SPL In Crisis – In Bed With The Devil

Zombie FC

Arguably one of the most galling thing in any argument is the compromise to repair it. In war, for instance, territory is given up or conceded, prisoners are released, deals are struck. Just yesterday alleged mass murderers were shaking hands with Queens in the interest of a new era.

So despite my hyperbole it’s something that perhaps is going to have to happen in the fickle world of Scottish football. We may have to accept stuff we don’t like for the sake of the bigger picture.

It’s looking increasingly likely that this Newco Rangers – hitherto christianed Zombie FC in this reporters mind – are going to find a compromise which will allow them to be seen to be punished and spend not three but one year out of the top flight – a top flight which will radically change at the beginning of 2013/14. It seems that Regan and his zombie wranglers are indeed going to sleep with the Devil in order to, what I’m sure is in their mind, save Scottish football. But will this be at the behest of all sporting integrity?

Despite what Rangers fans – themselves angered and hurt beyond belief by what has happened (so much so that the vile comments directly towards myself and other commentators like Jim Spence beggar belief) – think, or, perhaps, feel, Rangers are guilty of terrible, terrible crimes. All the rhetoric in the world can’t hide the fact that secretly playing players, or not paying for transfer fees, or tax, or the wee face painting woman, is cheating. No one else gets away with such a blatant disregard for the rules – could you, for instance, walk into ASDA to do your weekly shop, walk out without paying it, then offer 8p in the pound for it, then say you’d changed your name and didn’t owe anything but were keeping the messages anyway, thanks very much? No of course not, that’s silly, but it’s what Rangers have done. Make no mistake, this isn’t about going into Administration – a silly and lazy accusation thrown towards Motherwell FC by irate Rangers fans has been this very argument – “Aye but you went into Administration, two faced/double standards” etc etc –  and the Administration was dealt with by a years ban from Europe (itself a paperwork glitch, not an administered punishment) and a useless ten point deduction (Celtic would have won the league anyway) – so, please, Bears, enough already. THAT was your punishment for that… THIS is something else altogether. You liquidated. The assets of the club have been split. Senior players are leaving two by two. All you’re left with is a reserve team with a different name. As a result, RFC does not exist. Of course, the history does, of course the “glory days” do – as long as Bears remember them then they are real. But that’s not this team. Now the question is – where does this team start? What’s right and proper? The administration punishment was for another team altogether.

Of course, for a majority of die-hard footy fans, there is no option – Division Three. But even that is fraught with controversy – what about the criteria for the three years checkable accounts? A newco can’t have them. What about challenges from Cove Rangers or Spartans? Both teams have, on paper, more legitimate claims to the position than Zombie FC. What about the precedent set by Livingston, hammered by the SFA, or Gretna, gone completely? These are important, meaningful, right questions. The right thing today – and today I use right instead of best – is to tell Zombie FC that they no longer exist, that they must start outwith the SFL, and apply on merit, in three years time after plying their trade elsewhere.

For a team with the potential earnings of Zombie FC that is never, ever going to happen. So what will happen?

Well, for a start, the fans asked their Chairmen to listen to them, and they did. Votes were cast, meetings were had. More than half the SPL has already abided by their judgement – and of course I have no doubt Motherwell’s Well Society, of which this reporter is a proud member and has already voted NO – and Zombie FC will NOT be plying their trade in the SPL next season. Again, this isn’t a punishment. This is a decision of sporting integrity. A brand new team has no place in the SPL. Punishments – for EBTs, taking the game into disrepute, underhanded business practices and tax dodging – are all still to be administered.

Ah, but there’s the rub. Who do we administer them to? Zombie FC? But, by our own argument, this is a new club, not suitable for the SPL, hell, not suitable for any professional league. Why should they be punished for the actions of a dead club? Surely no other sanctions can befall The Team Formerly Known As because, well, we’re all arguing they’re dead? This very reporter calls them Zombie FC.

It’s a tangled, bitter, unholy mess. Our great and good – and make no mistake Stewart Regan and his henchmen are neither great or good, but what they’re what we have – need to salvage something from this. We have two years left of a Sky deal. To lose it would be catastrophic. Each club looks like losing £700,000 to £1m per annum. The game will change completely in the next five years. And yes, there’s a certain amount of brush fire to that, sweeping away deadwood, but we have to be careful we don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Excuse the mixed metaphor.

So, can any good come from what has happened to Zombie FC? What can we get from it? Selfishly, what can we pick from it, whilst giving it a jolt?

Well, of course, the first thing, is money. They owe us. Big time. Should they get away with it? Of course not. A dead team can’t pay its dues. So it has to survive. How that money is distributed though – from both Zombie FC AND Celtic – needs looked at. Despite the fact that those two have been the biggest draws in the SPL, we’ve shown this season that we don’t have to put up with that, that they need a league to play in just as much as we need them to play in our league. So we renegotiate the way funds are distributed. What else do we want? What are we always going on about?

A league reshaping. Our league is small minded and insular, it needs to expand, to play on its strengths, and the strengths of this Country, itself small. Expanding the league is the right thing to do, for the game, for the money, for the country. So we push ahead with that. What else do we want?

Rules. Hard and fast rules. We’re all forever moaning that things are tied up with the suits and the Powers that Be and that rules make no sense, or that each association fights against its brother. Lets sort that out. Anything else?

A fairer distribution for SFL teams. Some clearly big teams – Partick Thistle, for instance, or Dundee – languish in the lower leagues for no other reason than money and opportunity. Look at the tumble of Livingston and Morton for instance. So we refurnish that.

But, as I said at the beginning. This requires money, and money is generated by interest, and interest, like it or not, comes from the Big Two. So, to get all that, to make all those great and wonderful and right changes, we may have to suck up one compromise. Just one. And that’s letting Zombie FC into the first division. It’s still a humiliation. It’s still a proper punishment. Make no mistake, the team has lost its star players, its lost its ability to play in Europe for three years and, most importantly, all dignity and sympathy along the way. But it’s one compromise we might just have to make. For everyone else. It might stick in our throat, but it might just be the thing that saves this game. Not Zombie FC, but our reaction to it.

Forever Claret and Amber

Ed

VFTES

The Ibrox faithful return to the First Division

The SPL In Crisis – Mainstream Media Add Fuel to the Fire

Season tickets and Well Society

In an unprecedented move, Motherwell FC have put the fate of the club in the hands of the fans. Often football fans claim that the club is “theirs” and the current owners/board are nothing more than “custodians”, and, in the case of Motherwell FC it seems to be more the case than in most. Following the Barcelona model, Motherwell FC have asked their fans to own the club, and as a result The Well Society was formed – where fans can help finance and have a say in the running of the club. A great idea on many levels, but few foreseen the first act of The Well Society being one which would rock Scottish Football to its very core – being given the vote for MFC to decide whether The Rangers FC or “newco” would be allowed entry into the SPL after the death of its rotten old granny RFC.

It’s a huge decision. One which is without a winner, in many aspects, and one which is in turn easy and impossible at once. To help with the decision it is of course reasonable to have all the facts, and again, Motherwell FC made another very bold move and put our finances our there for all to see and said “Here’s the facts, the pros and cons – now you decide!”

It is indeed a bold and brave move. Fans by their very nature rarely do things through clinical and business like thinking, we do things instinctively, and follow our heart and emotions. But we can’t do that this time. We have to be sure that voting NO for the Newco isn’t about getting it up Rangers, it isn’t about laughing at rival fans in the pub or the work place, and it isn’t about some revenge for a dodgy goal twenty years ago. It has to be done because it’s the right thing to do.

Of course, in the previous blog I talked about the difference between the right thing to do and the best thing to do, and this is very much the case here. Motherwell have lay bare their finances, and warned what will happen if things don’t go their way – and it’s a fair assumption that this will be the case for many of the other clubs in the SPL. Few have benefactors with unlimited resources who can fund principal over business, few have an infrastructure to sustain a nuclear strike. But that is something Motherwell are asking fans to do. For everyone crossing the box “No For Newco” is now required to step up. Everyone who has had a moan, a tweet, a post or a comment about it, now it’s time to put your money where your mouth is. Of course, not everyone is able to buy a season ticket, or attend the games and most certainly not everyone has the £300 needed to join the Well Society, but there are plenty of ways to support your local team. And this goes for Celtic fans too. If they want us to back their huge cry for No, then get behind us too. If you stay in Lanarkshire, hire out our facilities for your functions, buy from the Well Shop (which sells neutral sports stuff too) and get behind us. Join our lottery, get your kids up to our training facilities, or buy an MFC gift for a friend. The Well Society membership for children starts at £25 for instance. To Well fans – get your name on our wall, enter the 50/50 draw… anything you can do, even if you live to far from Motherwell to attend the games or you’re skint – is money we will desperately require next year. And this goes for every other club in the SPL. Whoever you support, if you have been advocating the NO vote, then up off your bums and do something.

The document sent to us by Motherwell FC does show a worst case scenario situation – it is not an admission of insolvency by any means – but it is important that everyone knows the severity of a NO vote. However, a NO vote is what we must do to keep the game real. To allow Rangers to enter the SPL again is unthinkable.

And now it seems Stewart Regan and his cohorts, desperate to appease their Rangers friends, are trying to find some kind of parachute loophole that will allow Rangers to enter into the First Division with the SFL being compensated with by the very money we’re so keen to keep. This cannot be allowed to happen either. Yes the whole of Scottish football needs an overhaul and yes some kind of amalgamation with the SFL is necessary, but this is a separate issue from Rangers. It seems churlish to keep banging on about this but Rangers are dead, they liquidated. They don’t exist. Even their Captain, Steven Naismith said “Rangers in that form are gone”, and he and several others are leaving to go elsewhere, so there is absolutely no precedent to allow them into the SPL. By that rule, ANY club from ANY division can apply to join the SPL. Or perhaps we should make a club up and apply? Why not? Hell, this new Zombie Rangers don’t even have the criteria to enter the SFL at Division 3 – and if I were Spartans or Cove Rangers for instance I’d be watching this very carefully, as I would if I were Gretna or Livingston – so there’s no way they should be allowed into the SPL.

But again this means we need to look at how we all support our local teams and what we do about that now.

Motherwell say – “There are clear risks to the financial stability and very future of this Club presented by the current situation.” and this cannot be underestimated. But by no accounts does this statement read “We’re about to go into administration”. Speaking to the fans last night Alan Burrows, head of media at Motherwell, was very adamant. He said: “It’s worth pointing out folks that the Board at MFC have not said insolvency is inevitable in the event if a Newco…it’s likely to see you take a hit financially. Most ‘Well fans I have read have ‘got that’ and haven’t been found wanting previously. We’re moving towards a sustainable fan ownership model and, together, everyone needs to pull together, which we will!”

So Motherwell needs us. Are we ready to step up? Are you ready to step up if you’re an Arab, a Don, a St or a Celt?

We’re either in this together, or not at all.

Forever Claret and Amber

Ed

VFTES

The Boo Boys and Michael Higdon

Hello there fellow Dossers

Motherwell made hard work of a huff n puff draw at Tannadice on 21st and headed back down the road with a one each draw which will probably satisfy us more than it will Dundee Utd.

We seem to be having a bit of a wobble recently, and it can be no coincidence that this is perhaps down to a slight change in the starting personnel with Chris Humphrey giving way for Omar Daley primarily down the right wing. This is leaving our auxiliary right back Tom Hatley exposed at the back, and, particularly at Tannadice yesterday and at Tynecastle on Christmas Eve, showed a vulnerability which beforehand wasn’t there.

It’s difficult to put the blame on anyone for this, it has to be said. The Gaffer has made the decision to swap Chris for Omar probably due to Daley’s early goal scoring record, and perhaps also due to the fact that Chris isn’t long back from quite a bad dead leg which blighted the end of last season. Perhaps he sees Chris as an impact player, and he most certainly is that, but with Omar being more attack minded, it breaks that linear progression between winger and full back, and leaves Tom more exposed.

It seems to VFTES that this is the problem with the team at the moment. It’s not because anyone is playing badly, or is wrong, it’s just a readjustment in the personnel that isn’t quite working.

Which brings us on to the target of the frustration of the fans – Michael Higdon. Big Higgy did what he does for us again yesterday – scored a goal – that’s ten for the season, so far putting him in the top ten goal scorers for the SPL, with twenty of 38 shots at goal on target. That’s a 50% success rate. Add to that the fact that the big forward has only two yellow cards to his name – and considering the amount of times he’s kicked, pushed, barged into and downright fouled during a game, and his ploughing a lone furrow up front for most of every game – and this, for a provincial club like Motherwell is a decent record.

Perhaps we are expecting him to be a like for like swap for his predecessor John Sutton. Sutts was a big target man, perhaps a little ungainly, not the quickest player in the world, but he relished the position in a way the Liverpudlian doesn’t seem to. Despite their similar physicality, they are not the same player, and Higdon has big boots to fill – but let’s not forget that John Sutton started slowly, and was a target for the boo boys too in his day.

Unfortunately, booing crowds are, by their nature, louder than quiet ones, and, despite them being in the minority, they can be heard. For a player who is knocking his pan out week in and week out, on his own, it must be frustrating to hear. Motherwell fans have an unhappy habit of targeting their own players – Derek Townsley springs to mind, or John Davies, a man so hated he was booed ON to a game.

Despite this, we can also be a loyal and praising support, but it’s unfortunate that the boos resonate louder in the ears of the players than the applause.

Michael Higdon’s gesture to his own fans was out of order yesterday – a fact made very well known by the reaction of Stuart McCall – and he was clearly still hurting from the criticism at the final whistle. His ire though should not be dismissed as a player thr0wing his toys out the pram. Ten goals by January is a great record. For a team like Motherwell FC, if we get 15 a year off our main striker we should be happy, and Higgy is well on his way to beating that.

We’re a family team. When you pull on the Claret and Amber you represent not only yourself and your pay packet like the “big” anonymous teams such as Celtic, Rangers, Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen do, but you become part of a community. We argue and we fight like any other family. But we do it because we’re close. Michael Higdon is a good footballer. He IS doing the business for us. But if we continue to boo a professional at work, he’ll turn his back on our family and his work rate, his heart, will go down. It’s only human nature. So, yes, his gesture, borne out of frustration and anger and probably a little hurt, was wrong, but he’s one of us, he’s a Steelman, he’s family. And what do we do when family wobble? We gather round them, and we pick them up.

We’ll touch on this in our Podcast, but, for now, it’s important on Tuesday that the little spat is forgotten, and that we get behind ALL our players, and we allow them the courtesy of getting behind us.

Forever Claret and Amber

VFTES