King does have a point but both he AND the SPFL need to get their house in order...
IT’S possible to think Dave King is on to something over the conflict of interest at the SPFL while also finding the Rangers chairman’s public sermons on corporate governance a slightly laughable business.
Rangers and the SPFL have become involved in a statement war of words. A verbal ping-pong match where backhanders are smashed across the net in an unwinnable rally.
King wants an independent investigation into the fact the SPFL chairman Murdoch MacLennan serves as a nonexecutive director with a media firm part-owned by Celtic shareholders Dermot Desmond and Denis O’Brien.
And allegations the league failed to fully disclose the link between the Invisible Man of Scottish football and Independent News and Media PLC, a company in which Desmond and O’Brien account for 45 per cent of the shares between them.
A couple of lengthy SPFL statements designed to kill the story actually had the opposite effect.
They’ve given it more oxygen than King could have dreamed of.
Privately, SPFL people think the Rangers allegations are spurious. That the relationship between MacLennan and Desmond is, at best, arm’s length. And that Ibrox managing director Stewart Robertson, an SPFL board member, was briefed when the league chairman joined INM in January.
The league argue there is no evidence MacLennan has personally helped Celtic in any way in his role as chairman.
But even the perception of a tie-up is damaging. It leaves the SPFL open to accusations of bias — even if it doesn’t exist.
Neither does it help that when the Parkhead club called for an SFA inquiry into EBTs last year, they couldn’t lend their backing quickly enough.
Dismissing the Rangers call adds to Ibrox suspicions they pay a little more heed to what one club has to say than others.
Beneath the surface lurks an unspoken subtext. Angered by the latest Notice of Complaint from the SFA, Rangers are sending out a message. For long enough, fans have wanted their directors to ‘grow a set’ and King has responded like Clint Eastwood blowing smoke from his Colt.
When it comes to pleasing the galleries, there’s nothing quite like an old-fashioned public kicking for the SPFL or SFA.
Celtic played that game when they called for an independent inquiry into the Rangers EBT saga to appease their own support.
And King knows fine how well this stuff plays with the fans who think Neil Doncaster dances to Peter Lawwell’s tune.
Since succeeding Ralph Topping as chairman of the SPFL in July 2017, MacLennan hasn’t said a word on anything. Not a peep. This would be a good time to set the record straight on his links — or otherwise — to Desmond and O’Brien.
‘Transparency,’ claims King, ‘will be key to recovering the confidence of key stakeholders in Scottish football.’
A lofty goal, perhaps. But the last six years have taught us that the men in charge of the game have to be held to a higher standard.
The SFA and SPFL have to strive to be beyond suspicion or reproach. And that has to work both ways. It doesn’t just apply to the men in charge of the governing bodies.
It applies equally to the chairmen of clubs. Rangers included. And when it comes to his own footballing transactions, King hasn’t always been a paragon of good governance himself.
He paid £43million to the South African Revenue Service as an alternative to 82 years in jail.
And the Takeover Panel are pursuing the Rangers chairman for a breach of City rules for acting in concert with fellow shareholders to seize control of the Ibrox club.
Oddly, he seemed less keen on full public disclosure back then.
Ordered to make a mandatory offer worth £11m for the rest of the shares, King wants more time to shift the money from a family trust to a UK bank account.
But if the Takeover Panel run out of patience, he can argue all he likes it has nothing to do with Rangers — but his chairmanship would become as toxic as that of MacLennan at the SPFL.
King’s Rangers statements brim with the conviction of a man convinced he’s right.
And where MacLennan is concerned, he just might be. But if good governance and transparency are traits King values highly, he can show the SPFL how it’s done by fixing the leak in his own roof first.