[edgie]

Aye just because it took years to get to a court instead of mickey mouse tribunals its legality should be ignored. Do me a favour.

Its cheating pure and simple,and the "side letters" further compounds it via the players registrations. As far as I know no other clubs used ebts in this manner,and ones that even used them at all like arsenal or Celtic settled up long before hmrc came calling.

Jim the I know nothing about the Arsenal one
I know Celtic got juninio from Middlesbrough with the EBT set up already.
our chairman at the time took the position that this was dodgy and reported it to the SPL and the SFA, then paid the tax due.
The issue in footballing terms is not really the legality, just the fact that it wasn't disclosed to the football authorities. EDIT: our football authorities just hid behind the legality issue to reduce and mitigate any punishment
Rangers deliberately hid it from the authorities, side letters and all