Ronny Deila wins manager of the month. Fair enough.

“This award is for everybody – it’s for the whole club, the players, staff and everybody who has turned things around, and that’s good. So hopefully we’ll get more in the future. 

Bet he still keeps it in his house though.

“We’ve won a lot of matches in the league and getting through in the League Cup was an important win as well.

“Those were big games and it’s good that there are big games coming up all the time. I think we’re improving. You see more intensity in our play and we’re good at dealing with a lot of games because that’s also a tough thing that other teams don’t have to deal with.

 “We are in a good position domestically and now I’m looking forward to the game against Molde on Thursday night.” 

Maybe, just maybe , we’ve had our duff patch for the season and things will go a little more to plan now, starting , of course, on Thursday.

Some , for example the aptly named website “Talking Baws “, don’t seem to see it that way;

Written by Daniel Caw, this appears to be his application for a job in the MSM;

Ronny Deila should be sacked on Friday morning if Celtic’s Europa League campaign is effectively ended by Molde on Thursday night.

Plain and simple.

The Parkhead support are a faithful bunch, and many continue to stick up for their manager.

That’s an admirable trait in an age where managers are dispensed of far too quickly, under pressure from faceless money-men and fickle crowds.

But all the Ronny Roars in the world can’t disguise the Scandinavian’s woeful record any longer.

If the team currently ranked as the sixth-best in Norway’s Tippeligaen come to Glasgow and follow up their 3-1 victory from two weeks ago with a similar scoreline, then there will no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Ronny Deila deserves another crack at Champions League qualification in the Autumn of 2016.  

Yeah, and if he doesn’t make the final of the boat race again this year etc etc..

 Nonsense again.

Sometimes I despair. 

More good news for the club, well, probably, is that Peter Lawwell has edged Dave King for the nomination in the CEO awards. 

Lawwell has been nominated alongside Huw Jenkins (Swansea City), Jez Moxey (Wolverhampton Wanderers), Bob Symns (Peterborough United) and Jason McGill (York City).

The nominees have been shortlisted following a vote by their peers in each of their respective leagues.

Each winner will receive the award for their respective league at an awards ceremony on 5th November at Chelsea Football Club’s Stamford Bridge stadium before the overall winner is announced on the night.

fcbusiness Editor and Football Business awards judge, Aaron Gourley, said: “The award for CEO of the Year is one of the most prized in football. Each of the finalists is there because their hard work and dedication has been recognised by their peers.

“But the Football Business Awards are a fantastic way of recognising the efforts of everyone involved in the beautiful game and I’m sure, as each of our CEOs would testify, they would not be in line for an award without them.”

Chris sutton has offered manager Ronny deila some advice ahead of the Molde game, and it’s probably not too far away from what a lot of us have been thinking. 

Defensively, Celtic have been found wanting in the last 15 or 16 months in Europe and Ronny has to address that. “It is a problem that they’ve been so easy for teams to hit on the break.

He said a bit more than that, but the point remains. There has been a little bit of naivety at the back, and by simply stretching the two centre halves, Celtic’s opponents, in europe at least, have exploited that. 

 Cast your mind back a few years. 

Didier Agathe used to get a lot of abuse from the stands when he would sprint down the flank only to halt at the half way line, and then look as though he didn’t know what to do next. In fact, he had been expressly told not to enter the opponents half, but his pace had taken him ahead of the play. #

 Thats the sort of discipline that needs to be instilled in the two full backs on Thursday. Only one should be allowed in the opponents half at any time. 

And the centre backs must remain at the back. No wandering up field where all their pals are. 

Build from the back, make the defence solid, and let the forwards do their job without worrying that every time they score, the defence will let them down. 

Elsewhere, Second Rangers have published their accounts to June, which show they are losing about half a million a month, but Dave King is in charge, so don’t worry. 

They lost £7m for the year, give or take a couple of quid, which on an announced turnover of £16m is a spectacular achievement. 

You can have a look at it here, if that sort of thing interests you;

AnnualReport2015

Actually, it’s quite funny.

The main thing , though, is that they need money in quickly to ensure they complete the season.

Happy to help. 

Apparently not. 

and something else came out this morning, while we’re on about that lot;

Advocate General for Scotland v Murray Group Holdings and others

A scheme involving payments to various trusts set up in respect of executives and footballers employed by the former Rangers Football Club amounted to “a mere redirection of emoluments or earnings” and was accordingly “subject to income tax”.

Judges in the Inner House of the Court of Session allowed an appeal by the Advocate General for Scotland, acting on behalf of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), against a decision of the Upper Tribunal in relation to tax assessments made on Murray Group Holdings and other members of the Murray Group of companies, including RFC 2012 PLC.

The Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Carloway, sitting with Lord Menzies and Lord Drummond Young, heard that in the tax years from 2001/02 to 2008/09 the companies entered into a series of transactions as part of a scheme designed to avoid the payment of income tax and National Insurance contributions (NICs) in respect of their employees, which resulted in assessments by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to income tax under the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) system and corresponding NICs. 

The companies challenged those assessments before the First-tier Tribunal, which upheld the appeal by a majority of two-to-one. An appeal by HMRC to the Upper Tribunal was refused in August 2014, but permission to appeal to the Court of Session was granted.

The scheme involved a cash payment into an Employees’ Remuneration Trust (the Principal Trust), and the trustee of the Principal Trust then paid the same amount into a sub-trust for the benefit of the employee and his family. The trustee of the sub-trust then advanced funds on loan to the employee in question.

The First-tier Tribunal held that the trustee of the Principal Trust had a “genuine discretion” as to how to apply the funds advanced to it, thus the benefit enjoyed by the employee and his family once the funds were resettled into the sub-trust resulted from the exercise of a “discretionary power” by the trustee of the sub-trust. 

Such a payment was not a payment of emoluments or earnings, and was therefore not subject to income tax, the First-tier Tribunal ruled.

However, HMRC contended that the cash payment made by the employing company to the trustee of the Principal Trust was in consideration of services by the employee, and thus had been “earned” by the employee. 

Therefore, the scheme amounted to “a mere redirection of earnings which did not remove the liability of employees to income tax”, it was argued. 

The court concluded that the argument by HMRC was correct, and accordingly allowed the appeal on that ground.

The judges observed that the “fundamental principle that emerged from previous cases was clear: “if income is derived from an employee’s servicesqua (in their capacity as) employee, it is an emolument or earnings, and is thus assessable to income tax, even if the employee requests or agrees that it be redirected to a third party”. 

Delivering the opinion of the court, Lord Drummond Young said: “That accords with common sense. If the law were otherwise, an employee could readily avoid tax by redirecting income to members of his family to meet outgoings that he would normally pay: for example to a trust for his wife…or to trustees to pay for his children’s education or the outgoings on the family home…The funds are ultimately derived as consideration for the employee’s services, and on that basis they are properly to be considered emoluments or earnings.”

In relation to employees other than footballers, the “true nature” of the individual transactions was that bonuses were paid into the trusts on the basis of the work performance of the employee in question, and the profitability of his employing company. 

“On the foregoing basis, we are of opinion that the sums received by the trustee of the Principal Trust and in due course by the trustees of the sub-trusts amounted to a mere redirection of income and thus constituted emoluments or earnings of the employees in question,” Lord Drummond Young said.

In relation to footballers, when a contract of employment was concluded, an additional side-letter provided for a discretionary trust payment and the amount of any bonus was typically negotiated by the footballer’s agent as part of his overall responsibility for securing “proper remuneration” for the player’s services.

Lord Drummond Young continued: “It seems to us to be self-evident that the obligations in the side-letter were part of the employee’s employment package, and provided him with additional remuneration. They were negotiated as part of the total employment package…Once it is accepted that the bonus payments represented consideration for a footballer’s services qua employee, it inevitably follows that those payments represented emoluments or earnings of the footballer in question.

“Furthermore, so far as the footballers are concerned, at least, it seems to us that if bonuses had not been paid they might well have taken their services elsewhere. We realise that the fifth respondent [RFC 2012] was in, potentially, a difficult financial position, competing for good players in an international market where other countries may not have the same rigorous approach to taxation as the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, the law is clear: the payments made in respect of footballers were in our view derived from their employment and thus the payments were emoluments or earnings.”

He added: “We accordingly conclude that the primary argument presented for HMRC is correct: the payments made by the respondents to the Trustee of the Principal Trust in respect of employees were emoluments or earnings and are accordingly subject to income tax. Furthermore, those payments were made at the time of payment to the trustee of the Principal Trust, with the result that the obligation to deduct tax under the PAYE system fell on the employer who made such a payment.”

The full opinion of the court can be accessed via the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service website (see link below) from 12 noon on 4 November 2015:

http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/search-judgments/judgment?id=8213f5a6-8980-69d2-b500-ff0000d74aa7   

Of course, we will be told that it doesn’t affect the “current regime ” at Ibrox, but thats because , of course, it’s a different club. 

But it does open up a an of worms around years and years of cheating. Especially that bit in bold.  

Cheating and compliancy….but we knew that anyway. 

Now though, something needs to be done about it. 

Noone got the answer to yesterdays question, which surprised me. The pic was of the Turkish president, and he was in the news because, from the Telegraph:

Caption competition….