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Dundee have been dysfunctional for just about as long as I can remember, so it's no great surprise that even D4life have lost the plot along with everyone else. Dundee's last flirtation with administration was caused solely by a Board headed by the Marr brothers buying in people who they couldn't afford and couldn't keep (Ravanelli, Cannigia etc.) They were (allegedly) funded in a highly suspect manner including being invested in by a chappie called Arcan from Serbia. As well as football, he enjoyed a spot of genocide. Not a great business model for football, but marvellous for a certain type of laundering.... Roll up Melville, now sacked from his company and they are looking at where a lot of money went to in a mysterious kinda fashion. Melville has disappeared like snow off a dyke and the rest of the Board have gone belly up. The parralels between episode 1 and 2 are frightening, and yet all Dundee and it's fans can do is propogate that myth that they are the "biggest club outside the SPL" "too important to die" and that the SFL have been "disgraceful" to them. Let's get this clear, the only people to blame are the Board, which includes D4life. The SFL are entitled to safeguard their product and should do so. It was good to us. The SFL are not attempting to "murder" Dundee, they are seeking to humanely destroy it. SPL? You're having a laugh.

I think a tough line needs to be taken. As long as penalties for this sort of behaviour are relatively minor, people will continue to take risks with the finances of football clubs. What they are doing is taking a gamble that the investment will lead to rewards on the back of success, and as long as the risk seems to be small relative to the potential rewards, people will continue to take those risks. Others have commented that it is the fans of clubs going into administration who suffer and that they should not be the victims of this. That may be true, but to some extent they, at least, have an opportunity to comment on and perhaps, influence what is going on in their club. The real victims are the fans, players and staff of other clubs who are cheated out of success by those who go into debt to buy success on the park. Last season, had Dundee not hit the self destruct button, then they may well have held on to pip us for promotion. The increased revenue SPL status would have given them could have meant their gamble paid off as money would have come in to cover the debt. And who would the losers have been? Us, of course. Would we then have been able to bring in the new signings we have and get existing players to extend contracts? How long might we have stayed in the SFL? Having got promotion, things are looking good and folk are even daring to dream that we might be playing in Europe soon. All of that could have been denied us had the Dundee Board's irresponsible gamble of spending money they hadn't got come off. Yes, I feel sorry for the Dundee fans but we have to get the message over that cheating honest clubs out of what is rightly theirs is not acceptable. At the very least, the club should be demoted to the 3rd division and those responsible for the mess be banned from acting in any official capacity in any club afilliated to the SFA.

Your first paragraph is a good point and i never actually took that into account. Here is some food for thought. A little story drew up to show how silly Money is.... I was in the middle of the Cairngorm Mountains in the Scottish Highlands, miles from any human habitation, when I saw a group of men approaching me. I knew they were from outer space, because they all had pointy ears like Mr. Spock in Star Trek. When they got near enough, one of them said "Greetings, Earthling!" another clue: not many ordinary humans talk like that. "We bring salutations from outer space!" I understood every word, and that was a stroke of luck, because out of all the six thousand languages spoken on Earth, they had happened to learn the only language I knew. "We have been reading the news on your internet,? the alien spokesman continued, "and we wish to condole with you on your recession. Hundreds of your schools were going to be rebuilt or refurbished, and now very few of them are. A sad business!" He shook his head. "So there are no people available to do all this rebuilding." "Oh yes"? I assured him. "There are two and a half million unemployed in this country, including lots of builders, plasterers, plumbers, electricians, and so on ? and lots more of the jobless could quickly learn these skills. The country is full of people who could teach all these useful trades." "I see!" said the alien. "So it's bricks, and cement, and pipework, and paint, electric wiring and so on you are short of." "Not a bit of it! Since the recession, builders' merchants' yards up and down the country are full of all this stuff." "But perhaps the authorities are keeping all these materials in reserve for other important building jobs, in case you run short of raw materials?" "No, no, nothing like that. All the raw materials ? clay for bricks, metal for pipes and wires, colour for paints ? there's more than enough, up and down the country." The alien ? and his friends ? appeared puzzled. Then he brightened up. "Ah, I see what it must be. Transport! You've got all these things, but you can't get them to where they are so desperately wanted." "Not a bit of it,? I insisted. I didn't want him to think we were that backward. "We have fleets of great trucks, under-used because of the recession. The country is crossed with excellent roads, well surfaced with tarmac. All these materials could be delivered anywhere in Britain within hours." The aliens went into a huddle, and jabbered away in their own language. Then the spokesman piped up again. "Let's get this straight. You people here in Britain all want these schools to be built or repaired. You have plenty of people standing around idle who would love to do all the work, if only because their children are being educated in inadequate and ill-equipped schools. You have all the materials, and all the transport you need to get them where they are wanted. So ? excuse me if I seem a bit obtuse ? why don't you just do it?" "We haven't got the money, of course!" A longer pause this time. "Er ? what is this 'money?" I smiled. How could anyone not know that? "You know ? money, dibs, spondulicks, the ready! Coins ? little round bits of metal, though most of it is paper, nowadays. High grade paper, of course, with nice designs on it ? in colour, too." "This paper,? said the alien, with a baffled expression. "What does it do? Can you use it instead of bricks? Or instead of slates on the roof?" "No, of course not!" Privately I thought that surely space voyagers who have been able to journey billions of miles could get hold of such a simple idea. I tried to explain. "People hand it to each other. Well-off people have to hand some of these bits of paper to the government, then someone hands some of it to the people who make bricks or carry them along the motorway. The actual builders and pipe-layers and so on get some bits of paper each Friday." More bewildered conversation among the aliens. "This paper ? high-grade paper as you say, with coloured designs ? can't keep the rain out, or hold the roof up, or carry water or electricity round the new buildings?" "No, of course not", I said, laughing. "It would just collapse if you put any strain on it, and any water in a paper pipe would just run away. And if you tried to make electric cables out of paper they would probably catch fire!" "But if you don't have these pieces of coloured paper, even though they are only feeble, useless stuff,? said the alien, "you can't have these schools rebuilt and so on?" "Exactly," I said. "Now you've got it. Without these pieces of paper, no food is grown or eaten, no clothes are made, no buildings go up ? nothing happens. We all have to pass these pieces of paper around to each other, or everything comes to a halt. In fact most of us here on Earth spend a large part of our time handing these pieces of paper on to other people. Every organisation has many people who spend their lives writing down figures about all these pieces of paper: doing sums, all day. In fact some great concerns don't do anything else ? banks, credit card companies, insurance companies, people concerned with revenue and taxation ? all of them spend their lives fiddling with these bits of paper." The aliens all looked at each other. I saw several of them pointing a finger to their own foreheads, and making a kind of circular motion with the finger, while pulling a face. I wonder what that means in alien language? After some more unintelligible conversation, the spokesman said that they had decided to get back in their flying saucer and get away as soon as possible. I thought I heard him say something like, "I thought we were told there was intelligent life on this planet!" but perhaps I mis-heard.

Seems to be little or no clarity here ...... The precedent has been set twice already and although I dont want Dundee to go out of business, I fail to see why they are any different to Livi or Gretna. In fact, as much as we can loathe both Livi and Gretna for the way in which they rose high and fast due to money poured into them then dropped like a stone when the money dried up, each of them only went into administration once ... this is Dundee's second flirtation with disaster and yet they get a slap on the wrist (albeit a big one) while the others got a punishment that did put one of them out of business and almost put the other one out. Dundee fined 25pts after Administration. Livingston relegated from D1 to D3 after Administration then Liquidation proceedings commenced. Liquidation never happened as that was the straw that broke Massone's back and he sold his shares the next day. Reason for relegation was "A breach of rules". Gretna relegated from SPL to D3 after Administration. Subsequently went out of business. Reason for relegation was "due to their inability to guarantee fulfilment of their forthcoming fixtures".