Today the Supreme Court has found Rangers guilty of defrauding the Exchequer for a decade. The costs to the tax man are substantial. The costs to the public purse are enormous. I will detail them in a moment, but first and foremost we have to consider this a crime against football, and it was.
The size of this is incredible.
The scale of the suffering other clubs endured as a consequence is virtually incalculable; Celtic alone lost tens of millions at a conservative estimate. Our club was able to thrive in spite of this; we cannot imagine the cuts that had to be made elsewhere, the teams who had to be dismantled, the players who clubs had to let go early, the fans who were denied a chance to see their teams in Europe and in major finals … it can only be guessed at.
Because of this, the hammer cannot fall just on those who benefited financially.
This crime hurt football clubs and it was done to win trophies and keep alive the illusion that Rangers was a club able to sustain its aggressive policies. Those policies were illegitimate. They were cheating. As such, the consequences within football must fall accordingly.
Rangers won 14 trophies during the EBT years, including five league titles.
All of those trophies should be stricken from the record, or what is our sport about? Every major honour of that time is tainted by this verdict; that taint is not on Rangers but on Scottish football itself, and until that is rectified it will continue to damage the sport.
This article will set out the scale of what Rangers did and why it has to be punished.
It will argue that only a punishment within football will do. It will examine the consequences of what Rangers did, for the game here. And it will review the LNS verdict and make a case for why that has to be immediately set aside, and a new tribunal established.
This is the story of how Rangers’ EBT use nearly wrecked the game … and why what happens next is of vital importance to us all.
