The life of a football fan is punctuated with levels of extreme high when your team scores a goal, wins a match, wins a cup or wins the league. Sometimes a single goal in a match midway through a season is celebrated more than seeing your team lifting a trophy, its all about the build up to that moment and the occasion surrounding it.
Similarly your life is punctuated with extreme lows when your team loses a goal, a match, a cup or a league. Nick Hornby stated that the natural state of the football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score and there’s an element of truth in that. Sometimes the memory of that crushing feeling of defeat and loss far outweighs the memories of victories and celebration.
As a Celtic fan of some vintage, I have been witness to some scarf over the face moments; Inverness Caley Thistle, Clyde and Ross County
Nothing compares to the two league titles that were lost on the last day of the season in 2003 and 2005. I can recollect every moment of these games, every emotion during the 90 mins and the hours and days in the aftermath of them, more so than any title win.
In 2003 we travelled back from Seville on the Friday and headed down to Rugby Park
The press would eulogise in the aftermath, pointing out how good a team Rangers must be and what an achievement for the club to beat a Celtic Team in the League and League Cup Final. A Celtic team that was generally agreed was the most talented Celtic side in decades, what an achievement for Rangers, what a manager they had.
Well now we know the truth of the matter, Chris Sutton was half right when he said we were cheated that day, we had been cheated for years. By utilising the EBT tax avoidance scheme and not declaring side contracts / letters / additional payments to the SFA and SPL they intentionally cheated. It was a club policy to pay players in this way; players who would have attracted the highest tax rate were able to be paid twice as much as the club could have afforded otherwise. By doing so they were able to employ players who ordinarily they couldn’t attract or afford and covered up the fact they were doing it with the SFA / SPL.
Heres the Rangers Team That played against Dunfermline the day they won 6-1 and pipped us to the title;
Klos (EBT),
Ricksen (EBT), Moore (EBT), Amoruso (EBT), Numan (EBT),
Mols (EBT) (Thompson 62 EBT), Arveladze.
Of the 13 players involved that day 12 were recipients of the Employee Benefit Trust, 5 of the goals were scored by EBT Players; they were managed by someone in receipt of an EBT.
Fast Forward to 2005 and we are standing at Fir Park
Again we had this loss rubbed in our faces, it was dubbed Helicopter Sunday and the celebrations and eulogizing lasted for weeks, the feeling of disappointment still remains. Alex McLeish was quoted recently that nothing has given him as much satisfaction as snatching the league title from Martin O'Neill's Celtic in the final three minutes of the 2004/05 campaign.
But again we were cheated, heres the Rangers Line up that day;
Waterreus (EBT),
Ricksen(EBT), Andrews (EBT), Kyrgiakos(EBT), Ball (EBT),
Arveladze, Ferguson
Prso (EBT), Novo (EBT).
Subs Not Used: McGregor, Thompson (EBT), Malcolm (EBT), Burke (EBT), McCormack, Steven Smith (EBT), Lovenkrands (EBT).
Apart from Arveladze, Mcgregor and McCormack the whole team and substitutes bench were being paid in contrivance of the SFA / SPL rules and of course the manager who rates this as his greater ever achievement was also evading his tax. Without breaking the rules Rangers would have been unable to field any of these players, they would have had to operate within their means and utilise a squad that would have been considerably under strength.
In the EBT years Rangers were able to entice players on salaries they could not afford and then subsequently sell them on for massive profit which they were then able to reinvest in the squad. By recruiting Boumsong and Cueller alone in a short space of time Rangers netted almost £14 million in profit from there sales. So on top of the money they have cheated from HMRC that’s another £14 million they accrued that they wouldn’t have been able to outwith using the EBT’s
In reality since the days of Graeme Souness sweeping into ibrox (Note: Only Rangers men sweep into anywhere) whether it’s been from excessive borrowing, EBT Tax avoidance or bank funded share issues we haven’t seen the real Rangers. Before this when I started watching football Rangers were a shell of a club, dwindling support, substandard players (not aided by their sectarian signing policy) they had not won a league title since 1978 – nine years of wilderness. For the people who talk about the league needing “a strong Rangers” back in football I would ask who are the real Rangers? Because they have been operating artificially and outwith the rules for the best part of twenty years.
Spare me the claims of those deluded followers and journalists – Jim Traynor especially who’s over exposure in the written, radio and television media has allowed him to popularise the myth that they have been punished enough. The Rangers fans have had their celebrations, title parties, flag days and triumphalism for years on the back of these cheated titles. The good times they have enjoyed have been so plentiful that the punishments so far imposed and the potential punishments awaiting do not out weigh that in my opinion.
The old Rangers are in a sack filled with bricks at the bottom of an ocean getting devoured by plankton, this new club which as yet have no where to play are lying like injured road kill on the side of the road awaiting one final juggernaut before they are terminated too. All of it self inflicted but don’t expect any contrition or making amends as decades of entitlement and “we are the people” have removed the ability to see what is in front of them.
In the words of Thomas Aquinis three conditions are necessary for Penance: contrition, which is sorrow for sin, together with a purpose of amendment; confession of sins without any omission; and satisfaction by means of good works.
Even after seeing Rangers die and even after hearing that titles may be stripped it still doesn’t erase from me any of those memories of gut wrenching disappointment we suffered on those two specific seasons, the slate will never be wiped clean and the penance will never be paid.
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Just to end, with summer upon us many of us will be heading off for a holiday and will be cut off from our usual Celtic Fix, if you want to fill your I-Pod with some entertaining, engrossing Celtic chat (and some rubbish too) you could do worse than download some of the recent interviews from Beyond the Waves.
Some of the recent interviews with Matt McGlone, tictactic, jim from Greece and many more are worth checking out – some are so long they might even last the whole flight – can be found at the link below.
http://www.spreaker.com/page#!/user/homebhoys
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