Financial collapse of Rangers FC in 2012

[The Saintee]

Missed a question.

Why did the Rangers fans let their club die?

[killiekranky]

7 hours ago, G51 said:

where's the option for "the flexibility of debt as a concept is it's primary strength, and the moral obligations associated with repayment is one of the chief weapons deployed by the capitalist classes against the proletariat in order to maintain the class structure of the western world, therefore not paying debt is in fact good and correct and should have resulted in Rangers being awarded the 2011/12 SPL championship"

It would have happened that way but the FIFA ruling on awarding league titles posthumously meant it couldn’t be. 

[Monkey Tennis]

Good luck in your studies and all that Mate, but it's a dubious questionnaire.

It contains assertions about what unfolded, that suggest you know less about it than most on here.  You appear to fail to recognise liquidation.  Why on earth would you, as an accountancy student, pursue questions about whether Celtic's titles should be considered tainted, or whether people are surprised by the progress of this incarnation of the club? And the Italian parallel is of course, nothing of the sort.

You sound like an aggrieved Rangers fan, trying to address a perceived wrong via your course.  It doesn't look like a wise approach.

[IrishBhoy]

8 hours ago, Calum Montgomery said:

Hello everyone, I am a 4th year student at the University of the West of Scotland and I am writing my dissertation about the financial collapse of Rangers Football Club in 2012 and I was looking for some football fans to answer my questionnaire about this topic. All responses would be gratefully appreciated and no personal information will be taken from anyone who completes the questions. 

This questionnaire if voluntary and anonymous and by clicking this link you are agreeing to take part in the survey. 

Thank you for your time!

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=DQSIkWdsW0yxEjajBLZtrQAAAAAAAAAAAAZAALWMTP1UNVFMTFpHMjNFMlNYSDRaRlI0QlRNMTFUUC4u

Would have liked to have been able to expand on some answers, as some questions can’t be adequately answered with ‘Yes’, ‘No’ or ‘Other’. 
 

Q10. Asking what league Rangers should have been ‘put’ in... Rangers (or Sevco it may have been at the time), reapplied to join the Scottish league structure due to the small matter of the previous club being liquidated.
 

I believe the reason that people believe Rangers were placed into a certain league is due to the SPLs attempts to have them bypass the rules of application. I think it was Spartans who also applied to the league to fill the empty space that Rangers left.

There was no relegation, the original Club was liquidated and no longer existed, a new club was formed and applied to league. They were treated preferentially over other clubs due to the stature of the old club, but that was slightly easier to stomach over them being admitted straight back to the SPL. 

Q17. The comparison between Rangers and the Italian teams punishments... How could a club who no longer existed due to being liquidated, take a points deduction? The two situations are incomparible imo, the only similarity is that teams cheated to gain an unfair advantage on the pitch  

 

Edit - I should have read the thread first, I see both those points have already been made. Don’t want to put the guy down but an area for additional comments under each question would have gathered more accurate information. Unsure what conclusion you can draw from answering Yes or No to some of those questions. 

 

Edited March 1, 2021 by IrishBhoy

[Sergeant Wilson]

12 minutes ago, IrishBhoy said:

They were treated preferentially over other clubs due to the stature of the old club, but that was slightly easier to stomach over them being admitted straight back to the SPL. 

 

Speak for yourself! I found it even more nauseating than trying to shoehorn them into other divisions.

[SANTAN]

I'm over it. 

[G51]

7 minutes ago, Stormzy said:

I'm over it. 

I'm still laughing at the idea that communitarian institutions can "live" or "die" based on insolvency laws.

Very hopeful that we'll continue to see people who consider themselves to be left-wing losing the run of themselves over it. The inevitable league title win this weekend should hopefully result in some good sevcoing.

[Sergeant Wilson]

7 minutes ago, Stormzy said:

I'm over it. 

Over what, it was the deal of the century? Any new club should've been sharing with St Anthonys and playing Newmains and Glasgow Perthshire.

[Arch Stanton]

2 hours ago, The Saintee said:

Missed a question.

Why did the Rangers fans let their club die?

Indeed. they threw more money at the linesman at the Tony Macaroni than they did at their club.

[IrishBhoy]

24 minutes ago, G51 said:

I'm still laughing at the idea that communitarian institutions can "live" or "die" based on insolvency laws.

I think it’s a bit more complicated than that when it comes to institutions operating at the level Rangers were at. Not wanting to get involved in arguing the toss over wether its the same club as, in my opinion, Rangers are the same club to all intents and purposes. If I was a Rangers fan I wouldn’t particularly care what company number was registered at Companies House, Rangers fans still go and watch a team called Rangers play games at Ibrox. When it comes to the legal continuation of the club then that may be a different matter, but not really something worth arguing over because it doesn’t really matter now. 

Edited March 1, 2021 by IrishBhoy

[Thistle_do_nicely]

2 hours ago, IrishBhoy said:

I think it’s a bit more complicated than that when it comes to institutions operating at the level Rangers were at. Not wanting to get involved in arguing the toss over wether its the same club as, in my opinion, Rangers are the same club to all intents and purposes. If I was a Rangers fan I wouldn’t particularly care what company number was registered at Companies House, Rangers fans still go and watch a team called Rangers play games at Ibrox. When it comes to the legal continuation of the club then that may be a different matter, but not really something worth arguing over because it doesn’t really matter now. 

iirc from the BRALT a major sticking point  was the notion that the history/titles were a transferrable asset that could be moved from one to the other seamlessly.

I think HibeeJibee made a point too that for a brief while there were technically two Rangers FC "licences" to play football which is a bit of an... oddity, but I'm not wanting to misrepresent him/make a hash of that point in too much depth

edit: might be too late already re-reading that, I think it was membership rather than licence, wasn't confident licence was right hence the quotation marks above  

Edited March 2, 2021 by Thistle_do_nicely

[Monkey Tennis]

Our questionnaire pal also seems unaware that the question of stripping titles, revolves not on the club acquiring debt it couldn't pay to enhance on-field performance.  By that token, Hearts would be losing a couple of Cups too.

It's about the fact that Rangers registered dozens of players improperly for hundreds of matches.  Football has a history of dealing very harshly with improper registration, even when instances are isolated, minor and clearly entirely accidental.

[Alert Mongoose]

I don’t think this lad will even be bothering Desmond.

[coprolite]

After being locked in the house for two months with the wife and two daughters, i found it a refreshing change to be asked for my views on anything and to be able to answer. So it had that going for it. 

[BFTD]

7 hours ago, Thistle_do_nicely said:

iirc from the BRALT a major sticking point  was the notion that the history/titles were a transferrable asset that could be moved from one to the other seamlessly.

I think HibeeJibee made a point too that for a brief while there were technically two Rangers FC "licences" to play football which is a bit of an... oddity, but I'm not wanting to misrepresent him/make a hash of that point in too much depth

edit: might be too late already re-reading that, I think it was membership rather than licence, wasn't confident licence was right hence the quotation marks above  

No, it was that Rangers SFA licence had to be transferred to the new club from the old one, because there were two clubs. None of this dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin stuff about companies dying and clubs surviving and being transferred to another company; there were two clubs, one of which had an SFA licence and was owned by the company that was liquidated. The licence had to be transferred to the new club, which was set up by a new company, the name of which escapes me right now. Serco, was it?

It's important because there's still this revisionist nonsense that Rangers were relegated to Division 3 by the big, bad SPL/SFL clubs. The new club was admitted to the bottom tier from nowhere, without the usual bidding process for electing new members and despite racing against time to even exist outside of an idea on paper. You'd think a bit of gratitude might be in order.

[bennett]

2 hours ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Our questionnaire pal also seems unaware that the question of stripping titles, revolves not on the club acquiring debt it couldn't pay to enhance on-field performance.  By that token, Hearts would be losing a couple of Cups too.

It's about the fact that Rangers registered dozens of players improperly for hundreds of matches.  Football has a history of dealing very harshly with improper registration, even when instances are isolated, minor and clearly entirely accidental.

 

You're making the same mistake as Rodney McKenzie did in not realising that once a player is registered with the SFA that registration remains valid.  As confirmed by the SFAs Sandy Byrson and also confirmed by Lord William Nimmo Smith.

 

45 minutes ago, BFTD said:

No, it was that Rangers SFA licence had to be transferred to the new club from the old one, because there were two clubs. None of this dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin stuff about companies dying and clubs surviving and being transferred to another company; there were two clubs, one of which had an SFA licence and was owned by the company that was liquidated. The licence had to be transferred to the new club, which was set up by a new company, the name of which escapes me right now. Serco, was it?

It's important because there's still this revisionist nonsense that Rangers were relegated to Division 3 by the big, bad SPL/SFL clubs. The new club was admitted to the bottom tier from nowhere, without the usual bidding process for electing new members and despite racing against time to even exist outside of an idea on paper. You'd think a bit of gratitude might be in order.

 

2 clubs, 2 licences.....

 

That'll do the trick for our green and grey friends.

 

Edited March 2, 2021 by bennett
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[bluearmyfaction]

12 hours ago, Sergeant Wilson said:

Speak for yourself! I found it even more nauseating than trying to shoehorn them into other divisions.

What would have happened if the revived Rangers had not been admitted to the League and that place had gone to (say) Spartans?  Surely the new people behind them would have done an Airdrie and bought someone else out of the competition entirely?

[Ric]

For me it's just simple, either you take the debt and titles or you take neither. People can go on and say that Rangers are the same club all they wish, and I honestly couldn't give two fucks how many titles either side has won, I'm only interested in whether my club could win it (...and we all know the answer to that!), but it's a matter of fairness.

As Pink Floyd memorably recorded, "If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?" which I believe sums it up far more succinctly than I could.

[G51]

1 minute ago, Ric said:

For me it's just simple, either you take the debt and titles or you take neither. People can go on and say that Rangers are the same club all they wish, and I honestly couldn't give two fucks how many titles either side has won, I'm only interested in whether my club could win it (...and we all know the answer to that!), but it's a matter of fairness.

As Pink Floyd memorably recorded, "If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?" which I believe sums it up far more succinctly than I could.

"all clubs who enter administration should forfeit their titles" is a hell of an argument

[Ric]

4 minutes ago, G51 said:

"all clubs who enter administration should forfeit their titles" is a hell of an argument

It's not the same club though, that's the difference. Did Dundee or Motherwell suddenly become Dundee Incorporated or The Motherwell Trading Company?

You know this, and are perhaps playing semantics. I don't really have a dog in this fight, it's irrelevant to me the histories of either side of the OF.

Edited March 2, 2021 by Ric