So, on Thursday, we kick off the first game of a rather short pre-season programme against the ghastly Livingslime. This hideous Frankenstein's Monster of a club, with the dead corpse of Meadowbank grafted onto the not very appealing head of the West Lothian concrete jungle, makes the trip north in absolute turmoil. Indeed, we may make history in this game, as being the last club ever to play Franchise FC, before their demise.
To readers under 25 it's probably not worth rehearsing the whole and rather sorry history of this loathsome fake club. Briefly, in the early 90s property developer William Provan Hunter took over Meadowbank Thistle, a little supported and rather innocuous lower league Edinburgh side, regarded with patronising affection by most other Scottish fans. Hunter entered into a deal with West Lothian council to move the club lock, stock and barrel to a new purpose built stadium in West Lothian's asphalt desert, which he achieved after a long and brave battle against the move, by Meadowbank's two hundred or so diehards. It was the first example of franchise football in the UK.
Unfortunately, ever since, Livingslime have been a bright light bulb in the murky shadows inhabited by chancers, shysters, fantasists and fly-by-nights. The club, with no history and a fanbase with very shallow and fickle roots (most people in Livingston had an affiliation with one of the Old Firm or Hibs-Herts long before Hunter's freak show rolled into town), was a magnet for those seeking a quick buck, or Walter Mitty type characters promising Champions League football just around the corner. Without boring the readership to death, the latest and most Byzantine chapter in the long and miserable existence of the club-that-never-should-have-been, has been under the stewardship of Italian chairman Angelo Massone. Arriving last summer, having bought the heavily indebted club for £1 from Irish owner Pearse Flynn, Massone delivered the usual asinine patter about "becoming the third force in Scottish football, a line more than good enough to fool the apathetic, gullible and naive majority in the home support. Since then, despite a promising start on the park in 2007-8, the club has lurched from disaster to disaster.
It has still to submit accounts to the SFL for last year; Almondvale has no mains power supply after Scottish Power pulled the plug, literally, over an unpaid £32,000 bill; and, now, the club's Almondvale landlords, West Lothian council, have taken legal action over nearly £300k's worth of unpaid rent on the stadium. By Thursday, there is an outside possibility that Livingston will have had an interim liquidator appointed and will no longer exist, leaving us to cool our heels with no one to play; more likely is that an administrator will be appointed, leaving the club to stagger on- for now.Livingslime's total debt is estimated to be in the region of £1.35 million, but, faced with a queue of creditors longer than the M6, it may well be much higher than that. If it enters administration, it will be for the second time in five years, with this meeting with Mr. Administrator more than likely to be fatal.
It almost defies belief that a club should be allowed to conduct its affairs in this way, and go unpunished by the football authorities. "Livi" are widely detested in the Scottish game, even by fans too young to remember the Meadowbank issue. This is because they have consistently lived beyond their means on budgets utterly unsustainable at a club of their size, and then entered administration to wriggle out of those debts- whilst enjoying the on pitch success that the money they never actually had, brought. Meanwhile, the SFL, aware that a total meltdown of Franchise FC will be embarrassing for their premier competition and cause some chaos in the league, are sitting with damp towels over their heads in a darkened room, praying that somehow all this stuff just, well, goes away. It must be said that what little sympathy that is being extended towards the club, is for the few fans who just want a team to watch on Saturday, who have nothing to do with the succession of crap chairman the club have had, nor their serial failure to pay creditors what they are due in reasonable time. If those fans can build a bit of momentum to re-form a Livingston team in non league and play their way back into the SFL, then they would deserve everyone's support.
With current and former playing staff still owed money, with the club chef having walked out in high dudgeon over an unpaid bill of £7,000, with former manager and assistant Paul Hegarty and Graeme Robertson still awaiting wages after they were suspended then dismissed, the club should at the very least have been demoted to the third division by now. That they haven't, just makes the SFL look spineless, weak and incompetent.
After all, this is the very same body which has pursued the poor Hedgetrimmers with great pedantic vigour, over a frankly irrelevant-at-our-level UEFA directive yet which, faced with gross mismanagement on Livingslime's scale, chooses to look the other way. The neutral would be forgiven for thinking that clubs who live within their means- and are forced to chew on a greasy bolus of second or third division football for years on end as a result- are punished, whilst Livingslime's serial mismanagement induces nothing more than a disinterested shrug of the shoulders. The whole business is an absolute embarrassment and, the longer the SFL allow the matter to drift, the worse the consequences for their competition's integrity.
The slow-motion car crash in West Lothian could still have real effects on this level. If they disappear in the next fortnight, the it is likely that the precedent set last year will be followed- the Fake Diamonds will return to Division One, and Cowden will find themselves in Division Two. This will leave nine clubs in Division Three with no time to hold a credible election to vote a new club in, leaving real financial implications for us all at this level. This is why the SFL are praying that somehow Franchise FC's twitching corpse can be coaxed back to life- at least for one more season- as chaos will follow their demise along with a good deal of justified criticism of the SFL's bizarre inactivity over the issue.
Anyway. Enough football politics. Amazingly, for a club in near terminal decline off the park, Livingslime are able to field a team of reasonable quality. The club has benefitted in recent seasons from an excellent youth policy which has produced players such as Graham Dorrans and McPake (both now playing in the English Championship), and Leigh Griffiths, scorer of 22 first division goals in twenty eight starts last season, and currently celebrating a six figure move to the Dees with a dose of swine flu, poor man. There are plenty more youngsters where those came from, and some experience in the squad, too, with the likes of Chris Innes at the back (Innes last appeared at Links Park in the colours of the defunct Anvil Abusers so would appear to be something of a Jonah.) The club's latest manager is little known American goalkeeping coach John Murphy, who actually comes across very well. So, even if it is their last game, we are likely to face a very stiff test. They already have 90 minutes under their belt, a 0-0 draw with Falkirk at ghostly Almondvale, closed to fans because of the lack of a safety certificate.
For us, manager Steven Tweed has returned from holiday to take charge of the team, which presumably means Moffat has been taking training for the last ten days. It will be interesting to see who starts in goal, and how he intends to marshal his vast defensive resources. I'd expect quite a few different centre half pairings to be tried out. However, we are *very* thin up front. In today's Courier, Tweed admits that the quest to sign John Gemmell is over, as the clubs can't agree on a fee and, if a poster on Pie & Bovril is correct, the player doesn't want to move from Central Park anyway. Tweed has promised several trialists in this match and it will be fascinating to see who he has in mind to sign as a strike partner for Voight. We need a big, experienced striker with a good league pedigree, and there are still a few unattached out there who are desperate to keep their senior careers going. If Tweed is to make one more addition in pre-season it really must be in this position.
I'm very much looking forward to the game on Thursday, it has been a long and football-free pre-season. See you there.
0 comments:
Post a Comment