DAVID Taylor, the joint general secretary of Uefa and former SFA chief executive, said last night the football world was united in condemning the actions of Rangers in going to the Court of Session to overturn the 12-month transfer embargo imposed on them by the SFA.
Lord Glennie accepted a petition from the Ibrox club's administrators for a judicial review on Tuesday, sparking the footballing version of a constitutional crisis and forcing the SFA to return the matter to the appellate tribunal chaired by Lord Carloway for an alternative sentence.
Specified punishments range from a fine of £100,000 to suspension from the Scottish Cup or suspension or termination of the club's SFA membership, and Taylor admitted Fifa and Uefa will take co-ordinated action to ensure one of their most sacrosanct principles – that clubs should appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport rather than take recourse to "ordinary courts" – is upheld.
Pointing out that he is not involved in Uefa's decision-making process on Rangers, the former Forfar lawyer said: "Football is almost united in saying it isn't the right approach to take to go to court to challenge the authority of the football association when there are other ways of resolving matters. Perhaps it is because the administrators are in charge and aren't familiar with these things, but I would have thought that advice should have been taken before this course of action was pursued."
Taylor said it was likely to be regarded more as a Fifa matter than a Uefa one. He added: "But without getting into areas of speculation, this is still entirely a matter for the Scottish FA. A national association is only the clubs, it isn't something separate. It is like being a member of a golf club or something like that. If you want to be a member of that club then you abide by the rules, or you will suffer sanctions."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article