Darrell King - Questions That Need Answered

[chilledbear 16]

Taken from FollowFollow

 

Answers needed to satisfy baffled support

 

By DARRELL KING

 

7 Feb 2012

WALTER SMITH stood inside a deserted Rugby Park and opted to gaze to the future, rather than revel in the moment.

It was May 2011, and he had just guided Rangers to their third successive championship after a final-day demolition of Kilmarnock.

It was the afternoon the baton was officially handed over to his assistant, Ally McCoist, and also the exact moment a coded warning was fired in the direction of the man who had, just days earlier, purchased the Ibrox club, Craig Whyte.

Smith spoke of a pressing need for major investment in the Rangers first-team squad. If it wasnâ??t forthcoming, he conceded, it would be difficult for McCoist to build upon the foundations he had laid over the previous four years, especially with a renewed effort certain from Neil Lennonâ??s Celtic, given how close they had come to the SPL title.

Smith had been at a meeting with Whyte along with others prior to the takeover from Sir David Murray and privately wondered if the sums had been done correctly. The fear was that he was millions of pounds out on what would be required, not hundreds of thousands.

As the latest Rangers cash crisis continues to rage and the club lurches from one controversy to the next, supporters are trying to come to terms with what some of them perceive to be risky moves the new owner has made, like borrowing against four years of season ticket money for £24.4million from Ticketus.

Those who were on the scene at the time are now claiming some of their fears may be about to be realised in terms of a lack of serious investment on the one thing that is the focal point of any club â?? the team on the park.

Doubts were in place from the off over Whyteâ??s ability to fund the Rangers takeover; but he got over the line and picked up the baggage that carried some very heavy weight, none more so than an ongoing tax investigation into the use of Employee Benefit Trusts to pay players.

His critics â?? and there were many inside the club, including the majority on the old board â?? had one final dig in their statement to share-holders the very night he took over. They questioned whether he had the one thing Rangers needed. Money. But Whyte was in control now, and it was up to him to prove them wrong.

Rangersâ?? transfer dealings have become more of a soap opera than Eastenders, but here SportTimes tries to shed some light on what has gone on, where the cash has gone, and just why McCoist has been left in a situation where the strikeforce he attempted to rescue a Scottish Cup-tie against Dundee United last weekend with ended up being the inexperienced Andy Little and Salim Kerkar.

 

THE PLEDGE

The burning issue for everyone at Rangers post-takeover was just how much money would be available for new players. The squad had performed heroics to win eight trophies in the previous four seasons, but was in much need of new blood.

In part three of the circular Whyte sent to shareholders on June 3, 2011, it read: â??The Rangers FC Group (Whyteâ??s takeover company, previously named Wavetower) has under-taken to provide £5m for invest-ment in the playing squad.â?

The grey area in this was that figure was never specified. Would it be for transfer fees alone? Or would it be to pay wages and transfer fees?

 

THE NEW CONTRACTS

Rangersâ?? wage bill for the playing staff when Whyte took over was £14m. He quickly moved to tie up three of the squad on new, lucrative long-term contracts. Allan McGregor, Steven Davis and Steven Whittaker were all secured on new deals, and it is undoubtedly good business to secure major assets and enhance their values should other clubs show interest in signing them.

But why did the due diligence not reveal that Rangers were spending more than they were earning, if Whyteâ??s figures last week stack up?

He was reported as saying the club was spending £45m, but bringing in £35m before any European income from either tournament, which can never be guaranteed.

Was it a good plan to rack the wage bill up, especially for a player like Whittaker who, at times, struggles for consistency and was under offer from Turkish side Bursaspor at that time?

He is now believed to be earning well in excess of £20,000-a-week, and it may have made better sense to take the Turksâ?? money â?? given the squad needed plenty of new bodies â?? with the cash being spent on contract extensions and the incoming fee utilised elsewhere. The wage bill is now believed to be back up by about £4m to £18m.

 

THE TRANSFER STRATEGY

Rangers embarked on some farcical attempts to sign players. Given what we know now in terms of the finances, were there ever any serious attempts being made to sign players like Roland Juhasz from Anderlecht and Carlos Cuellar from Aston Villa?

Whyte was reported in the past few days describing a £10m funding gap season on season â?? so where was the money and wages going to come from to bring in players in that bracket, along with the likes of Dundee Unitedâ??s David Goodwillie, who was always going to require a transfer fee of £2m?

Whyte admits he budgeted for the Europa League and the potential £5m it would bring â??it would appear that money was being earmarked to fund this level of transfers as, when they suffered the embarrassment of being dumped by Maribor in the qualifiers for that tournament, just weeks after being sent spinning out of the Champions League play-offs by Malmo, all interest in any players with significant fees ended. Clearly, the European money was crucial to these targets, if they were ever going to happen.

When the dust finally settled at the end of August on a transfer window that had, at times, left Rangers looking like hapless negotiators, at best, and without a clue as to what they were actually doing at worst, seven players had been acquired.

Lee Wallace, Juan Ortiz, Dorin Goian, Alejandro Bedoya, Carlos Bocanegra, Matt McKay and Kyle Bartley, a loan arrival from Arsenal.

The first instalment on Wallaceâ??s £1.5m transfer from Hearts was said to be £800k, with the balance still to follow. Exact fees for Ortiz, Bedoya and McKay have been hard to establish, but club sources say the outlay was believed to be £1.2m for the trio who have hardly kicked a ball.

Again, Goian and Bocangeraâ??s fees are hard to know for sure, but McCoist has spoken of them being great business at, again, around £1.2m for the pair. So, doing the arithmetic, Rangers spent somewhere in the region of £3.2m in the summer on fees.

 

THE SUMS THAT DONâ??T SEEM TO ADD UP

Madjid Bougherra was sold to Qatari side Lekhwiya for £1.8m in August. It is believed this fee was paid in one lump sum from the cash-rich Middle East outfit.

Charlie Adamâ??s move to Liverpool â?? and the fee has been reported at £7m â?? would have earned Rangers a further £650,000 as they were on 10% of anything Blackpool sold him for over £500,000.

Whyte has said in three interviews inside the past few days that he had to pay off James Beattie to the tune of £1m last August to buy out the last year of his deal.

This use of resources is being picked up on by supporters.

Whyte was quoted as saying that he had to â??findâ?? £1m to pay another instalment to Rapid Vienna for Nikica Jelavic. This is accurate, but it never came out of the blue.

Vienna, in the knowledge that Rangers were having major financial problems, were concerned that they would not get their money if Jelavicâ??s new club went to the wall and therefore had a sum of 2.4m euros (£2m) guaranteed in a payment plan by the Rangers board at that time. Of that, £1m was to be paid in August 2011, and another has still to be paid in August 2012. The management accounts for the end of April/start of May show this, and Whyte would have known this from the due diligence process.

Also, what the chairman failed to point out when asked to explain at the weekend exactly where the Ticketus money has been spent in response to allegations that it funded his purchase of the club, was that Rangers took in £3m in the summer for transfer deals outstanding to them.

This sum was made up of instalments for the sales of Pedro Mendesâ?? to Sporting Lisbon, Danny Wilson to Liverpool and Kevin Thomsonâ??s to Middlesbrough.

In short, Rangers took in £5.45m in the summer for Bougherra, Adam and the balance on transfers â?? and paid out £5.2m on the Jelavic payment, the Beattie pay-off and the transfer fees for six players. That leaves, and there needs to be a bit of give or take as we donâ??t have exact figures for the monies spent, potentially a net profit of around £250,000. But Whyte insists £5m was spent on strengthening the squad.

 

THE JANUARY FIASCO

With Steven Naismith out injured for the season, McCoist wanted to bring in one forward last month. If Jelavic was to be sold, it would have to be two. This situation was intensified further when Kyle Lafferty suffered a serious hamstring injury on January 2 and was ruled out for six to eight weeks.

McCoist said very early on in the month the nightmare scenario would be Jelavic going just before the deadline. If truth be told, was there a Rangers fan out there who didnâ??t see it being played out that way? Especially when an inflated price of £10m was put on his head, leading to many interested parties backing away.

Jelavic was punted to Everton with a few hours of the window left. This was despite a higher offer from Leicester City of £6.5m being rejected in August, and the so-called £9m offer from an unnamed club that was also supposedly kicked into touch.

With this oft-mentioned £10m funding gap in mind and no European revenue, would it not have made more sense to sell the Croat back then?

Meantime, a botched move for Fran Sandaza fell through, and no strikers arrived. A token £1m bid for Norwich City skipper Grant Holt was laughed out on deadline night.

 

THE TICKETUS DEAL

Today, the major question on the lips of every Rangers fan is how can the club be skint when they took in £24.4m from Ticketus in the summer, on top of the £8.8m cash in hand that was shown in the June 30, 2011 unaudited figures (basically season ticket monies), plus all the money Whyte pledged in the circular to put in â?? £5m for playing squad, £5m in working capital, £2.8m for the small tax case and £1.7m for stadium improvements (total £14.5m).

That is a lot of cash ... and clearly, as has been shown above, itâ??s not all been spent on the team. If the gap in revenue was £10m, why not just borrow that from Ticketus? The maximum the club had ever taken in advance in the past was £5m.

And, while the Ticketus deal is again being digested, Whyte has now used two descriptions of what he claimed was a bill still owed to that company when he took over.

Last Thursday, he was quoted as saying it was £7m. Weekend reports suggested it was â??several millionsâ??. The April/May management accounts for Rangers are believed to show Ticketus were owed a balance of £1.7m that had to be paid back by May.

It appears that the more things change, the more they stay the same for the Rangers fans. More questions than answers, left to try and absorb an avalanche of claims and counter-claims. Meantime, the clock is ticking on the production of the accounts they badly need to see, and the AGM they deserve.

Meantime, manager McCoist is left to consider fielding a guy who has never started a game for the club, and a reserve who has been out injured for the guts of a year at Dunfermline this weekend as he tries to stay alive in the title race ...

[biggordy 0]

I was told today that Sandaza was told on "deadline day" to come back from Spain and sign for us. One hour before his flight was due, he was then told the deal was off. He was understandably raging.

Can anyone confirm this or if Sandaza was in fact in Spain on that day.

Jf this turns out to be true, WHAT THE FUCK is going on.

 

Darryl King has certainly put some facts together and is asking some highly pertinent questions imo.

[chilledbear 16]

If we see the accounts, we will/should see where the Ticketus money has gone.

[Zappa 0]

I was told today that Sandaza was told on "deadline day" to come back from Spain and sign for us. One hour before his flight was due, he was then told the deal was off. He was understandably raging.

Can anyone confirm this or if Sandaza was in fact in Spain on that day.

 

Aye, he was in Spain and the story was in carried in various news and media last week mate. Here's one of the articles -

 

Feb 2nd by keache Jackson

 

FRANCISCO SANDAZA last night told how he thought he was finally on his way to Rangers – only to end up the victim of a deadline-day farce.

 

The St Johnstone striker first appeared to be on the verge of a surprise move to Glasgow midway through the January transfer window when he was offered a pre-contract by the troubled SPL champions.

 

Sandaza rejected that deal and declared his intention to see out the season at McDiarmid Park before bagging a more lucrative move inthe summer.

 

Now the Spaniard has revealed how his plans all changed again on Tuesday afternoon when, at his family home in Madrid, he received a phone call telling him he was needed at Ibrox in time to beat the 11pm cut-off to sign for Ally McCoist’s side.

 

And how he then endured an agonising five-hour wait before finally being told: “Erm, you’re not wanted after all.”

 

Sandaza’s anger was still simmering yesterday back home in Spain where he pored over the bizarre chain of events whichultimately led to yet another crushing disappointment as he missed out on the chance to become Nikica Jelavic’slast-minute replacement.

 

And he now suspects he was caught up in the crossfire of a battle between McCoist and the club’s top brass over the names on the manager’s January shopping list.

 

Sandaza said: “I received a call from them yesterday at about five o’clock in the afternoon. We agreed about the terms more or less then they told me to wait 15 or 20 minutes. They said they would phone me back and tell me which flight I had to catch.

 

“But no one called. I was waiting and waiting for the call but it didn’t come and I realised I wasn’t going to get the chance to go there and sign.

 

“I don’t know what they were discussing but they decided not to sign me. Finally, after 10 o’clock the guy called and said they had decided not to sign anyone to replace Jelavic.

 

“I felt very let down because everyone would love to play for Rangers. But I am feeling betternow. All I can do is focus on playing for St Johnstone for the rest of the season.”

 

Record Sport understands it was McCoist’s decision to block the move for Sandaza because he believed Rangers could afford better, having just agreed with Everton a fee of around £6million for Jelavic.

 

With the clock ticking down, the Rangers boss had a crucial round of talks with owner Craig Whyte at Ibrox to discuss what options were available to him as talisman Jelavic prepared to sign at Goodison Park.

 

McCoist – who had been hoping to land Grant Holt from Norwich – was instead offered a cut-price deal for Sandaza which he probably regarded as too weak a compromise.

 

At 7.50pm, an ashen-faced McCoist emerged from the meeting clutching a squad list which highlighted how many of his threadbare top-team squad are unavailable through injury.

 

And eventually, a bewildered Sandaza was told to put his passport back in the drawer. He said: “Rangers have acted very poorly. They have not behaved like a big club – they are acting like a very small club.

 

“What they have done is wrong because they should have a replacement for Jelavic.

 

“Now they don’t have anyone so if they lose the title it will be all their own fault.

 

“There could be a conflict between Ally McCoist and the directors. Maybe Ally McCoist wanted me but thedirectors did not? Something like that. But I’m not 100 per cent sure.

 

“I just heard Ally McCoist wanted me but the directors said they didn’t have the money to pay St Johnstone £300,000. Maybe that was it.”

 

In fact, it was the other way around. McCoist has never seen the journeyman Spaniard as anything better than a squad player.

 

But that will do little to console Sandaza as he reflects on losing out on a move to Ibrox for the second time in a wholly confusing couple of weeks.

 

By sticking to his principles McCoist finds himself a further body down. During the transfer window a total of 11 players – Jelavic, Davie Weir, misfit Juan Ortiz, John Fleck, Jordan McMillan and a mix of kids from the first-team fringes and youth department – have left. Only one player, Swede Mervan Celik, has been recruited.

 

But McCoist would rather go with what remains at Murray Park for the rest of this season rather than further dilute the quality of his group.

 

Quite simply, he believes replacing Jelavic with Sandaza would have constituted an unacceptable dropping of the club’s standards. And one for which, ultimately, he himself would have been responsible.

 

It was too much for McCoist – who also rejected a seemingly endless list of trialists delivered by director of football Gordon Smith – to swallow.

 

Now Sandaza is left trying to get his head around exactly what happened. The player is convinced that if he had been given the chance of leading McCoist’s strikeforce, he would have gone on to establish himself as a prolific Rangers centre-forward.

 

He said: “I don’t understand what is going on. If a club wants a player they should act very clearly. But Rangers have not done that. They have been very weird about everything.

 

“In football, people are used for commissions and money. It’s all sh**e.

 

“I have already scored 15 goals this season for St Johnstone. Can you imagine how many I could score if I was playing for Rangers?

 

“But they valued me differently because I am only a St Johnstone player. If I was playing for a Polish team or a French team they would be saying, ‘What a striker this guy is’.

 

“But because I’m a St Johnstone player they think it is easy to sign me. They have acted very poorly.”

Edited February 7, 2012 by Zappa

[Ergatrude 0]

The wage bill is now believed to be back up by about £4m to £18m.

 

Where did this figure come from?

[Ergatrude 0]

Today, the major question on the lips of every Rangers fan is how can the club be skint when they took in £24.4m from Ticketus in the summer

 

He has already said that it was "closer to £20m." Lazy journalism.

[Ergatrude 0]

And, while the Ticketus deal is again being digested, Whyte has now used two descriptions of what he claimed was a bill still owed to that company when he took over.

Last Thursday, he was quoted as saying it was £7m. Weekend reports suggested it was ‘several millions’. The April/May management accounts for Rangers are believed to show Ticketus were owed a balance of £1.7m that had to be paid back by May.

 

Can we see these accounts?

 

If this is true I'd like to see this one explained as it is a blatant lie & as such requires an answer.

[BrahimHemdani 1]

Madjid Bougherra was sold to Qatari side Lekhwiya for £1.8m in August. It is believed this fee was paid in one lump sum from the cash-rich Middle East outfit

.

 

I'm told it was more like £1.3m, £400K of which was immediately arrested by the Court re Bain's case.

 

£3.5M was arrested by the taxman at about the same time.

[der Berliner 4,165]

This is ever more bordering to the ridiculous the more it gets on. Half-truths and hearsay from all angles, assumptions and speculation all over the place. I think I'll give it a rest till we get the HMRC verdict and see what developes after that. May the press enjoy their self-stired hysteria and may the Bears keep a clean head.

[chilledbear 16]

Vosene is recommended