Rangers visits would soften Parsâ?? relegation blow

[ian1964 10,831]

Published on 17/05/2013 02:58

 

THE administrator in charge of crisis-hit Dunfermline believes that prospective new owners of the club will not be discouraged by relegation to the Second Division â?? thanks to Rangers.

 

The Pars appear to be on the verge of dropping down a league after Wednesday nightâ??s 3-0 defeat by Alloa Athletic in their play-off final at Recreation Park.

 

Only what would amount to a famous comeback in Sundayâ??s return leg at East End Park will now save the Fifersâ?? First Division status after they were plunged into a relegation battle following the deduction of 15 points for going into administration.

 

A 6-1 second-leg victory over eight-man Forfar Athletic in the semi-final last Saturday was their emphatic response to a 3-1 first-leg deficit, but Jim Jefferiesâ?? young outfit will find it more difficult against the Wasps this weekend.

 

It has been widely suggested that relegation could sound the death knell for Dunfermline as they battle to survive administration and the threat of liquidation brought on by debts of 
£8.5 million.

 

Experienced administrator Bryan Jackson has admitted the two home play-off ties have boosted his cashflow and the prospects of successfully negotiating the close-season month of June in advance of the aim of getting a company voluntary arrangement ahead of next term.

 

He reckons the presence of Rangers in the Second Division next term, which would bring in the extra income associated with two home games against the Ibrox club and the likely TV revenue, means interested parties will not be put off by an aggregate defeat by Alloa on Sunday.

 

He said: â??If we win over the two legs that would probably change, psychologically, the mood, being in the First Division, and any funder coming in thinking â??my income for next year might be better than being in the Second Divisionâ??.

 

â??But then, in the Second Division, some people might take the view of how much is it going to affect us when weâ??ve got games against Rangers?

 

â??Then, youâ??ve also got another factor, in what happens if reconstruction comes in before then? How does that affect the cash-flow for next season. Itâ??s very fluid.â?

 

Despite the financial boost of the extra play-off games and money from BBC Albaâ??s coverage of the final with Alloa, Jackson has again stressed the importance of supporters attending Sundayâ??s game in his efforts to keep Dunfermline alive.

 

He added: â??Obviously, itâ??s a broken record, but the message is the usual one. The fans have been absolutely brilliant, the contributions have been more than we expected, but the reality is they genuinely need to keep on coming to save the club.â?

 

http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/sfl-division-one/rangers-visits-would-soften-pars-relegation-blow-1-2934456

[SteveC 150]

Us as their saviours after all they said about and did to us - makes one wish to ejaculate vomit at high speed.

[ian1964 10,831]

Rangers takeover: John Yorkston calls on SPL chairmen to relegate newco Rangers

 

Published on 06/05/2012 00:00

 

JOHN Yorkston, the Dunfermline Athletic chairman, will urge his Scottish Premier League counterparts to stand by the principles of sporting integrity when they are asked to decide on the future of Rangers this week.

 

At Hampden tomorrow, a general meeting of the SPL will reconvene to consider a series of financial fair play proposals, including sanctions for liquidated member clubs that reform as a new company.

 

Under the proposals, clubs such as Rangers, who will become a newco as part of the takeover planned by Bill Miller, will be deducted ten points for two consecutive seasons, and have their SPL payments reduced by 75 per cent for three successive campaigns.

 

Yorkston does not believe that an SPL share should be transferred to a newco in the first place. He insists that, despite the economic consequences for the game in this country, Rangers should be relegated to the Scottish Football League.

 

“That’s what I will be arguing for, but I do understand that others will look at the financial side, and that will have more sway than sporting integrity,” he said. “I would guess I’ll be almost a lone voice, but it doesn’t stop me from having my say.

 

“Everyone agrees that there should be severe punishment, but there are a number of chairmen who will look at the financial thing and say, ‘do we want an SPL without Rangers?’ It will be a question of sporting integrity against financial necessity. That is the choice facing chairmen.”

 

If eight of the clubs represented vote in favour of the points penalty, it will come into effect on 14 May. Only five votes are needed to introduce the financial penalties. The decision does not need to be ratified by the SPL board, which recommended the proposals.

 

Under Article 11 of the SPL’s articles of association, a club requires the consent of the SPL board for a share transfer to be registered. If Rangers were to be granted this before next Monday, they would not be subject to the new sanctions.

 

Yorkston is concerned about the credibility of a league in which it is possible to wipe out debts through liquidation and start again. He says that a points penalty would not be a sufficient deterrent to others.

 

“If ten or 15 points is the penalty, then other clubs are going to have a look at that in future. Maybe not right away, but if you have a bad run, somebody else comes in, and maybe these people are not prepared to finance the losses, then you might see it happening.”

 

http://www.scotsman.com/scotland-on-...gers-1-2278177

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[ian1964 10,831]

By PAUL FORSYTH

Published on 06/05/2012 01:13

 

An SPL without Rangers would be preferable to an SPL without integrity, insists John Yorkston

 

SAY what you like about John Yorkston and, let’s be honest, a lot of people do, his heart is in the right place. The Dunfermline Athletic chairman has his critics, people who would rather he piped down and played the political game but, if his club are relegated at Easter Road tomorrow, the Scottish Premier League will be the poorer for his absence.

 

Dunfermline, five points behind Hibernian, will have to beat the Edinburgh side if they are to take their survival bid into the last match of the season, but it is not the only victory Yorkston yearns for tomorrow. Hours before his team take to the pitch, he will be round a table at Hampden, arguing the toss with fellow chairmen in an SPL meeting that could be crucial to the future of Scottish football.

 

Up for discussion are financial fair-play proposals, including how to deal with liquidated clubs, and more particularly Rangers, if they go down that route.

 

“Everyone agrees that there should be severe punishment but there are a number of chairmen who will look at the financial thing and say, ‘do we want an SPL without Rangers?’ It will be a question of sporting integrity against financial necessity. That is the choice facing chairmen.”

 

Yorkston’s view is no secret. He has already declared that a newco Rangers, if it ever comes into being, should be denied a share in the SPL. “That’s what I will be arguing for, but I do understand that others will look at the financial side, and that will have more sway than sporting integrity. I would guess I’ll be almost a lone voice, but it doesn’t stop me from having my say.”

 

As far as Yorkston is concerned, Bill Miller’s elaborate takeover plan changes nothing, however much the preferred bidder talks about incubators and radiated toxicity. It is, thinks Yorkston, liquidation in disguise. “I employ accountants and lawyers, and they’re scratching their heads, wondering how they [Rangers] go into liquidation, but don’t go into liquidation,” says Yorkston. “No matter how you dress it up, you’re in liquidation. The share has to be transferred to another company and that other company is not the old company so it’s a newco. What we are talking about here is a new company owning Rangers.” And newcos are not to be tolerated in Yorkston’s world. Only relegation will do if Scottish football’s credibility is to remain intact. He says that a points deduction, as has been proposed already, is insufficient to deter others. “If ten or 15 points is the penalty, then other clubs are going to have a look at that in future. Maybe not right away, but if you have a bad run, somebody else comes in, and maybe these people are not prepared to finance the losses, then you might see it happening.”

 

Yorkston says that it is too easy for clubs to go into liquidation. Technically, they can return only as a new company, but on a human level, they are the same old club, with the same old history.

 

“I don’t think Airdrie fans my age look back to the 1960s and think it’s a different club now. It’s just Airdrie. When they went down, [they] bought Clydebank, became Airdrie United, moved to Airdrie, wore the same strips, played in the same town. They’ve got the same first name. In a year or two, it will have all blown over for Rangers fans. It will be Rangers they’re supporting, and they’ll still be talking about the good old days. They won’t be talking about Rangers 2012.”

 

Yorkston is not willing to grant Rangers leniency, despite their argument that Scottish football needs protecting, an angle that he says they conveniently overlook when the prospect of playing in another country arises. “They’ve talked about leaving the league on numerous occasions, to England, the Atlantic League, the North Sea League, everything,” says Yorkston. “There is hardly six months go by when it doesn’t rear its head. To be honest, the rest of us are at the point where we’d quite like it. It would leave us with a competitive league. You’d probably be looking at about six or seven different clubs with a chance of winning the title. It would make for exciting football.”

 

For the moment, though, Yorkston is stuck with them, which is why he and his colleagues are trying to make the most of what they have, by arguing for a change to the voting rights, and demanding a more even distribution of revenue.

 

These issues have become mixed up in the ongoing crisis. Many SPL clubs would rather bargain with Rangers than make an example of them, the theory being that they can extract from the Ibrox club, in its hour of need, some of the power that has been concentrated in Old Firm hands for too long. The trouble is that Yorkston is no politician. He says what he thinks, and perhaps more importantly, what the fans think, especially those who are not convinced that the game begins and ends with Celtic and Rangers. Yorkston’s aim is to represent the paying punter, which he claims is seldom done by Scotland’s media.

 

“They are not [represented] because the majority of the media are west-coast based. If they didn’t have Rangers and Celtic to write about, they wouldn’t have a job. The media have a bias in favour of the Old Firm. That’s the reality. Fans of all non-Old Firm clubs would agree with that. I listen to fans. I don’t agree with everything they say but, when 85 per cent in a neutral survey say that they want a bigger league, when 95 or 96 per cent say that a newco should not be accepted, I listen to that. Half of those say they will not be back at games because the credibility will be lost. That worries me.”

 

Yorkston is willing to stand up for the fan in the street, but he can understand why others are not. Sandy Jardine, a Rangers ambassador, said that their supporters would take action against clubs that had been unhelpful to the Ibrox cause. “There have been an awful lot of unfortunate comments from people inside and outside Rangers. After the carry on with the three SFA guys, folk are keeping their heads down. You will be lucky if you get another chairman who is prepared to speak out. You can’t win. If I support Rangers, I’m a Hun. If I don’t, I’m a Tim.

 

“I genuinely hope Rangers can get a CVA, and we wouldn’t need to worry about a newco, but that looks increasingly unlikely.”

 

Yorkston insists that he doesn’t have it in for Rangers, or indeed Celtic. He is portrayed as their enemy, a hawk among doves, but it is not war he wants, only justice. “It’s a right bloody mess, and the trouble is that we don’t have rules in place to deal with it. If they had been drawn up already, it would all have been automatic, but now that we’re talking about a particular club, people think you’re in favour or against them, which isn’t the case.”

 

As if to demonstrate as much, he says that he advocates short, sharp punishments rather than those that hamper a club’s recovery. He does not agree with successive points deductions, and it’s safe to assume that he is not enamoured with the SFA transfer embargo either, even if Rangers’ conduct under Craig Whyte was dubious to say the least. “I don’t know how you get away without paying the revenue for nine months. I wish I knew how you could do that.”

 

Tomorrow is a big day for Yorkston, who will take a deep breath before the meeting, and then another before the visit to Easter Road for a match that has the potential consign his club to the First Division. He is still confident that they can pull off the great escape, although he is willing to admit that they might already have been safe had Jim Jefferies replaced Jim McIntyre earlier in the season. “It’s possible. You just don’t know. The two draws and a win he has given us in our last three games. . . we would have killed for that in January. Everybody, including myself, says that we should have done it sooner, but there’s never a right time, and I still believe Jim McIntyre will be a good manager. When you have ten folk on a board, you don’t all feel the same. I was probably the last to be swayed to make a change.”

 

If the worst comes to the worst, and Dunfermline don’t make it, their chairman will grin and bear it, as he has done often enough in the past. In the First Division, they would lose out on the £900,000 payment made to the SPL’s bottom club, but compensation would arrive in the shape of a parachute payment, reduced wages and an increase in the average attendance. Raith Rovers, Falkirk and Dundee all draw bigger crowds to East End Park than Celtic or Rangers, whose matches tend to be live on television. “People go on and on about the consequences of getting relegated, but it’s not the abyss that some folk make it out to be,” says Yorkston with the same fighting spirit that will come in handy tomorrow.

 

http://www.scotsman.com/scotland-on-...rman-1-2278327

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[ian1964 10,831]

DUNFERMLINE chief John Yorkston says the SFA have no choice but to boot Rangers out of the game because a Scottish Cup ban is too soft.

 

The Pars chairman saw his club kicked out of the cup in 2010 for clerical mistakes that saw them field the suspended Calum Woods as a sub in a 7-1 win over Stenhousemuir.

 

They are far from the only ones with Spartans, Brechin City and East Stirling all having been expelled from thecompetition for fielding ineligible players through honest mistakes.

 

So Yorkston insists it would beludicrous to deal Rangers the same punishment for dodging taxes and putting the nation’s football future in jeopardy by pursuing the SFA through civil courts.

 

While he doesn’t want to see Rangers die, Yorkston believes that in a stark choice between terminating the club’s SFA membership or letting them off with a cup ban, there really is no alternative for the game’s bosses.

 

Because the lesser punishment simply does not fit the crime.

 

Yorkston said: “Most of us feel that because they are who they are, Rangers would get away with the lesser sentence but a cup suspension is not enough. This is more than a small administrative error that saw us and other clubs expelled from the Scottish Cup.

 

“None of us want to see Rangers go out of business but given the choice between the options available to the SFA, there is only one decision.

 

“I always thought relegation was the appropriate measure but I don’t know if they can find a middle ground any more because they tried that already with the transfer embargo.

 

“That’s what makes Rangers’ decision to go to the courts so foolish. They were badly advised because everyone knows you don’t go to court. People will blame the administrators for that but there are still folk at Rangers who should have known you just don’t do that. You don’t go to court unless you know all the facts and not enough research was done to check what the consequences would be.”

 

If Rangers were to pay the ultimate sanction, the additional place in the SPL could see either Dunfermline spared relegation or Dundee promoted as last season’s Division One runners-up.

 

Either way would be less than ideal, Yorkston argues, as both sides have signed and released players based on the assumption they’ll be playing in the lower league.

 

A sudden rise into the top flight – with all the additional costs involved and uncertainty over the TV deal they would need to fund it – would pose a massive headache. Yorkston added: “There are so many ifs, buts and maybes that there’s no sense in speculating too much.

 

“But safe to say it’s not as straight-forward as just getting back into the SPL and everything will be rosy.

 

“Whether it was us or Dundee, it would throw plans into turmoil because both clubs have beenbudgeting for the First Division.

 

“All of our players’ contracts have wages agreed for when they play in the SPL and a lower wage for the FirstDivision, so those still with us have taken a cut and others have moved on.

 

“My fear is that the new season will probably have started by the time this comes to a conclusion, which will bring even more chaos to a situation that has already dragged on for too long.”

 

Rangers hopes of getting away with a Scottish Cup ban seem even more remote when you consider that one of the men due to sit in judgment was the last club chairman to suffer the same sanction.

 

Spartans’ chief Craig Graham was dismayed when the East of Scotland League side were thrown out for the crime of using a player whose new contract had only been dated once.

 

The SFA demand contracts are dated twice and therefore ruled that striker Keith McLeod had been ineligible to play in Spartans’ 2-0 win over Culter.

 

That cost the Edinburgh club alucrative third-round tie with Partick Thistle plus a £4000 fine – a heavy price for such a small administrative error.

 

Graham oversaw Gers’ original appeal against the 18-month transfer embargo along with Lord Carloway and former Partick Thistle chairman Allan Cowan.

 

Their decision to uphold the embargo meted out by the SFA’s judicial tribunal (comprising Gary Allan QC, Raith Rovers director Eric Drysdale and journalist Alastair Murning) led to Gers ill-advised approach to the Court of Session.

 

Now they’ll have the whole sorry mess dropped back in their laps again and are expected to sit within the next two weeks to assess what little options remain at their disposal.

 

If Yorkston represents the majority view in Scottish football then there is no decision to be made. And if Spartans chief Graham felt his club were harshly treated to be kicked out of the Scottish Cup for an honest administrative slip-up, there seems little chance of him approving the same sanction for blatant, pre-meditated deceit.

 

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/f...angers-1128190

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[the gunslinger 3,366]

not if us finishing top kept them down again it wouldn't. they better hope for a play off win.

[Darthter 542]

I actually hope that the cash they get from playing us DOES directly keep them afloat!!!

 

Yorkson was very vocal about punishing us last year....lets see if he's as vocal with his sincere thanks when the Rangers support visit, and boost their coffers enough to get them through another season.

[JTP 0]

Is he still there?

 

I seen a post on RM where some guy was at a sportsman doo with Jim Leishman and he was saying the guys who wanted us dead have gone from his club.

[aweebluesoandso 290]

They wont be getting my money, two away games i'll be missing.

[the gunslinger 3,366]

the administrators are running dunfermline not yorkston.