Pay Cut for Ally McCoist? Does Rangers’ Boss Have Highest Basic Wage in Scottish Football?

Rangers* do not have financial problems. Their Finance Director made that clear last week. They have £10 million in the bank after all!

But the doubts are still there. When former Directors like Messrs Johnston and King talk of administration, that, especially to Rangers fans, should ring warning bells.

So it was against that backcloth that the press reported Mr McCoist’s willingness to consider whether or not to accept a wage cut, if asked.

Recent criticism of spending at Ibrox has mentioned the salaries of executives and management. Mr McCoist’s basic wage is understood to be £700,000 (plus bonuses). As that was his salary with the now liquidated Rangers, he was entitled to insist on keeping those terms when his employer changed from Rangers Football Club PLC to Sevco Scotland Ltd/The Rangers Football Club Ltd and thence to Rangers International Football Club PLC.

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Guess Who Has Been Ordered to Pay Legal Costs of 5 Players With Whom It Was In Dispute?

There are occasional moments, when I have had my last mug of tea for the day (Vanilla Earl Grey, if you’re putting the kettle on thank you) and I think if I should write a blog post for the next morning. Has anything happened which justifies me looking at the legalities of some situation?

On those occasions I can generally depend on one particular football team to be involved in something which has a legal aspect to it.

People ask me why I keep writing about Rangers – is it an obsession?

The short answer is that there has been no other entity in Scotland which has been involved in so many different aspects of the law over the last two years.

Tax, company law, insolvency, family law, damages claims, breach of contract, employment law, defamation, privilege, Data Protection, breach of confidence … you name it, and it has been there.

The Latest Sayings of Rangers’ Charles Green – Blackmail, Terrorists, Desperados and Ratner-esque “Worst Rangers Team Ever”!

Mr Green has been, by his standards, quite quiet recently. However one cannot keep a good man down!

On the back of the excellent results for Rangers announced last week, Mr Green made some comments. I have extracted them from the STV website here. My observations on his bons mots as in bold.

“No one has got security, no one will ever be given security – Murray Park and the stadium are unencumbered. No one has got a charge over them, we have got no bank debt, no institutional debt and we are never going to have any.”

Excellent! Well done! After all, if there is no debt then the club/company/holding company (delete as appropriate) cannot end up in the same mess as oldco managed!

Just a couple of points come to mind (but as Mr Green’s business record is infinitely better than mine, I am sure I have simply misunderstood the implications of what the Businessman of the Year has had to say).

“Déjà Vu All Over Again” – Reaction to the SFA Arbitration Panel’s Rejection of Rangers Claim

I mentioned the rejection of newco Rangers claim for compensation for breach of contract from the players who refused to accept a TUPE transfer from oldco to newco last summer. This was despite Mr Green taking a rosy view of proceedings before the decision was issued.

The reaction on the Rangers website was an appropriate one – stating the import of the decision, but that the claim would continue, with the relevant papers already having been filed.

I noticed that today’s blog by Mr Leggat provided one reaction from a Rangers perspective, which seems, from a cursory glance, to meet the approval of other fans of the Ibrox club.

For those who do not know, Mr Leggat is a respected journalist and author of many years’ standing, who now blogs on Rangers, and primarily on the injustices, iniquities and evils being inflicted upon his favoured team by all and sundry. His views might not be accepted by everyone, but they are rarely dull.

As background the SFA Arbitration Panel is made up of members from a list of willing participants from football, business and the law. It operates on a cab-rank principle – people get chosen in turn for cases, rather than being specifically selected, although conflicts of interest would disqualify a member from sitting on a Panel should that exist.

The Scottish football authorities came up with this as an idea to avoid the problems inherent in the previous system, and as pointed out by the late Paul McBride QC, where committees of SFA members would consider these matters. The SFA decided after hearing the criticism to establish an “arm’s length” system for these matters.

Rangers Suffer Defeat at the SFA Arbitration Panel – False Hopes and Winking Sheriffs

You might recall that I commented on a story on the Rangers website in early January, which was headlined “Rangers Compensation Claim Boost”.

As Rangers .co.uk reported at the time:-

RANGERS have made a successful start to their bid to win compensation for the players who walked out on the club last summer.

The club is chasing Allan McGregor, Kyle Lafferty, Jamie Ness, Stevie Naismith, Steven Whittaker and Sone Aluko for breaching their contracts. Compensation is also being sought from their clubs – Besiktas, Sion, Stoke City, Everton, Norwich City and Hull City.

A meeting took place on Monday at Hampden to discuss jurisdiction on the case and Rangers prevailed.

Chief Executive Charles Green told RangersTV: “From our side it went as well as we could have expected. From the other side I’m sure they will be disappointed. Clearly they wanted they commission to throw it out and rule that the SFA had no jurisdiction because the whole process of the first meeting was about jurisdiction.

“What we stated at the meeting was that newco wants to continue where oldco was. We have this slight anomaly where for a period newco were not members of the SFA from June 14 until being granted membership on August 3.