Nemesis
I had one of those conversations this week which demonstrates how people
construct reality based on their own innate desires and prejudices, rather than
the facts. I was in Tibo, a nice café on Glasgow’s Duke Street, with a couple
of friends when a ‘friend of a friend’ joined us. The topic got round to
football and the chap commented that, Celtic’s current dominance is built on
the fact that they conspired with others to ‘kick Rangers when they were down
and get them relegated down the leagues.’ All of this was caused, in his mind,
by jealousy and hatred for the Ibrox club. This line of argument was a bit of a
red rag to a bull to me.
I tactfully reminded him that Rangers had imploded financially by spending
more than they earned for years and operated an under the counter payment
scheme to entice quality players to Scotland with the lure of tax-free money. (EBTs)
This, and the staggering level of debt built up by a club in the low-income
Scottish league led to administration and eventually a liquidation which left
creditors ripped off for millions. As a bankrupted business, employees,
including players, walked away and had Charles Green decided to build flats at
Ibrox rather than create a new company there would be no one playing there
today.
My now red-faced companion retorted, ‘the company went bust, a club can’t
die.’ I replied that, ‘Third Lanark died and in Scots law there is no separation
of club and company once an organisation incorporates.’ This fantasy about
being ‘relegated’ was also spouted and I reminded him that Rangers were not
relegated. The new entity applied for membership of the league and fans and
clubs across the land baulked at the idea of them being given preferential access
to the top league immediately. Like all new entities they’d have to work their
way up from the bottom.
Of course, this caused an Everest of cognitive dissonance with my verbal
sparring partner and he was not a happy man. His attempt to somehow portrait
the old Rangers as victims, when they in fact cheated on an industrial scale,
was as implausible as those Atletico Madrid fans who claim that the thugs who
kicked Celtic off the Park in 1974 were victims of a bad referee and diving
Celtic players. Most of us know the facts of what occurred in 2012 and aren’t
buying this victimhood narrative. If anything, Rangers FC (1872) were fortunate
the SFA lacked the guts to follow their own rules and strip them of trophies won
during the EBT years. I wrote at the time…
‘All of these arguments about whether Rangers as it currently
exists is a new or old club are in some respects a smoke screen hiding the real
issue here- the EBT scheme which saw Rangers pay tens of millions of tax-free
pounds to players they might not otherwise have tempted to Ibrox was and
remains the real bone of contention. To be clear, these payments were not
illegal but as the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled, they were
payments for playing for Rangers and as such should have been subject to tax.
For Rangers to pay players in such a manner and to record it in side letters
they subsequently hid from the SFA, broke player registration rules. As such
players who represented Rangers whilst receiving EBT cash were in breach of SFA
rules which state all contracts and payments to players be recorded with the
governing body. It stretches credulity to ask us to believe that Rangers
expected scores of footballers to pay back the EBT money they received. The
money paid was not loans but wages, and those in control at Ibrox at the time knew that.’
It all seems like an old debate and hardly worth rehashing
after a decade but the fallout from 2012 is still with us. The Rangers of today
still spends more than it earns but is learning that that it must have its
limits or the same could happen again. Celtic’s dominance in the past decade is
down to generating more income, running the club prudently and having 10,000
more seats which generate over £5m in revenue above and beyond what Rangers
could in season ticket income. They have also bought well and made handsome
profits on player sales.
Learning to live within your means is a hard lesson for those
who watched the hubris and arrogance of the Murray years at Ibrox. The ‘if they
put down a fiver, I’ll put down a tenner’ attitude of Mr Murray did for Rangers
in the end and he sold HMS Rangers to Craig Whyte for £1, knowing full-well it
was heading for an iceberg.
In Greek mythology, Hubris is seen as exhibiting excessive
pride and arrogance, and it is usually followed by Nemesis. Those of you who
saw the bloody, British gangster film ‘Snatch’ will recall the psycho gang boss
‘Bricktop’ describe Nemesis as…
‘A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an
appropriate agent.’
For the Ibrox club of 2023, watching Celtic having the sort
of dominance domestically which is as complete as any club has had in any era
in Scottish football history, is an appropriate Nemesis. Of course, some will
go through the list of organisations which state that Rangers are the same
club. I don’t actually care. What matters is that sporting integrity demands
that all clubs play by the same rule book. Paying players secret, tax-free
money was clearly wrong and honest Rangers fans will concede this.
As we left the café, I asked the chap what he would say if
Celtic had done the things Rangers did in those years. He smiled and replied, ‘exactly
the same things you’re saying now about Rangers.’ I could see he was implying
that I was exhibiting the same bias he had. I shrugged and replied, ‘but the
facts don’t lie.’
I don’t think I’ll be on his Christmas card list.
