After being promised the most competitive league in the world the SPFL are preparing for a nine team Championship procession with Hearts promoted by spring time.
The refusal of the Scottish game to take licensing seriously has come home to roost with reports that Neil Doncaster called a meeting with Deek Llambias over the latest distress signal coming out of Ibrox.
It seems that Llambias was able to reassure Doncaster that Sevco won’t go into administration which flies in the face of the raft of statements issued to the Alternative Investment Market.
On Monday morning it was announced that a loan from Sandy Easdale would be used for working capital over the ‘next few days’, the following morning the daily statement warned: “The Company is managing its cash resources carefully and will require further funding before the end of January.”
Having ignored the warning signs for over a year about the finances of Sevco the SFA and SPFL are caught in a Catch 22 dilemma.
If Sevco go into administration liquidation is likely to follow soon after with Ibrox and Murray Park unavailable as security against further loans.
That would leave a hole in the Championship with clubs losing out on a fixture that would have been included in their calculations at the start of the season.
Should the club hobble along surviving month by month due to loans those clubs that budgeted in July for the season ahead will be punished on a weekly basis by a club that brought in Kris Boyd, Kenny Miller and Marius Zaliuskas knowing that they didn’t have the funds to meet the terms of their contracts.
Whatever unfolds over the coming weeks and months the SPFL are unlikely to be painted in a glowing light as they attempt to find a sponsor.
Tough decisions have to be made to ensure that all clubs compete on a level footing, unless a club can produce audited accounts confirming that there are no going concerns fears they should be forced to play in League Two.
That message would highlight to supporters and players the distressed state of affairs, looking the other way and hoping that things will pan out isn’t really an option.
Reassuring Doncaster that all is well is a different matter to complying with AIM regulations to alert shareholders to the distressed state of affairs at the club. If the SPFL and SFA insisted on the same financial parameters as the AIM by the end of May to ensure a licence for the following season the uncertainty hanging over the Championship fixture list could have been avoided.
