Sandy Jardine has been diagnosed with liver cancer. Good luck to him.

www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news...dine-reveals-1443315

He looks very youthful for 63.

RobM wrote:


Was there many Bellshill punters over for the tie Rob?
They are now plying their trade in Tollcross as the dispute over the ground rumbles on and on.

torres wrote:


Not a huge number of them but those that did were good guys. Spoke to a few and they were talking about the ground thing, hope they can get something sorted. 4-0 flattered us a bit, decent enough side but without any real penetration.

I was listening to Neil Doncaster on Radio Scotland on the way home and my despair for Scottish football only grows deeper.

His/the SPLs proposal is for two leagues of 12 in a pretty blatant attempt at bringing the current 1st division sides into the SPL fold. It might work too, who can tell, although current Div 1 rent-a-quote Turnbull Hutton of Raith Rovers sounded decidedly cold towards it and the SPL in general.

But if I can see this is cynical attempt at splitting Scottish club football further and shore up the SPL powerbase why can't the BBC team interviewing him? How does two leagues of 12, basically what we have now except the Div 1 teams will get a wee bit more money, actually fix anything that's wrong with the game?
They don't want a 16 team league because it'll lead to too many "meaningless games". How can professional football matches be meaningless exactly?

And being the BBC the only fuckin question they have is whether Rangers will be fast-tracked into it!!! FUCK OFF! WE DON'T FUCKIN WANT FAST-TRACKED FUCKIN ANYWHERE, CAN'T YOU FUCKIN UNDERSTAND THAT YOU FUCKIN OBSESSIVE FUCKIN MUPPETS.

Honest to fuck, two leagues of 12, is that the best we can do?

AMMS wrote:


Even it is means that there will be games where the teams have nothing to play for, his actual statement runs counter to most empirical evidence on the topic. The more often teams play each other, the greater the points spread between the clubs, as any difference in quality will be reflected in four games rater than two.

If Celtic only had two chances to beat, say, Killie over the course of a season, it would hurt them more to lose with only one rather than three games left to make up the difference.

Increasing the number of teams to 16 would instead be a way to increase competitiveness and create fewer meaningless games.

The argument for a small league is that the average quality of the teams in the league will most likely be higher, not that competitiveness is increased. The two often get confused.

A 16 or 18 team SPL makes sense. There will be more scorelines of 4 and 5 nil when the teams at the bottom play the top sides but it means more players are being exposed to a higher level of football which can only be a good thing.
I'd also like to see a proper tiered system in place as well (the lower you go you'd probably have to regionalise it). I can't see this happening though as I don't see the SJFA calling it a day and granting control to the SFL.

The verdict on Rangers' tax troubles is in.

The club's use of the employee benefit trusts has been deemed illegal by a majority verdict.

The payments to players etc are recoverable for tax purposes.

This verdict is seemingly so complicated and convoluted that not even RangersTaxCase can quite work out whether Rangers have won or lost.

It appears that Rangers have won, after a fashion. The tribunal found that they were not breaching tax law when they made these payments, but that the ex-players, coaches and officials can be chased for repayment. In other words, the tax will be recovered from them and not the club.

The stripping of titles could still happen, not because RFC broke tax laws, but because they broke SFA rules in having "side contracts":



HMRC have said they are "disappointed" by the verdict and considering an appeal.

(Incidentally none of this has anything to do with the nearly £10 million in PAYE which was withheld when Craig Whyte was in charge. That's another boulder rolling down the tracks.)

AB2 wrote:


There's another tax case to be heard isn't there?

If Rangers aren't liable for this what was the actual extent of the liabilities that have taken the club under?

Another tax case beyond that maniac White's involvement in just giving up on paying the PAYE bill I mean.

Yeah, there is. It's smaller than this one though.

Interesting series of posts there AB2, it went from 'the fuckers are guilty' to 'erm, it seems they aren't, well, hopefully we can still steal their titles'. Says it all I'm afraid.

So it was all bolloks in the end, a witch hunt with many willing cheerleaders. I hear Murray is going to sue, I hope those bitter, bitter cunts at the sainted Rangers Tax Case get fucked sideways by his QC and whoever the cunt(s) at HMRC was that leaked everything goes to prison.

I feel nothing but anger tonight. Whilst there is a vindication of sorts my club still got raped and left for dead whilst countless thousands laughed and cheered and shouted 'cheat' as loud as they could. All because HMRC don't know there own fuckin rules. I generally laugh at the conspiracy theorists but this stinks it really does.

Not sure why RTC would be subject to legal action though. The verdict is that the whole EBT arrangement was not deemed taxable income but a loan arrangement. It still happened though.

As for HMRC, they merely make a claim for what they consider to be taxable income. It's up to a higher authority (in this case the Tribunal) to decide whether this claim is valid. Win some, lose some. In any case, HMRC have 30 days to launch their own appeal. It's not done yet.

AMMS wrote:


Yikes! I'll leave it up to the good burghers of OTF to make up their own minds whether those posts constitute the above. Everything in them is factually correct.

And while it may suit you psychologically to see Rangers as murder victims, don't forget that they weren't thrown down to the fourth division because of this case. They were demoted because they went into administration under Craig Whyte.

I don't want Rangers' smelly, dodgy titles to be given to Celtic anyway. They are tainted memories for everyone except Rangers fans. Best not to think about those seasons too much and, as poor old Tony Mowbray used to say, take it on the chin and move on.

Rangers were the Lance Armstrong of Scottish football. Not too many people are going to have much appetite for owning their stained leftovers.

I'm pretty sure Romanov is watching on with interest. With HMRC losing quite a few high profile tax cases involving football clubs and individuals, I can see Romanov becomming even more blase about it all now.

Steady now, I think anybody who follows football would be raging if somebody like Whyte was involved in the running of their club. That he was allowed in because Murray blinked first isn't something I think you could lay at the door of the Rangers support, they deserve some sympathy as a result of what's happened here. Any other club and most Scottish fans would be behind the support while castigating the asset strippers and such that were looking to cash in.

I have no confidence in Scottish football's administrators bringing a satisfactory end to all this without further fuck ups and controversy. We're in the hands of fucking imbeciles here and they need clearing out before any further moves towards re-construction etc. are set in motion.

Looking at Romanov I think he's probably got more pressing business worries than events at Tynecastle at the moment. I think he's probaly full on blase about Hearts already.

AB2 wrote:


Craig Whyte's involvement in Rangers, the creation of circumstances that allowed a man like him ownership of our club are directly related to the HMRC EBT claim. It's preposterous to suggest otherwise.

All along the club said the EBT scheme was correctly implemented, all along the club said they had no case to answer.

Remember it was HMRC who rejected Rangers attempt to come out of administration earlier this year, it was HMRC who forced Rangers into liquidation despite knowing at that time that Rangers had won the case. They rejected the CVA and even though they knew then their claim was spurious and incorrect. It doesn't suit me to see us as murder victims, we fuckin are murder victims. Ask yourself why it suits you "psychologically" not to see that?

HMRC have known the result of this tribunal for a year and yet sat on it, they didn't publish it and now hide behind silly, colourful pseudonyms. Happy enough to leak what suited them but not to publish the truth when it still might have made a difference to the club.
It stinks, it fuckin stinks so much.

Stick your Lance Armstrong pish up yer arse as we say in these parts. There was no cheating, we did nothing wrong, we just had a better team.

Tax avoidance is immoral, rich people trying to avoid paying tax is obscene. But I won't be taking lectures on it's morality from Celtic fans, go look at your own club and its tax affairs. Perfectly legal apparently but equally obscene and immoral, just like it turns out ours were too. If Lance Armstong rides a tandem then there's room on board for both of us.

AMMS wrote:


I find myself in the unusual position of feeling sorry for Rangers fans. It turns out Old Rangers were reasonably solvent all along and should never have been liquidated. HMRC could have resolved this by announcing their findings 6 months ago, saving the club and allowing the other creditors to get their due money back.

This is an astonishing turn of events and fans of RFC have every right to feel betrayed/aggrieved/shat-upon-from-a-great-height.

bruno glanvilla wrote:


It's a fuck up on a monumental scale on the part of HMRC. Why in the name of fuck didn't they announce this when it could've pulled the club out of the fire?

I know that any appeal (which HMRC are fully entitled to launch) would've made for shaky ground for the existing board/any new investors but fuck me surely this was the most important piece of information in the entire fucking process.

Jaw dropping stuff and I can't see any logic behind their processes here. Hoping somebody can supply a rationale for it.