The SPFL is tonight patting itself on the back as a result of a “revised” deal with the sponsors cinch, in which the club from Ibrox will not be required to participate.
They are congratulating themselves on a victory. In fact, this is a full-scale defeat.
Cinch have what they want. Their brand will be promoted. They have even been granted what Doncaster describes as “additional media resources.” Ibrox’s exclusion probably means that they won’t be eligible for a penny of sponsorship money, although crucially this has not been announced and so that matter is largely up in the air.
One would surmise it, but really that’s all we’d be doing. With this lot you just never know, because we have the weakest governance in football right here.
The announcement reeks of weakness, and all the self-congratulations will not change that. Ibrox is crowing about it and claiming that it fully vindicates their stance. In allowing them to behave like this, without material sanction, the SPFL has endorsed a lawless approach to all future contracts. All the Ibrox club (or others) have to do during contract negotiations with the next sponsor is open talks with someone in the same field and cut their own deal.
The SPFL regulations are explicit that all clubs must participate in joint sponsorship deals; are they now admitting that other features of those regulations are wide open for this kind of reinterpretation? Apparently so, so their calling it a victory is farcical and disgraceful and sets a shocking, and dangerous, precedent for all future negotiations.
Ibrox’s gleeful statement is one I cannot even argue with.
They are right to claim that their stance has been vindicated, even if it costs them a few quid. They are right to raise questions over the way the SPFL governs our leagues.
But this raises bigger questions than Ibrox is asking.
That club has, once again, bent the governance of Scottish football into a shape of its own choosing, and I cannot find a single thing about that to celebrate. It creates the raw conditions for anarchy.
The Ibrox club should have been told that they had no choice but to participate here. Sanctions should have been automatic.
Removing them from the money is only part of it; they should, first, have lost their place on the league board and everything else should have flowed from there. They have jeopardised not just this deal but future deals and there should have been grave consequences for that, because the potential costs to the whole game are enormous.
Our game is a lawless banana republic, in a perilous place tonight.
Right now, the SPFL’s grinning fool Doncaster is acting a lot like Neville Chamberlain did, standing in the well of the House of Commons and being cheered by MP’s as he waved the Munich Agreement in triumph.
Only one man, Winston Churchill, was willing to stand up, and his speech lives in history as one of his finest and sadly his most prescient.
“I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat … £1 was demanded at the pistol’s point. When it was given, £2 were demanded at the pistol’s point. Finally, the dictator consented to take £1 17s. … and the rest in promises of goodwill for the future … And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year …”
He was booed for it. Doubtless there were a handful amongst those tasked with running our game who understand this for exactly what it is.
We will never hear what they had to say, but I assure you that they will be proved right, and all of us will suffer for it.
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And yet again we sit idly by and do nothing.Challenge the quislings on the SPFL board by doing the same thing.cut our own deal and see who blinks first
The question is did they get any cash for last season. And why is no one asking that.
Remember the FAKE game your buying into when you purchase your season book this year.
Your every bit to blame as Doncaster and our board.
Infact I don’t blame sevco or Doncaster or even our board it’s the fans they buy into it and have ENCOURAGED it.
James
Now that sevco have been given carte blanche to negotiate their individual sponsorship deals without any punishment from the spineless SPFL, can you now foresee the possibility that Celtic can do the same, but with their tv rights?
typical spineless SFA solution to another, in a long line,of problems, emanating from the the arrogant ibrox club….and as brian ask’s, as do we all…did they/will they get any sponsorship cash….
and what will be the response from our own in-house, spineless board…?….SFA ?
Yes they will, its the first sports story in the record. They are gleefully reporting that sevco will still receive the payments
This is a disgrace. It’s bad enough they’ve been allowed an exemption from the deal but why are they still going to get money from it if not participating? Why aren’t all of the other clubs apoplectic about this? They should be calling for Doncaster’s head on a platter FFS!
God how I loath them all….
It is appeasing the filth and all its hordes of zombie scum we must be proactive in the removal of all broque wearing soup takers at Hampden and make sevco follow all the rules and regulations of association football no more running up unassailable debts it has no intention of paying on players they cannot afford then dumping the debt but claiming honours of a dead entity
when any organisation can run up debt go bust without paying any of the debt then tell us that they can carry on being the same organisation without anyone in the media questioning the lie then im afraid anything goes regarding the ibrox club. never forget the civil unrest statement. covid breaches and the two george square riots were the perfect example of laws not applying to them. the incompetence of the scottish government and police scotland should have meant a clear out with those responsible losing their jobs. the assault on the celtic employee is another shameful example of lack of publicity can you just imagine if that had happened in england live on sky sports.
That’s the difference they employ real football people to run ther F A and would have sorted all that out in jig time ans that’s the way it should be up here they are to shit scared of reprocussians no balls at all.
Your comments are a joke mate, you are gone.
Even FARRY wasnt this bad it really time for a complete clearout of both the SPFL and the SFA and get real football people in ther that know what they are doing