Board meets today to seek resolution
The Scottish Professional Football League will hold an emergency board meeting today in a bid to resolve the impasse holding up £9.3 million of payments to its 42 member clubs.
The videoconference of the ten-person SPFL board will address multiple issues raised by the acrimonious fall-out from last Friday’s chaotic vote on their resolution to end the 2019-20 season amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The ballot narrowly failed to achieve the level of agreement required across all four divisions of the SPFL to pass the resolution, with confusion and controversy surrounding the initially submitted “No” vote from Dundee which the Dens Park club are now believed to be reconsidering.
The SPFL plan, if passed, would see the Championship, League 1 and League 2 all finalised on the basis of the league tables when football was suspended because of Covid-19 last month. It would also give the SPFL authority to similarly call time on the Premiership, should completing the campaign at a later date be ruled unfeasible.
Rangers, who are 13 points behind Celtic at the top of the Premiership with a game in hand, proposed an alternative resolution which they said would
Ally Mccoist has condemned the Scottish Professional Football League’s handling of the vote to end the 2019-20 season, claiming it “absolutely stinks”.
The SPFL have already been accused by Hearts of attempting to “unduly influence” the outcome of Friday’s chaotic members’ ballot which was left unresolved by the confusion over the timing and veracity of Dundee’s vote. Mccoist’s former club Rangers also raised major concerns over the process, calling for the suspension of SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster and lawyer Rod Mckenzie while an independent investigation is held.
“It’s a shambles and an embarrassment,” said Mccoist, pictured. “Only in Scottish football! The SPFL are the cartoon network – they’re the gift that keeps on giving. They had a vote that had to be in by 5pm and seemingly not all the votes arrived. For some reason, the SPFL thought it was a great idea to release the result of the vote before all the votes were in.
“All of a sudden Dundee said they sent their vote but, strangely, the SPFL said they didn’t receive it, then say they received it later on. At best, the whole thing absolutely stinks. For a governing body who are supposed to be looking after their members, it’s an absolute embarrassment. There’s people in there who definitely have their own agendas and I really hope we get to the bottom of it because once again it’s been an embarrassment for Scottish football.
“There are rumours that a lot of the smaller clubs have been bullied into this deal because they need the money, where, in fact, the duty of the SPFL is to look after their member clubs. They should have found a way – and they could still probably find a way – where these clubs could get their money without voting. I don’t understand why the vote has to be done now, I don’t get why there’s such a hurry.”
Mccoist, speaking on TALKSPORT, also called for IT specialists to be involved in any inquiry into the timeline of Friday’s vote. “I’d get a forensic computer expert in and I’d find out who’s lying and who’s telling the truth. When was the e-mail (from Dundee) sent? Did it arrive? If so, what time did it arrive? What’s happening is shocking. We all know there are far greater issues going on in the world than this but it’s a big issue in Scotland.”