CaleyD

I really must have lost the plot. God forbid that I should view the club posting information about a short extension to the early bird offer and keeping the shop open over a bank holiday weekend to accommodate as being a good thing. It's clearly all just a conspiracy to bury the story of Ross Tokelys resignation....silly me, how could I not have seen that. Nothing wrong with opinion, I have plenty of my own, but attacking the club for the above is not opinion, it's just using any excuse to have another pop and make a bad situation look worse than what it is. What's more, when such a thing spills over into personal insults and name calling then it's clear that hysteria has taken over....yet I am the one who is overreacting!!!

Maybe you should have taken up the invite to go in for a chat face to face instead of hiding behind an alter ego and trying to show off to the kiddies online?

Would rather see it sponsored and bringing some money in. Nostalgia doesn't put a team on the park or pay the bills.

Blasted when they don't try and blasted again when they do....get the feeling that some people are never happier than when they are stirring the shit and looking for an argument. There's people knocking their pan in trying to make things a bit better under extremely difficult circumstances and all others can do is sit behind a keyboard, criticise and do feck all but leave those who are trying with a feeling of "why bother?". Give yourselves a shake, FFS.

Yeah, and it also says that will be covered by using part of the £8.5M offered for the CVA.....which means Rangers have been running up credit whilst in administration. Would be interesting to know who with and how they are being allowed to get away with it as I'm pretty sure one of the things about being in Administration is you are not allowed to create further debts. The only thing I can think of is that it's a bit of clever accounting and Duff & Duffer are the ones who are owed the £3.6M (allowing that "debt" to accrue in order to pay players in the knowledge they are first to be paid when the money comes in?). This would certainly stack up with other quoted figures which suggest that if club goes into liquidation then assets would be sold for £5.5M and only £1.9M would be available for credits. However, there's a few side notes which suggest that the money due to Duff & Duffer could rise to (would you believe it) £5.5M when legal fees are added meaning the Creditors would get fook all in that scenario. All very suspect. Buying shares for £1 and using borrowed money to clear the debts....I could be mistaken, but is that not what got them into this mess to begin with!!!

As wrong as it is, IMO, the moment the club went into administration and it was agreed that an attempt would be made to sell them as a going concern then they could effectively stop paying anything due to creditors prior to that date. This means that any/all money coming in + cash in bank at the time could be used to keep the business running until such time as it exited administration. They could well have surplus from the income generated since 14th February, they will also have money to come from the SPL, possibly "appearance money" for any pre-season friendlies, merchandise sales etc. The logic/argument (although I do not agree with it) is that if the company had been liquidated the day it went in to administration then none of that income would have existed so Creditors should be no worse off than in terms of what they would get if it was liquidated now as opposed to back then. Administration is a bit self-contradicting because being granted that "status" is designed to protect the business from its Creditors to give it a chance to trade/sell its way out of trouble. However, it's the job of the administrators to ascertain if that is possible and ensure Creditors get the best possible return from either a CVA or Liquidation. I still think Duff and Duffer could find themselves in some bother over the way they have handled the administration. Aside from all the alleged "conflict of interest" stuff, there's things like deliberately devaluing assets (player contracts), courting a buyer who is having to borrow £8.3M of the £8.5M for the attempted CVA which could effectively return zero to Creditors and the chance this could be challenged by other interested buyers who perceive their offer to have been better etc. They are under investigation and I would be very surprised if they walked away unscathed. We are still a long way from the end of all this.

No they don't because they could have an AWAY tie on that date and it is only an option open to those with HOME games. The OF are guaranteed HOME fixtures that weekend and no other club is which means they are the ONLY ones who can make advance preparations.

I guess should have known better than try and engage in a sensible conversation with you....more fool me!!!!

That's as may be, but not all clubs have been (or can be) given a home fixture to allow them to take advantage of it....that's an arrangement which has been put in place especially for the OF and with no agreement required from the team they were suppose to be playing. Everyone else has to wait on the fixtures coming out to discover if it is an option for them...the likelihood of being able to arrange a lucrative friendly in 2 months is slim to none.

Excuse me for not picking up on the tongue in cheek comment hidden among your string of moans and complaints about not getting the letter....or was it all just one big wind-up, you did really get it and I've taken it hook, line and sinker?

Only wish the SPL were mindful of the disruption to the teams they would have been playing likely playing catch-up midweek and demanded the OF compensate them accordingly.

The club are going to risk losing out on hundreds of pounds just to save themselves the cost of a stamp....are you for real!!!! Given the volume of letters sent...and having helped put the renewal packs together I know there were thousands...then it's not beyond the realms of possibility that a few would go astray within the postal system and it's also not beyond the realms of possibility that of those then more than one would be a user on here.

You missed option #5.....Continue as per the original sanctions and enforce the Transfer Embargo. The "opinion" of the Court of Sessions has no basis in law, it does not pass judgement on the legality of the actions taken by the SFA and the SFA would be quite within their rights to continue as if the CoS hearing had never taken place. Of course, if the SFA did that then Rangers would be quite within their rights to pursue a civil case, but that takes a lot of time, a lot of money and there's no guarantee that civil action would deliver the same outcome. While all that is going on, Rangers face further sanctions...almost definitely suspension/expulsion due to FIFA pressure...for breaching the rules on going to the ordinary courts for a second time. What's more, the transfer embargo would remain in place until that decision was made. Rangers could try for an interim interdict to prevent the embargo being applied while the case was being heard, but that is unlikely to be granted as it is not a point of law which is being argued and courts are generally reluctant to get involved to that degree in such cases (ask Partick Thistle).

Going to laugh my t*ts off if this turns out to be Jonny playing the ultimate wind-up on Aberdeen.

It would seem so. I have a few issues with what has happened, but let me start by saying why I think they have gone the way they have...... Clubs can go in to Administration for a variety of reasons...and it's not always something of their own (immediate) making. e.g. Rangers non payment of monies due to clubs this season past caused issues for a couple of clubs, most notably Dunfermline who had to short pay players and then make up the difference. Had the amounts been larger then they could easily have found themselves in the more trouble than they did. If you have set penalties then a club ending up in administration for those reasons would have to be treated the same as a club who found themselves in administration due to purposefully trying to cheat the system and deliberately withholding tax whilst spending money they did not have....and that would hardly seem fair. The problem I have is that there's other measures which could be taken under those circumstances to ensure one club does not become the victim of another clubs poor financial management. Things like..... - The SPL withholding prize money and paying these "footballing" debts. - All match tickets for league games are sold by the home club, in cases where the away club want to sell the tickets then they pay up front for them. - No "credit" facility for inter-league player transfers....if you are willing to pay a transfer fee then you must pay it in full up front. Further to that....if a club are operating in such a manner whereby non payment of a few thousand pounds is likely to send them into administration, and subsequently liquidation, then their problems (and debts) are very likely to run a lot deeper and it's not the leagues place to be throwing out lifelines which allow them to escape the full consequences of operating in such a manner. The other problem I have is the "fixed" penalty of going into administration....one third of last seasons points or ten points, whichever is greater. It is a punishment which serves to punish the smaller teams more than it ever will the bigger teams. e.g. Celtic could have placed themselves in administration this season after seeing it happen to Rangers. If both had been given a one third points deduction then Celtic would still have won the league (on goal difference). Celtic could have wiped out any debt and effectively gone unpunished. Given the huge financial benefit of playing in Europe (even Europa), then is a team on the fringe of a qualifying place going to think it worth taking a punt by spending money they can't really afford to push for that place? A one third deduction in points if it goes wrong isn't going to relegate them and provided they can come out of admin via a CVA then what's the hardship? The point being....relegation hurts (financially) more than anything else and the new rules do no more to dissuade clubs from spending to avoid it than than the old ones. 10pts or one third of previous seasons total is only going to hurt the bottom half teams....why should the threat of relegation as a result of administration not apply to ALL teams? The change of rules in regards to administration are, IMO, nothing more then the SPL paying lip service to the problem. Then we have the "NewCo" situation. Forget the "we'll decide on a case by case" argument. It wouldn't make any difference if they had put in place 1001 rules to cover every possible reason for the event. Why? because there's not a court in the world that will allow any organisation to punish a new organisation for the indiscretions of an old one. The SPL have shot themselves in the foot head here. They have a setup which now says a NewCo can walk straight into the SPL....that's fine, it's up the the SPL to decide the entry criteria. The problem comes the moment the first SPL club goes into liquidation (leaving Rangers aside) because the SPL will say "yes you can join, but here is the conditions". The Club/NewCo in question will go thank you very much for letting us in, but we do not accept the conditions which punish us for the actions of a club/entity which we have no legal connection to. A court (be it civil or CAS) will not allow the conditions to stand and if the SPL then remove the membership they will be hammered for removing membership on the basis that a club refused to accept illegal conditions....end result, NewCo in the SPL and no further punishments applied. Dress it up any way they like, make promises to deal harshly with worst offenders if they want, the fact is it WILL NOT WORK and the ONLY way to deal with the NewCo situation is not to allow a NewCo entry to the SPL under any circumstances.

Absolutely disgraceful......SPL vote in new rules which give NewCo green light to stay in the SPL - http://www.bbc.co.uk...otball/18263819 Nothing more than a license for SPL clubs to continue what they are doing now (running up debt, then clearing the board via administration)...and the bigger the club the more likely you are to get away with it as a 1/3rd loss of points isn't going to see you relegated. Sanctions for NewCo's to be decided on a "case by case basis"....unreal!!!

Why don't you ask them yourself?

ICT are not likely to know any more than we do as Jonny is (effectively) a free agent and neither he, his agent nor Aberdeen are under any obligation to tell them.

If he wanted to play in a large empty stadium, then surely he'd find more satisfaction in signing for Queens Park?

There's not a hope that the SPL are going to deliver a decision (one way or the other) whilst there's a chance that the SFA/FIFA will do it for them. I'm actually surprised todays SPL meeting hasn't been called off already and fully expect another deferment. The SPL claim there's nothing more they can do to punish Rangers as the 10point penalty is the sanction for going in to administration....however, what about there' options under the charge of bringing the league/game into disrepute? Seems very convenient that nobody at the SPL or any of the member clubs has made mention of that...and that is because, as we all know, they really don't want to get rid of Rangers and are willing to sell their soul, the soul of the clubs they represent and the soul of the game for the scraps from the OF table. Any inclination I might have had towards accepting a situation which saw Rangers (current or new form) continue in the SPL has now gone and hell mend anyone (SPL Reps, Charimen etc) who tries to argue in favour of such a move.

Unless Jonny is lying through his teeth on Twitter, and that would be totally out of character as he's normally pretty straight up with his comments, then it sounds to me like the agent has jumped the gun and agreed a deal without his (Jonny's) knowledge. It could very well be that Jonny had told his agent he was looking for a deal that consisted of XYZ and Aberdeen have offered those terms, but that's still a ways off from agreeing and signing a deal. Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if Aberdeen have released the statement hoping that other interested parties might now think he's unavailable and overlook him.

The SFA broke no laws....what the Court of Sessions performed was a Judicial Review, which is basically them taking the Associations Rules and applying them (using their own understanding) to the actions that were taken and giving a decision on whether that was right or wrong. That is exactly the same thing as would have been done by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The same scenario exists within the example you give. If an employer took disciplinary action against an employee which they did not agree with then you have to go through the appeal and tribunal process before taking it to the courts.

The problem with that is FIFA are unlikely to see that as sufficient punishment for taking the case to the ordinary courts, let alone punishment for bringing the game into disrepute in the manner which they have.

Article 65.5 of the SFA Articles of Association The fact of membership of the Scottish FA shall constitute an agreement by a member that it, or any body or person interested through such member, shall submit all disputes to the jurisdiction of the Judicial Panel and shall not be permitted to take such differences or questions to a court of law. FIFA Statute 64.2 Recourse to ordinary courts of law is prohibited unless specifically provided for in the FIFA regulations. There's also an article at - http://www.scotzine....urt-of-session/ - is where it claims the last association to find itself in this position (Chilean) were faced with taking action against a club or being thrown out of FIFA. Backed up by BBC article at - http://news.bbc.co.u...als/8382018.stm

With todays ruling by the Court of Session that the Trasfer Embargo was not an option open to the SFA and FIFA announcing that they will be asking the SFA to take action against Rangers for going outside both SFA and FIFA rules by taking action in the ordinary courts then you do wonder where things are going to go now. The judge hearing the case also commented that a fine, suspension and expulsion were really the only options open to the SFA for punishing Rangers and that just because he had thrown out the Transfer Embargo, that did not mean Rangers should escape further punishment. Looks to me like Rangers are calling the SFA bluff in that they will not suspend/expel them....but with FIFA now getting involved and the risk (based on past actions by FIFA) that the SFA could be thrown out of world football, then it would seem that things are far from over.