Dibbles old paperboy

Since we sold the ground to Tesco it sounds like the BoD have still had to stump up significant sums of cash to deal with the annual cashflow issue after Christmas and before the SPL pay out the final prizemoney afterthe end of teh season. Plenty of people wanted a deadline put on the CIC bid and now there is one. FWIW I am sure that all the shit flying around with Rangers continued attempts to be allowed to continue to cheat without punishment* is a major factor in SG and the consortium deciding that almost 3 years after they put the club up for sale they do all want out by a set time and for a new team to be in place before the next transfer window opens. * before they exit administration and before the SFA appeal panel has met again to decide about the transfer ban punishment the cheats are now appealing to get permission to sign players before they exit administration! http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/18385024 and also http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/18378555

SG on the SFA's new resolution: http://www.paisleydailyexpress.co.uk/renfrewshire-sport/renfrewshire-football/renfrewshire-football-st-mirren/2012/06/08/gilmour-backs-atkinson-to-pass-the-test-87085-31136228/

Have SMISA really pulled out? A while ago they said they were 'in principle' behind the CIC but it would be up to the SMISA members to vote on the proposal and decide if the £50k contribution to the CIC being mentioned would be given. We don't know if the Consortium will sell to the CIC yet and so at the moment SMISA's membership have no decision to make or vote to organise. If the 10000Hours bid is successful and they do get the majority shareholding then it is at that point that we will see whether SMISA and its members look at the proposals and take a vote and either back the CIC or pull out. SMISA also have to surely accept that if any other bidder buys the majority shareholding at St Mirren then the most tax efficient and legal way to buy the club is to buy out using a parent company to hold the shares. When Craig Whyte bought Rangers for £1 the deal was done through one of his companies which got renamed as the parent company for Rangers and if Charles Green buys Rangers for £2 it will be done through the Serco company he set up a month or two back. If another bidder buys St Mirren and uses a parent company to take ownership of the club then the problems SMISA are highlighting now about the CIC would apply to whoever takes over and uses a company as the vehicle to buy the club. The only way to not have any risk of a new parent company running SMFC and suffering an insolvency event is, i think, for SG and the consortium to never sell their shares. Any new ownership will have some risk attached... we know how RA and the CIC more or less plan to finance their bid and what numbers / level of support is required to make their bid viable. No other bidder has said who they are, what their plans for SMFC are or how they would fund buying the majority of the shares and how much money they have to invest in the club, whether they would continue to run the club aiming to break even or whether they would take a more speculative approach (and promise we can win a European trophy within 6 years by following a new more ambitious business model).

If i heard RA correctly at the meeting (and i was in the back row and may not have heard every word correctly) it was sounding like SG has asked the SFA to show the St Mirren board the document they would be expected to sign if they sell the club next week and which will require the selling consortium to declare they have done proper due diligence on any new owners and at this stage there is no document in existence for SG and the board to sign! The SFA know that in the next week 2 SPL clubs could begin changing ownership and have just voted in a rule change to make the sellers of a club responsible for selling to 'fit and proper' persons and to sign a document saying they have done all reasonable due diligence but as yet the SFA can't provide a document or draft document so any sellers of clubs can see what they are supposed to sign off. Crazy! The other concern with the new SFA resolution is that it looks as if it is just there to cover their own backs post-Craig Whyte, so if another club owner looks dodgy no one can moan why did the SFA not stop them gaining control of the club in the first place? It is not clear what the SFA can do if someone sells a club and signs their document to say they have done due diligence and the new owners are fit and proper and then 2 or 3 years down the line there is an insolvency event and voila it looks like the new owners aren't fit and proper after all. The previous owners haven't got involved in another club and are no longer active in football, they could have moved abroad or retired what do the SFA do next?

I didn't think SMISA were attacked. As someone not involved with SMISA I am not aware of what the sticking points between them and 10000Hours are and I think RA was asked a question about SMISA's opposition / view on 10000 Hours during which he pointed out that SMISA have similar clauses in their own constitution to the clauses in 10000Hours draft constitution that they were concerned about. Lots of people laughed at that point and one person accused RA of humiliating (or trying to) SMISA. RA explained why it makes sense for SMISA and 10000 Hours to have those clauses in their constitution. RA also said that SMISA have been given the same level of information and detail as the Social funders BII who were going to put in £500k and he appreciated that SMISA had handled the info correctly, i.e. the info provided was confidential and could not at this stage be shared with the wider SMISA members and no one at SMISA had leaked anything. Later on RA also said that in the absence of an organised No campaign to the CIC he thought SMISA have played an important role in saying the CIC bid had to be scrutinised by the fans rather than blindly accepted and SMISA as a supporters body had behaved in the way that supporters groups should and seemed to welcome the robust questioning / policing of the CIC bid by SMISA but did say he thought some of the criticism seemed personal. The impression I was left with was if the CIC does get the bid accepted then RA would be happy for all the previously confidential info given to SMISA's leadership to be shared with the wider membership who can then vote on whether they accept or not or want to negotiate further. It sounded like RA would like SMISA to be on board and the door is left open for them and that when you strip conspiracy theories away RA was saying one of the main issues between 10000Hours and SMISA was SMISA cannot commit their £50k without the full membership voting on the issue and 10000Hours could not allow SMISA to give out the detailed info to the membership to vote on because there have been other note of interest in buying the majority shareholding besides 10000Hours bid and some of the detail had to stay confidential.

Went along tonight, missed the first 30 minutes due to a prior commitment and was able to speak with RA after the main meeting closed about my concerns about Rangers and sporting integrity and where St Mirren stood on the issue and now feel reassured enough by his answers to proceed with re-submitting my direct debit.

CVA has been drawn up on the assumption that the Big Tax Case still won't have ruled by the time the meeting takes place meaning Ticketus are the biggest creditor (roughly £27m) and HMRC are second biggest creditor (roughly £21m). If the Big Tax Case does conclude and find in HMRC's favour then HMRC will be the biggest creditor. The size of the pot for the CVA will stay the same meaning that if HMRC win the Big Tax Case before the creditors vote then they will get a bigger share of the £5m total available to all creditors.

However it only needs Ticketus and HMRC to accept the CVA and they have the 75% of votes required to pass the CVA... Murray's companies won't have much of a say. (I'm hoping HMRC don't do a deal)

Fair point that none of the other non-CIC bids are asking for fans to fund most of their takeover bids. However, with the 2 new rival bids we don't know who is making them and whether it is a case of 1 new owner taking on the club or a consortium or how they are funding the takeover or if they have cash to buy the club without using the club's assets as security or if they are getting Ticketus to put the money in etc. At least with REA and 10000Hours he has explained broadly how he would attempt to fund the takeover and broken down how much different groups would pay and how long it would take to repay the loans etc and how many fans are needed to buy into his plan,and there is a vision of increasing links to the community in Paisley and hoping to grow attendances through stronger links with people in the area.

I don't remember Ken McGeoch, Massone (?) or the crowd that failed to buy Queen of the South telling the fans anything about their bids / enquiries / offers for St Mirren.

Is the sale price not going to be whatever 10000Hours can offer based on the number of completed DD mandates and 87 club memberships and it will then be up to the consortium to decide if they accept it or not?

I fear that Rangers will escape the type of punishment they deserve on legal technicalities due to the SFA and SPL rulebooks not being designed to cope with the level of cheating they have got away with for the last 15 years or so. The SPL meeting today clearly hopes that RFC will get their CVA approved and will move out of administration and there will be no need to vote on a newco application... and if that happens RFC start in next year's SPL as one of teh only debt free clubs in the league and may be allowed to sign players following the court of session ruling yesterday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/18265663?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=sportsound Good old John McBeth... sense at last!

Is this the same Daily Record you were pillorying a few weeks back? Pretty sure i saw a Daily Record front page a while back with a headstone with RFC's name on it but that doesn't change the fact that if Ticketus and HMRC vote to accept the CVA which has been put to creditors then Rangers will be out of administration, and debt free before the season starts and possibly allowed to begin signing players again. By not paying NI & PAYE for a season, going in to administration getting a CVA agreed RFC could land on their feet and be better off financially than Celtic. The only way the Big Tax Case affects things is if RFC win creditors will get a maximum of 9p in the £ and if they lose then creditors could end up with 2p or less in the £.

The problem is the SFA and SPL's rulebooks never envisaged a club could attempt to cheat on the epic scale and for the length of time that RFC have been cheating for. If St Mirren field 1 ineligible unused sub in a Scottish Cup game that is covered in the rule book, and we get a fine of £12k after an appeal. In subsequent years after a rule change clubs were thrown out the cup for the same offence. But with RFC the problem is that the SPL and SFA never imagined a scenario where a club could evade paying £17m in NI and PAYE in one season, rack up debts of around £135m or more, field teams full of ineligible players in every league and cup match they play in for a decade or more and still expect to play in the SPL next season and be allowed to sign more players for next season so they can still have a chance of winning the SPL moments after telling their creditors that receiving a maximum of 9p in the £ is better than receiving the 0p in the £ they would get if they were liquidated.

53 players and coaches and staff had EBTs and side (double) contracts over a decade... £47m paid out in EBTs all tax free, Barry Ferguson alone received the equivalent of twice the annual squad budget at St mirren in EBT payments, under SFA rules fielding an ineligible player should result in a team losing the match... RFC had whole teams full of ineligible players... some guys who didnt even make a first team appearance were paid with EBTs!

The comedy gold continues: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/18137913

Would be interesting to know how much it is costing the SFA and SPL to run their investigations into Rangers given that judges are involved in some of it and how much RFC continually appealing decisions costs the rest of Scottish football. We are reaching the stage where we should be saying to RFC / Duff & Phelps that if they want to appeal any more decisions by the SFA or SPL they pay the full costs of the appeals win, lose or draw!

Duff & Phelps hire more lawyers to challenge the SFA panel's power to impose the original sanction? Funny how hiring lawyers for appeal after appeal and legal challenge after legal challenge is no problem for Rangers but they can't stump up the £31k they owe Dundee United!

http://www.scribd.co...Note-of-Reasons 63 page report into the SFA investigation into Craig Whyte and his takeover and running of Rangers and explanation of the sanctions. Doesn't look like Sir DM was duped too much!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-17999964#?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=sportsound I love the way this blog casually mentions that last week's Blue Knights bid was for a whopping total of £1.5m... not enough cash to buy the majority shareholding at St Mirren FC nevermind work towards achieving a CVA with Rangers creditors who are owed in the region of £134m!

Duff and Phelps are claiming that they already have '3 other bids on the table' and 1 has a similar amount of quantum to Miller's bid! Can anyone take anything they say seriously now... Alex Thomson's blog yesterday drew attention to their press conference last week where the press were banned from asking questions and said that was a warning sign that any deal with Miller was precarious. One of the bids on the table no doubt belongs to the Blue Knights, who Duff and Phelps said last week had not offered anything like the same amount as Miller... can they now turn round and say the Blue Knights bid is a good 'un?! Miller as well as blaming Rangers fans also hinted that when the books were inspected (or that process of due dilligence began at his end) that things look worse than Duff & Phelps had painted. Would reckon it will be unlikely they have a new preferred bidder by the end of the week and time is running out for them to have a new owner in place for the end of the season!

You said recently that Danny Lennon had failed by not making the top 6 with the squad available to him and had failed by only reaching 2 cup quarter finals in one season and on that basis you still supported your claim from the autumn that he deserved to be sacked even if we ended up 7th after winning a string of 'meaningless' end of season friendlies. In the post-split fixtures we have played the 2 main relegation candidates and League Cup winners and we may also see Hugh Murray play his last game for the club. Given how much you bang on about the prestige and financial rewards of getting to a semi final at Hampden (or elsewhere as it often is in our case) I would have thought that the difference in prestige and prizemoney available to clubs finishing 10th or 7th also meant that the post-split games are not meaningless. The money we could earn by finishing 7th or 8th as opposed to the usual-Gus-SPL-places will probably bring in a similar amount of cash as your cherished semi-final appearance. When it comes to summer signings I would also think if we finish 7th or 8th as opposed to 10th or 11th potential signing proespects will think the club have a chance of top 6 or maybe even Europe next year as opposed to viewing us as potential relegation canidates. Anyway, here's a sample of what you actually said before the split:

... but not the only important match in the season despite it being the only match you mention in just about every post which is St Mirren related. (P.S. I don't mean that the only other game that counts as important was the quarter-final replay with Hearts!)

but Lex will tell us some of these results were achieved in end-of-season-meaningless-friendlies and what really counts is that the gap between us and the top 6 at the time of the split was bigger than in some seasons under Gus