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Post by parkhead98 on May 2, 2020 7:27:39 GMT
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Post by parkhead98 on May 2, 2020 7:32:14 GMT
By Tom English
Another day and more questions to answer for the SPFL as the league body face further controversy about their actions and words.
The vexed business of loans and advances has blown up again. A few weeks back the SPFL said they could not issue loans to cash-strapped clubs without final league placings being confirmed by way of a yes vote in the SPFL's resolution to call the leagues.
A few days later, Ann Budge, chair of Hearts, contradicted the SPFL's view on that. "I've sat on the SPFL board and I've approved a loan for another club," she told BBC Scotland on 18 April. "[It was] in my early days as a director. I genuinely can't remember the club involved, but a club required an advance. We discussed it [as a board], it wasn't contentious, everybody agreed and we moved on. It sticks in my mind. Can you give a loan to a club? Yes you can. And I know that for a fact." Last week, SPFL chairman Murdoch MacLennan contradicted the contradiction in the mammoth Q&A with himself, stating no loan had been issued by the SPFL for more than seven years. SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster reiterated that point later in the day in his round of media interviews. "The suggestion of issuing loans is a red herring," said MacLennan. "Loans have been made by the league to individual members in the past, but not for many years - and only where the board was able to satisfy itself that making a loan was in the best interests of the league as a whole. The last loan made by the SPL was more than seven years ago, in unique circumstances to a single member, secured against a personal guarantee given by a wealthy supporter."
Now there is further information. When you trawl through the SPFL's accounts dated 31 May, 2017 you will eventually come to section 14 which details advances [some might call them loans] to two clubs during the year. "Two advances on club payments were made to SPFL clubs totalling £300,000," the annual report says. "An amount of £6,613 remained outstanding as of year end, which has since been repaid."
These were the financial transactions that Budge was referring to when she pointed out that the SPFL was wrong to say that loans to cash-strapped clubs could not be made. Budge was on the SPFL board at the time the £300,000 was paid out.
MacLennan, soon-to-be SPFL chairman, was one of the people who names appears on the accounts. Neil Doncaster was the chief executive. Other directors whose names appear on those accounts detailing the release of £300,000 to struggling clubs were Ken Ferguson, Karyn McCluskey and Les Gray and Stewart Robertson.
The list of other directors and advisors on the accounts include Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell, Scottish FA chief executive Ian Maxwell and Hibs chief executive Leeann Dempster. All three retired from the board in July 2017.
The SPFL denied on Friday evening that these figures were loans, but when is a loan not a loan? If, according to the accounts, a sum of £6,613 "remained outstanding" then does that not indicate it's a loan, the very thing that MacLennan said midweek hadn't happened in more than seven years? All of this goes back to disquiet among certain clubs about the haste in which the SPFL's resolution was held. Some feel that they were railroaded into voting to end the leagues because they were told that was the only way they could have end-of-season payments released.
A number of clubs say they will tell their stories, should Sevco' call for an independent inquiry prove successful. The odds are hugely against it. Sevco will release whatever information they have to clubs sometime next week. Their so-called dossier will need to be explosive, or else the only detonation going on in the Scottish game, will be one that goes off in the face of the Sevco board.
Privately, in the days leading up to the SPFL's resolution to end the leagues, some SPFL figures confirmed that the only way money could be released to clubs was for them to vote for the league's resolution.
SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster has received criticism for the board's recent actions In his Q&A, MacLennan asked himself a question about alternatives to loans being issued to troubled clubs. He never mentioned advances; he just said that no money could be forthcoming to clubs without a yes vote. "What other options did the board look at? What other ways were explored to get cash in the pockets of clubs now?" he asked. The answer was emphatic. "There were simply no other viable options. We've already talked about loans. It is clear, that in the absence of any suggested alternative ways of providing money to clubs, no other practical and realistic way exists."
So, the possibility of loans or advances - call it what you will - didn't exist, according to the chairman. However, the accounts of 2017 suggest that the board did, indeed, have that latitude.
The SPFL have now sought to explain all of this. "During season 2016-17, earlier than usual fee payments were made to two clubs, totalling £300,000," said a spokesman. "These were made following the promotion of Sevco FC to the Ladbroke Premiership. These fee payments followed complaints by three clubs that they had been disadvantaged in the fixturing for that season by not getting three visits from Celtic FC/Sevco FC. "As a result of the negative impacts on their cash flow resulting from this fixturing anomaly, two of those three clubs requested earlier than normal fee payments totalling £300,000. These fee payments were not loans and were wholly within the amounts budgeted to be earned by those clubs, whatever final league placing was achieved by those clubs that season."
In other words, they were advances against prize money that was due to the clubs. The SPFL spokesman even used the words "advance fee payments" in his statement on Friday. Even if you accept that they were, indeed, advances and not loans, how does that tally with MacLennan's view that "there were simply no other options"? A repeat of what they did for the two clubs back in 2016-17 wasn't an option?
There also remains the mention of the repayment of an "outstanding amount" of £6,613. The SPFL spokesman came back: "At no point was there any loan to any Premiership club, indeed not to any SPFL club."
A loan? An advance? The other day, the SPFL told us that none of these things were options. Their own accounts shed extra light on that.
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Post by MTS on May 2, 2020 7:48:22 GMT
The lies just flow from these corrupt feckers and they’re not even embarrassed about it. Time for heads to roll starting with Doncaster and MacLennan.
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Post by parkhead98 on May 2, 2020 10:36:15 GMT
And still MacLennan tries to treat us like fucking idiots by claiming those payments weren't loans but in fact "advances on normal payments." Apparently, the clubs involved were Motherwell and Partick Thistle. It also transpires that Celtic FC were involved in that they deferred a £300,000 payment due to them so that the SPFL suffered no cash flow impact. www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/spfl-issue-furious-denial-murdoch-21960869I mean, what the fuck are they all about? Is it really the case that Celtic have them in their back pockets? I'm not even sure if these people are actually corrupt or just incompetent to the extent their plain fucking stupid. Maybe I'm stupid, but it seems obvious to me that this crisis has caught, along with the rest of the world, the SPFL, SPL and the SFA with their breeks down. They've been faced with the dilemma of how to handle the situation and opted for the "easy" way out by way of a members vote on how to end the season. A vote hastily arranged and orchestrated by them to ensure the preferred outcome was achieved. Struggling clubs were put in a position whereby they had no choice but to vote in favour and even when it looked like there may have been a problem with the result, pressure was obviously applied to ensure they got desired outcome. There is definitely something rotten through Hampden way and it's not just the stadium.
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Post by drj1956 on May 2, 2020 11:34:51 GMT
You've hit many nails on the head there Parkie. I genuinely dont believe they are corrupt but I do equally genuinely believe they are incompetent. I'm grateful to Tom English as he isn't let this die, he is pursuing it and them, as a good journalist should
I do worry about getting caught up in the opprobrium of being seen to be backing Sevco which we are not. If this is called dossier doesn't contain TNT, Sevco are going to look very very foolish and I fear we will be tainted by that.,
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Post by MTS on May 2, 2020 19:42:40 GMT
The lies are still streaming from this prick’s mouth See Tom English Tweet
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Post by Flat Earth FC on May 2, 2020 21:04:29 GMT
They have fuck all integrity over this. The whole concept behind a loan was that they could provide monies without ending the season.
All they've done is say we can't provide loans but we did provide advances. And they've only admitted they could do that because it's on the fucking accounts.
Which brings us back to the principal of tying the end of season alongside the financial payments to the clubs. Bullying/coercion in my book.
Depressing listening to the pundits on BBC Scotland just accept this whole debacle just because Neil agreed a strictly controlled interview. They don't have the guts to ask the hard questions to his face because he seems 'a nice man'. So is Boris until you factor in he lies about everything. The whole thing stinks.
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Post by Dedrokstar on May 5, 2020 19:23:51 GMT
We know about Dongmeister but MacLellan casts a sinister shadow over everything. Known as a short tempered bully and a liar throughout his time in newspapers. Not for nothing did Private Eye repeatedly refer to him as Shifty McGifty. Oh, and he's a hard line Septician.
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Post by K19 on May 6, 2020 9:50:13 GMT
None of the clubs were asking for loans - they were asking for advances of part of whatever was due to them from their end of season payouts without, crucially, having to formally end the season.
The GFA said advances can not be made unless the league finishes early. This is clearly false. Yet Doncaster tries to make Anne Budge look like an idiot for mentioning loans (although she mentioned loans and advances in the same sentence)? That useless fuckwit decides to be pedantic about the use of the word 'loans' and then argues about the fucking semantics of loans v advances to get away from answering the crucial question: why did you tie requests for loans OR advances to the league finishing, isn't that just coercion?
Hope that useless cnut get tarred and feathered and dragged through the fucking streets by a donkey. Same goes for MacLennan and anyone else who is a useless pedant or worse. Get rid of the fucking lot of them and form a new SFA.
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