Today the Scottish media is united in a wholehearted embrace of the Survival Myth.
You cannot pick up a paper or turn on a news show without seeing some reference to how “Rangers” have “returned” to the top flight, or of how they were “relegated” in 2012.
It is infuriating and it is offensive.
It is an insult to sporting integrity, and to the intelligence of every single football supporter in the country … and yes, that includes Sevco fans too.
I would wager that there is not one person in the whole of this country who genuinely believes that Sevco and Rangers are one in the same. It suits some people to pretend otherwise, and for others it is literally vital to their psychological grounding, but deep down?
I don’t think there’s a soul who actually thinks that it’s true.
The media certainly doesn’t.
That they continue to parrot the line is idiotic at best.
They know full what happened in 2012; there isn’t a single newspaper – not one – which wasn’t writing it at the time. They all knew what a failure to get a CVA meant; the old club would be liquidated and the assets sold to someone else.
At the time they wrote it all up, just so.
On the day the CVA was refused every single one of them published an obituary.
This has to be the first time since Jesus that a death certificate was issued only to be rescinded later.
What changed here?
What new fact emerged that changed their minds?
I ask that question because at least one journalist has told people that “things were explained” to him that convinced him the club hadn’t died. I’d like to know why he didn’t write those things, because I’d have loved to read what they were. I’m not saying they would have convinced me – I’m afraid I tend to rely too much on common sense and, oh, UEFA regulations and company law – to be swayed by emotional nonsense, and I suspect that’s what it was.
All of this is emotional nonsense.
It certainly isn’t grounded in any kind of reasoning.
Even the examples they use to justify it, like Leeds, are, on examination, entirely different scenarios, where CVA’s were accepted.
In Rangers’ case it wasn’t.
A BBC Q&A on the issue at the time had this to say about it:
“The Rangers Football Club PLC is a public limited company registered in Scotland (company number: SC004276) and was incorporated on 27 May, 1899. When the current company is officially liquidated, all of its corporate business history will come to an end.
When this happened to Airdrieonians in 2002, all of the trophies, titles and records associated with the club were discontinued and a new club, Airdrie United FC, took over. Airdrieonians’ official history ended in 2002, then Airdrie United’s took over.
The answer lies principally in the eye of the beholder. Some supporters will view the new Rangers as the same Rangers, while others will feel the old Rangers no longer exist.”
That, of course, is partially correct, but it reveals a chronic lack of understanding about what happened to Airdrie and the last bit is profound nonsense, thrown in there so as not to upset Rangers fans.
Because Airdrie United did not inherit a continuation of the history of Airdrie FC. Indeed, although Airdrie United only exist because they bought Clydebank, they don’t get either Aidrie’s old history or that of Clydebank. In fact, if you look at the history of Clydebank themselves you find no fewer than four separate versions of the club, and under Scottish football regulations not one of them was treated as a continuation of those which came before.
Nor too did Gretna FC retain their honours.
If this was any other club but Rangers, we know full well these arguments wouldn’t exist.
The notion that a football club can be liquidated, reform and keep its history is palpable, obvious, contemptible nonsense.
Yet every single newspaper in Scotland today is united in the idea that somehow Rangers did just that.
I am sure this article will provoke the usual outpouring of anger and nastiness from the supporters of the Newco, but even they realised what liquidation meant as people like Chris Graham were saying at the time. The Big House stayed open, but everything else changed. Players left on freedom of contract because their employer no longer existed. Sevco started with a blank sheet, as was evidenced in the decision not to grant them Rangers’ Scottish Cup seeding. Commercial partnerships were binned because the company that signed them was gone.
If you are a right thinking person these are the facts, and they are undisputed.
Still the Scottish media tries to.
I don’t know what makes them look more foolish; their continuing to say it or their thinking we believe it.