The Perfect Storm Scotland's Game

We are to give two years' notice of our resignation.

Celtic and Rangers have forced plans for a subscription-based

This programme contains some strong language.

In 1998, Scottish football signed a deal with BSkyB

that brought the world to its door.

The deal resulted in greater exposure,

live TV coverage of matches, a focus on entertainment

and a much increased pot of money to promote the game.

Football had become a global brand,

and Scotland was keen for its share of the action.

But the money came at a price.

The contract affected kick-off times,

top players demanded higher wages,

and TV now called the shots.

It was a whole new ball game.

For many, Scottish football's selling point was the drama

of the Old Firm games between Celtic and Rangers.

They may have attracted the viewers

but they also brought their own problems.

Clubs desperate to compete in this new world

were vulnerable to harebrained schemes,

mavericks with money and ego-driven illusions.

Almost overnight,

the dual drivers of money and media transformed the game

but left Scottish football struggling to forge an identity

that would carry it into the future.

COMMENTATOR: You are about to witness something rather special.

There's an intensity and often a rawness at a live event.

You could almost feel the stadium moving as a living entity.

The perfect storm.

A league decider at Celtic Park that Rangers could win,

at the home of their bitter rivals,

a 6.05 kick-off on a holiday weekend.

The match is the climax to a newly formed business venture

which began one year earlier in 1998 -

the SPL, the Scottish Premier League,

made up of the top 10 to 12 football clubs in Scotland.

It had been formed to push the Scottish clubs

into an increasingly globalised marketplace.

This showdown will be watched by millions of people

in almost 120 countries around the globe,

such is the magnitude of this match.

The rights to broadcast the SPL games

had been sold to Sky Television,

giving them control over scheduling and kick-off times.

Holding an Old Firm game at six o'clock,

at a time when, actually, they were getting so early,

you were lucky if you had finished your breakfast

if you were wanting to go to one of the games,

they were getting earlier and earlier,

and here was a game actually getting late, at six on an evening.

It is one of the biggest fixtures in world football.

The players in Old Firm matches are well warned before the matches

about the possible effect

of their behaviour on spectators,

both within the ground and further afield.

Celtic is losing their discipline here.

This will be a yellow card for dissent.

And a foul by McCann.

Stephane Mahe has to calm down here. He's off!

Oh, he's gone back to have a pop at Hugh Dallas

and his team-mates have got to get Stephane Mahe away,

because he's losing it here, big time.

Ten players were booked.

Three were shown red cards.

It's a third red card on a controversial evening in Glasgow.

There were numerous pitch invasions...

Ah, no, we've got a supporter on the pitch here.

..and 113 fans were arrested over the course of the event.

Hugh Dallas has been hit by something.

And these are shocking scenes at Celtic Park.

There's that intensity and that rawness,

which, in one sense, is what television wants

when it wants live sport, but it doesn't want too much of it,

because there's a line and, occasionally,

that line is crossed, and that was one of those games

where the line was crossed.

Well, they put us all to shame, these scenes -

the atmosphere at this fixture is nothing short of poisonous.

I had, as my guest, the head of sport at Sky,

and Vic and I looked at each other

and we both realised that we had a problem.

Somebody else came over to us both

and was gleeful because it was "great television".

But I realised that the morning after

was not going to be a lot of laughs.

He and I spoke maybe five, six times over that weekend

and both of us asked each other, you know, if we could continue.

Remember, the whole cornerstone of the SPL

was based around that contract and the 6.05 game.

That time had never been agreed by the police.

If we had to move the time slot,

Sky would've been able to say, "We're walking away."

That was a seminal moment - the SPL could have died then.

The finances of the SPL would have gone.

So that was two or three very, very heavy days.

Television's grip on football began in earnest nine years earlier,

with the arrival of Sky Television.

February 5th 1989 - the dawn of television's new age.

One of their first moves was to invest around ?190 million

in the English Premier League,

giving them the rights to transmit English games all over the world.

The armchair fans - and their subscription fees -

were about to become key players in the future of football.

The FA Premier League. Live, only on Sky.

It took the arrival of Sky to make all the other broadcasters,

I think, around the world, realise how important sport was.

People in Scotland would say,

"I'm going to watch the game in the pub."

What game is it? Doesn't matter, it's a live game.

Television was always important to football

but it has become the absolute key financial driver of football.

The fans have become less important, in many ways,

and subscribers and television viewers

have become more important.

In terms of the drama that was needed to bring in an audience,

there was no doubt what the SPL's biggest selling point was.

People don't like to hear this,

but Celtic and Rangers finance Scottish football.

There is no sponsorship without Celtic and Rangers.

There's no TV deal without Celtic and Rangers.

The Old Firm are that kind of

double-edged sword for the Scottish authorities, in one sense.

Part of them, actually, you know, resent the circus that goes with it

but in an age where all the football leagues look kind of similar,

you have to differentiate yourself because you're in a selling market

and the Old Firm offer you something that's different,

that's distinctive and unique.

So the kind of challenge you have

is how do you kind of market that side of it,

while recognising there is a kind of potential downside to that.

Erm...and that's...that's a kind of interesting dilemma.

It was a dilemma that had haunted Scottish football for decades.

This is now like a scene out of Apocalypse Now.

It may have been a good story for television,

but it wasn't so good for the country.

One particular series of events revealed to the rest of the world

the unpleasant underbelly of Scottish football and society.

REPORTERS: 'Packages containing bullets

'have been sent to the Celtic manager Neil Lennon...'

'..continue to investigate a parcel bomb campaign

'against Celtic manager...'

'Police confirmed Lennon was sent a parcel bomb designed to kill.'

Here we were,

in socially enlightened, 21st-century,

fair and just Scotland.

But amidst us was this high-profile captain, then manager, of Celtic,

who was being subjected to a - there's no other way to put it -

a campaign of terror.

'Two Glasgow University students

'who attacked Celtic star Neil Lennon admitted

'drunkenly chasing the footballer in his car

'before spitting and abusing him.'

Neil Lennon arrived and Martin O'Neill arrived -

two high-profile Catholic figures in football,

they came to Scotland from Northern Ireland -

and it all kicked off.

Issues that Scotland thought had been consigned to the past

were suddenly re-ignited.

He expected a certain amount of abuse.

I think, obviously, when it got really out of hand...

You don't mind the hate mail,

but when bullets are sent through the post to you,

I think that's when it can get absolutely nasty.

He was going to stick up for himself.

He would comment in the press, he would defend himself verbally,

he would sometimes defend himself physically.

He wasn't going to take any of this abuse lying down.

ANGRY SHOUTING

Skirmishes, arrests, inquiries and summits -

recorded, photographed and broadcast

to every corner of the world.

The story ran and ran,

even as the aggression towards Lennon heightened.

I was about seven or eight yards from where it happened.

I remember thinking,

"Can you imagine, on Match Of The Day,

"seeing Arsene Wenger being attacked by a fan, or Jose Mourinho?"

You just couldn't conceive of it.

And it perfectly captured

the tragedy of Neil Lennon's experience in Scottish football.

It summed it up.

It wasn't make-believe. It wasn't fiction.

It wasn't a spoof film - it actually happened.

It was really embarrassing for Scotland and Scottish football.

It was tragic. It held up a mirror to us

and it showed a very ugly image back to us of what we were.

The Scottish game was paying the money men in blood -

television audiences first, social consequences later.

But it still wasn't enough to save them.

Satellite television and the money it brought in its wake

was having a profound effect on the game.

In June 2000, Sky injected another ?1.1 billion

into the English leagues.

Scottish clubs, desperate for the same level of funding,

attempted a renegotiation of their terms.

The SPL, they seemed to feel that English football was being paid X,

so they should be paid X.

But it's not like-for-like, you know?

It's two totally different things.

You know...people in Scotland love to watch English football.

I'm not sure people in England love to watch Scottish football.

Scottish football is a little boy with the nose pressed against the window.

On the other side of the window

is English football...and the billions.

It's a glass window, but it's, like, ten feet thick.

We have entered into commercialism. We have made a deal with the Devil,

and the Devil doesn't pay over the odds for what he doesn't want.

We had done internal studies

that talked about us getting almost double the monies

we were getting on the current contract.

The clubs were getting very excited,

so excited that they started arguing about how to split the pie.

That argument took six months.

Six months - long enough for the dot.com bubble to burst

and for the planes to hit the Twin Towers.

That money was no longer on the table,

so the argument had been futile.

It created a huge amount of bad blood.

But we had missed our moment.

Someone at the SPL said to Sky,

"You're insulting Scottish football, take that offer off the table."

So they took it off the table

and went and insulted the English Football League instead,

who were happy to take the money,

and I think the SPL suffered.

The SPL had just turned down

the biggest - and only - deal on the table.

Without that money, Scottish clubs could not compete

with other European clubs on the global stage.

But Mitchell had an ace up his sleeve.

The clubs hatched a plan to go it alone

with a bold proposal for a self-run football television station -

SPL TV.

Our only other option is to do our own channel.

People didn't know what that meant

so we had to spend a lot of time studying it, market research,

preparing it - six months.

And after every month, we went back to the clubs and said,

"Here's our update, here's our update -

"are you all up for this?"

"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes."

I didn't think SPL TV would ever fly.

I thought they were sabre-rattling.

They were just trying to create competition where none existed,

and I don't believe that it was ever serious.

It was an innovative venture -

especially in the days before YouTube and social media -

but the bold business move relied on a united front.

So when it was discovered Celtic and Rangers

had been in secret negotiations to leave the SPL,

joining the better-resourced English Premier League,

the death knell was sounded before it had even begun.

At the last meeting, Celtic and Rangers said no.

It was a bit of a surprise that they said no -

so much so that the ten clubs asked them to leave the room

and resigned from the league.

We are to give two years' notice of our resignation.

Celtic and Rangers have forced plans for a subscription-based

SPL television channel to be abandoned.

At a meeting of the 12 clubs this morning,

the Old Firm wouldn't back the deal,

which effectively puts an end to it.

So you can imagine the whole project at that point died.

And financially, it was a disaster for Scottish football.

And that wasn't the only problem they faced.

Roger Mitchell decided to give the negotiations

with the broadcasters one more go,

but found at one of his appointments with a friendly television executive

that Rangers and Celtic weren't the only ones

operating behind closed doors.

He said, "Roger, you don't really know what you were dealing with."

And he turned his computer screen around

and showed our internal business plan for SPL television.

That he had known everything from the start.

People - I don't know who it was, but I can guess -

had been telling him what we were planning to do,

what I was planning to do.

So it was like playing poker

with your opponent knowing exactly what cards you had in your hand.

All the money that had been there

to allow them to compete in the new marketplace

had just disappeared.

I'm not angry about it.

I just feel that it was a huge missed opportunity.

A more modest agreement with BBC Scotland kept live football

on air for the next two seasons

before the arrival of a new big money deal -

this time with Dublin-based sports service Setanta.

Five years of stability followed

and then rumours of the broadcaster's financial problems

began to emerge.

I remember the very first time

I appeared on radio in Scotland,

going into the studio with a cutting from the Sunday Business Post,

Ireland's Financial Times

from the previous week,

and it was a brilliant news story -

"Collapse of Setanta imminent."

It hadn't been reported in Scotland.

So I read it out on the radio

and it kind of triggered this questioning of Setanta,

and eventually Setanta came out and said,

"Yeah, we're in trouble here."

And it was just another kicking for Scottish football.

The clubs were going around with their hair on fire.

You know, "We're not going to survive."

Armageddon. Before the other Armageddon!

That was the first Armageddon.

One of the reasons the SPL was created

was to provide a more profitable model,

keeping all the member clubs financially solvent,

but, with the collapse of the Sky and subsequent TV deals,

financial ruin was back as a real possibility,

especially for some of the smaller clubs.

Motherwell thought that spending money would be the best way

of improving their fortunes.

In what he saw as a visionary move,

the owner John Boyle appointed a former footballer

as the Chief Executive.

He's got considerable skill as a businessperson,

as a person who knows the business of football,

and his appointment as Chief Executive

will be one further step along the road of building Motherwell up

into one of the challenging clubs in Scotland.

Over McCarthy's head this time...

Nevin, with Wilson...

He's got round him.

Will he try one from here?

What a superb goal by Nevin!

Pat Nevin had considerable experience in finance.

His university degree in commerce

and his experience of running players' associations

helped him shape a business plan.

I explained to John Boyle,

after looking at it for a few months,

"This is going to cost you a lot of money.

"And, if you want to be successful,

"it's going to cost you a hell of a lot of money."

I gave him three scenarios -

a kind of average side, a half-decent side,

and a side that could get third or fourth.

It came out at roughly two million quid a year

to get a side that would battle for third and fourth.

Two million quid losses per year.

And he said, "Yeah, OK."

And I went, "Really?!

"OK, if you want to."

So we put something in place there that worked quite quickly.

It was a short-term solution to a long-term problem

and it had been tried before,

but the lessons of overspending had still not been learned.

Clubs continued to hope that the more they spent

and the higher their spot in the league,

then the more money would come their way...

..but it was a gamble that rarely paid off.

After the first season, we got straight up,

battling with Hearts.

A lot of teams had bigger budgets than us anyway,

but we were able to punch decently around and above our weight

for a period of time.

But...I could feel it wasn't right.

You don't feel good when there's a red part of the accounts.

And that's when the problems kind of started for Motherwell,

because, understandably, the owner thought,

"Well, wait a minute, I was willing to lose X amount a year,

"but I'm not going to lose X amount a year

"plus another two million, or whatever it is, on top of that."

Scottish football has been shaken by the news that

the Premier League club Motherwell has gone into administration.

The Chief Executive, Pat Nevin, has resigned

and the court of session has been asked to appoint an administrator.

The failure to agree a deal with Sky TV last year,

and the collapse of plans for SPL TV,

which we wholeheartedly supported,

were bitterly disappointing

and extremely bad news for us financially.

It's going to be very painful,

it's going to be very difficult,

but it is, quite honestly, the only possible way forward.

The players dismissed by Motherwell yesterday

as part of a cost-cutting exercise

say they feel bitterly let down by the club.

I think we're talking about a war between football and business here.

For the first time, the businesses are running all over football

and that's hard to understand.

It will be a slimline Motherwell on a much lower cost base

and that may have a chance,

in the current climate of Scottish football,

of surviving.

Motherwell did survive...just.

After narrowly escaping relegation from the SPL,

they limped on, but without much success.

Subscription TV was where the money lay

but Scottish football was still outside the party

with its nose pressed up against the glass.

Some clubs went for glamour in an effort to attract more TV coverage.

Dundee were uniquely connected to Italian football.

And their management team were in charge, if you like,

of bringing in players,

and they had these connections to, actually,

some very, very talented players, of course -

Argentinians, Italians and all the rest of it.

Dundee signed guys like Claudio Caniggia.

Who would have thought of

an Argentinian World Cup star

singing for Dundee?

You know, they were signing players from all over the world

and, for a wee while,

it was one of the finest Dundee sides I'd seen for years.

There's a game against Clyde midweek

when Fabrizio Ravanelli comes off the bench and scores a hat-trick.

We were almost bewitched by the romance of these players -

their fame, their kind of celebrity.

They were paying these players way beyond

what their 5,000-6,000 crowd could ever justify.

The intention was to sell them on and the experiment ended in failure.

And whilst it might have been a great rollercoaster

for Dundee fans at the time,

it tipped them into administration for the first

and then subsequently a second time.

With no lucrative sponsorship or broadcast deals in place,

the clubs fell prey to individual deals

from anyone with money to spend.

Gretna's new five-year plan involves a 6,000-seat stadium

and entry to the SPL.

OK, it sounds ridiculous for a town of less than 3,500 people,

but, with Mileson's millions, it might just be possible.

Brooks Mileson was a self-made multi-millionaire

who had taken advantage of the expanding financial services market

and had an interest in sport.

I will put in the investment that's required here

to meet the requirements and our ambition.

I got sent down to Raydale to meet Brooks.

So I had never seen him.

I didn't know who he was.

And I go into the wee kind of boardroom

and I'm looking about for this guy, and there's a guy hoovering.

This guy's hoovering and I'm like that...

He turns round and I says, "I'm looking for Brooks Mileson."

"Oh, come here, you silly fool." Big cuddle.

"Hi, I'm Brooks." And that was it.

I'm like, "What you doing, doing the hoovering?"

He says, "Everybody does anything here.

"I wouldn't ask you to do anything I wouldn't do myself."

And, right away, you're in love with the guy.

It was like a kind of carnival.

My first game, there was guys on stilts, there was fire-eating,

there was candyfloss everywhere...

It was just a family-orientated club.

This was a story to rival anything offered by the Old Firm.

Even if it was just one man's bank balance that was funding it.

David Graham... This is the title...

He squares it...!

IT'S THERE! Unbelievable!

James Grady has won the league for Gretna!

You would not believe...!

That was his dream. Owning a football club.

He was the guy in charge but he was still a fan.

He still travelled up with all his pals to the games.

He never went into boardrooms.

Three promotions in three years has never been done before

and might never be repeated.

There was no organisational structure in place

to question how one small team from the lower divisions

could storm through three leagues in as many years,

and whether it was sustainable.

Brooks, smelling success,

continued bankrolling the club with even more lavish weekly gifts.

Bonuses included borrowing his luxury sports car,

as he doled out wage cheques personally.

Mileson did finally acknowledge the club's precarious situation.

It can't be run viably.

If you were trying to run this viably,

we'd have a part-time team, as it was in the past,

which is why we were in the lower leagues.

Despite the problems, he pressed on.

The tiny club rose up through the ranks

and reached the showpiece event of the season -

the Scottish Cup Final.

If you want a morality tale about Scottish football,

go to the cup final in which Gretna play Hearts,

which was greeted in the Scottish media as a fairytale,

and, in lots of ways, the sad thing about this was

here was a club predicated on an ego-driven fantasy...

The affable, single-minded moneyman had bought his way to success,

bringing with him on the journey to Hampden

thousands of very happy customers.

Brooks and everybody else within the club

are in a Portakabin selling the tickets with Tupperware boxes.

They've got the tickets in one box and the money is going in the other.

You're like that to yourself... "This isnae right.

"How can we be in a cup final here?"

It was an absolute Ponzi scheme.

It was a con of the worst kind.

And they're playing in our national cup final

and clowns and idiots are calling it a fairy tale.

Do me a favour.

Buying good players to improve a club's future was nothing new,

but this was the first time it had been done in such a blatant way.

The dream continues!

So the penalty shoot out begins...

Skelton steps up...

Off the crossbar, and Hearts have won

the Tennents Scottish Cup 2006!

I'm convinced that, on that day,

a warning shot was fired about the failures of Scottish football.

'Do not spend what you can't afford.'

And Gretna did it in ways that were...

Actually, the best word I can think for it was "shameless".

It was a house of cards.

One small push and it would all topple down.

And, just a few seasons after the cup final,

topple it did,

when Mileson suffered a rapid deterioration in his health.

It think it fell away so quickly

due to the fact that, when Brooks took unwell,

he couldn't communicate.

And his wife, Jerry, took the decision where,

"Unless my husband tells me to write a cheque for anything,

"it's stopping."

And it was that quick. It was that day.

No other money came into the club.

The club's income from football is insufficient to sustain it.

It cannot pay its wages, it cannot pay its commitments,

without the support of Mr Mileson.

Following a board meeting on Friday 7th,

the directors passed a resolution

to place the club into administration.

Brooks Mileson died in November 2008.

He left financial chaos in his wake and a club and fans in mourning.

With no long-term strategy in place,

few checks on the ownership of clubs and little coming in from TV deals,

the clubs were growing increasingly dependent on anyone

who had the money and desire to own a football club.

The rapidly changing social circumstances around the world

would also have a significant effect on Scotland's game.

REPORTER: The Soviet parliament today formally voted the USSR

and itself out of existence.

The break-up of the USSR

had brought into being a whole new breed of oligarch.

The most famous was Roman Abramovich at Chelsea in England

and in Scotland arrived Vladimir Romanov,

greeted like a conquering hero by the weary Hearts fans.

FANS CHANT: Vladimir Romanov!

Where do you start with Vladimir Romanov?

I mean, here's this guy

who gets involved in the banking system in Lithuania

during a time where Russia and the various independent states

are privatising their gas and their electricity and their oil

and all the rest of it and all sorts of bandits are flooding in there

and Romanov, through his banking,

becomes involved in Scottish football.

Some people would say, well, actually, at the time,

he was looking to set up a Lithuanian Ukio Bankas,

his Lithuanian bank, with a headquarters in Edinburgh

to move into the banking system here in the UK -

that's one of the kind of theories around it.

Romanov saw in Hearts an opportunity to play on the global stage -

a chance to promote his bank,

its logo emblazoned on all the club's merchandise.

TRANSLATED: They will be champions of Europe in ten years' time.

TRANSLATED: I promise to build here a new stadium.

And it will be a stadium with the best atmosphere in the world.

Hearts had been in financial turmoil for years.

Badly in debt, the board had taken a controversial decision

to sell the stadium for housing redevelopment.

REPORTER: It's the end of an era for Hearts Football Club.

After months of speculation,

a deal has been done to sell off its Tynecastle ground.

REPORTER: Nothing short of the arrival of a major new investor

can secure Tynecastle's future now.

This sale had been a step too far for the loyal fans

and they mounted a campaign against chairman Chris Robinson

in a bid to prevent it.

You should be ashamed of yourself, you fat bastard, ye.

You pile a' shite, you fucking parasite fuck.

Parasite!

After several failed attempts

to buy into Dunfermline, Dundee and Dundee United,

this gave Romanov the chance he had been waiting for.

APPLAUSE

Within minutes, Hearts supporters changed their loyalty

from a local businessman who had been with the club for years

to a bank-owning oligarch with mysterious motives.

The financial injection had immediate results -

the team headed the league.

Generating huge media interest...

FANS CHANT

..television channels flocked to Tynecastle for live coverage,

documentaries and rolling news reports.

"We can win the league but I buy the players" -

that's the message from Hearts major shareholder Vladimir Romanov.

There was the occasion where the boy Tall came for a trial -

we didn't think he was quite to the standard.

He went home and then within the next week, he arrived at the ground,

he'd signed a three-year contract and he was in my squad.

So, I think when that moment happened,

it was never going to work out.

Burley had achieved great success.

His team were riding high at the top of the league,

ahead of the Old Firm,

but after a number of high-profile disagreements with Romanov,

George Burley was sacked.

Quite incredible. I think we'd played 12 games at the time

and I think we'd won ten and drawn two.

They're going to play it long at the moment and here's Skacel.

Now Pressley! He's equalised for Hearts!

There was obviously disappointment

because George had built a good rapport with the players,

we had a real belief in the way that we were playing.

I always remember this -

he'd been at the club for three months and on his mantelpiece

sat three Manager of the Month awards

and we were losing our manager

so, you know, in that respect, it was quite bizarre.

Romanov had the money

and he also wanted to have his say in how the club was run -

a strategy that put him at odds with almost everyone.

The treatment of some individuals

during that period of time was horrendous.

The honesty, the transparency, just in all the things that I think

are really important in the foundations of a football club,

I thought were being disregarded and it got to the point

where I felt I had to speak out on behalf of all of these people.

A lack of stability, and a constant turnaround of managers,

it was up to the man who had to deal with it on an almost daily basis

to question in public what was really going on.

The club captain summoned the media.

There is only so much a coaching staff, a captain

and certain colleagues can do

without the full backing, direction and coherence of the manager

and those running the football club.

The last two years have been very testing for the players.

Together, we have faced a number of challenges.

I worked hard at retaining some degree of unity.

However, due to the circumstances,

morale understandably is not good

and there is significant unrest within the dressing room.

At no time did Vladimir ever come and face me

after I made that statement.

I don't think he had the courage to face me.

I felt let down.

You know, I had went from being a captain there for many, many years

to being exiled, but again, the amazing thing was

the day that I was told I no longer had a future at Hearts,

I was also offered the assistant manager's job.

Pressley left in 2006.

The club limped on under Romanov for another seven seasons.

Romanov brought in more and more Eastern Bloc talent,

building a team in his own image but with no clear purpose.

I believe, at one point, we had about 80 players on the payroll.

None of that made any sense.

There was no stopping him.

He became this reckless and kind of egocentric owner of Hearts

who took them on this kind of rollercoaster journey...

..and then, of course, sacked their manager and another manager

and another manager and sacked just about anybody

that ever said anything that he disagreed with.

I mean, it was unbelievable, it was almost like he was a Bond villain

or something like that and here he was

in charge of a Scottish football team.

In 2008, the global financial system went in to meltdown.

The system in which Romanov was a participant collapsed.

His business rode the storm but he was eventually cornered in 2011.

Sought by the authorities for suspected embezzlement and fraud,

hounded into hiding in his homeland,

Romanov left his staff, players and fans back in Edinburgh

sifting through the rubble, looking for money that wasn't there.

No idea yet, no idea.

REPORTER: Hearts Football Club will go into administration

within the next 24 hours.

The Edinburgh club has been in financial meltdown for some time

with debts of ?25 million.

We have inherited a fairly bleak situation,

in terms of there is no cash in the club at the moment.

That particular day, when they had that press conference,

I walked out of Tynecastle,

I thought this is... this could be curtains.

And there is also no income due to the club.

I mean they, the messages they were sending out were so grim.

So that's put us in the situation where...

It's been very regrettable but, as of today,

we've had to make 14 administrative staff,

nine full-time and five part-time, redundant.

The vibe was so, so negative.

We've got to be honest, it's as desperate as anything I've seen.

But, you know, from that potential disaster

grows this kind of inspirational story.

Trying to look at the positive side of it,

we all know there's a huge fan base here.

Hearts had something that Gretna didn't - rich community roots

and a large fan base who might just provide a saviour.

I was approached initially by the group that is now

the Foundation of Hearts.

They kind of felt that the supporters needed to stand up

and try and take a little bit of control of the club.

Entrepreneur, computer software and IT specialist,

and with a degree in psychology,

Ann Budge is an award-winning businesswomen

and a Hearts season-ticket holder.

I did think, this cannot be rocket science.

There has got to be a way of running a football club

without losing millions of pounds ever year.

What if I help so I'll basically advance the funds,

buy the club and then let the supporters take time

to buy it back again.

A football club isn't a toy, rich man's or otherwise, it's a business.

It shouldn't be played with,

it should be run appropriately and properly.

Desperate for cash,

Romanov's administrators agreed to the fans' offer,

with Ann Budge's help, to buy the club.

Could fan ownership with community backing succeed

where individual and corporate efforts had failed?

Romanov was only one of many bank owners

devastated by the global financial crisis.

Even businesses deemed too big to fail,

such as the Royal Bank of Scotland,

collapsed but were rescued by the taxpayers.

Then it was the turn of one of the biggest institutions

in Scotland's game to come under scrutiny.

If somebody wants to come in and do a better job than me,

and wants to take a serious interest,

I'm happy to talk to them.

But I don't think it's about money. I would be reasonable to deal with

if I thought it was in the best interests of the club,

but all the people who said

they're going to do this, they're going to do that

and they're going to raise money,

and the share schemes from the trust -

none of that comes to fruition, nobody has delivered an offer

that is serious and, in my opinion, in the best interests of the club.

Rangers had once been valued at ?110 million

but over the years, that value became a fantasy.

Just like the signs of the global financial crash,

the warning signs at Rangers had been ignored, even denied.

Of course there's money available - this is Rangers Football Club.

The basic overdraft of the football club at the year-end

was ?21 million and I'm comfortable with that,

the shareholders are comfortable with that

but it makes great, sensational copy for you people

who want to make it look as if we're in a crisis or something.

Rangers Football Club

have just announced their worst-ever annual results.

Allowing for interest,

the Ibrox club has lost just over ?35 million...

It did take a while for people to say,

"Hang on, this is unsustainable,

"this is industrial-scale spending.

"How in the name of God can they afford this?"

There was a famous interview with Hugh Adam, the Rangers director,

who said this will crash and burn

and it will happen sooner or later

because that is business -

you cannot have those outlays with that income

and hope for a happy ending.

The financial situation also had a considerable impact

on what happened on the pitch.

When I came to Celtic in the year 2000,

and say Rangers were spending ?12 million

on a player like Tore Andre Flo,

they were bringing class players from the continent and across

and looked as if they were able to afford to be able to do that.

David Murray had found a loophole in the tax system,

giving him more disposable cash than the rest of Scottish football,

allowing him to buy more players.

Don't take salaries, don't pay tax, just take loans called EBTs,

Employment Benefit Trust.

Just take these loans,

you don't really have to ever pay them back, and you just get cash.

And you don't have to pay tax on it or PAYE -

that means you can buy more expensive players,

you get an advantage on the pitch. "Yes", says David and the lads.

The first ten years of the century they do this,

Rangers win no fewer than 12 trophies.

While all this is going on,

?47 million is shelled out in these loans,

and directors buy second houses in France,

Rangers get expensive players, success on the pitch.

In making use of EBTs, Rangers drew on advice from tax specialists

and subsequently some judges agreed with their position

when tested in court.

What Rangers were doing was no more than

part of that Wild West, out-of-control global culture

where tax avoidance - as opposed to tax evasion,

which is of course illegal -

is ingrained in everybody's culture everybody is doing it,

and if you're doing it better than the others,

you gain commercial advantage.

COMMENTATOR: This could be the championship-winning goal

if Mikel Arteta can hold his nerve.

You seen how close it was in terms of winning the championship -

it was a goal in it.

We were so level, it wasn't...

It wasnae true.

He can!

Rangers have won their 50th title!

So, if they didnae pay the same kind of money that

Celtic paid their players, we would have been behind them.

You wind up being a football club which is buying players -

in its own words - that it couldn't otherwise afford,

to gain...presumably and seemingly sporting advantage,

otherwise why would else would you do it?

It gained sporting advantage, they win 12 trophies in

the first decade of this century

and, lo and behold, no-one's paying tax.

The spending at Ibrox was based on loans and debts,

and the banks demanded a closer look at their accounts.

At the point when the banking crisis happened,

the cosy relationship David Murray had with the bank began to change.

They started to want to call in all the major debts they had -

not just Rangers, but all major debts -

and a condition of the debt

was that they put a banker on the board of Rangers.

Who was seen... You read about it in the press all the time,

where they were turning around and saying,

"This guy is stopping them buying big players"

and all the rest of it,

and you're thinking, "Are you really getting what's going on here?"

HMRC issued the club with a multimillion pound tax bill.

David Murray was forced to act.

David Murray had got to a stage where when he sold Rangers -

a global brand name with some of the largest, most devoted,

most passionate, most loyal fans in the world -

he had reduced that to an edifice which was worth ?1.

And the only reason it was sold for a pound was because

he was desperate to get rid of it.

He had to, he was under pressure from his own bank,

from the Murray Group - the Murray Group were in trouble -

erm, and he had to off-load it.

That is a catastrophe, and that is a financial mismanagement

of big business, big culture, big football

the like of which I don't think we've seen anywhere else,

certainly on these islands.

If I move on from Rangers, I will leave it in the hands

of people that I think have put their best into the club.

Only guy that will buy it is a bizarre,

slightly Walter Mitty character called Craig Whyte.

APPLAUSE

Can I ask how it feels to be walking in, the dawn of a new...?

It's very exciting.

The supposed billionaire, who didn't

turn out to be a billionaire at all.

And I remember talking to David Murray in the preamble

to the final deal being done, because I had never spoken to

Craig Whyte up until that point,

and I said, "What's he like?"

And Murray said, "He reminds me of a young me."

I thought, "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

And he told me he was convinced that Craig Whyte was the answer.

If Craig Whyte was the answer, I didn't know what the question was.

STUART COSGROVE: Craig Whyte only arrived

because there was an opportunity,

an organisation was being sold by someone that knew

that the debt it was carrying was unsustainable.

In the first interview I did with Craig Whyte,

he had said, "Other than being a slightly regrettable event,

"I don't see what the big deal

"about Rangers going into administration would be."

And in hindsight, you can see that was the plan.

REPORTERS: Rangers have lodged an intention

of going into administration with the Court of Session.

..with Rangers on the verge of administration, what are the...?

..contend with even greater adversity.

What we've done today was the most practical way forward

to safeguard the long-term survival of Rangers,

which is what we're all about,

and prevent the possible closure of the club.

FANS SHOUT OVER HIM

We hope to continue discussions with HMRC,

and have practical proposals in place.

I've spoken to the manager and the staff

and supporters' representatives this afternoon,

and have outlined the position. This is a difficult day for Rangers,

but we will emerge a fitter and stronger club. Thank you very much.

BOOING

ANGRY SHOUTS

He's a coward and he must go! He shouldnae be allowed to rule.

We need to know what's happening at this club. That is the problem -

nobody seems to want to talk to the fans.

The fans are the people who bring the cash into this club

to make it run, and that's what needs to happen.

That house will stay open!

And the fans will make sure it stays open!

Cos we are the people!

We are the people, and it'll never be taken away fae us.

THEY CHANT: Whyte must go! Whyte must go! Whyte must go!

Since the inception of the SPL,

five of its members had entered administration.

But now Rangers were heading for an even greater demise - liquidation,

which would mean exclusion from the professional football leagues.

It was very, very difficult for the Scottish press

and for other branches of Scottish society,

to deal with the idea that there might be no Rangers.

I think they found that perilously difficult to imagine,

and in lots of ways it was beyond the idea of how they framed the way

that Scottish football was.

This is about big sport,

like big banking, going badly out of control.

It is about an organisation which perhaps perceives itself,

and is certainly perceived by the authorities -

and that is critical in Scottish football -

as it was in banking, as being too big to fail.

The brand must be protected.

The power, the reach, the place that this club has, indeed,

in Scottish culture must somehow be protected. It can't go to the wall.

Rangers applied for membership of the football leagues,

hopeful this would see them accommodated within the top tier.

When it came to deals with the media,

the SPL had backed the Old Firm brand with an all-in bet.

Future prosperity had been built on that rivalry

and displays of tribal aggression.

But the rest of Scottish Football had had enough,

and the fans of the other teams demanded to have a say

in the unfolding drama.

I think in this case, fan power really came into play.

I think a lot of football chairmen who were keen to keep Rangers

in the Premiership, for obvious financial reasons,

found that their fan base just weren't going to tolerate it.

Our season ticket sales were about a quarter of what they would

have been normally, at that particular time,

and the fans basically said,

"If you vote them back in, we're not buying a season ticket."

The financial effect for us as a club of not having

season ticket sales would have just been enormous.

We went with what was right for our club. We had to do that.

As many other clubs did.

The decision to place Rangers in the lowest tier of the

professional game would have been unthinkable only months before.

The Scottish Football League's only acceptable position will be

to place Rangers FC into the Third Division

of the Irn-Bru Scottish Football League...

GROWING FAINT, ECHOING: ..from the start of season 2012...

It's an extraordinary story of how a club can be brought

from the very zenith of Scottish football pretty much to start again.

For me, it all goes back to David Murray and hubris.

Spending money that he didn't have, ego, and the EBT disaster.

I would blame David Murray for the collapse of Rangers.

Sir David Murray denies any financial mismanagement

during his time in charge of the club.

This period also saw a major restructuring

of the football league system in Scotland.

And despite the crisis at Rangers,

the predicted downfall of Scottish football failed to materialise.

From the perspective of some football fans,

it's been a great period.

We've seen lots of competitive football.

There is no question that from the vantage point

of St Johnstone fans, we've qualified for Europe

three times on the trot.

STADIUM ANNOUNCER: St Johnstone!

CHEERING

We've had some great wins, particularly away in Europe as well.

Meanwhile, the Highland teams are going on,

getting to cup finals.

Inverness are winning cups and all the rest of it.

From the point of view of many other clubs in Scotland,

this has been a great era for the game.

After four years and several changes

in boardroom and club management,

Rangers Football Club is now back in the top flight.

It's dropped now for Grady!

Oh, what a glorious goal!

Football had gone global.

But questionable decisions at the start of it all

had left Scotland's clubs struggling to play catch up

and vulnerable to predators.

Watching the way that these bandits who had been in financial control,

this series of robber barons, you realise that

capitalists are in it for themselves.

They're in it for a profit.

It made me realise that fan ownership has to be the way ahead.

One enduring constant throughout the lifetime of the SPL are the fans.

Always there, always ready to help, it is the supporters

who genuinely have the best interests of their clubs at heart.

The Hearts supporters were remarkable.

They were almost entirely progressive.

"Don't look back, look forward."

We're still quite a long way off

from even fully understanding how it will work at Hearts.

The one thing I'm sure of is that there's not one right model here.

There are more examples of where it hasn't worked

or where it's caused problems

than there are of where it has worked.

So I think there's still a lot of work to be done on that.

I think there's a yawning gap opened up now between

the authorities running the game and the football fan.

And the football fan out there is thinking, you know,

"You say constantly that you value us, you say constantly that

"you're listening to us. Where's the evidence?"

And I have to agree with them to a large extent, I don't see

much evidence of football fans in this country being listened to.

As the dust settles on the 30-year revolution,

and wise heads make sense of the triumph, transformation and turmoil,

the way ahead remains uncertain.

Our club football may be doing well at local level,

but in the 17 years since that first failed Sky deal,

Scottish football has never managed to attract the investment

that would deliver on its ambitions.

Players, managers, oligarchs, bankers and tycoons

have all attempted to play the game,

but a lack of any sustainable structure at a higher level

means that it's still every club for itself.

And until that changes, Scottish football

will continue to have its face

pressed up against that glass window.

If you're living in bed with an elephant, as the Scots were,

there was a tremendous incentive for David to beat Goliath.

There's something special, an elixir about football

that is almost kind of alcoholic.

If you don't want to play for your country,

then there's something wrong with you.

You've lost a game where the expectations were

that you should win it. How do you deal with that?

And the newspaper front page has got I should get the sack.

Alex Ferguson walked in the room and said a couple of words.

"Jock's dead."

In an unforgiving time, Scotland had its heroes.

Cooper has made it!