READING BETWEEN THE LINES: RANGERS CHIEF EXPLAINS THE DOSSIER After 200 pages leaked with more questions than answers, Robertson spells out case against the SPFL
RANGERS sent their “dossier of evidence” to their fellow SPFL member clubs yesterday – and are now hoping it convinces them to vote in favour of an independent investigation into the handling of the resolution on the end of the season.
The document contained some damning claims – including that information about how much deciding to curtail the 2019/20 campaign prematurely would cost was withheld, that threats were made to Championship clubs and then ignored when reported, that members weren’t told league reconstruction will need broadcasters’ backing.
Stewart Robertson, the Ibrox managing director, didn’t hold back in a lengthy interview with the daily newspapers, his first since the coronavirus outbreak caused football to be shut down last month, last night either.
Question: Rangers claim clubs weren’t told that £10million may need to be paid to broadcasters if the season is ended prematurely. How significant do you think that information is?
“When you are only distributing £25m worth of prize money this year and there’s the potential of a £10m refund to broadcasters and sponsors, that’s a material number.
“When you take that forward, what does that mean for clubs and their budgets? it could mean they lose £500,000 to £600,000. If you have a club with say a turnover of £5m that makes a huge difference, especially in the current environment. To take another chunk out of budgets, in my opinion, is a fairly material fact which we should have been told.”
How incendiary do you think Rangers’ “dossier” is?
“I think it shows a culture within the organisation, particularly in this situation, where there is a complete disregard for the members.
“This is a company that is owned by the clubs and who employs the executive. It’s not the executive doing a favour for the clubs. Those clubs should be shown the respect they are due.
“It’s because of the clubs that money is generated to pay the executive.
“When you look at the potential liabilities we weren’t told about, it hasn’t been able to make a fully formed decision.
“You’ve potentially got some clubs staring down the barrel of a gun next season in terms of their budgets. It is the material misrepresentation by omission, as the lawyers would call it.
“Look at the [SPFL] statement this morning. That’s a complete deflection away from the report.”
Were you surprised by speed and tone of the SPFL response to your evidence?
“Somebody made a comment to me today about it managing to get through their firewall when they actually weren’t sent it by Rangers.
The pace they were able to read a 200-page dossier? Maybe they are just quick readers. It’s a complete deflection away from the point we should be discussing, which is the failings of the executive in the build-up to this vote.”
“For any investigation to take place you need to have confidence in the people that are there and running it, that’s the first reason for asking for an independent investigation which we feel is fundamental to getting to the bottom of this. “Personally and as a club we have lost confidence in the way they are running the organisation, quite frankly. On the basis that this was railroaded through and key information wasn’t provided to member clubs, I think we are quite within our rights to ask for that.”
“This is part of the reason we need an independent investigation. This has been reported to the chief executive, he’s aware of it. He certainly didn’t report it to the board, certainly not when I was there.
“Did he report it to the chairman? Did he investigate it? As a fellow member of the company and someone who is a board director of the SFPL, if someone is making some kind of threat to others members that should be investigated. Did Murdoch [SPFL chairman
MacLennan] know about it? I don’t know.”
“I genuinely don’t know. I genuinely don’t know why you wouldn’t treat all the members fairly. Why wouldn’t you give them the material information they need to make a decision of this nature? What is it that has led them to go down the path they have gone down? I don’t know.
“And I know I have probed and probed and probed.
It was like pulling teeth sometimes to get the information I was after to try and make a proper assessment of why there was a rush to make this decision. It was clearly a huge decision. I just can’t understand it.”
“At the time I was very frustrated. But it comes back to the basic point of separating cash from what happens at the end of the season. We have seen that since. You look at the advances that have been paid to Motherwell and, I think, Partick in 16/17.
“You look at the misleading information put out in
Murdoch’s Q and A on the Gretna situation when he talks about loans being written off. We have seen in the last couple of days that if you go back to the accounts there have been no loans written off at all. Again, that’s been advances received.
“We then get the resolution and have block after block after block put on it as we tried to get it done by the Friday. They were just filibustering to get it to Friday.”
“I don’t think Scottish football can afford not to do this. We need to be coming out of this on the front foot if we can. At the moment, the automatic answer you get to asking them something is ‘no, the rules won’t allow it’.
“We need people we can trust, we need leaders we can have faith and confidence in to take us forward. I think situations like this don’t give you that confidence.
“I know everything is going on in the country with the pandemic, but from a football perspective maybe this is the best time to be doing it because there is no football going on to distract us. Let’s concentrate on sorting it and fixing it while we’ve got a chance to fix it.”