Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Money money money,would be funny, in the SPL

Adequate. Dull. Unspectacular.

All adjectives that could be used to describe Rangers' performance in Inverness at the weekend, in a match which the Ibrox side won thanks to two very controversial penalties indeed, the first following what appeared to be a ball-winning challenge, and the second after an innocuous collision which caused Romanian Dorin Goian to execute a curious mid-air triple twist that Jane Torvill would have been proud of.

They are adjectives that, in hindsight, I suspect the Rangers board wishes could be applied to previous tax retuns. Not least after the HMRC sent round the Sheriff Officers last week to serve papers on the club regarding their outstanding (in more than one sense of the word!) £4.2 million tax bill.

Tch, when the debt collectors come round to your average joe, they are skinheads with baseball bats. For a major company, they are balding and carrying briefcases. Same idea though, except for the fact that Ally McCoist's fingers aren't going to get broken. Yet.

This is a bizarre case indeed, which led Rangers to complain of the process of being conducted "in public" and fans supporters to accuse the taxman of "grandstanding"...despite the fact that no news organizations ran with the story until Rangers brought it to their attention with the above statement. Considering the outstanding payments date back eight years, and Rangers have so far failed to pay them despite the fact this became public before the summer, it seems to this observer that HMRC are quite entitled to seek what they believe they are owed; an accountant and a solicitor who I count amongst my friends (the latter despite being a Gers fan) inform me that this is proper procedure, whatever the club say.

The latter summed it all up beautifully for me: "there's not a company in the world that doesn't do everything it can to minimise a tax bill. That's why a good tax lawyer can get paid a fortune. Maybe Rangers should have got a better one."

This whole affair is juicier than a Florida orange. And it's just the beginning; as I mentioned in a previous post, HMRC have a much bigger case which returns to court in November, seeking somewhere in the region of £20 million in unpaid taxes...against Rangers.

And for all the whinging by their PR men about it being plastered all over the media, the papers have been restrained in their coverage of the whole affair. In fact, there has been a feeling of "thou doth protest too much" - I can't believe I got a Shakespeare line into the blog! - about the whole thing.

They aren't the only ones dodging their bills though; Hearts, it transpires, were served a winding-up order last month by HMRC, and finally paid up approximately £250,000 this week. Astoundingly, the media failed to mention this winding-up order until the bill had been paid - though internet message boards had picked up on it, and Rangers' impending Sheriff Officer visit - though that didn't stop accusations of the club's reputation being blackened.

Rich men and huge corporations, having to pay their taxes? Who'd have thought it? Under a Conservative government, surely only the poor should be paying taxes, getting affected by cuts, that sort of thing.

About the only interesting news in Scottish football recently has been surrounding the financial side of the game, and I've been playing the amusing game of 'read between the lines' a lot. Last week also saw the publication of the annual PriceWaterhouseCooper report into SPL finances - though it always runs a year behind, so it covered 2009-10 and so didn't involve Caley Thistle (as we were languishing in the lower leagues/sweeping majestically to promotion - delete as applicable to suit your point of view).

The interesting points to note? As of that season only Hamilton (now relegated) and St Johnstone were debt free. There was an overall profit of £1 million...but only because Hearts and Kilmarnock had £8 million of debt written off. And, as was picked up by everyone, there has been a massive drop in attendances which threatens to cause huge damage to the Scottish Premier League - 600,000 fewer fans attended during the 2009-10 season than during the 2004-05 season, a drop of 16%.

What wasn't picked up by anyone, apart from a very wise head at Caleythistleonline.com who has far too much time on his hands, is that it is not representative of the SPL, not by a distance. Compared to 5 years previously, average attendances at Hearts and Hibs are higher (though not as high as they were 3 years ago), and Dundee United's are stable. Kilmarnock and Motherwell are a little down, but are on an upward trend. Inverness, St. Johnstone and St. Mirren are higher, though the latter two were not in the SPL five years ago. Meanwhile, Celtic's attendances are down 21%. Aberdeen's are down 19% - no surprise considering the mess they were in. Rangers are better but have had the third highest drop off in attendances.

And since Celtic and Rangers' attendances are more than twice that of everyone else, the reason for the vast majority of that drop off - in fact about 60% of that 500,000 total - is fair weather Old Firm fans. Not that you'd know from the SPL's soundbite; "our clubs made a profit...this is incredibly positive" was so far from the truth that I assume they use the same PR firm as Rangers and Hearts do.

The conclusion? For all the Old Firm's whining that they are being held back by weedy provinical clubs, the truth is that they are the ones who are struggling to stay afloat...and they are at risk of drowning the rest of the SPL with them.

L.

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