Stop laughing at the back, England - you're next

Bib Fortuna's Maw · May 11, 2012

I saw this title in a football magazine in the nineties on a piece about Rangers dominating the Scottish game.

Today, in the Telegraph, Roddy Forsyth does a piece about how FFP in football will eventually affect everyone

Rangers takeover: cost of City's attempts to buy success a timely reminder of Sir David Murray's madness

Some years ago, when Sir David Murray was still plain Mister and the late Jim Farry was chief executive of the Scottish Football Association, there occurred what proved to be a prophetic spat between the two. Farry publicly rebuked Murray for piling up heaps of debt at Rangers in pursuit of European glory with Dick Advocaat as team manager.

Murray retorted that debt was no more than a means of advancement of ambition and said that he assumed that Farry, like most people, had used a mortgage to finance the purchase of his home. Some saw the exchange as a contrast between the world view of a dull bureaucrat and that of a successful entrepreneur.

Others thought that Farry was â aptly enough in retrospect â on the money in his warning that sooner or later deficit funding always has to be paid for and that Rangers did not possess the means to do it without the aid of a sugar daddy â so long as the sugar daddy had deep pockets. Farry, alas, is not here to favour us with his views on the debacle played out at Ibrox over the past year, but we can at least grant him credit for seeing what hindsight now reveals so plainly.

One would have liked to hear his take on how another team in blue have spent their way on to the honours list â assuming, of course, that Manchester City do not stumble at home to QPR on Sunday. The Daily Telegraphâs detailed analysis of the state of financial play in the Premier League was not so much food for thought as a feast for contemplation and analysis, even if one conclusion was wholly predictable.

In our solvency index table â where clubs were graded by match operating cash flow with interest either deducted or earned â City were so firmly rooted to the foot of the list that, had it been the Premier League table itself, they would have been relegated a couple of months ago.

And, by the same measure, the championship trophy would have been destined for another season spent inside the trophy cabinet at Old Trafford. In a comparison that is almost too neat to be true, Unitedâs wage bill of Â£153 million equals Cityâs turnover, but United spend 46 per cent of their earnings on salaries compared to Cityâs 113 per cent

Remember when a certain Rangers owner infamously boasted that, for every Â£5 spent by Celtic, he would outlay Â£10? Fans of the stricken Ibrox club look at the Etihad and wonder â how do City get away with it while Glasgowâs bluenoses wander dazed amongst the debris of shattered hopes?

Even more to the point, while Murrayâs lavish cash outlay swiftly saw off the likes of Aberdeen, Dundee United and Hearts and established nine years of dominance over Celtic, it has taken City four years to gather sufficient momentum to perch at the top of the Premier League going into the final day of the season.

And, as detailed by The Daily Telegraph, they have had to surpass even Murrayâs 2:1 spending ratio to get there â with an outlay of Â£3.04 for every Â£1 earned during 2009-10. We have yet to discover the cost of the charge to the title during the current campaign, but at the moment the price of success since City became a sheikhâs plaything is not much short of Â£1 billion.

Mind you, this correspondent once phoned Murray to be greeted with the words: âI made Â£60,000 selling shares this morning.â By contrast, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al-Nahyan trousered Â£1.4 billion profit from selling Barclays Bank shares he had held for a mere seven months.

So, for as long as there are abundant fossil fuels under the sands of Abu Dhabi and while Sheikh Mansour retains his enthusiasm for the cause, City supporters will continue to savour their clubâs ability to commandeer almost any desired footballer at will.

The sporting integrity argument is another matter entirely and when Uefaâs Financial Fair Play regulations kick in, City will have more of a job to comply than most of their Premier League counterparts. Of course, if there was a sporting integrity league table in Scotland, Rangers would be rooted at the foot right now.

There is force to the argument, advanced by Walter Smith, that their club is being made to pay for the actions of an individual, specifically Craig Whyte. But the same logic can be applied to the Murray regime, should it be found by the ongoing tax tribunal to have abused Employee Benefit Trusts to gain an advantage in the transfer and salary market.

Likewise, if it is proven that Rangers were paying players via illicit and unregistered contracts, the deed will be laid at Murrayâs door, even if he pleads that he was acting on the advice of tax experts and lawyers. Moreover, the consequence for Rangers of those actions was not the ruin of the club but the advancement of its ambition, to coin a familiar phrase.

In other words, sauce for the Whyte goose would have to be sauce for the Murray gander.

Meanwhile, some Rangers fans tell themselves that if only they could move to the Premier League, their troubles would evaporate like snowflakes in a blast furnace. Yet the total debt for Premier League is currently Â£1.39 billion.

As Alex McLeish once observed when a move to England was mooted while he was manager of Rangers: âWhoâs to say that even if we had that kind of money we wouldnât just flush it down the toilet?â Who indeed? Certainly nobody at Ibrox.

Click to expand...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...ly-reminder-of-Sir-David-Murrays-madness.html

Of course, Rangers are a bit different as they did nothing wrong until this year and the club is being "punished" for the actions of one Motherwell thousandaire

Redwino · May 11, 2012

I went to school with Roddy Forsyth. He once did a ****e into a poly bag then threw it from the second floor onto the grass where the dinner ladies were sunbathing.

Bib Fortuna's Maw · May 11, 2012

Redwino said: ↑

I went to school with Roddy Forsyth. He once did a ****e into a poly bag then threw it from the second floor onto the grass where the dinner ladies were sunbathing.
Click to expand...

My kinda guy

Tina_old · May 11, 2012

Otto Flayshow · May 11, 2012

I can exclusively reveal that one of those dinner ladies was reincarnated as a pigeon.

[video=youtube;uxdETjyjB08]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxdETjyjB08[/video]

Redwino · May 11, 2012

he also used to stick pens and pencils in his nose and ears and say they were fly scarers.

Stop laughing at the back, England - you're next

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Stop laughing at the back, England - you're next

Bib Fortuna's Maw Well-Known Member

Redwino Active Member

Bib Fortuna's Maw Well-Known Member

Tina_old Princess

Otto Flayshow Well-Known Member

Redwino Active Member

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