I wrote my last article for the blog two weeks ago.
Nothing much has changed since then.
Purely due to the actions of Rangers, Scottish football remains at an impasse.
The SPFL and especially it’s chief executive Neil Doncaster and chairman Murdoch MacLennan stand accused of……………….well we’re not quite sure of the specifics.
Bad behaviour, mismanagement, incompetence and vague hints of corruption would appear to be the crux of it.
Rangers have a dossier you see and supported by Hearts and Stranraer – who you can be assured aren’t simply doing anything and everything to avoid their deserved respective relegations after disastrous campaigns on the pitch – they have called an extraordinary general meeting of all 42 member clubs for May 12th.
There they will put to a vote a request for an independent investigation into the governance of Scottish football.
In Ranger’s dossier they have damning evidence that will blow this whole thing wide open. Or something like that.
Nobody has seen the dossier except Rangers – not even Hearts and Stranraer – and despite repeatedly claiming they’d disclose its details well in advance of the aforementioned general meeting we’re now 13 days away and still nothing.
In recent days MacLennan and Doncaster have come out all guns blazing dismissing Rangers claims of ‘bullying’, ‘coercion’ and other vulgarities as nothing but trumped-up charges lacking specifics and indeed any actual ‘evidence’.
An SPFL statement signed off by various members went thus:
“We are unaware of any impropriety or any disregard for appropriate qualities of corporate governance. If Rangers Football Club has a dossier of evidence which shows anything to the contrary, then we would repeat the call for it to be brought forward immediately, because we, as club representative directors, have a clear duty to interrogate any allegations of misconduct or the like which it contains.”
Doncaster then weighed in:
“Ultimately, if people have allegations they wish to make then they should have the courage to bring them forward to the chairman and let them be investigated.
“It’s just not acceptable for these vague assertions to be made without anything being brought forward. We’ve got demands for suspension of myself and another trusted employee of the SPFL without any clarity as to what it is we’ve alleged to have done wrong.
“I just don’t find that acceptable at all.
So they’ve basically called bullshit on the mythical ‘dossier’ and now the ball is well and truly in the Ibrox clubs court and you just now they are going to smash it back into the net.
The more they stall for time the clearer it becomes all of this has been a complete sideshow and failed smear campaign.
Indeed they’ve not only alienated loads of other clubs in the past few weeks but have been doing so for years as the extent of their financial doping and lack of contrition as well as finger-pointing became obvious for all to see as they have lurched unabashedly from one complete and utter disaster to another.
Mired in spiralling debt with a crumbling stadium and saddled with a highly paid flop of a manger – the latest of many – they have ‘big plans’ for their 150th anniversary in two years and zero cash to realise any of them.
Journalists like Tom English are quick to belittle the SPFL’s pretty rational conclusion that this is already a waste of time.
In doing so English and the likes are pinning their hopes to the mast that Rangers actually have something on the likes of Doncaster and MacLennan but the fact that both have pretty brazenly dismissed such claims as far fetched nonsense and indeed welcome details of the ‘dossier’ would indicate that Tom and the laptop loyal are onto plumbs.
I mean even Keith Jackson, the legendary marble staircase sycophant, has backed off from the conspiracy angle revealing that his own sources admit that any ‘evidence’ is more akin to and I quote ‘a water pistol than a smoking gun.’
Deloitte have already done an independent investigation into the recent actions of the SPFL.
They found no case to answer.
Rangers, Tom and the rest of the flute band insist it wasn’t far-reaching enough ie: ‘they didn’t find anything so let’s broaden the scope to hope that next time someone does.’
All of that undercuts, of course, the fact that all of this hoopla in regards to the SPFL was specifically based around the voting process last month where the vast majority of the clubs agreed to conclude the bottom three leagues immediately.
Since then the top flight of Holland and France have followed suit and Belgium are on the cusp of it too.
The Dutch leagues have been called null and void which is of little surprise when you see how tight the table is at the top of the Dutch Eredivisie with Ajax and AZ Alkmaar tied on points and Feyenoord and PSV not far behind them.
Second division side Cambuur are threatening legal action though as they were 11 points clear at the top and rightfully think promotion was inevitable.
Watch this space on that one.
Meanwhile, the French leagues look certain to declare winners and losers with the system on how to do so still to be decided.
One thing is for certain and that’s that PSG are guaranteed to be awarded the Ligue 1 title and so they should be as they currently hold an emphatic 12 point lead over second-placed Marseille.
Even Marseille themselves appear to have no problem with that and neither they should as they were miles behind going into the final stretch.
Magnanimity and common sense will prevail there it would seem.
Not of course in Scotland.
All the while Celtic keep their council and wait diligently to see how it’ll all play out whilst others continue to shred any last remnants of credibility and take flamethrowers to bridges aplenty.
There are those who would love to cast as us the villains with spurious claims we’re taking advantage of a horrendous situation.
But by keeping schtum we simply give such wayward voices the chance to shout more loudly and look more desperate.
I mean even committed Ulster bigot and dedicated moron Gregory Campbell is now involved bumping his sectarian gums about Scottish football governance.
Celtic don’t need to say anything.
The situation speaks for itself.
In roughly a fortnight the EGM called by Rangers will have concluded.
To be honest I doubt it’ll even get past the voting hurdle so poor is their relationship with just about very other club in Scotland barring Hearts and Stranraer.
But even if it does then I guess it’ll give is some entertainment over the summer months as the contents of the dossier will have to be revealed and you already know that they’ll either be ludicrous or so featherweight they’ll quickly disappear into the wind.
All the while Scottish football will continue to cannablise itself all due to the petulance of a few clubs and the hubris of one in particular.
God only knows what exactly will be left of the landscape when sporting life returns to normal.
To finish here’s a video of Celtic beating rangers 5-1 at Ibrox.
Just because…..you know.
....Always A Tim! 