Once again the SFA bowed down to a club from Ibrox with the outcome of their Notice of Complaint over the 2011/12 licence announced yesterday.
The issues were clear cut, the evidence overwhelming. It took some highly creative minds to come up with the fudge that surprised no one.
It was the sort of imagination that allowed Sandy Bryson to come up with ‘improperly but eligible’ ruling when it came to using players without fully disclosing payment details.
No one inside football said a word in 2012 when Nimmo Smith switched the timescale of his enquiry away from July 1998 to November 2000 to avoid the Discount Option Scheme that Rangers (IL) had admitted guilt on over payments made to Tore Andre Flo and Ronald de Boer.
This time the SFA had all the evidence to find Rangers (IL) guilty and ban Dave King, Paul Murray, Andrew Dickson from football for life.
Had they done so the guilty men at Ibrox would only have had one avenue of appeal- the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Amazingly in a game of dares the Ibrox legal team told the SFA that THEY would have to go to CAS to convict the men at Ibrox that cheated HMRC and every club in Scottish football.
Getting up off the carpet the SFA agreed!
Rather than punish Rangers (IL) and risk being taken to CAS the SFA bottled out of justice and issued a feeble statement saying that they would have to take the case to CAS.
At some stage someone inside Hampden has to take responsibility- the more that they delay and deny justice the harsher the eventual consequences will be.
