Aim Here

If you have to resort to deliberately misquoting people to make your point, you're clearly wrong and you clearly know it.

There's no 'explicit' provision to change a No vote in the leaked document, sure, but given that they explicitly have to state you can't change a 'Yes' vote, it's almost certain that, by default, votes of this nature are revokable, otherwise there would be no need for the provision making the 'Yes' votes irrevocable; likewise, if No votes are irrevocable, it would be perverse for this line to only mention 'Yes' votes. It could well be that elsewhere in the document or in another one, there's an actual explicit rule that points this out, but I'm not privy to it.

The SPFL rebuttal suggests Douglas Park made a serious, defamatory allegation, coupled with a threat, hence the four cease and desists. It'll be fun if this hits a courtroom and Old Douglas Park has to explain he was channelling the dregs of FollowFollow...

From the leaked SPFL Resolution document It's implicit in the statement "Once you have indicated your agreement to the Ordinary Resolution, you may not revoke your agreement". The SPFL would have phrased it differently if both 'yes' and 'no' votes were irrevokable. Also abstaining is considered as a default 'no' vote (i.e. if you vote 'no' by abstaining, you have to be able to change your 'vote').

What business is it of Neil Doncaster if championship clubs want to discuss amongst each other how they want to vote? It's not wrongdoing, and even if it is, it's certainly not wrongdoing by the SPFL. You seem hung up on the wording of 'alleges threats'. It doesn't allege a threat, it alleges some perfectly reasonable activity, under the headline of 'threat', and the hypothetical intended activity that constitutes the supposed 'threat' isn't from the SPFL, it's from a bunch of Championship clubs. If anything, Doncaster stepping in to interfere with how Championship clubs want to vote at upcoming elections would be the kind of interference that Rangers & co would ordinarily frown on.

Rangers call it a 'threat', but it's not an actual allegation of a threat. What they're describing is Championship clubs voting to not pay the higher-placed league clubs prize money based on league positions, if there's no league positions to base prize money on, due to Dundee and ICT voting to void the league. They're being reminded of a perfectly fair consequence of their actions. It's no more a 'threat' than the shopkeeper at your local corner shop is making a 'threat' by saying that he'll take that pint of milk and packet of hob nobs off you if you don't pay him the money you owe him for them.

Rangers certainly used the term 'bullying' and 'coercion' in their statements and the tweets, despite what Stuart Robinson has claimed recently. But no, the actual dossier doesn't contain allegations that amount to anything that could reasonably be described as clubs being bullied, even if some folks out there are unreasonably using the word.

It's not the case, no. All the supposed 'bullying' amounts to is that something like half of the Championship clubs pointed out they'd vote against Dundee and ICT getting extra prize money for a season if they were choosing to nullify it. Those clubs not only had the right to say something like that and vote in a way that had consequences to Dundee and ICT they wouldn't like, they were obviously *in* the right - you can't give people prizes for a tournament they're choosing to void. What's alleged doesn't constitute bullying. Even if this does somehow constitutes bullying (and it doesn't), it wasn't the SPFL doing it, but Championship clubs doing it to each other. Rangers should have directed that part of the dossier to the chairman of Alloa Athletic, not Neil Doncaster.

Other than stopping Hearts from being relegated, you mean?

In this context it's a letter from a company to an employee explaining that the loan deposited in their bank account isn't actually a loan and isn't expected to be paid back and is actually their pay packet, but the 'loan' story is what they're telling the taxman for fraud purposes.

The dossier doesn't even allege bullying or coercion on the part of the SPFL. What it claims is that the chairmen of Alloa and Dunfermline pointed out that the Championship clubs would be inclined to vote to equalize prize payments if Dundee and ICT succeeded in negating the 'end the season on the basis of league position' vote. Pointing out the position of championship clubs in a future vote isn't any more of a 'threat' than normal Scottish football politics, and the chairmen of championship clubs pointing out what championship clubs are likely to do isn't evidence of SPFL bullying. The fact that one of the club chairmen is also an SPFL board member is irrelevant - the action threatened isn't action by the SPFL bureaucracy. It's no more an SPFL "threat" than it is a threat by Ross McArthur's masonic lodge or Mike Mulraney's bowling club. As far as the 'bullying' allegations are concerned, there's no case to answer. Rangers have, in the words of the American legal system, 'failed to state a case for which relief can be granted'. All they manage to allege is a non-SPFL non-threat.

It can be faked. It probably is real and not faked. But even if you take everything at face value, there's no wrongdoing alleged, other than the use of the word 'threat', and that's just a semanticism. The 5 Championship clubs are right to point out that the consequences of not voting for a proper season-end would be a null season with no extra prize money for those higher up the table.

Not to mention that apparently, the Championship club chairmen stating what the Championship clubs are going to do is apparently a threat by the SPFL, on the grounds that one or other of them happen to be SPFL board members. By that same logic, this is just as likely to be a threat by Mike Muraney's bowling club.

It's consistent with what we're hearing from folks who are in a position to read the documents, so I don't think there's any reason to think it's not genuine.

Courtesy of that great bunch of lads at FollowFollow, I got my hands on a leaked copy of the executive summary (first 20 pages) of the Explosive Dossier That Will Rip Scottish Football Apart. Enjoy! https://drive.google.com/open?id=1DJ8xJLASZwDK1MB3ZE1xgVVR0GbyND4g

Nonono A 200 page dossier followed by a belligerent slogan appended to a retweet of a month-old statement.

Can't wait to see Rangers fans following in the footsteps of their suffragette forefathers (foremothers?) and going on a Bobby Sands-style hunger strike, and flinging themselves under the queen's favourite horse.

You're talking about public relations in Scottish football, an industry that hired Jim 'concomitant' Traynor for years in multiple capacities, and where the whole world was exposed to Ann Budge's unfiltered, unedited, rambling, geriatric prose style. The SPFL statement is pretty much gold standard by comparison.

It's been quoted by at least two professional journalists on twitter, so I reckon it probably is. The one thing they're really good at is regurgitating press releases.

Pffft. Large reports of this sort are easy to get the gist of. The first thing you do is hit the conclusion section, find out what they're *really* saying and then track back to the bits of evidence that actually support the conclusion. And if you're able to see at a glance that those are pish, then you don't really need to trawl the details of the flimflam to denounce the report as a whole.

It could possibly be just a well-worn strategy of throwing a ton of shit that takes far too much time to refute. It would also explain the maximal delay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

Not sure what I've said here that got me labelled as a Country & Western fan, but I'll admit I'm not above cranking up a Johnny Cash or Steve Earle tune from time to time. But to stay ontopic, I'll vote for a complete anticlimax.

Tuesday, according to some news reports.

Depends how exactly the Mysterious Millionaire from Midlothian actually makes their millions. If he or she owns a string of pubs or an airline or a few dozen AirBnB buy-to-let properties, they might not be able to throw the usual £2 million-per-year into the bottomless Gorgie moneypit and Hearts might find themselves a bit more strapped for cash in upcoming seasons...

He'll be back...