I have, at times, lamented how much of Scottish football’s recent history has been decided off the pitch.
From cheating at Ibrox to efforts to shoe-horn the NewCo into the top flight, to the dragging down of our game’s commercial power by those who were there to ensure it, so much of what we talk about has not happened on the green surface with the lines painted around it.
This week, though, with no games being played, could be the off-field one to end them all. Even the first Ibrox administration (note the use of that word; we’ll seen another, one more at least) might not come close to it.
On 12 April – on Wednesday, in other words – the deadline for King to submit his Takeover Panel bid will have been reached. Has he sent out the prospectuses to the other shareholders? I don’t think so. He’s dragged his feet. But time marches on, and the City of London is watching. The regulators will not be bought off by stalling tactics or PR bluster; they gave him an explicit instruction and if he hasn’t ignored it, he’s certainly not got on it right away.
Who knows how this ends?
When it started I thought he would walk, that he’d have no choice to, or that the Ibrox board would do what it needed to do and wield the axe. He’s not talking like a man who is planning to depart, so that means he’s nakedly determined to resist even if it means the Black Spot falls on him and, by association, the whole club.
King is a guy whose behaviour is consistently erratic and unpredictable. He has just sent out a letter with the club’s season ticket renewals in which he’s basically warned the manager that he has to prioritise winning over playing good football, made more grandiose promises of spending what the club can’t afford, he has boasted about how much things have improved at Ibrox and said it’s good that the club is no longer mired in crisis stories; he must be having a laugh.
Many of the crisis stories which engulfed Sevco over the last five years originated with King himself, as he attempted to destabilise previous boards.
Many of those which still assail them flow from a South African address.
Between the toxicity that wafts out the stands and this guy, no wonder nobody of repute – including managers or a Director of Football – will touch the club with a 20 foot pole. Sevco could never hire a Brendan Rodgers, even if the finance was available to do it.
King’s problems are but a shadow next to the looming impact of the Craig Whyte trial. That starts in eight days. The next week will see frantic, behind the scenes, moves to forestall what damage that man might do when, and if, he takes the stand.
The charges are related to his takeover of the club; they are not related to what happened after he did.
I’ve long argued that nothing Whyte did in the aftermath of getting his hands on Rangers was technically illegal. Neither was anything Charles Green did in relation to Sevco – save for the share issue – after the point at which the deeds were in his hands. Whyte ran them in a fashion that was reckless, cavalier, highly unorthodox, but I’ve always suspected that it was well within the law. Sevco fans who have long wanted him in prison will be very disappointed.
But Whyte is a man who’s got so many enemies, and so much compromising information on them, that I am certain people will be scrambling to keep him off the stand. Don’t be surprised if the prosecutors and Whyte come to a nice wee deal over the next week, to keep that for ever happening to happen.
If they don’t, who knows what he might say?
For openers, he can implicate Murray in the Ticketus deal, and he almost certainly will. Alastair Johnston has been called in as a witness, as he sat on the “independent board” who’s job it was to scrutinise all potential takeover candidates. They commissioned a private report on Whyte before the takeover which was highly critical. They certainly would have shared that with the board, on which sat Dave King. That’s a problem in and of itself.
Because if King read that report he had a duty to speak out on it, especially to the club’s many other shareholders.
He really is quite lax when it comes to his responsibilities.
That report is equally bad news for the SFA.
The “independent board” had a duty to share that information with them, as it pertained to “fit and proper person” criteria. Did they? Whyte can certainly answer that question; if he says the SFA saw that report and waved him through, that’s another big problem and one they’ll have to answer for.
This guy can make ninety kind of trouble for them if he desires. He can implicate Regan and God knows who else in everything he did. Doncaster, at the SPL, does not have clean hands either, as this site has gone over time and time again.
On top of that, there’s an issue which drags up the spectre of Resolution 12, and this will certainly come up in the course of the case. What Whyte says on the stand could well prove to be devastating in that regard, and re-open that can of worms all over again.
When Craig Whyte initially made his offer for Rangers, the quoted price was not £1 as was later to be the case. It was £5 million. The deal was done quickly when Murray agreed to accept £1. But Whyte had the £5 million, or claimed to.
Whatever happened to it?
Well, Whyte told the media, and presumably the Stock Exchange, that it would be set aside for other uses.
And what were the other uses he told them about?
Some of it was to go towards the playing squad and necessary work on the stadium – none of which, by the way, was ever done, as King has confirmed.
The rest of it was earmarked for a very specific, and necessary, purpose; to pay the £2.8 million “wee tax case” bill, which the club, and Whyte, had already accepted was due. The architect of that scheme – the Discounted Options Scheme, which had already been declared illegal by the tax man – was, of course, none other than the SFA President Campbell Ogilvie.
As it directly relates to the charges, any prosecutor with an ounce of sense will ask why the cost of acquiring the club dropped from £5 million to £1.
It would be a fairly obvious next question to ask where that £5 million went to.
At that point, if Whyte feels in the mood to make trouble his answer could level Hampden and detonate the “official” story of Resolution 12. It blows a big hole in their timeline, and in the central thrust of their claims, that they were unaware that the bill was “outstanding” when the license was granted.
There is more to come on that; the guys behind the campaign have already said that several matters outstanding are tied up in the Whyte case.
This would be one of them.
There are other things going on as I write this; the initial documentation for Sevco’s European license application was supposed to have been in the SFA’s hands already. I hear they aren’t very happy with what they’ve got and that it won’t pass muster with UEFA. The final date for receipt of these documents – unless “special dispensation” was granted to a club – was 7 April, three days ago. The meeting to make the decision as to whether to recommend licensing a club takes place between 20 April and 30 April.
The clock is ticking, and as yet Sevco has not done everything required of it.
As all the information has to be in the SFA’s hand seven days prior to the decision, that could leave them as little as three days to get everything sorted.
This is a crucial week for a lot of people in Scottish football.
The week after that might well be the most explosive since 2012.