Gretna cast into Third Division and ordered to find buyer within week

GRETNA lurched ever closer to extinction yesterday when they were relegated to the Third Division of the Scottish Football League with a warning they will be expelled completely next week if a buyer for the club is not secured.

A Glasgow-based consortium, headed by football agent Paul Davies, failed to convince the management committee of the SFL that their proposed bid for Gretna was credible enough to sustain them in the First Division next season.

At the SFL's annual general meeting at Hampden later in the day, the management committee's decision to demote Gretna to the lowest rung of the senior league ladder was endorsed unanimously.

It means Airdrie United and Stranraer, beaten finalists in the Second and Third Division play-offs earlier this month, have been promoted to the First and Second Divisions respectively.

Gretna, who entered administration in March when benefactor Brooks Mileson severed his ties with the club, were relegated after just one season in the Scottish Premier League.

Administrators Wilson Field last week made all remaining players and staff of the club redundant, but still hope to find a buyer willing to take on Gretna in the Third Division.

David Longmuir, the chief executive of the SFL, insisted last night that his organisation will not allow Gretna to retain their membership unless they come out of administration next week.

"We wouldn't allow that to happen," said Longmuir. "The administrator has given us fixed guarantees that he will not be taking Gretna forward in administration to play football next season. Gretna will not be playing football in the Scottish Football League as a club in administration. The cut-off point for us in terms of Gretna finding a buyer is a matter of days from now. I would hope we will have total clarity by the very early point of next week."

Should Gretna fail to satisfy the SFL, the process to elect a new member club for the vacancy will begin with several candidates, including Spartans and Cove Rangers, having already expressed an interest.

"If Gretna fold," added Longmuir, "then we will put in place a contingency plan which will involve opening up the Third Division for applications for a new club to join the Scottish Football League. We would try and do that as quickly as possible.

"We have been in close consultation with the Gretna administrator over the last few weeks, trying to work out if there was some kind of way we could help Gretna fulfil football in the Scottish Football League First Division.

"As a result of today's meetings, we have realised this was not going to be possible and… we have decided to invoke one of our rules to relegate Gretna to the Third Division.

"We have done this in consultation with the administrator at every point and, to be fair, we have had a very good working relationship with him. He has agreed with everything we have decided, including putting Gretna into the Third Division.

"He believes he still has an interested party who may wish to take Gretna forward as a Third Division club. That remains to be seen and is up to the administrator to decide now if that plan is a sustainable one.

"We had to make sure we protected the integrity of our league There was no commitment from the administrator that Gretna could fulfil their fixtures at all in the forthcoming season and, therefore, we had to do what we felt was right for our league."

Longmuir revealed that the proposals submitted by the Paul Davies-led consortium yesterday fell considerably short of satisfying the SFL management committee on a variety of basic issues, not least that it had already failed to convince administrator David Elliot of its worth.

"A lot of it was based on, first of all, the administrator telling us that he did not see a sustainable business plan on the table from the third party who was trying to buy Gretna," said Longmuir.

"We also looked at their business plan and we agreed with the administrator's assessment. We found many fundamental flaws in that business plan. It was based on a number of things which were just not right.

"We also have to recognise the fact there has been no work or development done on Raydale Park since 2006 and, therefore, Raydale Park itself was going to be an issue for us.

"There were a number of others issues around the areas of Uefa and SFA rules on football debt which the third party was unable to quantify or give total clarity on how he was going to handle those debts. We decided that the risks were far too high and took the decision to relegate Gretna to the Third Division."

Airdrie United chairman Jim Ballantyne, a member of the SFL management committee, took no part in the decision making process yesterday because of the potential benefit which his own club duly accrued.

Having been involved in rescuing Airdrie United from the ashes of Airdrieonians and Clydebank back in 2002, Ballantyne has sympathy for Gretna's plight which tempered his delight at promotion to the First Division.

"I feel for Gretna, having been so close to what happened to my own club six years ago," said Ballantyne. "It's disappointing how it has worked out, but Gretna still have a chance to get themselves sorted and stay within the Scottish Football League."