Sevco and their fans suffer humiliating dossier defeat

[AsimButtHitsASix]

I read the football on the Graun a lot and every now and then Murray pops up as some kind of authority on Scottish football whilst writing articles that often have no idea of what's going on. It's atrocious. He's done a decent bit of fact finding there tho'.

[rainbowrising]

2 minutes ago, Ric said:

I doubt Murray knows what objective journalism actually is.

A quick look at his twitter feed will show a man who has a very clear bias and it's thinly veiled in that article.

I know it's unfair to go by a picture but his Guardian profile is as brogue wearing, staunchly staunch as you can get.

[Diamonds are Forever]

With no sport to write about people like Murray and English are having to create stories. Resorting to trawling through accounts from 12 years ago which have absolutely no relevance (no matter how much they want it to) to the current situation is some level of desperation though.

It's always funny to watch sports journalists like that fancying themselves as serious investigative journalists and being shown to be totally out their depth.

[CALDERON]

26 minutes ago, AsimButtHitsASix said:

Although I don't think they should have made loans I do think they could have advanced prize money to clubs. Find out the lowest possible position each club could have finished and forwarded the prize money for that position. That woulda gave clubs more time to come to a decision and seen how this would play out.

I'm not sure what the details about prize money are tho'. Perhaps the SPFL doesn't get that income from the sponsors, etc. until season's end so isn't a possibility. Just seemed one option to get money to clubs that needed it without it being a loan.

That's effectively what they did.  Every club had been given the minimum prize money (I think) and the cash people were waiting for was that balance.  

For some, that would be a figure not worth bothering about.  For some it was a pretty big figure indeed.  In Raith Rovers case, it was about £60k, and I think at the top end of the Championship was into the hundreds of thousands. 

[Dons_1988]

15 minutes ago, bennett said:

 

I'm sure that they originally said not possible,  searches show both.  Anyway clubs should have been notified of all options available to them and the spfl's rush to push this through no matter what was shocking.

 

I'm not sure I agree, if they'd just presented a menu of all possible options and told the clubs 'you decide' then they'd be criticised for a lack of leadership.

I have no issue with them coming to a preferred position, but I'd like a little more transparency on why they came to the one they did.

[capt_oats]

41 minutes ago, Dons_1988 said:

I think they said there was only one feasible method.

I haven't heard anyone say that loans are impossible. Just that it isn't feasible, which it clearly isn't. As the below says, advance fee payments are a different matter.

You're right here, it sounds like the money could have been advanced in certain ways and Doncaster didn't convince me on Saturday that they couldn't. Not to be confused with loans though.

I may have misheard (I really can't be fucked listening back either) but IIRC Doncaster covered that.

The gist was that - as it stands - the only trigger to release the balance remaining is the conclusion of the league and the distribution is based on final league placings. The only way to distribute the cash is via that mechanism.

Again, it's from memory and I don't think Richard Gordon picked up on it but he alluded to the fact that you'd need to change the articles of association in order to action an alternative method. So they'd have needed another vote to make that change. This is where the SPFL's language is important - and why they've chucked in "viable" when talking about the resolution that was presented to the member clubs.

In short, advancing the money isn't possible under the current mechanism however that's not to say it couldn't be done but it would require additional votes on amendments which I'm fairly sure the SPFL board would argue wasn't in the interests of the member clubs given the time sensitive nature of circumstances. From their POV the resolution they put forward was the most straightforward given the articles of association currently agreed. 

Edited May 6, 2020 by capt_oats

[Dons_1988]

2 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

I may have misheard (I really can't be fucked listening back either) but IIRC Doncaster covered that.

The gist was that - as it stands - the only trigger to release the balance remaining is the conclusion of the league and the distribution is based on final league placings. The only way to distribute the cash is via that mechanism.

Again, it's from memory and I don't think Richard Gordon picked up on it but he alluded to the fact that you'd need to change the articles of association in order to action an alternative method. So they'd have needed another vote to make that change. This is where the SPFL's language is important - and why they've chucked in "viable" when talking about the resolution that was presented to the member clubs.

In short, advancing the money isn't possible under the current mechanism however that's not to say it couldn't be done but it would require additional votes on amendments which I'm fairly sure the SPFL board would argue wasn't in the interests of the member clubs given the time sensitive nature of circumstances. From their POV the resolution they put forward was the most straightforward given the articles of association currently agreed. 

Ah ok cheers. I may have missed that then.

If that is the case then I'm struggling to argue too much with their conclusion.

[BigTamMuller]

1 hour ago, bennett said:

Not sure why you're deriding that article,  a good bit of journalism from Ewen Murray and something we don't see enough of. (Scoop Jacksons PR pieces)

Doncasters definition of what a  loan is seems to change like the wind, I'm sure that other journalists will pursue this further. 

* Ewan Murray.

Ewen Murray is a golf commentator and I don't think would enjoy having his name associated with that ehm, objective journalism.

[capt_oats]

1 minute ago, Dons_1988 said:

Ah ok cheers. I may have missed that then.

If that is the case then I'm struggling to argue too much with their conclusion.

It was only a couple of sentences, there wasn't a lot of detail and he clearly wasn't keen to dwell on it because the obvious question in response would have been "why didn't you put it to the member clubs?" and really his only response would have been "we chose not to, we felt that the resolution presented was the most straight forward" (or words to that effect) which may not have been the look he was going for.

[welshbairn]

This is probably bollocks but here's hoping!

 

[invergowrie arab]

They're not going to sink us again are they?

[Dons_1988]

6 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

It was only a couple of sentences, there wasn't a lot of detail and he clearly wasn't keen to dwell on it because the obvious question in response would have been "why didn't you put it to the member clubs?" and really his only response would have been "we chose not to, we felt that the resolution presented was the most straight forward" (or words to that effect) which may not have been the look he was going for.

Maybe, maybe not.

Time will tell if they could have gone down the route of amending the articles of association but I still think it's a reasonable judgement for a board to make under the circumstances. It certainly wouldn't suggest any gross negligence that a certain club would have you believe.

[Bohemian]

Rang3rs 

[Bohemian]

Mr. Gerrard is on talksport at 11 bells.. I'm sure he will clear all this up.

[San Starko Rover]

This is probably bollocks but here's hoping!
 

Think we’d have heard a bit more if there was any truth in it. Although I guess it’s only a matter of time before the first club hits the buffers financially. Rhyl are the first club I’ve heard of to enter administration but no idea who’s most at risk up here.

[Sergeant Wilson]

2 hours ago, rainbowrising said:

Today!...

Peter Lawwell has had a sneaky preview.

Edited May 6, 2020 by Sergeant Wilson

[coprolite]

57 minutes ago, CALDERON said:

That's effectively what they did.  Every club had been given the minimum prize money (I think) and the cash people were waiting for was that balance.  

For some, that would be a figure not worth bothering about.  For some it was a pretty big figure indeed.  In Raith Rovers case, it was about £60k, and I think at the top end of the Championship was into the hundreds of thousands. 

What the SPFL described was slightly different, in that they'd distributed the payments up to the level of the payment for the lowest placed club. So the unpaid amount  will be higher for higher placed clubs because their individual minimum finish might be higher than last place. 

21 minutes ago, Dons_1988 said:

Maybe, maybe not.

Time will tell if they could have gone down the route of amending the articles of association but I still think it's a reasonable judgement for a board to make under the circumstances. It certainly wouldn't suggest any gross negligence that a certain club would have you believe.

I think there is obviously more that the league could have done around explaining the reasons for the proposal and being clear why they felt some options weren't practically possible. They have clearly made a c**t of it. 

The grown ups have presumably been asking these questions and getting their half arsed unsatisfactory answers in private. 

I can’t wait to see the dossier, it's going to be dynamite

[Ludo*1]

Roger Mitchell is one of the most tin-hat wearing figures to have graced Scottish football. Whilst Rangers demise again would be lovely to see I'd pay absolutely zero attention to his nonsense.

[Dons_1988]

2 minutes ago, coprolite said:

The grown ups have presumably been asking these questions and getting their half arsed unsatisfactory answers in private. 

I suspect this is very true.

[capt_oats]

39 minutes ago, Dons_1988 said:

Maybe, maybe not.

Time will tell if they could have gone down the route of amending the articles of association but I still think it's a reasonable judgement for a board to make under the circumstances. It certainly wouldn't suggest any gross negligence that a certain club would have you believe.

Turns out there's a transcript of Doncaster's interview up on the BBC site so I didn't have to listen back. I think I've conflated my interpretation with what he actually said:

Quote

Were clubs told in the build-up to the resolution that there was no other viable way for the league to pay out that money?

"There would have been one alternative which would have been to change the articles of the company and to have equal fee payments to all clubs in each division."

Wouldn't another alternative been to make those advance payments?

"You couldn't make any further advance payments because you didn't know where each club was going to end the season until a line is drawn under the season."

You would have known within a position or two. You could have given 75% of those payments?

"Then you would have been in a position where clubs would have had to repay money to the league. A situation where clubs would have perhaps been defaulting on money back to the league. So people trying to convince you that loans were viable or realistic and that the league could have somehow done that without carrying out due diligence on those clubs is just not realistic.

"What was realistic and what was practical was what the board did and what was approved by over 80% of the clubs."

Link

I took it that there could have been an alternative allocation if there was a change in articles and I kind of extrapolated from that. He didn't specifically say that about actioning advances though.

Edited May 6, 2020 by capt_oats