Listening on Five Live radio this morning and they were going on about the Gretna situation.It was said that under the speeeel constitution a club must be relegated. It is known that Gretna might fold as a club this week thus all results with Gretna being made void

With St.Middens 2 games in hand...this will put us in the mire IF the above is revealed after ther EXT meeting tomorrow night and they refuse the spls loan because of insufficent other income it was said. :029: :029: :029:

if Gretna fold they will be classed as the relegated club.

if Gretna go into administration, they will be deducted 10 points and be relegated on points.

either way, ICT and others should be safe !

if Gretna fold they will be classed as the relegated club.

Playing devils advocate for a minute and i don't believe (or hope) for a split second it will happen,however,if Gretna fold,apparently all results are void and the league adjusted accordingly,therefore surely Gretna have not exsisted in this years league and therefore cannot be the relegated club.  :024:  just a thought like.

realy cant see it happening, the legal ramifications would be huge. they couldnt surely in effect relegate 2 teams at this late staeg, theyd have legal bills coming out their noses. not just from us but the likes of st j, they effectively have no chance of winning the league but a slightly better chance of 2nd. they could argue that now that they are out of the title race theye rested players or tried new formations as they have nothing to play for, however if all of sudden dundee and hamilton were promoted then they could argue that they could have fought on for 2nd place.

in summary, i dont see it happening

If Gretna were to fold there would be a space for one team to join SPL. I was told today that Gretna may be allowed to get out of difficulty by selling players outside the window and by fielding, predominately, youths for the remainder of their games in order to avoid all the league problems. They would also have to agree  to returning to Div 3 to avoid disruption of the existing promotion / relegation system. Getting rid of their high earners + transfer fees + parachute payment + what they are due from the SPL less any advance should keep them afloat.

Incidently, we are being linked with Skelton but thats probably sh!te

They are also allowed to take a "loan" from the SPL that is deducted from their end of season payment.

I prefer not to discuss issues on this board on which I am currently reporting but I do realise that this is a matter of concern to Caley Thistle fans. I have spoken to Graeme Bennett on this one so, if you are in the Highlands and Islands area, tune into BBC Scotland's Highland bulletins on 92-95FM at 0750 or if elsewhere, catch it on the internet afterwards. Tomorrow's BBC sport bulletin also includes a ray of hope for Clach and I've been running a mile at the Caledonian Stadium with Chappers and Dave, Dougie Imrie and Ian Black.

They are also allowed to take a "loan" from the SPL that is deducted from their end of season payment.

The end of season payment by the SPL is paid to the clubs at the split, it has happened before that teams can apply and be paid the sum of money early, this is what will happen in the Gretna situation.

The sum is around ?100k, will this be enough to keep them going? time will tell.

If Gretna fold before the end of the season, which even with the protection of administration and the benifit of an advance from the SPL, is quite possible, there will be no other team relegated.

Whilst Gretna's results will be expunged, which will do ICT no good given that we've humped them twice, they will be deemed to be the relegated team.

I know that the rules are less than clear on the point but the SPL''s management committee are hardly going t want to interpret them in any other way.

From what i can gather from Charles' report, current SPL rules say that if a team folds then another team has to be relegated i.e if Gretna go bust then we're in a relegation scrap. Grassa thinks that the rules will be changed if this happens.

Gretna will not fold before the end of the season. Sequestration takes longer than that. They will go into administration. The administrators will keep the club running, probably by offloading players, loan from SPL, strength of parachute payment for going down. They have ten games left to end of season and one is at home to Celtic so that should give a boost.

It is not in the interest of the SPL or SFL to let them fold before season ends as it would leave a big headache for promotion / relegation / playoffs etc.

I believe that Gretna are a limited company so, if the worst came to the worst, the process would be liquidation rather than sequestration.

I agree that they may well be able to stagger on until the end of the season but liquidation could indeed see them out of business  before the end of the month far less the end of the season.

Livingston and Gretna are examples of people treating cubs like hobbies.  They buy their way up the leagues and then when reality bites :sillywave:  I do not feel sorry for them in the slightest.

Right from the beginning I've felt very strongly that this is no way to run a football club, especially in the current financial climate, and what's happening to Gretna now proves it.

It's a bit of an SPL tradition that when the football season ends, we are kept interested and entertained by legal disputes and appeals through the summer!

According to someone on P&B the rules state that:

If any club in the league ceases to operate or to be a member of the league for any reason, its playing record in the league may be expunged and the number of relegation places shall be reduced accordingly

Gretna will probably limp on until the end of the season, propped up by the SPL and the fact that it takes a while to push through the whole process.

I'm not great at arithmetic but if one relegation place is reduced by one does that not leave a grand total of zero relegation places ?

Yes, but it would mean one promotion place available.

It would only be a problem if Gretna were in 9th or 10th place and away from automatic relegation.

The league without Gretna doesn't make particularly positive reading from our point of view, though - Killie and St. Mirren both hot on our heels with a game in hand.

[table]

[tr][td]Position[/td][td]Club[/td][td]Played[/td][td]GD[/td][td]Points[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]1[/td][td]Rangers[/td][td]24[/td][td]40[/td][td]59[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]2[/td][td]Celtic[/td][td]25[/td][td]43[/td][td]58[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]4[/td][td]Dundee Utd[/td][td]26[/td][td]5[/td][td]42[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]3[/td][td]Motherwell[/td][td]24[/td][td]1[/td][td]37[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]5[/td][td]Hibernian[/td][td]25[/td][td]1[/td][td]32[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]7[/td][td]Hearts[/td][td]26[/td][td]-9[/td][td]31[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]6[/td][td]Falkirk[/td][td]26[/td][td]-10[/td][td]31[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]8[/td][td]Aberdeen[/td][td]27[/td][td]-17[/td][td]30[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]9[/td][td]Inverness CT[/td][td]27[/td][td]-20[/td][td]27[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]10[/td][td]Kilmarnock[/td][td]26[/td][td]-14[/td][td]24[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]11[/td][td]St Mirren[/td][td]26[/td][td]-27[/td][td]24[/td][/tr]

[/table]

Have to agree strongly with Govan Jaggie - I couldn't give a stuff about them and the sooner they're gone the better. Normally I feel very sorry for any club in this position but have never regarded Gretna as a 'proper' club.

The whole journey from non-league English football through the Scottish ranks has been a farce. Their last gasp promotion winner last season was a predictable disaster for the SPL and turned it into an even bigger laughing stock than usual.

I've had quite strong views from the start about Gretna which I've largely kept to myself until now. I well remember the 93-94 election for the SFL in which CT and Ross County were successful by a long way. Gretna polled a miserable 2 votes which must be at least a strong pointer towards their lack of substance as a club pre Mileson.

Brooks Mileson poured money into what was in effect a football entity of no substance, with little support, in a tiny community and with no fundamental infrastructure. He cannot be compared with eg Eddie Thomson, David Murray etc becaue they have bankrolled clubs which have fundamental viability  and are substantial entities etc - all of which Gretna has never been.

It was also clear that Gretna was the plaything of a highly unorthodox man - a maverick with a personal mission, possibly a personal agenda having been knocked back previously by Carlisle? I believe.

Brooks Mileson said it all as far as I was concerned when an interviewer put it to him that they would need a major stadium in Gretna. He said he would quite simply build one and when challenged about how full it would be he said he didn't care in the least. The SPL wanted a stadium so they would get one. (Which of course they didn't anyway.) He made it quite clear that he was going to keep pouring money in until they reached the SPL with no heed at all to prudence.

It's a bit difficult to criticise someone who is very ill, but you have to take a very critical look at the apparently attention seeking mindset of someone who transforms his dreadful lifestyle into a public virtue and writes columns for the Sun, boasting about how he smokes 100 cigarettes a day and lives on Lucozade.

Gretna came to a Faustian arrangement with Brooks but it seems they got nothing like 24 extra years of life. Now it seems they are going to the Devil.

It was painfully obvious from the very start that a club like Gretna, lacking all the fundamentals that it did, would only have a limited lifespan which would terminate rapidly at the first significant difficulty on the part of a benefactor who simply bought their way for them up the leagues. I could never understand why there was so much awe at Gretna's "rise". With the kind of money that was thrown at them, it would have been stange if this had not happened.

This was clearly a house of cards right from the start and it has now suffered what was always its inevitable fate. I just don't understand how so many people were conned for so long.

I've had quite strong views from the start about Gretna which I've largely kept to myself until now. I well remember the 93-94 election for the SFL in which CT and Ross County were successful by a long way. Gretna polled a miserable 2 votes which must be at least a strong pointer towards their lack of substance as a club pre Mileson.

Brooks Mileson poured money into what was in effect a football entity of no substance, with little support, in a tiny community and with no fundamental infrastructure. He cannot be compared with eg Eddie Thomson, David Murray etc becaue they have bankrolled clubs which have fundamental viability  and are substantial entities etc - all of which Gretna has never been.

It was also clear that Gretna was the plaything of a highly unorthodox man - a maverick with a personal mission, possibly a personal agenda having been knocked back previously by Carlisle? I believe.

Brooks Mileson said it all as far as I was concerned when an interviewer put it to him that they would need a major stadium in Gretna. He said he would quite simply build one and when challenged about how full it would be he said he didn't care in the least. The SPL wanted a stadium so they would get one. (Which of course they didn't anyway.) He made it quite clear that he was going to keep pouring money in until they reached the SPL with no heed at all to prudence.

It's a bit difficult to criticise someone who is very ill, but you have to take a very critical look at the apparently attention seeking mindset of someone who transforms his dreadful lifestyle into a public virtue and writes columns for the Sun, boasting about how he smokes 100 cigarettes a day and lives on Lucozade.

Gretna came to a Faustian arrangement with Brooks but it seems they got nothing like 24 extra years of life. Now it seems they are going to the Devil.

It was painfully obvious from the very start that a club like Gretna, lacking all the fundamentals that it did, would only have a limited lifespan which would terminate rapidly at the first significant difficulty on the part of a benefactor who simply bought their way for them up the leagues. I could never understand why there was so much awe at Gretna's "rise". With the kind of money that was thrown at them, it would have been stange if this had not happened.

This was clearly a house of cards right from the start and it has now suffered what was always its inevitable fate. I just don't understand how so many people were conned for so long.

Charles has spoken.

Well said Charles! :clapping03:

The club could be saved if Charles could get his BBC Scotland colleagues to donate ?1 for every time they have used the word "fairytale" in a Gretna/Mileson erselicking context during the last 5 years.

I think there should be some sort of procedure in place to stop this happening again.  I mean it's made scottish football a laughing stock when they are getting bigger crowds at 2nd and some times third division matches than Gretna's SPL matches.

Wait a minute here. There is something very unfair about this.

It has also been and still is about the good little'un making good  -- or the minnow in a large pool of bigger fish trying hard to get a leg up in life.That was where the fun and the uplifting of the spirit happened. Now what on earth is wrong with that?

As has been said before, Caley and Thistle were small clubs at one time and a joust with a "big" club from the former first Division in Scotland was in former times a "romantic adventure" and , at worst, a glorious chance to make a name for themselves and a pile of money.And when they failed to win the Scottish Cup in the past did anyone say '''oh, jeez, why did we ever  let such poor teams into this classy arena"?

It is far too simplistic now to trot out the convenient platitudes about Gretna never having been a serious contender for SPL longevity and currently a non-contributor and a basic pain in the bottom to have in the SPL? Oh Really? Well, there but for the grace of God go I it may be said of quite a few other current SPL clubs. There is surely more than an element of hypocrisy here where the occurrence of misadventure  becomes a major crime and where the unfortunate upon whom this has fallen automatically becomes the butt of scathing denunciation and opprobrium.  Hindsight is  very nice to have is it not?

And even if Mileson bankrolled the club to success so what? Are they the only club that has ever arisen from obscurity to be successful because of the backing of powerful individuals who, themselves, had a dream?

Are we all now so cynical about the necessity to have money or the lure of money to have lost all genuine admiration for any person who dares to use the resources at his or her disposal to further the ambitions attendant upon a dream? What if Gretna had actually not ended up bottom of the SPL like ICT may have done at any time in the last few years? Would they have attracted praise instead just because the vagaries of life and the twists and turns of the game allowed them to be one single place above another team--a "break" perhaps which might have lead them on to greatness in the future?

You make up your own mind but I think it is a sadder tale than just a reason to crow or sneer?