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Stewart Regan’s west of Scotland problem

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Stewart ReganThe old ‘west of Scotland’ problem was one of the excuses thrown up by Stewart Regan during his brief meeting with John Clark from the Scottish Football Monitor.

As well as not knowing the rules about overdue payables and saying that he would do nothing if he was given evidence of rule breaking, the former Yorkshire CC chief exec also played the ‘west of Scotland’ card.

Addresing an international audience of students in Edinburgh, Regan was asked about the SFA not applying UEFA rules to the 2011 application from Rangers. Rather than explain his stance on the issue Regan side stepped it with the ‘west of Scotland’ excuse when the answer is defined by UEFA rules laid down from Switzerland.

Bringing in a relative outsider to replace Gordon Smith as chief executive seemed a sensible move by the SFA back in 2010 but after a rocky time bedding in Regan has proved to be anything but a new broom, learning little from the shambles of 2012 when he seemed sucked into the culture that Scottish football is wholly dependent on a Rangers team at any cost.

The recently created @mintys_lamb twitter account has been revisiting many of the events of 2012 with one article recovered this morning highlighting the extent to which Regan went to deny any form of sporting justice.

In any other country in Europe if a club goes into liquidation their successor club would have to start in the lowest tier provided they met the membership criteria.

Facing life without Rangers in Julky 2012 Regan claimed: “Without Rangers, there is social unrest and a big problem for Scottish society. The club has a huge fan-base and to contemplate the situation where those fans don’t have a team to support, where those fans are effectively left without a game to follow, I just think that could lead to all sorts of issues, all sorts of problems for the game.

There are thousands of Rangers fans whose fathers and parents and grandfathers have been Rangers fans. You can’t contemplate a situation without that and if Rangers weren’t to exist that could have dire consequences.”

In the same interview Regan added: “There hasn’t been a great deal of leadership at the club or a huge amount of communication from the football authorities for the right reasons because a lot of it has been legal dialogue and managing of judicial processes but there has to be an understanding about how serious this is. And as much as there was a lot of emotion at the SFL meeting on Tuesday there was also a realisation from a substantial group of clubs that they couldn’t contemplate the future without Rangers.”

Despite the warning of social unrest SFL clubs rejected Regan’s plea to vote Sevco into the First Division with a place in the bottom division provided.

With no form of Financial Fair Play and sanctions for having a going concern warning on their accounts Sevco are likely to finish the season owing £15m to various individuals with the new club unable to be trusted by any mainstream bank.

During his five years as chief executive of the SFA no club has called for a vote of no confidence in Regan.

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