WALTER SMITH last night challenged the SPL to come up with proof that Rangers used EBTs and dual contracts for players while he was manager. An independent commission has been set up to investigate the Ibrox clubâs affairs. However, former boss Smith said: âAll I hear about is talk of stripping Rangers of titles. But any alleged wrongdoing involving EBTs and contracts has yet to be proven. I belong to that section of the Rangers support who wonder when the game will consider that the club has received enough penalties and punishments for whatâs gone on.â But Smith admits to being in two minds over the players who did do walking away when they realised Rangers wouldnât be playing in the SPL this season. His former charges Steven Naismith, Steven Whittaker and Allan McGregor have quit Ibrox. Smith said: âI understand why each took the career decision they did. I just wish theyâd hung around long enough for Rangers to get a transfer fee for them after negotiating cut-price deals with the club in the wake of administration. âBut I also know they had been placed in an awkward position after giving their all for the club. You have to look at the business managers of the club when you are apportioning blame.â Meanwhile, the SFA have confirmed the Rangers newco have been granted full membership. That depended on their SPL share being handed to Dundee â a formality that was completed yesterday. http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/ex-rangers-boss-walter-smith-tells-1214747 ================================================================== There are so many holes in what Walter is apparently saying that I honestly don't know where to start. He says that all he is hearing about is stripping Rangers of titles so he must live in a cocoon, there have been many topics in the public domain recently and admittedly almost all of them have been about Rangers, but it is beyond churlish to try and convince everyone that that's the only topic. Besides, he is not denying the allegations are true, he is challenging the SPL/SFA to "Prove it". Indeed Walter, that is the purpose of an "invesigation" - which was announced the other day, I would have thought that if all you are hearing about is stripping of titles then you would have surely heard that an invesigation had been launched? So what else do you want What Walter appears to be advocating is for the SPL/SFA to tell the world what evidence they have or forget it, just sweep it away, it is of no consequence because "the club has received enough penalties and punishments for whatâs gone on". That is simply a ludicrous defence, would he think the same in the trial of a mass Murderer and Rapist who was tried for only a couple of his alleged crimes? An extreme example perhaps but nonetheless true. Rangers should face punishment for all their wrongdoings if found guilty, you don't simply stop and say they have been punished enough, espcially when in recent days the new owners of The Rangers have been bragging to all and sundry how they are "Debt Free" and will be on a similar financial footing to Celtic within a year. I'm afraid when contrition seems to have evaporated like Scotch Mist it is not the right time to start asking for tea and sympathy, especially when a bit of attempted bullying is thrown into the mix. IF (and it's a big IF) Rangers are investigated and found to be guilty of employing Dual contracts then one of the punishments available is forfeiture of trophies won, that's a fact. It may not happen but Walter has no right to be telling everyone to drop it.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/former-rangers-boss-walter-smith-1214780 More of the same tripe, not even worth posting, absolutely dismal.
Smith said: âI understand why each took the career decision they did. I just wish theyâd hung around long enough for Rangers to get a transfer fee for them after negotiating cut-price deals with the club in the wake of administration. So after stiffing creditors for a 135m he thinks the new rangers should be given a financial head start. Idiot. What about all the people how will now lose there jobs because of what he and the board done? No class. Im glad he's hurting.
In the second article, Smith is alleged to have said “Motherwell went into administration and there were no penalties imposed on them. Rangers went into liquidation and the authorities discovered they had no rules for that so they just made them up as they went along.” Is that true about Motherwell?
He may be correct that Motherwell faced no 10 point deduction, but the rules were changed in the aftermath... I think. However, using Walter's logic, Motherwell were punished, they had to make most of the first team redundant within days of going into administration.
Walter is wrong. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/scot_prem/3418773.stm Scottish Premier League clubs who go into administration after this season will suffer a 10-point deduction and prevented from signing new players. Motherwell and Dundee, who are both in administration, will not be affected by the sanction this term. But if they are not in the process of coming out of administration by 31 May, the ruling will apply for next season. Motherwell have begun that process, but as things stand, Dundee could start next season with minus 10 points. Dundee administrator Tom Burton stressed that he did not agree with the new ruling, and suggested it may not be legal. "At Dundee FC, we hope that we can work round the proposed sanctions and not be further disadvantaged by the decision," he said. "However the painful difficulties faced by clubs in administration have never been more visible and this move to impose further financial sanctions on a club in a similar position in the future will have severe consequences. "Whilst we are aware of the motives behind the SPL's decision we do not agree with them. "Football is not above the law and the penalties now faced by clubs entering administration after the end of this season may run contrary to the Enterprise Act 2003, which places the emphasis firmly on survival of companies. "Under the new rules, survival is a much more difficult objective to achieve." http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/l/livingston/8179998.stm [h=1]Livi relegated to Division Three[/h]
Dundee rescue plan agreed Dundee Football Club's creditors have voted overwhelmingly in favour of a plan to take the Scottish Premier League club out of administration. A creditors' voluntary agreement will now be lodged that will enable the club to pursue their business plan. Dundee could have faced liquidation if administrator Tom Burton's proposal had been turned down. Acceptance of the deal should also allow the team to avoid a 10-point penalty at the start of next season. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/d/dundee/3749583.stm
Thanks - typical of Smith and Rangers not letting the truth get in the way of twisting the facts to suit themselves.
By Smiths logic all clubs in every football league in the world can now run up massive debts including failure to pay national state taxes so that they can field better players and with trophies, then simply go into admin or liquidate and walk away, starting all over again as the same club. Insolvency Act 1986 makes such behaviour not only a breach of civil but a breach of ciminal law. Sky still hammering Sevco in the BOTTOM LEAGUE then a little snigger.
i love the theory that rangers have been punished enough. they received a 10 point penalty for going into administration and received a transfer ban that still allows them to sign players. rangers no longer existing is not a punishment, merely a result of their own actions. no league titles can be stripped from sevco as they do not have any to strip, if rangers (now extinct) are found guilty of operating dual contracts then the only punishment that would fit the crime would be stripping of titles. there is no other way to punish something that does not exist.
When we take into account the "Draconian" £160k fine (which no one is sure they have paid yet) then they really have been hammered have'nt they. Not a bad penalty for writing off £134m of debt and starting afresh.
fair play dev i completely forgot about the huge fine they received. ****ing sfa kicking people while they are down
There is no Football Association in the world that would have regulations and punishments available to cover all the transgressions that the Rangers 1872 committed. It would have been impossible to contemplate any club running amok with what s right and wrong. Rangers, not only paid players by way of two contracts, but also at least one of their "legends" and a former manager just months before his new club paid Rangers an unbelievable fee for an average Footballer. Rangers with-held NI and PAYE from the tax Authorities. THey allowed their fans sing banned songs at matches with never a word of criticism. The Rangers club tried to con their way on to the Board of another SPL member. They made no attempt to check the fit and proper man to own Rangers. The list is endless .
Hugh Keevins launches Walter's Defence, expect more of the same for Traynor and Jackson et al. If a press man had said what Walter Smith did about Scottish football starting to resemble the League of Ireland there would have been uproar. (rightly so because he would have been shown to be nothing but a sycophant) There would have been talk of mendacious journalists bending the truth in a way that merited a visit to the Leveson Inquiry. There would have been accusations of bias and sour grapes because Rangers represent the establishment and have the media in their back pocket, whether they’re skint or not. And there would have been pledges to boycott whatever newspapers were concerned in covering up Rangers’ wrongdoing by saying it was bad for the game to put them into the Third Division. (I have already said he is biased because he is a Rangers man, and we also had silence - until now- on his comments, I would have expected journalists to do their job and examine what he said). But when it comes to Walter what are we going to do? Is someone seriously going to suggest he made all of this up just to get back at those who decided it was in the best interests of the game to jeopardise the SPL’s finances? (Yes, that's exactly what he is doing) Scaremongering? What difference does it make to him now he’s out and free to enjoy the life without fretting over football? This is a man with five decades worth of experience in the inner workings of Scottish football as player, coach and manager. Rangers to the core, certainly, but a down-to-earth and credible observer of the game that’s made him a wealthy man and is now impoverished. (Because he is a possible target for HMRC, that's why he's a wealty man perhaps, EBTs and all that?) Walter has done all of us a favour by using the first weekend of the SPL season to deliver the home truths concerning where we stand. We’re in a mess and rehabilitation can only begin, like recovering alcoholics, by admitting the existence of a problem in the first place. And we can start by taking stock of where we are off the park. The SFA have appointed a new security chief, the former Strathclyde Police superintendent David Brand, who was previously with the Football Co-ordination Unit for Scotland. That’s the anti-bigotry lot to you and me. (A different subject entirely, I thought you were going to tell us how and why Walter was right?) Rangers owner Charles Green can be introduced to him when he goes to Hampden to face the charge of bringing the game into disrepute that will undoubtedly be made against him for his ill-considered remark about bigotry having been responsible for his club’s entry into Division Three.We’ve gone daft in this country – to the extent there’s no shock value any more. The SFA’s chief executive Stewart Regan publicly describes a life of police surveillance after his flat was targeted by potential threats to his safety and no one really bothers. They obtained his wife’s mobile phone number and put it on the internet. How weird have we become and when does revulsion set in to allow us a road back to normality? Neil Lennon said he wanted Celtic to beat HJK Helsinki in their Champions League qualifier on Wednesday night so that the result would put a smile on people’s faces. You couldn’t make Scottish football lighten up and smile if you had Ken Dodd’s tickling stick. Most of the country hoped Lennon’s team got stuffed against the Finns because that’s the way we are. St Johnstone are out of Europe. Motherwell are preparing to say their farewells in Greece this week and Dundee United will need a Muscovite miracle if they’re to return from Russia still in the Europa League after the second leg of their tie with Dynamo Moscow. Celtic will be the last hope of saving our dwindling credibility when they go to Helsinki after having conceded an away goal to HJK in Glasgow on Wednesday night. They’ll go there with defenders playing out of position and hope the absence of a commanding figure at the back doesn’t return to bite them. You don’t want to express that opinion too loudly, incidentally, because Celtic still believe in that primitive system of banning people whose observations displease them. But that’s another matter. When Helsinki’s over, good or bad, they’ll dump the SPL for a weekend and go off to Philadelphia to play Real Madrid in order to make a few bob. That’s where we’re at in the aftermath of the summer shake-up where Celtic had to vote against their best interests rather than alienate the fundamentalists within their own support by asking for Rangers to stay in the SPL. (alienate the Fundamentalists? What a ****ing nerve this one has on him, according to him about 95% of SPL fans on a non Rangers slant are Fundamentalists, what do you think he means by that?) That’s all Walter was trying to say (Bullhsit and you know it) – we’ve made our bed of nails and now we need to lie on it for as long as it takes to bend the game back into shape. Now he can use that training on how to open suspicious envelopes he was given by the police when he was still Rangers boss in case any threatening mail is delivered to his house due to the fact he has the temerity to be honest. (honest? That really is a joke) As Doddy would say, it’s tattyfilarious. With the emphasis on the tatty. What a coward of a hack Keevins really is, still under Walter's thrall even though the man is no longer in and position of authority in the game, but Keevins like all of the slimeballs (with a few exceptions) in Scotland, don't criticise the Sainted Walter, just in case.
That’s where we’re at in the aftermath of the summer shake-up where Celtic had to vote against their best interests rather than alienate the fundamentalists within their own support by asking for Rangers to stay in the SPL. I still think it is in celtic's interest for rangers to be in the 3rd division as it makes the league easier giving us a chance of the champions league. That's where the money is to be made for us. As for walter just being honest why did he say then it would be good for Scottish football if Celtic and rangers both left?
Good post. As you say no one could have foreseen the antics that mob got up to. What I don't get is why the fans of the NEW CLUB whose name is yet to be clarified get so uptight about an extinct club having trophies stripped, after all would they feel so, if it was announced that Third Lanark were to have their one spl title and thei one SC stripped?
Agree with your analysis. Spot on. Kevin's has to be careful. If and it is a strong possibility that SEVCO do not actually survive as such, only Celtic fans will be the clients of the DR and we will not want to read his or Jabbas garbage.
He is old, senile and doesn't react well when he's no longer the top dog But go on Walter keep reminding everyone that as of yet Rangers have not been punished for anything...the SFA were hoping we would all forget about it... Tool
