Glenn Gibbons on Saturday: Uefa threat to debt-ridden clubs as hollow as their bank accounts

FORMER SFA chief executive David Taylor's warning that some or all of Europe's most illustrious clubs could face expulsion over unacceptable levels of debt would, in all probability, be deliberately pitched in alarmist tones in the cause of "impact". It is, however, extremely doubtful that his apocalyptic threat would cause so much as a ripple of concern in boardrooms in London, Manchester, Madrid or Milan.

You could fire a water cannon into an overcrowded stadium and fail to hit anyone who believes that Chelsea, Manchester United, Real Madrid or either of the Milan clubs would be banished from the Uefa "family" for any reason, far less for financial liabilities which are, until such time as they affect others, nobody's business but their own.

Among the most committed sceptics would be the hierarchy of the governing body itself. In private, neither Taylor, his president, Michel Platini, nor any other office bearer in Nyon would even countenance the prospect of ridding themselves of the clubs who generate the revenue that enriches their organisation. It would be, in effect, an exercise in self-amputation.

In order to illustrate the unlikelihood of such drastic action, it is helpful to go back around seven years, to a time when Uefa was planning the introduction of a licensing scheme for its members. One of the most striking of the criteria clubs were obliged to meet was economic health, including the absence of excessive debt. At the time, Real Madrid were up to their eyes in it, with an unsustainable £165million worth.

It was, at the time, a startling figure, and one that could not be eradicated through trading. But nobody even whispered the possibility that the Spanish giants would be denied a licence – thereby rendering them inoperable in Europe – because of it. As it transpired, the city government of Madrid, very conveniently, decided to take Real's old training ground off their hands for £206million – enough not only to clear the debt, but to recover the huge transfer fees paid for Luis Figo and Zinedine Zidane.

Football clubs are no different from other businesses in that – as we have become all too aware recently – the majority would prove to be insolvent in the event of non-payment by their debtors and total foreclosure by their creditors.

All of this is a reminder of the last days of the Kelly and White families' control of Celtic, when the Parkhead club established what was almost certainly a world record for indebtedness that is unlikely ever to be challenged. It was achieved because the directors, in charge of a private limited company and able to control the buying and selling of shares, did not allow the stock to float to its true value.

That restriction would not be lifted until Fergus McCann came in to buy the club, at which point the directors (the main shareholders) demanded top dollar from the little Scots-Canadian and some who had inherited the stock – Kevin Kelly was a notable and honourable exception – cashed in on the decline of a club whose wretchedness they had caused.

Having had, during their tenure, first option to buy, they had been offering other equity holders around £3 each for shares that would have traded at around £250 (an approximation of the price McCann was forced to pay) in an open market. As a result, Celtic's basic share capital remained at £20,000 – that is, 20,000 shares at £1 each – at a time when their liabilities were around £7.2million.

At an extraordinary general meeting not long before McCann came to the rescue of an organisation close to bankruptcy, Len Murray, a well-known Glasgow lawyer, ended with his articulate, insightful and scathing comments on the misdirection by the board with the killer summation: "No company in the history of commerce has survived a situation in which its liabilities have been 360 times its stated share capital."

Now, that was proper debt.

Kinnear's foul-mouthed outburst ill-judged and badly timed

FOOTBALL writers, in the main, are sturdy enough to withstand even the kind of flak fired in their direction by Joe Kinnear – actually, it was little more than a mild rebuke compared to Jock Stein and Alex Ferguson at their fruitiest – but the timing of the temporary Newcastle manager's outburst at his inaugural press conference should cause some concern among supporters of the troubled north-east club.

To have sought confrontation within about five minutes of starting work betrays an uncertainty that does not belong in a place where a strong will and clear thinking, uncluttered by negative emotions, are imperative. In such circumstances, Stein and Ferguson would have recognised instinctively the need to garner support and encouragement wherever it could be found – even among the media.

Ferguson's attitude to making a controlled start to a job is explicit in the famous story of his being asked for advice by Martin Buchan, the former Aberdeen and Manchester United defender, when the latter became manager of Burnley.

"Don't seek confrontation, it will come to you anyway," said Ferguson. "Too late," replied Buchan, "I hung one on my centre-half an hour ago."

It is probably also too late for Kinnear with regard to reconciliation with the reporters he defamed, but the short-term nature of his appointment – expected to last no longer than a month or two – makes his profanity-ridden diatribe the more puzzling.

And you would have thought that wages of £100,000 a month, plus £20,000 for a win and £10,000 for a draw would be enough to insulate anyone against the criticism of even the most hostile hacks.