Stewart Regan and the hierarchy of Scottish football have been exposed by an arrogant email that provides a step-by-step guide on how they would carve up Scottish football to secure a First Division spot for Sevco and as little damage as possible for ‘the game’.
The content of the email is certain to lead to Regan’s departure with the only decision to be taken is whether he gets sacked or leaves ‘by mutual consent’ with a generous pay off for his silence.
There have already been calls for Regan to quit coming from Clyde, Raith Rovers, Morton and Livingston with the latest revelations certain to force the issue.
At the heart of the matter is a cosy late night conference call chaired by Regan with his loyal assistants in the shape of Rod Petrie of Hibs, Neil Doncaster of the SPL plus David Longmuir and Jim Ballantyne of the SFL.
After months of wheeling and dealing involving the three football bodies, Rangers and Charlie Green, Regan feels that he’s hatched the cunning plan to save the day avoiding social unrest and the slow lingering death of Scottish football that he feared once his plan went off the rails.
Following the late night call on Friday June 22 Regan was confident of the schedule of events ahead of separate meetings of the SPL and SFL.
Amazingly the chief executive of the SFA virtually rubber stamped the membership of Sevco with Petrie to liaise with Green to ensure there will be no surprises (objections from Sevco).
Included in the to-do list on the email Regan requests that ‘Andrew (Dickson of Rangers) to ensure our check list of disclosures relating to Newco and Fit & Proper Person criteria are delivered by 2nd july.”
A fortnight on Rangers fans are still in the dark about Green’s mysterious consortium and the ownership of Ibrox and Murray Park. Regardless of that smug deal maker Stewy signs off ‘Speak soon… off to the airport’ as he rewards himself for a hard nights plotting and scheming.
Regan’s email:
Dear all,
Many thanks for your contribution and support over the last two weeks in trying to deliver a programme of change that will move Scottish football forward whilst addressing the need to deal with the Rangers matter with integrity and in line with our own values as an organisation.
I was hugely encouraged with where we got to last night on a long and tiring phone call and I thank all of you for your efforts to move this issue forward.
I thought it would be helpful if I summarised where I think we are:
1. The Rangers Football Club will be relegated to the 1st Division of the SFL with immediate effect and will be replaced in the SPL by Dundee FC.
2. The television rights for Rangers FC matches in the SFL will be purchased by the SPL for the sum of £1m as a one-off fee for the season 2012/2013.
3. The two leagues will merge into a single league body – The Scottish Professional Football League – effective season 2013/14 – with a working party set up immediately involving representatives from the SPL, SFL and (if required) the Scottish FA to plan the integration of the two bodies – people, rules, rebranding, commercial considerations and so on.
4. A new Board of Directors will be appointed to govern the single league. The make up of this Board will consist of an Independent Chairman, CEO, 3 representatives from the Premier League, 2 representatives from the Championship/Leagues 1 & 2 and 2 Independent Non-Executive Directors.
5. Play-offs will be introduced immediately with the first matches taking place at the end of the coming season 2012/2013.
6. Enhanced parachute payments will be implemented from the end of the season 2012/2013 to soften the landing for club(s) relegated from the Premier League.
7. A revised all-through distribution model will be put in place to provide: a) An all-through distribution model for clubs 1-22 and a minimum guarantee for 20 clubs in Leagues 1 & 2, equivalent to what they would earn under the current settlement agreement.
8. A Pyramid System will be put in place which open up the bottom of League 2 effective from the end of season 2013/2014 with the first opportunity for promoted clubs to enter the league being 2014/15 thus allowing for licensing to take place.
9. Consolidation below the Third Division to take place to create a Lowland & Highland League structure effective 2014/15 with appropriate play-offs and promotion/relegation to be put in place. Clubs to be briefed that the previous season 2013/2014 will involve the opportunity to enter play-offs for the first time.
In terms of actions/timings I think the following needs to happen in this coming week:
A) A joint statement today from all 3 bodies confirming that productive discussions have taken place on a new blueprint for Scottish football. Consultation will continue over the next two weeks with a view to clubs getting together week commencing 2nd July to try and agree the way forward. (D Broadfoot to provide this and circulate to DL/ND for approval)
B) Rod P / Jim B to finalise the all-through financial model by Wednesday this week latest.
C) Neil / David to finalise the detail on Governance, Commercials and Play-Offs (ideally Monday/Tuesday) and incorporate these, plus the financials in B) above into a legally binding Heads of Terms ‘draft’ for presentation to each league body w/c 2nd July.
D) DL to organise SFL Board Meeting w/c 25th June to gain buy-in to the plan and also arrange an all club meeting w/c 2nd July
E) ND to gain support from SPL Clubs 28th June
F) SFL Clubs Meeting to be planned for 3rd July
G) SPL Club Meeting to be planned for 4th July
H) Scottish FA Board to sign off on the final plan post 4th July. Subject to approval all bodies (including Newco) to sign legal documentation.
I) Agree joint communication strategy
J) In parallel to A-D above, could Rod Petrie please brief Charles Green confidentially on the discussions from a Scottish FA perspective so that there are ‘no surprises’ and there is a general acceptance of the plan plus all of the other conditions discussed e.g. transfer embargo, fines, repayment of football debt, waiving rights to legal challenge, acceptance of relegation and so on.
K) Andrew to ensure our check list of disclosures relating to Newco and Fit & Proper Person criteria are delivered by 2nd july. The Board will need these plus the Heads of Terms above in order to complete this plan.
The Scottish FA Board have agreed to provide a one-off restructuring budget of £1m on condition the above plan is delivered.
I hope this covers everything.
Speak soon….now off to the airport!
Regards
Stewart
There will be no trust in Scottish football until all the characters mentioned above are cleared out of the game with the possible exception of David Longmuir.
The CE of the SFL seemed an unwilling conscript to the shoddy deal for Sevco and appeared relieved that Friday’s SFL vote blew apart Regan’s wishlist.
Noticeably following Friday’s vote the term ’42 club solution’ started to gain currency.
In light of the details above the clubs in the SPL should announce their resignations at the end of the 2012/13 season and re-join the SFL headed by Longmuir with the voices of Turnbull Hutton from Raith Rovers and Livingston’s Gordon McDougall at the heart of decision making rather than Regan and his discredited cronies that are strong on sharp suits, buzz-words and power-point presentations but devoid of credibility, integrity and substance.
Regan’s email was sent to: Scottish Premier League chief exec Neil Doncaster; Scottish Football League boss David Longmuir, SFL President Jim Ballantyne, SFA vice-president Alan McRae, Hibernian FC chief exec Rod Petrie and SPL chairman Ralph Topping.
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please god take regan doncaster and ogilvie away from hampden and never let them any where near football again
Just totally disgusted…
Come on, your struggling now. What is the BIG news in all this?
1. An itemised list of steps to be taken to merge the two leagues, play off etc. This is pretty much what was published last week.
2. The fact that the SFA, SFL and SPL discussed the document “late into the night”, umm… of course they did.
3. The fact that the SPL’s preferred solution was a first division place for Rangers (SKY deal intact), well yes, you should try reading the papers more, we knew that.
4. The fact that CG was kept informed of the proposals?, the wording seems to suggest it is more a sounding out to avoid a “stuff the lot of you, we want to go to the 3rd” reaction, that the RFC fans want anyway, and is he he broadly supportive. He takes it all with a pinch of salt now, people telling him what HMRC will do, the SPL the SFL, the SFA – water of ducks back now. A quote from him a couple of weeks ago from a reporter on the steps from Hampden in answer to the question what do you expect next?
“I’ve learned in dealing with Rangers that the last thing you should expect is the expected”
which sums it up quite well.
And NO, I don’t think the game is run anywhere near as well as it should be in Scotland, but if you think oddballs and wierdos like Hutton and McDougall will be our saviours, then God help us.
GSW is an attention starved Sevco fan who believes MSM scare stories and is best ignored.
Sevco are not in a position to say “stuff the lot of you, we want to go to the 3rd”. It’s not Sevco’s decision to take. “The lot of you” have actually said ‘stuff Sevco, you’re going to the third’.
What is new here is that the email has been published in full and reveals the extent of the establishments corruption in trying to revive the establishments club. You should read the papers less, they are full of misleading propaganda, or pure keech, as it’s known in bampot land.
Althetim,
What is there in the email, apart from CG being given an update, that you didn’t know already? The SFL, SPL and SFA all talk to each other?
“what is the big deal in all this?”
That answer is pretty simple: the complete disregard of the fact that RFC don’t exist as that entity anymore. They haven’t been relegated as it states in the email. They haven’t been banned from Europe for three years.
They haven’t been punished for their misdeeds–and the new company shouldn’t be punished as they are just that: a NEW company.
Everything that has happened is a direct CONSEQUENCE of their actions. As soon as people (msm, SFA, SPL, sfl) recognize this, Scottish football can begin a rebuild; hopefully one where cronyism doesn’t exist on the level it does now.
There’s been no contrition coming from them. Most fans, and I’m assuming you’re one of them, want to start in the 3rd division in the hopes of punishing the other clubs financially and hopefully crippling them. Only one team is in the wrong here.
Rangers fans have no one to blame but the people who put them in this mess and an overly compliant media who propagated all the BS.
Scotty,
I think you and others are guilty are trying to squeze reality into something more consistent with you own rather bizarre world view.
I don’t think doncaster and the others have done a particularly good job on this. Like it or not he is trying to ensure the health (financial and other) of the league he represents (his job in other words). Every email, telephone call, or meeting to sort this out, you perceive as being an “establishment” conspiracy(?). Well fair enough you continue to think that, but it doesn’t change the fact that we need a solution, a viable way forward, pretty darn quick.
I actually think that this is a good plan- apart from the sneaky save Sevco/ragers at all costs bit.
It’s laughable how badly the SFA have handled this situation. It’s like they went out of their way to create a atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust. Why didn’t Regan just announce in the papers, openly and honestly, that this was what he wanted to do? If he’d been honest at the start, I’m sure a few more clubs would have backed sevco in SFL 1. But no, he went down the usual route of secret meetings, arm-twisting, and, no doubt, funny-handshakes. Why did he do that? Why did he resort to veiled threats about social unrest and financial collapse?
Maybe it was the influence of Ogilvie, or maybe it’s because they’re so used to cheating and being sneaky and underhand to help ragers they don’t know how to do anything honestly anymore.
For example, I could never understand why the referee lied to NL about the penalty against Dundee United. He didn’t have to. It was like a knee-jerk reaction. ‘I screwed-up a decision against Celtic: quick, lie and cover it up’.
It’s a sad state of affairs. But I guess that’s what you get if the authorities favour one team over another and ignore decades of corruption by ‘their’ team. They just don’t know how to act in an open and honest way- because they’ve never done it before.
Most importantly though, they can hardly be open and honest now, if they were actually personnally involved in their favoured team’s corruption- like some very powerful figures could well have been.
After all this, how do they expect anyone to trust them to handle the EBT scandal openly, honestly, and fairly? How do they expect anyone to trust them to ensure that sevco pass all the criteria to play in any Scottish league? And how do they expect anyone to trust them to rebuild Scottish football?
I agree – its not altogether that bad a plan. Scottish football should have a pyramid structure and a highland/lowland one works okay – though I would have mooted a highland/east/west type.
Furthermore this 42 team solutions idea I don’t buy into. Its not the clubs that need to be listened to – its the fans. What do clubs like East Stirling – who sold their own ground to property developers and paid the proceeds to shareholders, ground share with local rivals in a different town now and average less than 400 fans – really contribute to football other than a way for certain owners to eke out a living.
There are good junior and highland teams who’s voices should be heard louder. Protectionism isn’t just in the SFA but the leagues too. The whole model is broke, and even though Regan’s plan has merit its clear that the real leadership and responsibility problems are still there.
This also has me in the slightly strange position of agreeing with GSW a little. The only real concern here is that there is a general tone of roond-ye-ism towards fans, clubs and supporters alike with regards to how they do business.
It’s certainly at odds with the transparent and open policies Regan champions in public and stinks of a continuation of the cronyism that festered in the past that he was appointed to tackle head on.
Do the right thing. Admit its broken and get the government to set up a working party to fix it top to bottom. SFA isn’t fit for purpose but not because of this plan – because its listening more to money and the same idiotic faces who care nothing but what they get out of football than it is to the fans who are who football belongs to. Clubs, players and chairmen are there to provide the fans with what they want and they shouldn’t forget it.
GSW you have no shame, no team, everybody’s to blame, its about time FIFA, UEFA, UN, said something, you think that no paying your lot did no wrong ha ha liquidated
missed out paying y0ur way b4r numnuts say;s something about schooling
It seems clear that despite the fact that most people with even a passing interest in Scottish football would be open to the restructuring pretty much in keeping with or at least similar to the plan in the email.
Where the various characters involved in the cloak and dagger scheming went wrong was in treating the clubs fans and chairmen like morons and attempting to subvert natural justice and established practice and procedure to get sevco into the top tier as soon as they could.
I have no doubt that the funny handshake brigade are deeply involved. For the good of football and for the future of our game, the sooner all of them are booted out, the better.
Like GSW, they are entitled to their opinions, they are entitled to put the case for what they want, but not while pretending, like Petrie in particular, to be doing something else.
The real funny thing about the whole sordid affair is that if it was all a grand conspiracy to feck the buns the way they have, Duff and Duffer, the media, Scottish football authorities, Rangers with their appeals, threats, etc etc have played a blinder. And even funnier we are only half way through! Magic!
is the D.Broadfoot mentioned the same one as who claims to be the beacon of impartiality of journalism? honest, forthright and with no agenda? in fact the catchphrase whenever challenged on Radio Snyde “my wife’s a catholic” says it all!
No wonder Scottish football is in such a state.
Regan must think that his job is to dictate the way things are to be and then to seek the usual secret funny handshake approval. This whole reconstruction guise was just to ensure their beloved poodle sevco newco would be allowed to play in the top division of the SFL.
Poor GSW has, because if his reliance on the msm for ”news” is now left with nothing but the prospect of supporting a ‘diddy’ team for the foreseeable future.
Can we be witnessing the end of corruption authority in Scottish football? Surely it will start when these three useless clowns are out the door…and the quicker the better.
old News but news that is now offical via a leaked email.just another nail in the coffin.
Not long now for the “vote of confidence” in the LOT of them.
Bye bye bigot boys. yer tea is oot.
they just like sevco will not see out the season and bhoy does that make me happy!
Where is RC ‘what school did you go to’ O’Gilvie in all this?! The very fact that he is still President of the SFA beggars belief! And as for Jim ‘RFFF badge wearer’ Ballantyne, his counterpart at the SFL, what can we say about him?!
Reading Regan’s email is like coming accross something concocted by a secret cabal like the Illuminatti! Their day has come, and it will soon be gone!
HH!!
Have to disagree. Unfortunatly.the majority of chairmen in the spl anyway would never have the balls to do the right and proper action and get these people out of the game.especialy now.when these directors have them in a state of constant panick.fear is very effective weapon for control
I’m sure there are secret shenanigans going on as we speak. The Clyde chairman suspects fowl play is still asunder! There is an SPL meeting on Monday.
I imagine another William Wallace-like treachery taking place and if they do a u-turn it will be the last nail in the SFA & SPL credibility coffin (if they have any nails left that is). We need to know what part is Campbell Ogilvie playing in all this?
The role of Longshanks perhaps? Depends who shakes who’s hands the funniest I suppose. Nothing changes in this small bigoted country so why should we expect anything else other than a band of semi intelligent middle aged fat cats doing the bidding of their lodge masters.
I smell a rat and it stinks of treachery, bribery, corruption and deceit. Is there secret plotting going on this weekend between Scottish footballs corrupt administrators getting at certain club chairmen, bribing them with fear and incentives or even threatening them with untold consequences unless they to do a u-turn to invite Sevco into the SPL as club 12?
Why was Dundee told to vote at the last minute on Friday after being told not to? Was that to save the Club 12 position for Sevco should the SFL vote not go as planned?
Why are the chairmen of Inverness Caley and St Mirrin now sounding like they wish to change their minds?
Have they been “got at”?
Threatened with expulsion from their respective lodges?
Sporting fairness my sash!
“Why are the chairmen of Inverness Caley and St Mirrin now sounding like they wish to change their minds?”
I think they were assured by regan and doncaster that the SFL would get them out of this mess by voting Rangers into the 1st Division and the SKY money would still come in. There’s now a realisation that they’ve be sold a pup, and next years money is somewhere over the rainbow.
Let’s hope the world finally realises that these people have shamed Scotland with their actions.
Pure scum, pure toad licking Govan-loving scum.
The very basis of this is to do whatever it takes to save Sevco, or as they prefer to keep calling them, rangers.
So in order to “save” a dead club, they are prepared to throw 45% of teams to the lions! Who on earth voted these imbiciles in?
This is still all about saving their proven to be corrupt establishment team. They really don’t care what they have done, show no remorse for knowing this was going on all these years, and are happy to kill off many minor clubs in the process!
As long as the establishment team is safe, they will try to blackmail the more financially strong clubs into shafting the less affluent. Scumbags and cheats.
Our clubs should simly get their own houses in order, live within their means and try everything they can to placate their fanbase, attract new fans….coming out with the crap that Kilmarnock, St. Mirren & ICT have done will only further hurt their own standing with loyal fans.
SS fc can look after themselves, Chico the clown stated he will have £ 30m in the bank by the end of July…Not even a half wit would believe him. They are heading directly for another administration.
Their main hope Watty Myth is already compromised as an EBT beneficiary, fans won’t put money into Sevco as they know it is only Ticketus looking to regain their money then cut & run. Sevco are a dead man walking…see even dead they still walk away.
No fighting funds, no red / black scarves, no mass protests….going under without a whimper, blaming everyone but themselves.
Not even their high powered friends can save them – Ogilvie, Ballantyne, Doncaster, Regan, Green, all now totally lacking in credibility / ideas.
Time to clear the decks and count who is still standing then we can move on.
Despite his name not appearing anywhere in the document can anyone be certain that Peter Lawwell was not involved? Looks like a cunning plan to protect Celtic’s revenue streams and Regan is just a puppet. The simplest way to get the Newco Rangers into SFL Div 1 would have been to accept their application to join the SPL but implement an immediate sanction of relegation. That would have left the SFL with no option. Looks to me as if the SFA, SPL CEOs and clubs didn’t have the balls to stand up to their supporters to do this simple thing!