of quality. Jock Stein famously said that a 100m race between a group of pensioners would be competitive, but it would not be fast.

Reconstruction is badly needed, but the aim of that reconstruction should not be to make the game more competitive, or more meaningful, or attract more money.

The aim of reconstruction must be to improve the quality of Scottish football. That can only be done by improving the quality of player we produce.

The first thing that must happen is the removal of the split.

The league split supposedly leads to a more exciting end to the season, with the top teams playing off for the title and the bottom half fighting to avoid relegation.

This is not always achieved because frequently (as this year) there is very little doubt where the title is heading by the end of Matchday 33. Barring an incredible end of season collapse, it is only a matter of time before Celtic clinches the title. This year there will be an exciting race to decide which Scottish team will bomb out of the Champions League qualifiers in the first round in early July.

Whenever there is a close race for the title, the split makes the league fundamentally unfair, as the top two clubs do not play an identical set of fixtures and “the computer” can influence the outcome.

For example, in season 2008-09, the SPL was able to dictate that the now-defunct Rangers FC would play a third home fixture against Hearts. The principle behind this was that Hearts needed to play three away matches to balance their home and away quota and they apparently could not be expected to visit Easter Road for a third away match against Hibernian.

As a result, Rangers avoided a potentially very difficult second visit to Tynecastle in the run-in.

If I was a Hearts fan, looking at their records in matches at Easter Road and Ibrox, I would have welcomed a third visit to Easter Road .

I am certain a fan of the now-defunct Rangers FC could point to similar instances where Celtic were given a favourable fixture in a tight race in order to balance the home and away split of matches. It would merely serve to further highlight the unfairness inherent in a system involving splits and teams in the same league playing a different set of fixtures.

The split can also influence which teams finish in the top six. For example, Hearts and Dundee United are two fairly evenly matched sides, but if Hearts play 17 home matches before the split while United have 16, it would be cold comfort to United to have a third home match after the split if they were consigned to the bottom half by a defeat at Tynecastle.

What we need then, is a return to the type of league set-up almost every other league around the world uses, where everyone plays an identical set of fixtures.

So far so good, but that only addresses the principle of fairness lost in the present set-up. How do we improve the quality of the product through reconstruction?

Most clubs demand a minimum of 18-19 revenue-generating home matches per season, but it is accepted that in a 12 team league, 44 matches is too many. We can reduce the number of teams in the league, which restricts the “riches,” of the SPL to the detriment of too many SFL teams, or we can expand the league to a level where each side plays each other once home and away.

It is the received wisdom that there are not enough reasonably-sized clubs in Scotland to make this feasible.

That in my opinion is where we have gone wrong.

Of course in a top league of 16-18 clubs there will be uncompetitive matches, but that is the case in every league in the world. I would argue that we actually NEED uncompetitive matches in a season in order to develop a higher quality of player.

I would like to see a top league of 16 teams, who play each other once home and away, giving a league season of 30 matches.

This obviously produces a fixture short-fall and most clubs would be unhappy to be guaranteed only 15 home games a season.

To make this up, I would re-introduce the group stages of the League Cup, to be played early in the season, on Saturday afternoons. Groups of four teams, playing each other once home and away would give each side a guaranteed 18 home games per season and at least 36 games altogether.

To encourage youth development, I would introduce a rule that there must be a minimum number of U21 players on the pitch in League Cup matches, possibly as many as four. Clubs would need at least seven U21 players in their League Cup squads in order to ensure they could meet this rule.

Clubs would keep the home gate receipts for League Cup matches, and share the gate in the knock-out rounds.

A league of 16 would mean clubs in the middle of the league would be relatively safe from relegation and could therefore take time to develop young players free from the cut-throat pressures inherent in a 10 or 12 club league.

With only two matches against Celtic (and maybe one day a strong Sevco Franchise team), a club such as Motherwell would be more likely to challenge for the title.

Motherwell are perfectly capable of beating Celtic on their own ground on any given day, but over the course of a season, they can realistically expect to take only 3-4 points out of 12 from Celtic, while dropping 7-9 points over the four matches.

If a strong Sevco Franchise team is added to this equation, Motherwell might expect to take 4-6 points from a possible 24 in the current set-up, whilst dropping up to 18.

Now if Motherwell only had to play Celtic once home and away, they might realistically expect to take 1 or 3 points from 6, which could deny Celtic 2-3 points.

In the current set-up, Celtic has four chances to kill off a title challenge from anyone else. With only two chances, and fewer points to take away from them, I would argue that a Motherwell , Dundee United or Hearts team that put together a winning run would pose far more of a challenge to Celtic than they currently do.

The other problem in my opinion is an uncontroversial one – Scotland has too many professional teams.

The population of Scotland is roughly a tenth that of England, yet we have only just less than half the number of clubs in their league set-up.

More controversial would be the suggestion that there needs to be club mergers in order to create bigger clubs (assuming the fans of each club transfer their support to the new clubs).

I realise that this would involve fierce local rivals joining forces, and may be extremely unpopular for some, but it has already been successfully done in Inverness.

Inverness Thistle and Inverness Caledonian successfully merged in the 1990’s and the newly-formed Inverness Caledonian Thistle has gone from the Highland League to the top 6 of the SPL in little more than a decade.

The only clubs I would definitely consider “big enough” to stand on their own are Celtic, Hibernian, Hearts, Aberdeen and, assuming they last that long, the Sevco Franchise. A case might be made for the two Dundee clubs as well.

It would be a mistake to merge too many clubs to the point where there were only a dozen or so clubs in the whole country, but ideally, Scottish football should aim to have a maximum of 34 clubs (achieved through mergers) in the senior set up, with two leagues of 16 and 18.

I would also advocate opening up the trapdoor on Division 2 and providing the opportunity for a Junior club to enter the senior ranks every season.

As I started off by saying, improving the quality of the game in Scotland is far more important than chasing money from the TV companies.

There is no pot of gold within reach for Scottish clubs to buy in high quality players. We need to produce our own.

To do that much more is needed than a re-shuffle of the league set-up. There are deep-seated problems in Scottish society which prevent the production of the next Jimmy Johnstone or Kenny Dalglish. These problems cannot be dealt with by the SFA alone.

But we can make the senior league set-up a place more conducive to the development of young players. That means an environment where managers can blood youngsters knowing that it won’t necessarily cost them their job if it all goes wrong.

It means an environment where not every club is in a relegation dogfight and can develop young players in a relatively pressure-free setting.

It means a league where there are uncompetitive matches throughout the season, because competitive does not necessarily equal high quality.

Athletics fans would not turn out in numbers to watch a race between eight sprinters who will all finish within 1/10^th of a second of each other, if it will take all of them 12 seconds.

But add in one Usain Bolt and fans will turn out in large numbers to see that one sprinter finish the race in 9.5 seconds.

To continue the analogy, football fans will not turn out in large numbers to watch a league of 12 teams who will finish the season with just 10 points separating top from bottom and the top 3 separated by just two points if the football is rubbish.

But they WOULD turn out in large numbers to watch a league of 16 if it contains four or five excellent teams, even if the top two finish 20 points ahead of everyone else.

I am not naïve enough to think that my idea will be adopted by the governing bodies any time soon, but I despair at the deckchair shuffling they continually advocate in the misguided pursuit of money and competitiveness.

 

Are YOU a Bitter, Hate-Filled, Rangers-hating Bigot?

Rangers-haters are everywhere at the moment. Taking advantage of the opportunity to kick the club while they are down, Rangers-haters can be found in every bar, in every home, in every workplace, and on every street corner in the land.

So prevalent are Rangers-haters these days that YOU could be a Rangers-hater and not even know it. Fear not though for help is at hand. This quick and easy test, developed with the help of some of the top psychologists working in the US today, will enable you to identify if you need specialist support to get over your Rangers-hating psychosis.

Firstly, answer the questions below, and BE HONEST with yourself - it's the first step to overcoming the problem!

1) You are at a party at your sister and Taig brother-in-law's house, when one of his Timmy guests says that Rangers is a new club. Do you:
a) Quietly acknowledge that yes, Rangers is indeed a new club
b) Pretend you hear someone in the kitchen calling your name and hurry away from the deranged, bitter, hate-filled bigot
c) Drag your wife out, telling her you're not staying in this bigoted hell-hole, then put the guy's name, address and personal details on FollowFollow and call on your fellow Bears to send hate mail and bombard his work place with vicious defamatory accusations?

2) You are on holiday in Magaluf and realise that the newly-arrived couple in the room across the hall are from Dundee. Do you:
a) Introduce yourself and offer to show them around
b) Ignore them, you hate Dundonians. Especially that big-haired moron Jim Spence.
c) Play Tina all night at full volume and shit on their sun lounger every morning. They no doubt wrote to that Rangers-hater Thomson telling him he'd better not let Rangers into the SPL, the Timmy-loving arseholes?

3) In the dentist's waiting room you see someone reading the Daily Rhebel, who's grinning at their latest anti-Rangers, agenda-driven headline. Do you:
a) Try to sneak a look at the racing results over his shoulder
b) Get your lighter and set fire to it then phone your two mates Billy and Sammy to come down and knock seven bells out of him as he leaves after his treatment?
c) Ask him what the bitter, Rangers-hating bigot Jackson has written today?

4) A Taig at work tells you Charles Green is fleecing the Rangers support and will cut and run leaving the club heavily in debt. Do you:
a) Make a formal complaint to the boss, accusing him of sectarian bigotry in the workplace
b) Tell him you have your suspicions about Green too
c) Nothing. He's just a hate-filled, bitter, anti-Rangers, Rangers-hating bigot who has no credibility on the issue?

5) You are at an away match at Elgin, making friends and having fun, when a banner is displayed by the yokels in the home support saying Rangers have no history. Do you:
a) Lose it big-style and join other irate Bears in righteously smashing up a local pub after the game then aggressively chant The Billy Boys at other passengers on the train home
b) Laugh along good-naturedly at the joke
c) Write a furious letter of complaint to the Elgin chairman and Charles Green demanding a grovelling apology?

6) A pub in town has a huge advert for the live screening of Celtic's Champions League last 16 match with Juventus. Do you:
a) Consider watching it - the Champions League is the pinnacle of the modern club game
b) Write a letter to the council informing them the pub has breached its licensing conditions by displaying sectarian messages outside
c) Put a brick through the window and put a post on FollowFollow telling all Bears to boycott the Republican slop-house

7) You read a post on Rangers Media claiming that Rangers' problems did not begin and end with Craig Whyte, but have their roots in two decades of mismanagement by Sir David Murray. Do you:
a)  Engage in a lively and reasoned debate on the issue
b) You never read Rangers Media
c) Post the b*****d's real name and address, then put a brick through his window and poison his cat?

8) Watching a Rangers match on the big screen in your local pub, it goes on the blink 5 minutes in. Do you:
a) Rush along the road to another pub showing the match
b) Defecate on the carpet before smashing up the bar and attacking the staff with your mates
c) Wait patiently while the landlord tries to fix it?

9) At your niece's wedding, you notice one of the choices of starter is Eggs Benedict. Do you:
a) Consider whether you would prefer the Eggs Benedict, or the prawn cocktail
b) Demand to know who put Eggs Benedict on the menu - the guests have a right to know!
c) Drink ten pints, urinate on the dance floor, then start a fight with the Groom - the bitter, Rangers-hating, anti-Rangers bigot?

10) You are at the birthday party of your son's friend. As you stand around talking with like-minded Bears, you notice someone has given your son a green and white straw with his plastic cup of Coke. Do you:
a) Think nothing of it, it's only a straw
b) Grab your son and drag him out, angrily telling him to have nothing more to do with the little Timmy b*****d
c) Join the like-minded Bears in smashing up the house before reporting the wee boy's parents to their employers for their sickening sectarian provocation

Now simply add up your scores as follows:

1) a-2, b-1, c-0

2) a-2, b-1, c-0

3) a-2, b-0, c-1

4) a-0, b-2, c-1

5) a-0, b-2, c-1

6) a-2, b-1, c-0

7) a-1, b-2, c-0

8) a-1, b-0, c-2

9) a-2, b-1, c-0

10) a-2, b-1, c-0

Now for the result:

0-1 - You do not have an anti-Rangers bone in your body. You are a staunch, stalwart True-Blue and can hold your head up high in any company. You don't take any Timmy nonsense from anyone ad can always be relied upon to defend the honour of the Rangers against all-comers. The Gallant Pioneers would be proud of you.

2-4 - You claim to be a Rangers fan, but you are what David Leggat calls "the enemy within." You are a sickening appeaser and need to take a long, hard look at yourself. The anti-Rangers forces are massing (and I use that word advisedly) against the club and people like you will be the first to be dealt with when the club regains its rightful position of superiority.

5-20 - You are a sickening, hate-filled, Rangers-hating bigot. Your sinister cabal of Opus Dei familiars are the enemies of Rangers. I demand to know your name. The Rangers fans deserve to know who you are!



Well, thanks for taking the test. Feel free to share your results in the comments section, but please be aware that all Rangers-haters' names will be sent to Chris Graham, Bill McMurdo, David Leggat and the vanguardbearloonytunes.

Fans' Movement Required to End the Myth

With UEFA announcing a ban on Malaga competing in Europe next year due to monies owed to the tax authorities, and closer to home Hearts and their fans making every effort to pay HMRC to avoid a winding-up order, it is especially crass to say the least, that The Rangers are holding 140 year anniversary parties and crowing about being cash-rich and debt-free after dumping up to £140m in debts.

Even worse, they claim to be the same club as the legal entity placed in liquidation earlier this year.

With the acquiescence of the Scottish MSM and the complicit silence of the SFA, The Rangers has been allowed to promulgate the fiction that football "clubs" are separate from the "holding companies."

Like all the best lies, this has an element of plausibility.

Rangers FC plc WAS separate from its old holding company, MIH, and its final holding company The Rangers FC Group, both of which at one time owned the majority shareholding in Rangers Football Club plc.

But neither of those companies have been liquidated, Rangers FC plc itself  has been.

As I covered in my previous blog, there is no separate club and company. When clubs incorporate as Rangers FC did in 1899, they BECOME companies.

Rangers FC was founded in 1872, incorporated in 1899, and went into liquidation in 2012.

Scottish soccer fans would be wasting their time if they lobbied the SFA to show some leadership and declare The Rangers FC is a brand new club formed in 2012, with no connection to Rangers FC other than being the new owners of their real estate.

The only way to stop the Scottish media and football authorities allowing the "same club" myth from taking hold is by forcefully bringing the issue to the attention of UEFA, whom I suspect are not in possession of the full facts of the case.

There are two reasons why UEFA would have no option other than to declare The Rangers unambiguously a new club.

First of all, their own licensing regulations would prevent the myth being allowed to take hold.

UEFA define clubs as "legal entities responsible for a football team." Please note, not "responsible for a football 'club'." A "team." There is a significant difference.

UEFA do not recognise Charles Green 's definition of a club, ie, "the stadium, training ground, colours, badge and history."

Charles Green in effect has made "Ramgers " a brand, or a franchise, not a legal entity responsible for a football team.

Secondly, UEFA's Financial Fair Play regulations are dead in the water if the SFA is allowed to dupe UEFA into recognising The Rangers as the club formed in 1872.

How can UEFA ever make any club meet its financial obligations if these can be avoided simply by liquidating and selling the assets to a friendly businessman? Why would any club ever again WANT to meet its financial obligations if it can simply switch "holding company" and dump any amount of debt?

UEFA must be informed of the full facts of this case and pressed to insist the SFA move to promote Financial Fair Play in Scotland.

I believe only a grass-roots fans movement, similar to "Say no yo the newco" will be sufficient to end the myth that The Rangers is a club formed in 1872.

I am willing to use this blog to get such a movement up and running.

I have no pretensions to front or run such a campaign, others will be far better qualified and equipped than me to do so, but please, if you are a fan if any Scottish club and are willing to do anything to help get things moving, let me know.

I will do anything I can through this blog to start and promote a movement to end the myth that the club and company are separate and that The Rangers was founded in 1872.

Rangers died through apathy. Don't let their successor club win this propaganda war through apathy too.

What's In A Club?

There is a weeping, Rangers-shaped sore festering on the body of Scottish football today.

Like a gangrenous digit that should have been long since amputated, The Rangers Football Club has been allowed to infect the game with the stench of corruption and intimidation.

Refusing to take tickets for a Scottish Cup game at Tannadice because of perceived slights to their predecessor club, demanding apologies from clubs like Falkirk, Stirling Albion and Montrose whose fans refuse to recognise them as a club founded in 1872, The Rangers FC certainly looks and acts like Rangers FC.

It could all have been so different, if only the Scottish Football Association had applied its own rules when The Rangers Football Club applied to have the now-defunct Rangers FC’s membership transferred to it.

The SFA claimed at the time that The Rangers Football Club did not need the requisite three years’ worth of audited accounts, on the spurious excuse that it was seeking a transfer of Rangers’ membership, not a new membership.

It was an inconvenient truth that Rangers had not lodged audited accounts for the previous two years either. So inconvenient, it was ignored entirely.

The Rangers Football Club was allowed to join Division 3 when they should have been told to apply for the West of Scotland League.

Having given membership to a body which did not meet their own requirements for membership, the SFA have now allowed this new club to promulgate the myth that they are actually the dead club they replaced.

A fiction has been allowed to grow that in the case of Rangers FC, the “club,” and, “company,” are separate, and that only the company is in liquidation. The club, apparently, carries on, exactly as it did before.

In assessing the accuracy or otherwise of this claim, it is necessary to establish two thing:

1)      What, in law, is a, “club?”

2)      Given the requirement for holding a UEFA club license for our top-flight team, how do UEFA define a, “club?”

Information on the legal status of clubs in Scotland can be found here:

Clubs must be properly constituted.

They must have written constitutions which set out their purpose, how they will be run, how a committee is elected etc.

It must have a written record of a meeting at which it was decided to form a club, or a Memorandum of Articles of Association.

Clubs must hold at least an Annual General Meeting, and have a mechanism by which meetings can be called by members outside of this.

Finally, clubs must have adequate insurance to cover all of their activities.

If Charles Green’s “Rangers,” was founded in 1872, it should of course be an easy matter for Charles Green to produce records of the club’s agm’s going back to 1872.

He will be able to produce records of the club’s committee members going back to 1872.

He will be able to produce records of the club’s membership lists going back to 1872.

Of course, these will not be records pertaining to Rangers Football Club plc or Rangers Football Club Ltd, because the club and company of course are separate…

We all know Charles Green would be unable to do this, because such records do not exist.

Charles Green’s claim to have purchased Rangers FC (the club) though, rests on his having purchased the business and assets of Rangers Football Club plc.

He bought Ibrox Stadium, Murray Park, the Albion carpark, and the Rangers “brand.”

Clearly, Rangers FC (the club) as defined by Charles Green is NOT a club as defined in Scots law.

 

 

UEFA are very clear what a club is.

Article 12.1 of UEFA’s Club Licensing and Fair PlayRegulations states:

“A licence applicant may only be a football club, i.e. a legal entity fully responsible for a football team participating in national and international competitions…”

Under this definition, Charles Green’s, “club” cannot be a football club.

Charles Green’s, “club,” is not a legal entity. It is some real estate and a brand.

The Rangers Football Club Ltd (Charles Green’s “company”) on the other hand DOES fulfil the requirement for a UEFA license of being a, “legal entity fully responsible for a football team.”

Unfortunately, it is also a legal entity which is only some six months old.

The Rangers Football Club Ltd does not at this moment qualify for a UEFA club license, which is why it cannot at this moment compete in UEFA competition, or the SPL.

It does not qualify because it does not yet have the required three years of audited accounts.

When it does meet this requirement, The Rangers Football Club Ltd, as a legal entity fully responsible for a football team, will be able to apply for a UEFA Club License.

It will not though, be a legal entity founded in 1872, with a 140+ year history behind it.

Contrary to misleading reports emanating from STV journalists on twitter, UEFA have not, “confirmed,” that they regard The Rangers Football Club as a continuation of the club formed in 1872.

UEFA does not issues club licenses to the owners of “brands.” They issue club licenses to legal entities responsible for football teams.

Due to a mixture of avarice and cowardice, the SFA has allowed the fiction of the separate club and company to spread.

They have refused to either confirm or deny that they regard The Rangers Football Club as the same club as was formed in 1872.

For the record, none of our “clubs,” have actually been clubs for many years.

They started out as clubs in the late 19^th/early 20^th centuries, but as the game turned professional our clubs incorporated in order to facilitate the paying of players and protect members from becoming liable for debts incurred.

This means our clubs BECAME companies many years ago and ceased to be “clubs.”

Rangers Football Club was formed in 1872 and incorporated (became a company) in 1899. This year it entered liquidation.

The Rangers Football Club Ltd was formed in May 2012 as Sevco Scotland and purchased the business and assets of Rangers plc. It did not buy a single share in the legal entity that was Rangers Football Club.

With The Rangers Football Club bullying fellow Division 3 clubs who dare to state they are a newco, it is now time the SFA showed some leadership for once and put this argument to bed.

The Rangers Football Club cannot possibly be the club formed on Flesher’s Haugh in 1872 because the “club” and the “company” are one and the same, and the club formed in 1872 is now in liquidation.