Scottish football is heading into the back end of this season, and there are one or two dangling threads for the clubs before they can roll into summer and the World Cup.
Celtic, for example, has to make a decision on Odsonne Edouard and have a long chat with Patrick Roberts.
There are contract talks to be had, things to sort out.
But at Ibrox, things are a lot more complicated.
Pull on some of those threads and the whole shirt unravels.
This is an abnormal time for that club and the media is trying its level best not to see what anyone who looks can easily comprehend without difficulty.
That club is in a lot of trouble. Deadlines are approaching for which there will be no extensions and no exceptions made.
Their future is not entirely in their hands.
I’m going to look at the outstanding issues which face them going into the last few months of the domestic campaign … and some will “crystallise” a heck of a lot sooner than that.
UEFA Licensing Deadlines Are Approaching … And Sevco Won’t Satisfy The Criteria In Time.
Earlier this month, I wrote an article which was focussed on the biggest problem facing Sevco and the SFA at the current time; the ticking clock of UEFA procedure and process and how detailed financial information has to be in their hands by the end of this month in order to satisfy even the most basic licensing criteria for next season’s Europa League.
I pointed out that even if this information is presented in time, it will, in all likelihood, not be enough to satisfy the beaks at European football’s governing body, because the debt level will be too high and there hasn’t been a debt for equity swap to reduce it.
I said there was maybe still time for that plan to be put in effect, but that the time was running out.
It is impossible to conclude other than that the club has passed the point where that is still possible.
Even to put together such a scheme would take many weeks and they have two.
They advertised recently their intention to issue more shares to existing shareholders … but it appears not to be a concrete proposal, and I suspect it’s being used to buy them time. But they’ve had plenty of time already. The AGM gave them permission for this months ago, and it’s hard not to conclude that this sudden “appearance of progress” is an attempt to blow smoke at UEFA, who will not fall for it.
Frankly, I don’t see how it can be done, even if they had another month, which they don’t.
And even if it is … there are problems with the plan anyway.
King Has His Own Deadline To Worry About … And It, Too, Is Non-Negotiable.
The first of those, of course, is Dave King who is facing his own deadline.
He is under a court order to put together a share prospectus and make an offer to buy all the other shares in the club. There is speculation galore about what his next move might be, but it sort of leaves the shareholders in limbo for now, until he can extricate himself from this mess.
As I’ve also written, there are issues with some of the shareholders who were to “benefit” from this switcheroo; none can afford to take their own holdings over the 30% mark, which is to say nothing of them not yet knowing what a fair price for the shares are.
For any other football association in the world, King would already have crossed a red line.
He has openly defied a City of London order; bear in mind that what just transpired in the Court of Session was not, as some have labelled it, an appeal against the Takeover Panel verdict but an appeal against the enforcement order they sought from the court.
King, therefore, is in defiance of City of London regulators.
The SFA should have convened a fit and proper person hearing the minute the Takeover Panel took this issue to court the first time and won. From that moment on, he was pissing all over the law. The Takeover Panel gave him an explicit instruction, which he blatantly ignored.
The SFA’s failure to get a grip on this guy is shameful.
Not that it matters, because the verdict imposes its own time frame on him, especially if the clock started ticking on the day the Court of Session verdict came down and I see no reason why it wouldn’t have; when a court orders you to do something they generally don’t allow you just to proceed at your own convenience.
The Takeover Panel itself expects compliance within 30 days.
It’s been more than two weeks.
He has less than a fortnight left to do what they’ve instructed.
King cannot possibly put together a prospectus and make an offer in that space of time.
The due diligence alone will take weeks to do, and it will be expensive.
And what happens if he misses the deadline?
Well that’s the question, isn’t it? But it will be nothing good. This came from the courts themselves.
He never was “fit and proper” but if he flunks this there’s no way he can possibly be allowed to have a role at a Scottish club.
King may be just two weeks from being terminated as a Sevco director.
Even The Most Basic SFA License Relies On Audited Accounts … Which As Yet Are Not Forthcoming.
The SFA can’t just pretend none of this is going on over there.
Especially – and this is crucial to the whole thing – especially as the club has yet to release annual accounts, which is quite incredible with all this going on.
They now have 15 days to do that as well, or the UEFA license issue is over and done with before it even starts.
Nobody who has done the slightest research on this subject believes the accounts will be anything short of horrendous.
There are good reasons why Dave King wanted to take the club from under the umbrella of stock market scrutiny.
One of them is that he wanted to avoid the kind of frank disclosure that would have gone with that.
He can, thereby, conceal as much as possible under “other operating expenses” and stuff like that … a little bit, as Phil reminded me recently, like those oblique ways in which the Pentagon hides its expenditures by “paying” £20,000 for a toothbrush.
But it doesn’t matter how you try to disguise outgoings, they remain outgoings in the accounting process and when the club is forced to issue them – and remember, that has to be before the end of this month – there will be no escaping the horror of the picture they paint.
With UEFA’s Licensing Board Alerted, The SFA Has Its Own Questions To Answer.
All the focus of the last week or so has been on last Sunday’s game.
The media and Sevco itself must have been very glad for that, but we’re now past that point and hurtling into the next Ibrox crisis and nobody in the press corps is batting an eyelid, although there are issues here which add up to a whole lot of trouble not only at that ground but at Hampden.
One of those issues, of course, is the continuing saga of the compliance officer looking into the Resolution 12 stuff … and we found out this week that Alastair Johnson is up to his neck in whatever they have found. I’m told that something is coming down the pipe on this one “soon”.
Of course, the SFA is a rudderless ship right now, what with The Man Who Wasn’t There running things, Doncaster just elected to the board and no CEO in sight. Ian Maxwell might or might not have the job soon (I’m told it’s just about done, but we’ll see) but I bet he doesn’t want this near his desk.
It was a mess made somewhere else, after all, dumped in a corner by his predecessor … but if this isn’t resolved by the time he’s in post then, whether he likes it or not, it’s his nightmare to take care of and he had better do a job of it. Everyone is watching.
This one has run and run and run already.
It needs closure of the right kind, or it’ll fester like an open wound.
I’d say this needs to be resolved before Maxwell is formally appointed … or whatever the verdict this will define his entire tenure.
The official narrative remains that Regan jumped before he was pushed … I think the gutless sod was going to jump anyway.
If there was no case to answer over Resolution 12 the investigation would have been dismissed out of hand already; there’s something there, we know there is something there and now the truth has to come out. We’ll see where the Survival Lie winds up when this is done … I think I can guess.
Merchandising And Manufacturing Deals Remain Unsigned … And There Will Be No Big Money.
Sevco itself has a number of issues which it has to resolve, and of course some of them depend on money.
Two of them, in fact, are expressly concerned with money and they have come at the worst possible time, when everybody knows that the club is in dire financial trouble. There could not be a worse time for negotiating with a kit manufacturer and a merchandising company.
Crucially, these two areas depend on one another so if there are doubts in one camp your negotiating position is adversely affected with the other.
Without a merchandising arm, a club won’t get what it wants from a manufacturer.
Imagine you can’t land a major manufacturer and end up with one no-one’s heard of and who’s quality cannot be relied on? How are you supposed to sell lots of shirts? If you can’t sell shirts forget getting a high profile retailer willing to stock the jerseys.
It’s a bad time to be without these things.
The club’s negotiating position is horrendously weak.
Everyone knows they are skint. Sports Direct will get the retail deal; that’s almost certain. And they know that without it, and with the clock ticking, the club will be unlikely to get a good one anywhere else. The shirt manufacturer may or may not be Puma, but the relationship with that sportswear firm has been shattered by last season’s Dave King hissy-fit. If they do sign on for another campaign it won’t be at improved terms.
Ideally, a club would want those things taken care of before the campaign ends.
I expect Sevco to get it done on time … but there’s no pot of gold here, no matter what some claim.
Season Ticket Forms Are Going Out Soon And Sevco Fans Have A Lot Of Doubts.
Celtic fans will be asked to purchase season tickets soon.
We know roughly what we’re being asked to spend the money on in the next campaign. The manager will still be here. He’ll try to keep the best players we have, and I actually expect guys like Dembele to start the Champions League qualifiers. And if they stay for that I think they’ll stay the distance.
Sevco fans are being asked to buy the ultimate pig in a poke.
Uncertainty abounds over who their manager will be, what his team will look like, what their level of ambition is, and even with the best will in the world many of them are going to see the possibility of Graeme Murty at the club as a huge risk.
If he’s still not been confirmed one way or another, what are they being asked to buy into?
Material uncertainty stalks that club and even in perfect conditions they need to sell a lot of those seasons tickets right off the bat, because Close Brothers are getting paid from the take and they will not wait around or extend their payment deadline.
If UEFA is investigating the club’s finances – and even in the best case scenario they are likely to impose a “break even” requirement on Sevco, which will be devastating to any grand delusions the fans are likely to have – then the party might be over before it even starts.
This is a lot to sort out in a very short time and even the best run business might well struggle with all of these requirements and all these deals to get over the line. Nothing good will come of all this; none of their new contracts or agreements will be at premium levels because nobody pays big bucks for all this ambiguity, and especially not to a company that is on the record as being desperate for money, and depending on loans to survive.
The timing of it all is horrendous, and the situation will not improve as the countdown clocks tick down.
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