Why rebuilding shouldnt always be done the Green Way

“Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.” The words and thoughts there of St Augustine the Latin philosopher and theologian. A Wise choice of words I believe when looking at how to aspire to greater heights though I suspect they would be sadly lost on one man north of the border. If you’ve fallen from grace before you consider how to rise again wouldn’t you be better off to show some humility in doing so? It seems not so in the case of Rangers new owner Charles Green who some might say has gone on the record with some ill advised comments aimed at City rivals Celtic and the state of Scottish football financially.

When the old company went into administration it owed up to £134 million to unsecured creditors before it was eventually liquidated. Whilst the exact financial knock on affect is yet to be seen on Scottish football of the old clubs liquidation it’s widely predicted that it will have a massive detrimental effect and could potentially see some smaller clubs pay the ultimate price and go to the wall. Given this fact and claims from clubs like Stenhousemuir FC that they will have to scrap their youth system in order to be able to survive and you would think that Rangers new owner Charles Green would be somewhat careful in regards to what he has to say about building for the future.

Charles Green it would appear is akin to a bull in a China shop.

Yesterday saw Rangers win their Ramsden’s Cup first round tie away to Brechin City 2-1 in a tightly contested cup game which went into extra time after Rangers has taken the lead within the first five minutes. The good news for the Scottish game is that the travelling support is believed to have contributed around £30,000 to Brechin City’s coffers, the bad news is that it seems Green can’t resist having a dig at City rivals Celtic. Before the game Green went on record as stating he believes that his new company will be financially stronger than current Scottish Champions Celtic in a year.

Rangers are aiming to follow in the footsteps of Scottish league teams Gretna and Livingston who have both successfully climbed their way through the leagues and into the Scottish Premier League. Despite no longer receiving income from European matches after their subsequent relegation and punishment for liquidation for at least three years Green is confident about the new club’s short term financial prospects.

Green went on record stating; "If you look at the balance sheets at the end of next season you should see the strength of the two companies.

"We are in the third division and Celtic are in the SPL and what I'd like you to do is promise me at the end of the season, when all the games are played, examine the balance sheets of the clubs and tell me which one is strongest.

"Let's see who has got the strongest balance sheet. We've not got the debt that any of these clubs have.

"On the last day of the season I would really enjoy some clever financial analyst looking at the balance sheets and debt-to-equality ratio of every club in Scotland."

Yes – these are the words of a man who’s just set up a new company after the demise of the old one which went into liquidation owing £134 million to unsecured creditors. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, members of the jury do you think it is wise to start trumpeting the fact that you haven’t any debts whilst the old Rangers went into liquidation owing so much money? Do you think it’s wise to bring such matters up when clubs in the Scottish Premier League like their English counterparts have spent beyond their means in an attempt to keep their position in the league which in the case of the SPL and like La Liga has been dominated for so long by just two teams? Celtics debts if any will have been contributed to by trying to compete with the old Rangers Company in the first place. You’ve been allowed to continue to use Ibrox; an all seater stadium with a capacity of 51,802 so for every home game if you only charged a tenner and sold out every seat your match day income would be over half a million alone before programme sales, food and drink sales etc where included into that tally. Given that many of the team’s highest earners have been removed from the wage bill will be another testimony to the chances of ending the season in the black and not in the red for once.

So whilst you might be correct in your claims Mr Green wouldn’t it be wise to just think them rather than say them as if you are some sort of moral hero. Whilst you may not have been the man that created so much debt in the first place there are many, many people who will have suffered as a consequence being amongst those who were owed part of the £134 million. Do you think they want to have to read the types of comments that you raised yesterday? Just one more kick in the balls as far as I’m concerned.

So Mr Green would surely stop there would he not making ill advised comments and rubbing the noses of others into the ground that have lost money after the old companies liquidation. No it appears Mr Greens levels of decorum are akin to a snow ball rolling down the side of a hill; by the time they stop they have created a full on avalanche.

So having been so disregardful of the old company Rangers part in the debts now acquired by fellow members of the Scottish league he then sets about a vitriolic questioning of the future financial viability of Scottish football.

Green as part of negotiations to acquire membership of the Scottish FA agreed a deal which will allow Ranger’s matches in the Third Division to be shown as part of the SPL’s broadcast offering. Something I’m sure wasn’t offered to the nine other teams competing in the Scottish leagues bottom tier. Watch how Mr Green distances his new company from the mistakes of the old one yet still retains Ibrox and all its potential benefits. On why they agreed to the deal;

"We signed up to the TV deal because we don't want to be held responsible for the downfall of Scottish football," Green told the Rangers website.

 “This is not the end of the problems for Scottish football”

"But someone is responsible for the demise.

"It's the end of the problems for Rangers but it will be the beginning for many other clubs. I think it will hugely difficult for Scottish clubs.

"There is no doubt Scottish football has been going downhill and if you look back in history, as I can as a non-conflicted outsider, to 14 years ago when the SPL was formed and since that time Scotland hasn't qualified for a major competition.

"Incomes have not grown and there really has to be a look at where Scotland as football business is going."

Yes Mr Green really did say the words "But someone is responsible for the demise.” Would that be the same way someone in the old company was responsible for such huge levels of debt which are set to have a knock on affect on the whole of Scottish football?

"If we had come to the table with a clean piece of paper then we wouldn't have signed up to the agreement but the realities are there have been historical misdemeanours and this is the price we have paid," Green said.

"We were on the outside trying to get membership of the SFA and they set the rules and the regulations.

"I'm interested to see how things will be applied in the future because this is not the end of the problems for Scottish football.

"We'll make a lot of friends along the way I'm sure and while our former friends have the difficulties they are going to face Rangers and the fans will have an enjoyable few years walking through the divisions."

Mr Green also indicated that there shouldn’t be any job losses as a result of Rangers having to start the new season in the bottom tier of Scottish football whilst clubs like Stenhousemuir are looking at having to scrap their youth system and community support workers in a bid to stay afloat.

So for Mr Green everything is bright for Rangers whilst piled somewhere in a back office in the Ibrox stadium are the past of misdemeanours of Rangers pilled under a carpet ignored and nothing to do with his new company. The new club has washed its hands of the problems of the past and distanced themselves as best they can from anything that went on previously yet are indebted to have transferred £5.5 million worth of assets into the new company including Ibrox which should see them finish this season in the red whilst other clubs are struggling to survive and having to cut costs.

With the starting line in sight for Pompey in the next few days let’s hope that Mr Chanrai has the common decency to keep his mouth firmly shut as we head into the future. We can’t and won’t shy away from the mistakes of the past as we look to rebuild for the future.

Will football implode financially in the next three weeks or even three months?

Over the past couple of season’s finance in football has become an obsession of sorts for me - heightened I guess by the troubles that we saw off the pitch at Pompey not to long back. It’s one of the reasons that as a fan I’ve tried to give all the backing I can muster to the campaign to save Plymouth Argyle and spread the message of the fantastic job Fans Reunited are doing on their behalf as well. Reading the news today that their players have once again agreed to defer their wages really brings home how bad the situation is down there and the reality is that if a new owner doesn’t step up to the mark soon then it really could be curtains for the club. 124 years gone just like that? It surely cannot be allowed to happen? Apparently many parties have been interested. One ex-Pompey connection being that of our old owner Terry Venables. I hope that story for the sake of Plymouth Argyle is widely off the mark. The involvement of Peter Ridsdale must be mad enough given his track record at Leeds United and then Cardiff. Is it any surprise to Pompey fans that clubs who’ve employed our ex-CEO Peter Storrie have all had financial problems either with him involved or after his departure; Pompey, West Ham, Southend and Notts County. Not something you’d want people to remember about you surely?

For the past 12 months or more when writing about football finance I’ve held the view that the game of football believes it’s inside an insulated bubble which cannot be burst. I’ve talked about Arsenal, Wolverhampton and Bayern Munich as some who’ve bucked the trend. I’ve mentioned Portsmouth and Plymouth Argyle for obvious reasons. Glasgow Rangers will not be too far away when I’ve gotten to grips with that case. But voices from within side the game aren’t always that common. So I was interested to read the comments from Arsenal’s long serving manager Arsene Wenger when I opened the sports pages of the papers on Monday morning to see him starting to take the lead in the fact that the game isn’t as untouchable as it thinks. Whilst Plymouth Argyle continue to make the headlines in their search for a new owner, I found it refreshing to read the thoughts of a man who alongside the influx of money into the game, has been a revolutionary and a driving force behind making the EPL the league it is today – a worldwide force and phenomenon. Wenger’s arrival and his approach to diets etc for me is one of the reason’s the EPL went on to become so successful. Sure we still hear about antics from players such as Andy Carroll at the criticism from England Manager Fabio Capello that he needs to curb his drinking, but would Carroll have been able to have kept pace with the likes of Paul Gascoigne, Tony Adams, Paul Merson, Paul McGrath or Alan Knight and the entire Portsmouth team who ex-Manager John Gregory famously described as being like a pub team? I think Carroll wouldn’t have lasted much past 11pm.

“I believe that Europe overall, as a unit, is going towards a massive crisis, which nobody really expects now. I am convinced that Europe will go into a huge financial crisis within the next three weeks or three months and maybe that will put everything into perspective again.

Football is not untouchable. We live with people going to the stadiums as well and from advertising from people who buy products. All our income could be a little under threat in the next few months. Football is not only about money. We believe in ourselves that we can compete with them but it’s as simple as this.”

Arsene Wenger’s quotes taken before the Arsenal game against Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League this week.

Wenger had been talking about the dominance of two football clubs; Real Madrid and Barcelona and their power to negotiate their own TV rights away from the rest of the Spanish League. He threw in the names of Chelsea and Manchester City as part of a group whose spending power has separated them from the rest of Europe’s sides. For the Arsenal manager it’s created an uneven playing field where the rest of the clubs are unable to compete. In my previous blog I mentioned the affect of trying to keep up with the Jones’ and how spending big has become the norm in a bid to stay in the top league and compete. If prove of that was ever needed and how big a part players wages play in today’s modern game the recently released following financial breakdowns about wages show just how big a part they have to play and their impact on it’s possible collapse in the not too distant future;

For every pound earned by an EPL club in the 2009-10 season 68p was spent in wages. In Italy’s Serie A it was 69 cents in every Euro and in France’s Ligue 1 it was an even more staggering 75% of everything earned.

With this trend showing no signs of abating how long can the game worldwide sustain these levels of spending before everything starts to go horribly wrong?

One side in Europe who’ve bucked the trend and won on a comparatively small budget were Arsenal’s mid week opponents and current Bundesliga Champions Borussia Dortmund who assembled their Championship winning side at a cost of just £5 million pounds. This outlay was more than covered when Real Madrid purchased playmaker Nury Sahin for a reported fee of around £8.8 million this summer. Although I’m not suggesting that Dortmund are major contenders to go on and win this season’s Champions League, the revenues generated by reaching the group stages for a club already well run financially should be held up as a shining example to other clubs worldwide that success can be achieved on a sensible budget and that you don’t have to break the bank in order to achieve success. To have beaten a side like Bayern Munich with their financial clout in the German leagues is no mean achievement and shouldn’t be undervalued at all.

Spending big has never been a sure fire way to success although Pompey did manage won FA Cup win but we all know the financial implications of that. Interesting to see that or the last seven Champions league finals, six of them have featured and English side in them. The final between Internazionale and Bayern Munich was the only one to have not featured an English side. Of those seven finals there have been two English winners; Liverpool who famously came back from being 3-0 down to AC Milan to win and penalties and the other was Manchester United’s win over Chelsea which was also decided on penalties. So for all the financial power of the EPL spending big still doesn’t guarantee you success in Europe. 

The question remains though as to how long the levels of spending and big wages can be maintained. Scottish clubs forced to compete in wages with their richer neighbours over the border in England have seen current league leaders Glasgow Rangers in an apparent financial meltdown. Whilst Glasgow Rangers and Plymouth Argyle might be far removed from each other in terms of miles and balance sheets in terms of assets, it remains a fact that both sets of supporters will be sat looking at one another very worried at this moment in time. Will one go to the wall; will both go to the wall? If it happens will it be the message that starts the shock waves around the European game and forces them to start taking action. The next three weeks or three months could tell us the answer to that question.

Would you like to argue against Arsene Wenger on the subject?