League Reconstruction 20/21 season

[welshbairn]

14 minutes ago, Tony Wonder said:

Not been on here for ages, thought I'd pop in and when I do I see people claiming Bill Leckie is talking sense, that's more than enough for now.

 

4 minutes ago, Dons_1988 said:

I'm with you here.

I've seen some unnatural support for Donald Findlay, Chick Young etc so far, some of it justified mind you.

But Bill Leckie is a step too far for me. I won't have it. 

Wee treat for you both then! 

Quote

THE moment the fixture list drops really should be one of the great buzzes of any season.

But today it feels more like the drone of a bluebottle we can’t evict from the living room. 

Because, 115 days on from coronavirus getting football stopped, the new 2020-21 Premiership schedule isn’t so much carved in stone as scribbled on a napkin.

Away at Dundee United on day one?

Well, don’t make any travel plans yet, because they still might have their promotion scrapped, which means you’ll actually be away to Hearts.

Except, of course, if Hibs are at home. Which means they’ll either have to switch it so your lot play hosts instead. Or move it to a different day. Or rip the whole card up and start again.

 
Wait, though. What if United DO get told they can’t move up from the Championship and some rich punter stumps up so THEY can take it to court? Where do we go from there?

Hell in a handcart, that’s where.

Though let’s be honest, we’re already halfway down the hill with no brakes.

Just 25 days until our flagship league is due to kick off and everything’s still up in the air thanks to missing votes, smoking guns, EGMs, court hearings, arbitration and so much backstabbing that it’s not face-masks you need to attend an SPFL meeting, it’s a Kevlar blazer.

No wonder sponsors are deserting the scene in droves.

Craig Gordon was right when he claimed on re-signing for the Jambos the other day that there will be “bad blood for years to come” after this miserable summer of discontent.

 He’s also bang on when he expresses his dismay that Scottish football hasn’t been able to sort itself out despite its problems not meaning a toss compared to what’s going on in the wider world.

Without wishing to pick an argument with one of the game’s good guys, though, I have to say that, if he’s searching for a reason why it’s all gone so pear-shaped, it’s right under his nose; right there in his boyhood club’s boardroom.

Hearts are the ones who finished bottom of the table despite spending top-three money on players.

Hearts are the ones who panicked and demanded those players take pay cuts before the government even had the chance to introduce the furlough scheme.

Hearts backed the wrong horse in the vote on ending the season early, then again on the vote calling for an independent probe into how that decision was reached.

A reconstruction plan that would have saved their bacon fell on its backside, even though their own sugar-mummy Ann Budge chaired the committee who came up with it.

They dragged United, Raith Rovers and Cove Rangers into their legal fight to have the final tables declared void, a situation that has left Raith fearing they’ll be unable to risk a six-figure legal bill and will simply be crossing their fingers that the decision goes their way.

As if this wasn’t heavy-handed enough, Budge then nicked Robbie Neilson from Tannadice as her new manager — a hefty investment which, along with the deal to bring Gordon in from Celtic, is an almighty boot in the stones for every employee forced into a drop in wages when Budge pleaded poverty.

I know Jambos fans will be sick of reading this, maybe even as sick as I am of writing it, but it has to be put on record that, despite dominating the headlines for pretty much all of these 115 locked-down days, their club have produced not one positive, winning idea.

Good God, even when the hugely-generous James Anderson offered a donation of millions to make sure no clubs went down the pan, all Budge had to do was introduce him to Neil Doncaster and let them shake hands, but even then she managed to turn it into a fight.

Like Rangers chairman Douglas Park before her, she’s read the room wrong time and again. She’s been fighting shadows, punching smoke.

Plus, when she and her lawyers were throwing their weight around by plunging the plans of the three lower league winners into disarray, why didn’t they have the courage to claim that Celtic shouldn’t have been named Premiership champions?

After all, if they’re actually saying relegation shouldn’t have counted, how can the title stand?

Sorry, but there are more holes in Budge’s defence than . . . well, there were in her back four all last season, which really is saying something. And, for the umpteenth time, let me also say without fear of contradiction that, if they’d come off the bottom by winning at Paisley in the last, pivotal match before the shutters came down, we’d never have heard a peep from them.

So, sure, there will be bad blood whatever happens now. But it’s Hearts who spilled it.

Sure, it’ll forever be a crying shame that they, Partick Thistle and Stranraer were condemned to the drop when they still had enough games left to save themselves.

But there are also countless businesses who might never open their doors again, tens of thousands of workers sweating over when they’ll earn a crust again.

All Hearts were asked to do was suck up some rank bad luck and agree to kick a ball around in a different division come August — a division they’d be odds-on favourites to win.

Whatever happens next in this sorry, sordid saga, the fact that they preferred to cause chaos for everyone else around them will stain those famous maroon shirts for a long time to come.

 

[Dons_1988]

1 minute ago, RostokMcSpoons said:

However his latest Sun piece does sum it all up rather nicely. 

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/sport/football/5777365/craig-gordon-hearts-relegation-row-bill-leckie/

 

True but it's a needle in a haystack of horrendous opinion pieces on Scottish football. He was probably asked to do an opinion for the 'other side'.

Even if not, he's still a total fud.

[DA Baracus]

Anyone else want to quote the Leckie article in full? It's only 5 or 6 times so far.

[Ludo*1]

Just now, DA Baracus said:

Anyone else want to quote the Leckie article in full? It's only 5 or 6 times so far.

Quality sneering.

[DA Baracus]

3 minutes ago, Ludo*1 said:

Quality sneering.

Wrong

[Tony Wonder]

It's an absolutely w**k column from Leckie. Firstly, it basically says we should accept the financial hit of relegation but it'd be a shame if other teams were punished financially.

It talks about job losses, failing to recognise we are trying to save jobs at Hearts and Partick. Or do those guys not count?

It effectively fails to mention Partick are also part of this legal challenge.

It says we dragged DU, RR and Cove into this fight, when all we done was serve them the petition as interested parties, not as respondents, they chose to enter proceedings rather than let the SPFL fight it on their behalf.

And he says Hearts should suck it up and kick a ball around a different league in August, which isn't actually an option seeing as we'll lose two months of being able to play.

Apart from that it's great.

Edited July 7, 2020 by Tony Wonder

[CambieBud]

Raith Rovers saying today that they are struggling to fight Hearts case financially. This is outrageous. Budge et al should take a long hard look at themselves. The bad blood will be remembered for years to come

[Cowden Cowboy]

17 minutes ago, Tony Wonder said:

It's an absolutely w**k column from Leckie. Firstly, it basically says we should accept the financial hit of relegation but it'd be a shame if other teams were punished financially.

It talks about job losses, failing to recognise we are trying to save jobs at Hearts and Partick. Or do those guys not count?

It effectively fails to mention Partick are also part of this legal challenge.

It says we dragged DU, RR and Cove into this fight, when all we done was serve them the petition as interested parties, not as respondents, they chose to enter proceedings rather than let the SPFL fight it on their behalf.

And he says Hearts should suck it up and kick a ball around a different league in August, which isn't actually an option seeing as we'll lose two months of being able to play.

Apart from that it's great.

They were respondents in the petition not just ‘interested parties’ along with SPFL and Stranraer 

[welshbairn]

1 minute ago, Cowden Cowboy said:

They were respondents in the petition not just ‘interested parties’ along with SPFL and Stranraer 

And for some strange reason they left out the fabulously wealthy and lawyered up Celtic as a respondent. Oh but it's all about fairness and justice..

[Dons_1988]

Despite the legal terms it's probably a stretch to say DU etc are merely 'interested parties' 

Not to worry lads, you've not been petitioned but you might want to take a passing interest in the outcome.

Edited July 7, 2020 by Dons_1988

[realmadrid]

58 minutes ago, JimmyMirren said:

If you’re so desperate for someone to blame maybe point the finger at “successful businesswoman” Ann Budge, who hired Levein as manager, let him spunk the third biggest bill in Scottish football on wasters, journeymen, and drama queens and then kept him in post while they played rank rotten? Then, when she finally realised he was useless, replaced him with Stendel,  who wasn’t much better. Due to poor management, your team pissed 8.5Million of Anderson’s money up the wall and managed to win four games all season. She managed to cock up building a new stand so spectacularly, and even managed to make sure her brother made a profit from it. Any other club doing that would be baying for blood, and yet your ragtag maroon army of self pitying moonhowlers are so blitheringly oblivious that Budge has you believing she’s doing a great job.

I'm glad im not the only one who can see that Budge is at it with the Hearts fans cash.

She has not got a clue what she is doing on the football side of things and relegation must blow open her plan to get as much cash as possible out of the foundation of Hearts. I remember her saying that even when the shares are handed over she needs to stay on, why? Why not get someone who knows what they are doing into the job. 

[wastecoatwilly]

16 minutes ago, CambieBud said:

Raith Rovers saying today that they are struggling to fight Hearts case financially. This is outrageous. Budge et al should take a long hard look at themselves. The bad blood will be remembered for years to come

I still think the jags have more to lose in this saga and the bigger decisions to make after all this mess is cleared up.

[Aim Here]

40 minutes ago, Tony Wonder said:

It's an absolutely w**k column from Leckie. Firstly, it basically says we should accept the financial hit of relegation but it'd be a shame if other teams were punished financially.

Relegated teams are the ones punished financially in a normal season. That's how it works. All in the game, yo!

Quote

It says we dragged DU, RR and Cove into this fight, when all we done was serve them the petition as interested parties, not as respondents, they chose to enter proceedings rather than let the SPFL fight it on their behalf.

And he says Hearts should suck it up and kick a ball around a different league in August, which isn't actually an option seeing as we'll lose two months of being able to play.

The three clubs certainly were served as respondents. The petition document explicitly states that outright.

And their defence can diverge from that of the SPFL. It already has, in fact (as per the motion to dismiss).

It would be legally and financially reckless for the clubs to trust the SPFL's defence to represent them. For instance, the SPFL has far less incentive to fight an unrelegation; they can choose to settle by cancelling relegation with little or no cost to themselves, but with a supposed £10 million cost to United and Raith, if Hearts and Thistle's Fantasy Island figures are to be believed. If they're not paying the lawyers, the lawyers aren't likely to be acting in their interests.

 

Edited July 7, 2020 by Aim Here

[MacArab]

1 hour ago, Insaintee said:

People say Hearts will come straight back up. Maybe, I'm not so sure. I'd say having seen both teams that they are pretty much on a par with Dundee United but don't have a Laurence Shankland to dig them out of holes, win games out of nothing. Without Shankland I don't think Dundee United would have won promotion. (leave it Arabs)  will Hearts win it without a similar player. The likes of Dundee, and ICT thought they could just dug shite it back to the top division, but a team equiped to win games is a very different team from a team that will shithouse the bottom six.  Works both ways, when we won promotion with a free flowing attacking side, that was no way going to work in the Premier. 

 

No I won’t fucking leave it!!!

It’s Lawrence, not Laurence.

Apart from that, Neilson did not win us the league. Sir Lawrence of Shankland won it for us pretty much single handedly.

[Green Day]

[Jacksgranda]

3 hours ago, The DA said:

Not this again.

They must have a rota of "useful idiots" to keep regurgitating the same FACTS, fair play to them, that takes some dedication.

[jaybeee]

4 hours ago, Aylo vanal said:

It's cost us the best part if £10m to end the league by having to repay the tv companies and give sky loads if free games. 

Perhaps it did, just as it cost thousands of people their lives, but in either event...........nothing was optional, the government shut things down, correctly in my view

 

[GordonD]

54 minutes ago, Tony Wonder said:

It talks about job losses, failing to recognise we are trying to save jobs at Hearts and Partick. Or do those guys not count?

What about the jobs at Dundee United and Raith? Or do those guys not count?

[GordonD]

11 minutes ago, Green Day said:

The only way Hearts will be in Europe is if there's another war.

Mind you, the shower at Tynecastle these days wouldn't enlist.

[Insaintee]

1 hour ago, Tony Wonder said:

It's an absolutely w**k column from Leckie. Firstly, it basically says we should accept the financial hit of relegation

Yeah you should cos you finished bottom.  You are trying to use a global pandemic to escape the consequences of being shite all season 

Edited July 7, 2020 by Insaintee