Strip Tease by Saint Tim<\/b><\/p>\n
I’ve been asked by some ‘Rangers’ supporting friends about the issue of title-stripping recently and mostly the conversation has revolved around whether they can be stripped from the new Rangers and, if so, whether that can be challenged.\u00a0\u00a0 I am not and don’t hold myself out to be a corporate lawyer but I’ve got a bit of experience in the area.\u00a0 I also can’t\u00a0guess what the outcome of the investigation will be.\u00a0 Hopefully though, I am in possession of a reasonably logical approach to these things despite being an internet bampot.<\/p>\n
To be honest, along with many others, I’m pretty fed up explaining basic law and common sense to Rangers fans.\u00a0\u00a0Few of them actually listen and the fairy tales persist. Nevertheless, I’ll share with you my own response (there’s nothing new here, I just felt like sounding off) to my pet zombears and leave it up to you to make up your mind on whether I’m talking pish.<\/p>\n
Actual History<\/strong><\/p>\n Rangers Football Club was formed in 1873 and incorporated as a company in the early part of the 20th century. Incorporation is the process through which a business becomes a company. Note ‘becomes’. It does not sit within or on a corporate structure and it is not held by a holding company (a holding company is a company which holds the entire share capital or ‘stock’ of another company). Rangers Football Club is to be liquidated as the company became insolvent, entered administration and was unable to exit administration via a CVA. When the company is liquidated, that will be that. The club which was formed in 1873 will have ceased to be because the club and the company were (and currently are) the same. The assets were sold to another company which in turn formed a football club and applied and was admitted to the SFL as The Rangers Football Club.<\/p>\n Interpretations and Utter Bollocks<\/strong><\/p>\n Now, there is an argument that a football club is about community, culture and its support. On that basis it can be argued that the club\/company is simply the corporate or associative reference point for the identity of the community it represents.\u00a0 On that basis I think that there is a case for saying that the current club ‘is, was and always will be Rangers’.\u00a0 The support hasn’t changed (as evinced by recent and continuing behaviour), they play in the same place and represent the same ‘values’.\u00a0 However, the argument for retention of history and titles stems from two different lines of argument. 1. That Sevco bought Rangers history (that is patently nonsense as one legal entity cannot buy another’s history any more than I can buy Danny McGrain’s or Rod Stewart’s (sadly). Sevco bought Rangers’ assets: heritable properties, intellectual property, goodwill but not history.\u00a0 History is not an asset which can be sold, transferred or assigned between entities – it’s ridiculous that anyone actually has to spell that out); and, 2. that history somehow travelled to the new club via the transfer of association membership (association membership is simply a badge that says ‘professional club’ ‘entitled to compete in this set-up’ and ‘bound by the rules and regulations of the association’. Competitive history no more attaches to association membership than my mid-90s competitive history at Sensible Soccer attaches to my driving licence.). The only real argument for the current Rangers being the same as the soon to be liquidated Rangers is an emotional and community one. Personally (and I know it won’t be a popular thing to say on this forum but) I think there is real force to that but I’ve not heard one commentator argue it – they inevitably focus on reality-bending fictions.<\/p>\n Title Stripping<\/strong><\/p>\n I don’t think titles will be stripped, however, the legal reality is crucial to both the ‘history’ and the title-stripping debate. The new Rangers (formed and incorporated in 2012), to my mind, has no legal title to challenge a decision relating to the recent competitive history of another club, which history predates its very existence. Presumably, the only entity entitled to challenge legally is BDO as liquidator of the original club. They won’t do that (even if offered the money by the RFFF) as there is no benefit to the club’s creditors.<\/p>\n However, Rangers, Sevco and the three governing bodies entered into a 5-way agreement in circa July 2012 relating to the new club being admitted to the SFL – so there may be an angle.\u00a0 We know that the original draft of that agreement involved Sevco accepting and not challenging title stripping (this was removed).\u00a0 The reason this was there in the first place was not because Sevco have any entitlement to the competitive history of Rangers but was presumably for two reasons: (i) because the Rangers support account for – give or take – 25% of the revenue of the Scottish game and, therefore, continuity between the old and new entities was vital; and, (ii) because the governing bodies realised that if the new club simply accepted that this was going to happen (against the ‘we accept this or its over’ backdrop) then a lot of emotional and probable legal turmoil could be avoided down the line. Green, however much of a crook, is sadly not a complete fool and he knows that the backing of the fans is imperative to his goals. Ergo, under no circumstances (with all of this occuring before the now unquestioning simpering love-in for the man) would he concede this.<\/p>\n If titles are now stripped by the SPL panel there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth but there may also be a legal challenge which is potentially going to make every member of that 5-way agreement look foolish.\u00a0 The ‘same club’ myth has knowingly been perpetuated and reinforced by each of the 5 parties to keep the Rangers support (and the money that they bring) within the sport.\u00a0 If ‘Rangers’ (funded by the Rangers Fans Fighting Fund) seek to challenge a ruling of the independent panel headed up by Lord Nimmo-Smith, my own feeling is that it could well fall at the first hurdle (legal title – i.e. basically, a legal relationship between the subject of the action and those bringing the action).\u00a0 Given that the SPL presumably know this – I expect a ‘guilty’ verdict and an alternative sanction to title stripping which will be grudgingly accepted (quite what that might be I do not know).\u00a0 The expected feral reaction of the Rangers support won’t concern the game’s custodians half as much as them taking their money away.<\/p>\n On one view, irrespective of the FTT(T) result, Rangers cheated the tax authorities and their contemporary clubs in Scotland for the best part of 20 years (why not declare these entirely innocent payment schemes\/loans? – the obvious answer is, well, obvious).\u00a0 It could be argued that retrospective title stripping will achieve little now but there is little doubt that, if the rules have been breached, there should be sanction.\u00a0 My own view is that – if found to have been guilty – the titles should be removed (groundbreaking viewpoint, I know).\u00a0 Whether they should awarded (to Celtic) is an issue which our support isn’t wholly united on if the message boards are any guide and I’m not going to get into.<\/p>\n p.s. A tale etched by a fud with a hard pencil<\/b><\/p>\n As an aside, I note that Green and Traynor are making noises about a tell-all book presumably revealing the extent of the skullduggery of the game’s governing bodies as the great and noble Rangers were shamefully relegated from the top flight.\u00a0 I’d welcome it.<\/p>\n The SPL and SFA bent over backwards to rip up their own rule book and admit a new club to the top tier of Scottish football because that club could carry the name Rangers and play at Ibrox stadium.\u00a0 They sounded off about armageddon and preached the doom of the game unless the most obscene carve up of sporting integrity imaginable was allowed to take place.\u00a0 They met with people from Rangers and from Sevco with a view to putting this in place.\u00a0 When it became apparent that it wouldn’t fly they admitted them to the SFL against their own rules requiring 3 years audited accounts for an applicant club.\u00a0 When sanctioning for refusual to pay income tax, VAT and national insurance they put a transfer embargo in place but allowed the new club an entire window to get players in place BEFORE the embargo commenced.\u00a0 The transfer embargo itself was the chose sanction (and ultimately accepted) because all of the parties (eventually) knew that the only reasonable and vaible alternative was the expulsion of the old club from the professional game – and the end of its all important membership.\u00a0 These administrative gymnastics were the work of the SFA and SPL working outside of their own rules and, arguably, morality in favour of retaining some form of ‘Rangers’ in Scottish football.\u00a0 Much of it was done with Charles Green and his representatives in the room.\u00a0 Throughout all of it Jim Traynor was laying the blame for the financial collapse of Rangers at the door of the SFA and SPL (with a smattering of blame aimed at Craig Whyte for balance).<\/p>\n And yet, we’re meant to believe that they have it in for ‘Rangers’ and that Traynor and Green are the men to drag the truth, kicking and screaming, into the light?<\/p>\n Ach well, I suppose it’s not the internet bampots the Jim and Charles are\u00a0transmitting\u00a0to.<\/p>\n Hail Hail<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Saint Tim ( <\/strong>Saint Tim is on Twitter –@UnderAnOverflow)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Strip Tease by Saint Tim I’ve been asked by some ‘Rangers’ supporting friends about the issue of title-stripping recently and mostly the conversation has revolved…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/etims.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/bear-strip.bmp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2J7If-vw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1954"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1962,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954\/revisions\/1962"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}