Rangers to find out league fate on Monday
Away from the bubble of the European Championships, something rather important happened yesterday in the realm of Scottish football. That is, of course, if the words “important” and “Scottish football” in the same sentence do not make an oxymoron.
Everyone is well aware of the problems facing Rangers right now what with their transfer embargo, huge amounts of debt and so on, putting their failure to make an impact on the European football scene’s top table (to mix metaphors) for around a decade now into a bit of perspective.
More news emerged yesterday that the club’s CVA (where it sought to agree a reduced amount to pay back to their creditors) was rejected by those club creditors and thus Rangers will have to re-form as a new company.
The big issue coming out of this is that, as a new company, the 11 other SPL clubs will have to vote on whether or not to allow the ‘new’ Rangers to compete in the league next season, the decision of which will be made in a meeting at Hamilton on Monday.
Many fans of other clubs in the SPL have expressed that they wish Rangers not to be allowed back into the SPL and that their clubs vote against the proposal as to approve it would damage the “sporting integrity” of the league.
However, the dilemma comes from the fact that Rangers presence in the SPL provides a huge amount of revenue for the league and other clubs through gate receipts and broadcasting deals which are of vital importance to the majority of the league clubs.
In many ways, this is a metaphor for the overall key conflict in football right now between the influence of money and the integrity of the sport itself as to allow Rangers back in the league would be seen as allowing them to circumnavigate the rules, thus reducing the spectre of liquidation of a club, particularly regards the Old Firm clubs.
But, if the income that the Old Firm clubs was to be reduced dramatically (as would most likely be the case if Rangers were forced into the Scottish League Divison Three, and who says they would be allowed to enter the league system there come to think of it) it would seriously damage the finances of the whole league.
The new Rangers will be formed by the sale of the player’s contracts and Ibrox to the new company formed by prospective owner Charles Green after his offer of a CVA offering 9p in the pound to creditors was rejected by HMRC.
The club still awaits the outcome of a First Tier Tax Tribunal about unpaid taxes to HMRC which could result in a further bill of anything between £35 and £70m which would have reduced the penny in the pound offer close to zero.
Clearly, there is much more of this story yet to run.
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