Bordering On The Ridiculous. (Official site)

[ForeverBlue_Since91 2,895]

CHARLES GREEN has often made the point that things happen quite differently in Scotland and you can see exactly where he is coming from.

The vindictive and often hateful campaign waged against Rangers in the past year or so has certainly opened the eyes of many who have had a peak into our insular little country.

The fact that this campaign was baseless given the Tax Case result going the way of the Murray Group last week merely exacerbates the point.

There was scarcely a broadcaster, pundit or columnist who differed from the view that Rangers had been “cheating” Scottish football for a 10-year period over the usage of Employee Benefit Trusts.

And, of course, there were a few agenda-driven bloggers whose vitriol at times was quite extraordinary.

Worse than that, the Scottish FA and the Scottish Premier League tried to force Rangers into accepting the stripping of five league titles among a raft of sanctions in order to gain SFA membership in July.

Of course, they might yet try to take that ultimate sanction because the SPL have not called off their investigation in Rangers’ usage of EBTs and how they may have affected players’ contracts – despite the court verdict.

Across the border in England, they do things differently.

As I wrote in this column before, invariably when a club gets into financial trouble the Football League and indeed the FA do their bit to try to help them recover rather than seek to batter them into oblivion.

It’s the same with tax matters. Did you know that 15 English Premier League clubs were being chased by HMRC over the non-payment of tax on image rights contracts?

Image rights allowed a club to pay a portion of a player’s wages in exchange for using their image to promote the club and their sponsors. Payments were made to a separate company, often based offshore, and taxed at a lower rate or not at all.

HMRC insisted the system was being abused by clubs, particularly at the lower end of the league, allotting an unrealistic proportion of their payroll to image rights.

Interestingly, instead of launching investigations into each of the clubs with a law lord at the helm, the FA Premier League decided to broker a deal with HMRC.

Indeed, they successfully came to an agreement with the taxman and it turned out Chelsea paid the most money in the shape of £6.4million.

The strange thing is that the man running the SPL, Neil Doncaster, is familiar with the workings of the FA and the Football League because he worked for both of them.

As Chief Executive of Norwich City, he was appointed a director of the Football League in 2006 and subsequently joined the FA in 2008 as one of the FL’s two representatives.

Indeed, he was working for the Football League when Leeds United transferred ownership from oldco to newco when a CVA failed in 2007 and was party to the decision to allow Leeds to remain in League One.

As Charles Green says, strange things happen in Scotland.

http://www.rangers.c...A7VlqfA.twitter

[Redwhiteandblue 3,330]

Who wrote that?

[The Godfather 71,878]

Lindsay Herron

[boss 1,941]

Bullseye.

[The Godfather 71,878]

Glad this stuff is being put on the official site, would never have happened before!

[Getstiffed 8,863]

Lindsay Herron

Cant be, no spelling mistakes

[RFC Eagle 4,888]

Glad this stuff is being put on the official site, would never have happened before!

It was in yesterdays programme. Another excellent piece highlighting the incompetence of those in charge of Scottish football (David Longmuir being the exception).

[Captain Hilts 12,819]

great article. not the kind of thing id expect to read on the official site. hope to see more of it in the future

[loyalfollower 1,543]

Right on the button with that one

[Dutchy 1,200]

Good work, but are the Rangers haters not over-running the Scottish media? Surely that won't get much coverage from them as they're probably busy looking for other anti-Rangers bloggers, or helping to cover their own bad quoting history.

We need to find ways of getting these stories out into the wider public as we need to get the SPL dis-banded by the time we're back at that level.

[Bothwellbear 1,392]

Great article indeed. That is more like it from the Rangers site.

[Ricky_ 893]

"Indeed, he was working for the Football League when Leeds United transferred ownership from oldco to newco when a CVA failed in 2007 and was party to the decision to allow Leeds to remain in League One."

BOOM! ive been fucking screaming this from the roof tops since the summer. Although, doncaster being involved is news to me- but ti's huge news. I was more pointing out that it would be exceptionally naive to believe what happened to Rangers is something "new", when many clubs have remain intact despite 'newco-ing'. It's unbelievable that not 1 journalist in this country seems capable of doing a little bit of research.

[JCDBigBear 10,824]

This witch hunt has gone on far too long now and it only serves to satisfy the petty, vindictive and jealous aims of those SPL clubs who so desperately hate our history of football success.

This "dual contracts" accusation serves no useful purpose. Rangers' use of EBTs gave us no unfair advantage over the other SPL clubs. The only people to benefit were the players and staff who utilised the scheme. Martin Bain, Campbell Ogilvie and Sir David Murray all participated in the EBT scheme and I don't remember SDM in particular making much of an impact in any game. Hardly surprising given his well-known disability.

The EBT scheme was based on discretionary loans to those employees who utilised it. There was no set amount. The scheme ran for 10 years and the total amount paid into EBTs was approximately £47.7m. That sum was only approximately 15% of our total wage bill. The actual tax which HMRC had claimed was only £19.1m or an average of £1.9m per year which is hardly an eye-watering amount in the grand scheme of things. The remainder of the HMRC claim was for interest and penalties. Rangers clearly noted the EBT amounts in their annual accounts, copies of which were provided to the relevant football authorities.

There would only be relevance to the SPL enquiry if dual contracts were:

a) hidden

and / or

b) the rule served any useful purpose.

There is no difference to RFC use of EBTs to the EBT used by the "forces of evil" at Parkhead, except that ours was more clearly identified. There is also no real difference between EBTs and image rights or whatever other legal ways there are to assist employees in minimising their tax liability.

We all know that the SPL enquiry is simply a poorly disguised excuse to punish Rangers, strip titles and reclaim win bonus payments for no other reason than hatred of our football club. Jim Traynor made that clear in his final newspaper column. Others with no anti-Rangers agenda have voiced similar views of the situation but those spiteful, small-minded and extremely biased individuals involved at the SPL will continue with their relentless pursuit in the erroneous claim of "sporting integrity". Their bitter determination knows no bounds and continues no matter what damage they cause to Scottish football in the process.

Scottish football at SPL level is dying and those responsible for its safety are the ones who are inflicting the most harm. They are currently discussing change with 75% of senior clubs omitted from the meeting. The people who provide the finance, the spectators, have no representation whatsoever. For any right-minded person, it is difficult to imagine a more ridiculous scenario.

Charles Green is correct in stating that Scottish football needs someone to take charge of the situation and soon. I would add the proviso that it shouldn't be any of those whose credibility is currently zero-rated.

[Reformation Bear 6,453]

"The vindictive and often hateful campaign waged against Rangers in the past year or so ..................."

Now that we have Jim T on board as Director of Communications it will be very interesting to see how the Rangers media team step up the battle rhythm going forward. More articles in this vein I suspect. In developing Rangers approach to league reconstruction I presume Charles will also want to tap the long and seasoned experience Walter Smith and JT have on Scottish football and the politics, self-interest and bias that go with it. It would be hard to pick a team that would have as much direct knowledge of the levers and drivers of Scottish football. If that assessment is correct that can be a very good thing for Rangers in shaping our response to these campaigns against us and to develop workable options for reconstructing the game that would work for Rangers.

It will take some skill and firepower to shift from where we are now of a fully justifiable belief of vindictive and hateful campaigns against Rangers to one where we can see that those campaigns have ceased to Rangers entire satisfaction. JT will be earning his Directors salary I think and I guess that is part of the challenge for him.

[stampyurie 203]

Are we on the attack now?

[GWR1979 1,964]

Good stuff from the official site.

Over the last couple of weeks CG has been bringing in people with experience in Scottish football, to start the fightback.

Did not know that Doncaster was in a position of power within the English league when Leeds went to a newco. if the mainstream media will not report the facts we as a club need to highlight them and use any platform we have to get them reported.

If Doncaster was in on the process of Leeds staying in the same league it makes a mockery of an unprecidented situation pish he was spouting during the summer.

[Madina 3,808]

I was unsure of Charles Green when he first came in but the man has impressed me. He doesnt sit back and let everyone attack us and get away with it like what happened for so long before his tenure. As the banner said on Saturday, keep it up Charles

[Bluepeter9 5,167]

one wonders if our mr Traynor ok'ed this ! or even instigated it?

[kanjo 26,328]

"Indeed, he was working for the Football League when Leeds United transferred ownership from oldco to newco when a CVA failed in 2007 and was party to the decision to allow Leeds to remain in League One."

BOOM! ive been fucking screaming this from the roof tops since the summer. Although, doncaster being involved is news to me- but ti's huge news. I was more pointing out that it would be exceptionally naive to believe what happened to Rangers is something "new", when many clubs have remain intact despite 'newco-ing'. It's unbelievable that not 1 journalist in this country seems capable of doing a little bit of research.

Leeds took a -30 point deduction that season. They didn't exactly get off scott-free (pardon the pun) but one way or another they weren't as victimised as we were.

What their hatred will bring though is karma. What Doncaster will get (got?) was a vote of no confidence in his ability. Can anyone really tell me with any degree of confidence the SPL will have a majority say in restructuring....more so since we are now in the SFL? i don't think so.

Doncaster is a weasel. We know it and the SPL are unfortunatley learning it now too.

[mabawsa 888]

Sorry but Lindsay Herron either sat passively for the last x amount of years or was told to say nothing. It is only now that JT will be his overlord that output has started to kick up a gear. We remained too meek for too long and our enemies knew they had free rein.