Celtic’s AGM announcement has generated significant backlash, as you’ve probably gathered.
Their decision not to support the Resolution 12 boys is shameful, and leads people to wonder whether or club has something to hide or not.
The thing that most people have commented to me on is the assertion that the club wants to leave this in the hands of the SFA.
“Why the Hell would the club want to do that?”
It’s a good question, one I have no actual answer to.
It is much easier to list the reasons why we can’t, and won’t, trust the SFA, and frankly the idea that the club does absolutely boggles the mind. An entire generation of our fans is growing up viewing the SFA through the prism of the events of 2011-12.
There are those of us with long memories and who’ve been around a while who remember things even farther back.
But since 2011-12, the supporter’s view of the SFA has been so toxic that I am frankly astounded, and not a little disgusted, that the club would even dare suggest we trust these people. I am going to look at just a handful of the reasons for our attitude towards them, and this is by no means an exhaustive list.
Tomorrow I’ll publish the complete version of my A-Z of Scottish football corruption and scandal, which at the moment is in several parts.
It is an overview of what we’ve had to contend with over the years. For now, I’m going to list just some of the reasons why we cannot trust the SFA, all rooted in the modern era, all offering the proof that those in office up there should be run out on a rail.
The SFA are the targets of the Resolution 12 campaign
Let’s start with this; the Resolution 12 campaign is based on the allegation that the SFA was either lax or corrupt in its procedures when it came to granting Rangers their 2011-12 license to play in Europe.
The idea that we should trust them to investigate this properly is akin to the SFA’s own decision to let the Ibrox club investigate the links between Craig Whyte and their then board run by Charles Green. Since when do criminals investigate their own crimes?
Even if nothing else in this article mattered – and it all does – this would be a disqualifying point all on its own.
The notion that we should trust the people who are at the heart of the allegation is so barking that I cannot believe Celtic really believes it.
That they think fans would accept this as if it were, in any way, an acceptable outcome is a blatant insult to the intelligence of the supporters.
I cannot put it more simply or brutally than that. They are either massively underestimating us or this is a sophisticated version of trolling with a punchline we aren’t seeing at the moment.
I think we know this isn’t some perverse gag, with a surprise waiting for us.
The board really does expect us to swallow this.
The Resolution 12 guys have the SFA bang to rights and there’s no doubt about that if you read through their work, and it’s all now publicly available to anyone who is inspired to do so.
These guys have found the smoking gun.
And the club wants us to trust the guys who fired it in the first place.
The suggestion is outrageous.
No wonder the fans are furious about it.
They knew what Craig Whyte was up to and let him do it
There are those who claim that the central conceit of the Resolution 12 campaign makes no sense.
It infers that the SFA were corrupt in their dealings with the Ibrox club.
There are some who would scoff and claim this is just a conspiracy theory.
But it does not require a great stretch of the imagination, because the SFA are known to have been involved in at least one Ibrox inspired conspiracy during that time, and I’m not even talking about the role Campbell Ogilvie played in the creation of EBT’s.
No, I’m talking about Craig Whyte and the infamous Hotel Le Vin meeting with the SFA and the SPFL leadership, where he laid out his scheme to liquidate the club and re-emerge at the head of a debt-free Newco. We know that meeting took place, in November 2011.
We know that because Whyte himself confirmed that it did.
The governing bodies knew he was intending to stiff the creditors, including the tax man.
They knew they would have to bend and even break their own regulations in order to let him get away with that, and not only were they willing to do so the very fact that they were willing to look the other way whilst he committed a clear-cut fraud against those creditors makes them co-conspirators.
It is a wonder to me that no-one ever took them to court for it.
We know from their conduct in the aftermath of the liquidation that they were willing to go to any lengths necessary to assist whoever was at Ibrox, and to Hell with the integrity of the game.
What they did in terms of the European license of 2011-12 was small fry in the grand scheme of things; they were complicit in things much worse than that.
They were the architects of the Five Way Agreement
One of the reasons Celtic fans are disgusted with the club over this is the suspicion that we are not chasing this down because we’re hog-tied in the Five Way Agreement, the disreputable document which lies at the heart of the last few years.
The Five Way Agreement is a pure corruption.
It is the document that guaranteed that the sins of the EBT era would essentially go unpunished.
It is a shameless contradictory document.
Not only does it show the blatant falsehood at the heart of the Survival Lie – it was signed by both the NewCo and old Rangers – but it is the document which underpins it.
We know all this, and we know that it came with its very own “side letter”, the one that made sure the current Ibrox club did not pay for any of the sins of Rangers and that Rangers itself got to keep every one of the tainted trophies. So far anyway.
What was Celtic’s involvement? We claimed not even to know about it until the whole grubby deal was done, but many of us have long believed that Celtic would not have accepted being shut out of such a major matter and that we signed off on the whole thing.
The Five Way Agreement is a scandal.
It erased a decade of cheating and birthed the Survival Lie even as it was built on the clear truth that Rangers died.
It protected Ogilvie and the governing body from its own outrageous behaviour.
It was a Get Out Of Jail Free card which all the guilty parties in the biggest sports scandal in Britain wrote to themselves.
They have rejected Celtic’s call for an official inquiry
Celtic claims to be invested in protecting Sporting Integrity; I actually think that in many ways we’ve worked towards that concept.
When we asked for a full inquiry into all these matters after the Supreme Court brought in the Tax Case verdict, that was a huge step and one that we were fully entitled to believe would find support outside Celtic Park.
But the media were wholly opposed right from the start; someone had clearly lobbied them in advance and we know that those instructions came from Hampden. The SFA tried ignoring Celtic, then they tried stalling the club.
Finally, Celtic published the details of the meetings and the exchanges of letters.
We tried to force the issue.
The SFA hoped that we’d drop it … and eventually we did, but before that we made it plain how important we thought the inquiry was, in putting all this stuff behind us. The SFA made sure their placemen – Petrie and Stuart Milne foremost amongst them – were ahead of them in shooting the idea done.
They did us over, basically.
And Celtic wants us to put our trust in them now?
Why would we? Everyone who’s looked at these issues in detail knows full well that an inquiry should have been called, and most especially into the SFA’s own role in these matters, such as what part was played by Mr Conflicted himself.
Ogilvie was the father of EBT’s, and he was running when the SFA when that organisation was supposed to be investigating them.
Only a corrupt organisation would ever have allowed such a thing and an inquiry would have got to the bottom of all of it.
And you know, it might have uncovered some unpleasant things about what our own club knew and when … the club was willing to risk that.
It makes you wonder just what the SFA was trying to hide.
They refuse to go to CAS with the case they do have
The idea that we should trust the SFA to deal with this is even more ridiculous when you consider that they’ve had part of this within their purview for well over a year now with no movement whatsoever.
In the aftermath of Celtic’s call for an inquiry they finally announced that they were taking the Ibrox club through a disciplinary process in relation to it.
That process stalled. It has been stuck in the mud for so long now that no-one can foresee any circumstances where we ever get to the bottom of it. The Ibrox club responded aggressively and the SFA backed down almost at once.
The matter now lies in a limbo where they have to decide either to drop it completely or send it to CAS.
They have done neither.
They have held off on a decision.
Nothing has happened recently which in any way suggests they are prepared to move it forward.
One of the dark truths about the Five Way Agreement is that it has bound together all those who were involved in a pact of mutually assured destruction.
The SFA will do nothing to provoke Ibrox for fear of what might come out in the wash, and that would be bad enough except that the chairman at Sevco is a man who would be perfectly prepared to burn down all of Scottish football to get his way, and so he can run rough-shod over the Hampden bosses any time he likes.
Whether the Five Way Agreement gives the Ibrox club leverage or whether it just legally binds the hands of the SFA elite no longer matters; King is not shy about wielding it as a weapon and the SFA wants it to go away.
He has them by the short ones, so how can we have any faith that they will ever even attempt to get to the bottom of all this?
They will not push for Financial Fair Play
Even if Celtic is completely committed to upholding sporting integrity and everything else, it does us no good if other clubs don’t care about that.
The SFA will not do anything to compel clubs to play by the rules, and nowhere is this clearer than in their failure to protect our game by introducing rules on Financial Fair Play.
Now the SFA might say that this is down to the clubs; in truth neither they nor any of the clubs has ever commented publicly on it.
Yet almost every club in the SPL – and certainly the bigger ones, like Celtic, Aberdeen, Hearts and Hibs – all adhere to it already and say so openly in their accounts.
Not only do they follow UEFA guidelines but most have gone further.
Our own club is one of them, and in recent years Aberdeen have boasted about how their ratio of earnings to income is a perfect model of good governance. I agree with them.
There is only one club that I can see who does not follow the basic tenants of Financial Fair Play and who be adversely affected by its implementation. They are the reason the SFA will not publicly come out in support of the idea, far less put it into practice.
And yet FFP would be for the good of Scottish football.
We’ve seen too many of our clubs suffer with administration and a few – like Rangers – have even gone to the wall. The current Ibrox club places itself in graver peril every day it overspends … it is in their own interests that some higher authority demands that they turn off the spending taps.
The SFA is simply not interested in anything that upsets the Ibrox board and the fan-base.
No matter how well intentioned, or beneficial to football, they just won’t do it.
They still think Dave King is a fit and proper person
Lastly, how are we supposed to have any faith in an organisation which believes that David Cunningham King, the “glib and shameless liar” is a fit and proper person?
It is simply unbelievable.
No other football association in Europe would have this guy within miles of one of its clubs, and don’t forget we’re told that the Ibrox operation is so vital to the game that their previous incarnation was “too big to fail.” You would think that the SFA would have insisted that the man who ran Sevco was of exemplary character.
But King never was and never will be.
He’s a South African tax cheat who’s on the City of London’s shit list after he got the black spot last month.
His record for losing court cases – brought on by his own utter indifference to contract law and regulatory requirements – is matched only by his record for picking duff managers. That man should be drummed out of our game.
And yet he’s allowed to swan around it as if he’s untouchable.
What does he have on the SFA? Is it the Five Way Agreement or is it more than that?
We know that he personally purchased Charlotte Fakeovers “blackmail box” of intercepted emails and documents, and that he holds them to this day … is that the reason for the SFA’s reticence in finally admitting what everyone else in the game knows and always has?
Whatever the reasons, they are leaving King in place … in the aftermath of the Cold Shouldering most of us expected that the SFA would at least announce that they were reviewing his status … they have done no such thing. It is outrageous.
Celtic wants us to trust these people, but they trust King … or they are afraid of him.
Either way it amounts to the same thing.
He is a disgrace foisted on the rest of football by the very people Celtic expects us to believe are committed to good governance.
That’s a joke, but it’s not a very funny one and nobody is laughing.
Do Celtic Fans Believe The SFA Can Be Trusted To Handle Resolution 12?
Of course they can
Are you off your nut?
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