Yoss

So, anyway. Did anyone on Tuesday night ask the board any of these questions about how much of a loss they're going to make this season and where the shortfall is coming from?

It's great being us at the moment, yeah. I'd have given you pretty long odds against us being the last unbeaten side in this division, we've already got a points tally I'd probably have settled for from the first quarter, and now we're coming into the games against Ayr and Airdrie which I'd have thought were the crucial ones where we had to pick up those points. We're quite capable of losing them both and sliding right down the table, but I must admit I'm just starting to wonder whether we're a bit better than I thought we were and whether we can keep the run going. Unfortunately, I suspect McGlynn will have his loyalty tested at some point this season if it does.

Central contracts time again, and some clues to the probable squad for South Africa. Bell and Sidebottom keep theirs but Harmison and Panesar don't, plus Flintoff is downgraded to the incremental contract. Prior, Swann and Onions step up to full contracts. England central contracts: James Anderson, Ian Bell, Stuart Broad, Paul Collingwood, Alastair Cook, Graham Onions, Kevin Pietersen, Matt Prior, Ryan Sidebottom, Andrew Strauss, Graeme Swann. Increment contracts: Ravi Bopara, Tim Bresnan, Andrew Flintoff, Adil Rashid, Owais Shah, Jonathan Trott, Luke Wright. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/england/8250676.stm

Duncan has signed off from the thread? It's the end of an era. I'm not going to promise to do the same, the Livingston drama has plenty of mileage in it yet. Not because of the remaining loose end of the postponed fixture, which I don't see as that big a deal - a compensation payment to the Shire should cover it - but they still seem to be living beyond their income even while they've yet to agree a CVA for the last lot of debts, and that's obviously not a situation that can go on for very long. I await developments.

Ah.

Scottish football is an incestuous world and the same few chancers crop up all over the place. Rankine is very much one of them but now that he's not getting his way he's dishing dirt on the others. It's pretty poor all round. As for that West Lothian Council link (for which, thanks), it specifically doesn't say that they've written off the debt.

Is this thing about the Council wiping the debt confirmed or is it just gossip from livilions?

So while some posters are criticising them for incosistency you're criticising them for being too consistent? Okay. I find that a bit odd and I don't see any reason why the circumstances this year needed to be treated any differently. Memories are very short. When Livingston went into that first meeting with the Management Committee, Livi were still owned by Massone, McGruther had said they were insolvent, he'd started making redundancies and the expectation was that Livingston would cease to exist that afternoon. Instead, the SFL bent over backwards to try and prevent that happening, they were prepapred to change their own rules, and they were even prepared to let Livi remain in division one, with little or no punishment for going through the insolvency. They weren't, however, prepared to do so if it involved signficant financial risk to their other members, and since Livingston's future was still very much up in the air and their seeing out the season could not be guaranteed, they were asked for a bond to protect the other members. Maybe that was too mcuh to ask, maybe no club could have provided it. Whatever, none of that matters, it was their only condition to what was overall a far more lenient stance than anyone had expected them to take prior to that meeting. Within a week, Livi are grumbling about having to meet that one condition, not meeting it, and then blaming the SFL for taking different action in the absence of its being fulfilled. It's really quite astonishing how little sense of self-responsibility their continues to be at Livingston, by which I mean the new owners and the fans and not just all the previous chairmen you like to blame when you present yourselves as innocent victims in all this. It's quite staggering.

I did address it - you're comparing the penalty England apply to one thing with the penalty Livingston have had for something else altogether, and ignoring that England have a different and much harsher penalty for that something else.

Okay. We've got several hunderd pages of the same thing over and over again but I'm going to try getting this through one more time anyway. They haven't been relegated for being in insolvency, they've been relegated for being in insolvency at the start of a season and being unable to guarantee completing the season (ie not having a CVA in place). Once again, English rules are *even more strict* in such circumstances, and in theory clubs aren't even granted an FA licence / league membership and allowed to start the season at all. (Though, unsurprisingly they've discovered that rule is a bit daft and doesn't really work.)

I don't have a problem with WL Council's actions. If they (and, indirectly, their electors) think it's an appropriate use of their cash for the prestige of having a senior club or for the money it brings into the town or whatever, that's up to them. None of my business.

And as also stated repeatedly in the thread, providing a bond of £750K does not mean being able to put your hands on that money up front, during that week. Anyway, speaking of mismanaged clubs, this statement from Bournemouth the other day made for interesting reading, they came out of admin last summer but ran up another millions quids worth of debt last season. Some clubs just never learn: http://www.afcb.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,1...1779943,00.html

Gretna were in the SPL when they entered administration, they were still in it and were unable to guarantee completing their fixtures when they became an SFL club that summer. It was the SFL who demoted them to division three. I don't even understand your last point. It's happened twice, and teams have been dealt with accordingly. If it shoudl start happening to half a dozen clubs every year then clearly there'd be wider issues that would need looking it. It's a bit silly imagining such a scenario at this stage as if it prevents you from acting on the situation you're faced with.

Again, we're going over old ground here, but they were in legal insolvency procedures that fall well within the scope of the SFL's rule to that that effect. (Edit: In any case I was answering, with that comment, your point that they're not doing anything different to anyone else, rather than commenting directly on the SFL's action.) (And, as already noted above, Hearts are in the SPL who only have a single league to play with. Analogies with different leageus have no bearing on how the SFL choose to act.) Yes you were. I think it's nonetheless legitimate for the SFL to take into account aht it's your second administration in a short space of time even if you didn't fall within their jurisdiction at the time of the first one. Though I stress that's a personal opinion and there's no particular suggestion that that influenced their thinking.

You're again making the mistake of thinking of this as a punishment for administration, which is not the line the SFL took. No such punishment is outlined, as you know. Personally I think it being your second one does make a difference and the punishment should reflect that, but interestingly the SFL don't seem to ahve seen it that way. In fact in terms of punitive measure they don't seem to have been that bothered at all, and were prepared to let you remain in division one, maybe with a points deduction, if the relevant guarantees could be provided. The action that's been taken, as with Gretna last year, was not a punishment but a pragmatic measure to deal with clubs in the absence of such guarantees.

All of this stuff has been gone over many times in the thread already, but just to note that that statement is simply untrue, no one else has had two administrations in recent years. As for equality of treatment, there have been two occasions (both in the last two years) when teams in administration have been unable to guarantee, prior to the start of a season, that they'd be able to complete it. Both were placed in division three and yes I see no reason to suppose the same wouldn't happen to anyone in the SFL. (How the SPL would deal with it I have no idea, but that's not relevant.)

Do you have something to go on there or is that just guesswork?

The power of positive thinking.

Meanwhile Keane has been acquitted of fraud: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinbu...ast/8224705.stm

As SD says, the move into full administration was a predetermined formality following McGruther's initial appointment, rather than news as such, and it was always clear that Rankine and McDougall were never volunteering to pay off the full debt so that would still happen. So I don't read anything into the fact it wasn't announced specifically, I just took it to be the case anyway. A CVA can't have been agreed yet, that's not a quick process and as stated above requires the publication of reports on total debt and creditors' meetings and all that malarkey. So McGruther is in control, but it's not incompatible with his duties to operate in conjunction with the owners. He does however have legal responsibilities, to cut costs to something affordable - and we still await evidence that he's doing anything about the playing budget - and to prevent debt from continuing to build. I can't see how it's possible for them to be maintaining the current squad based on the income they're getting at the moment and I'd thus like to know where the money is coming from to keep the club going in the meantime, and on what terms.

I'll add this one here for those who never look at the Infowire forum.

Alty was the team my dad used to take me along to watch when I was a kid in Manchester, yeah. I had meant to go to that game but it didn't quite happen for one reason and another. Don't think I'm going to get to London for a bit either, so I probably won't see Wimbledon until the Barrow game later in the year.

Here's a nice article / rant on the lack of punishment to teams going through administration down south: http://www.twohundredpercent.net/?p=1874 (It's not me who wrote that one, it's a multi-contributor blog.)

Is that what you said about Hunter, Keane and Flynn too?

I hadn't thought of that.