Radio5Live Last Night- Scottish Football

Chirpy Red

Avoiding all the usual jokes etc about football north of the border, there is a very interesting programme on now on the wireless.

Basically Scotland are in a similar state in footballing terms as Greece is in the Eurozone. Massive levels of debt, and not just the small clubs. Rangers very close to Administration. All rather sad considering all the very good Scottish players who played down here when I was growing up.....Dalglish, Hansen, Bremner, Lorimer, Jordan, McQueen, Maccari, Nicholas etc etc.

Algarveaddick

I have said it before, and I will say it again. How on earth can a club which over 25% of Scotland and a fair proportion of Northern Ireland support, plus shirt sales to an innumerable number of protestants with a point to make throughout the world, possibly be in such dire straits?

WelshAddick

its all to do with tv money, the bottom team in the prem will get far more than rangers this season for tv apearances. each time a prem team appears on live tv they get 3.8 mill.  rangers and celtic dont get 10mill for the entire season.

Chirpy Red

Rangers plight is to do with the small matter of an unpaid Tax bill of £49m owed to HMRC.

Mortimerician

When I was growing up the league was far more contested with the big two rarely coming in first and second.  The Souness/Murray Rangers revolution improved them and eventually dragged Celtic along, but left the rest floundering.  Bit by bit it's trashed the national team and left the league in a mess.  The big boys are miles ahead of the others but can't compete with rivals in England or the rest of Europe because they're part of a product than nobody is interested in. Trying to do so has left them both skint. I read an interesting article about why US franchises are so socialist: every Yankees cap sold in the world pays equal revenue to every team.  They recognize that having one outfit dominating might suit the fans their for a little while but it won;t be long after the rest get bored that even the dominant teams get fed up.

Chirpy Red

Celtics main target in the off season was a 35 year old released by Sunderland......

Chirpy Red

According to the programme the future player wise is bright with a number of exciting prospects at U16/17 level. The new troubleshooter at the SFA though says Scotland has an endemic problem of losing many players of this age to "fags and booze" before they make full pros. Bit of a sweeping statement!

ColinTat

TV money, and Rangers in the nineties consistently spending more money than most prem clubs.

SE10

Their current National team has got 13 players who have come from Scottish Youth teams out of 22 while only 4 of the Squad actually play in Scotland now.

Think you'll find it's the English clubs with bigger Youth academys and more money to buy the next 'talent' who plays a few games in Scotland.

Surprising also that Celtic havn't got 1 player in the squad yet have probably got quite alot in the Ireland team.

SheffieldRed

  They recognize that having one outfit dominating might suit the fans their for a little while but it won;t be long after the rest get bored that even the dominant teams get fed up.

I too would have thought this to be the case but there's statistical evidence to suggest otherwise.

 Rangers in the nineties consistently spending more money than most prem clubs.

Excluding TV money, so they should, Rangers are bigger than most EPL teams

Surprising also that Celtic havn't got 1 player in the squad yet have probably got quite alot in the Ireland team.

Scott Brown would play if fit

Stu_of_Kunming

Being bigger shouldnt be what determines your spending, your income should.

northstandsteve

It was very good Mark Magee said apart from the big 2, the wages the rest of the league could afford would only attract league 1 players and with the cost of relocating many are loathed to do it.So Randy is probably on about a smuch as the current squad.It really is a mess up there.They are saying administration is almost inevitable for Rangers.

Mortimerician

  They recognize that having one outfit dominating might suit the fans their for a little while but it won;t be long after the rest get bored that even the dominant teams get fed up.

I too would have thought this to be the case but there's statistical evidence to suggest otherwise.

Not if you include domestic and international TV deals.  It's fine producing a product that will get 50,000 people to come and look at, but as has been said that's a drop in the ocean with the TV money on offer in England and elsewhere.  Obviously we're a smaller country, but I think Scotland gets a disproportionately small share of the TV dollar because it has disproportionately shit football.  A Hibs or Motherwell fan won't pay to watch their team getting racked by the big boys, and nobody further afield will.  It might have been different in the days when Dundee United got to the semis of the European Cup and got to the final of the UEFA or Aberdeen won the CWC.

Friend Or Defoe

Rangers are in a bad shape but the other clubs are making a profit, which isn't happening down south. I always considered the SPL as being a couple of decades ahead of the premiership, in terms of the lack of competition. I would be more worried about the shape of the game down here. How have Fulham racked up so much debt? If the TV money dries up down here, and attendances are already dropping, even Man Utd aren't selling out, we will be in serious danger. I would say overall the SPL is in a far better shape than the premiership.

At least the behind the scene's problems aren't affecting what happens on the Park. Rangers could take a 10 point penalty and still be top and it's only November!

Chirpy Red

Friend Or Defoe 8:48AM Quote 
 

 I would say overall the SPL is in a far better shape than the premiership.

 

 

You obviously didn't listen then.

northstandsteve

Also FOD is it a 10 points deduction ? Dundee had 30 points last season or was that because it was their second administration.

se9addick

 I would say overall the SPL is in a far better shape than the premiership.

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I’m not quite sure how that can be argued. Lots of English clubs are in debt, but debt isn’t a problem so long as you can service it, so Fulham’s debt would become a real problem IF they dropped out of the Prem, but Rangers debt IS a problem now. Incidentally, whilst the poor TV revenue earned in Scotland is an issue now, this tax bill is actually part of a deferral scheme that Rangers ran up (believing it to be legitimate) quite a while ago when the TV money wasn’t so dire. I highly doubt Rangers will be hit with the £50m that’s being quoted, God knows what will happen if they are, but there’s a smaller sum of around £2-3m which they may well be liable for. Apparently Craig Whyte (the new Rangers owner) took this smaller sum into consideration when taking over from Murray last season, but to say the Whyte’s actions so far have not filled me with confidence would be an understatement.

 

Scotland’s problem are too numerous to discuss here, a couple of solutions that I truly believe would help; Firstly I think it’s absolutely imperative to switch the league to a summer season. This would have numerous benefits, firstly and mainly, for the majority of the season Scotland wouldn’t compete for fans (both TV and through the turnstile) with England. Secondly the weather should (!) be better and again get more people through the turnstile – you’re more likely to want to watch Forfar v Arbroath in the sunshine than in the sleeting rain whilst you could be home watching Man U v Chelsea. Thirdly, with none of their own TV on, we might actually build up decent viewing figures in England, imagine in the middle of July instead of watching Orlando Pirates v Spurs in some ridiculous friendly you could satisfy your craving for football with and Old Firm or Edinburgh derby. Finally (that I can think of this morning) teams with summer leagues tend to punch above their weight in the earlier rounds of the European competitions which is unfortunately the hurdle that Scottish teams seem to fail at the moment – unless their playing some dodgy Swiss team of course !  

Friend Or Defoe

Also FOD is it a 10 points deduction ? Dundee had 30 points last season or was that because it was their second administration.

Second admin, joke decision by the way. Did you see their true champions t-shirts during their lap of honour?!

PWC report on Scottish football 09/10

While the future is not great and there are some alarming figures in
there it shows St. Johnstone have the most cash in the league 1.3 million
in the bank on gates of just over 4,000. its certainly a different model
from that used in England where you need an investor. The SPL Chief
executive Neil Doncaster makes some good points as to where the Scottish game and
the game down south are heading in his blog
the week the report came out, especially the fact that the Overall turnover was up and the SPL's 12 clubs made a combined profit – the fifth annual profit in the last
six years. Over the same year, English Premier League clubs announced
combined losses of an incredible £445million and Championship clubs of
around £130million!



It's O.K. if the debt can be serviced, but that's no long term plan. One relegation and Fulham are toast! Also Portsmouth were in admin whilst in the premier league.

ColinTat

Why would Fulham be toast?  I can't imagine in recent years he's managed to get finance from traditional sources, if he has surely he's guaranteeing it himself or via Craven Cottage.  If they get relegated it's up to him what he does with his billion from Harrods.  Pompey spun out of control, as Gadaymak's debt fuelled businesses started being worth less than that owed.  Hence there was no money, or access to finance for Pompey.  A club run on debt goes bankrupt, when as SE9 says they can not service and re-finance that debt.

Rangers never could finance transfer spending like that of Premier League clubs, as their TV income through the whole era of Prem football has been minor compared to English prem teams:  When Sky withdrew ten odd years ago, don't think they were even offering as much as the first EPL deal.  Spending money on international players, paying big wages on the Salenko's, Gascoigne, Laurdup, De Boers, Van Bronckhorst, Kanchelskis, Numan, Amorouso and many others is nearly always adding to your debt straight away.  To attract to unlikely destinations you pay top wages.  So no Sheffield Red they could not spend big on transfers and money anywhere near like a Prem club could do.

Prem clubs will remain attractive, because they have a vaster turnover.  Even when Sky deals don't go up, or go down, there's a potential to make money of an operation that turns over 50 mill plus compared to 1-3 mill; just by making it leaner, and paying yourself handsome wages.  Either via Mandaric's technique, or the tax efficent attempts of a leveraged buyout, or Ashley's attempt to go a Comoli/Billy Bean route, you can make a decent income out of it.