Glenn Gibbons: Rangers fans playing dangerous game

[ian1964 10,721]

IN ROBERT Bolt’s play and film, A Man For All Seasons, Sir Thomas More assembles his numerous domestic staff to break the bad news that he has fallen on irredeemably hard times.

 

“I am no longer a great man,” he begins. “And since I am no more a great man, I no longer need a great household. Nor can I afford one. You will have to go.”

 

Here was a practical demonstration of the kind of acute insight and quick wits that gave rise to the former Lord Chancellor’s reputation as one of 16th-century England’s most formidable intellects.

 

Of course, More would also have been quick to acknowledge that even the humblest peasant farmer, faced with financial catastrophe – a failed crop, say – would have been similarly aware instantly of the necessity of a protracted period of austerity, or even abandonment of his smallholding and relocation as an employee on a steady, if modest, income.

 

It is a grasp of elementary economics that seems somehow to have eluded anyone charged with executive duties at Rangers throughout the years since the instigator of the old club’s decline, David Murray, began the large-scale, reckless extravagance that led to calamity.

 

Since then, despite the onset of administration and liquidation and passing through the hands of a succession of regimes to the present board of directors, the Glasgow institution has existed in a constant state of financial vulnerability, with no-one among the numerous sets of “saviours” apparently willing to identify certain damaging truths and take appropriate remedial action.

 

This speaks of a culture problem at Ibrox, one that became entrenched during the 140 years that preceded liquidation in 2012 and has generally not even been acknowledged, far less addressed, despite the overwhelming evidence of the need to abandon principles that have been rendered wasteful by monetary imperatives.

 

Chief among these actions is to emulate Thomas More and concede that Rangers are no longer a great club. That is, “great” in the sense of magnitude, as opposed to their historic high achievement and the resultant command of the affections and allegiances of many thousands of followers.

 

An organisation whose annual turnover once was close to £60 million has now, according to the latest returns, shrunk to £19m – and even that amount is likely to be reduced again at the end of the current financial year. Yet, in the wake of liquidation of the old club and the birth of the new, the directors saw fit to sanction a yearly wage bill of around £7m for players charged with winning the fourth- and third-division championships.

 

Salaries of non-playing personnel make the total around £9m, while the general costs of running the operation drain the kitty of £1.4m per month. These ludicrously high outgoings having to be met entirely from the club’s working capital, since their history of leaving behind creditors owed millions when entering administration means they no longer have access to credit lines at the banks.

 

Despite the obviously perilous condition of their finances (a recent emergency loan of £1.5m from private individuals required simply to remain solvent until the end of the season), numerous supporters are immovable in their conviction that Rangers remain a “massive” club whose rightful place is at the head of Scottish football’s Premiership and competing creditably in the Champions League.

 

There is, of course, nothing intrinsically flawed about aiming for the stars, but the problem with too many Rangers followers is that they want it to happen yesterday. Their ideal is the instant cure of a wealthy benefactor taking control and providing an unconditional minimum £50m of funding with which the team could be transformed from lower-league capabilities to national champions in the blink of an eye.

 

And yet, curiously, there appears to be a substantial number of fans willing to rally to the banner of Dave King, the South Africa-based entrepreneur who, astonishingly, has publicly declared his unwillingness to invest in the club. So far, he has offered only words, primarily to blacken the names of the current directors.

 

King has also shown himself to be as inconsistent as many who have become involved in the propaganda war at Ibrox, at first encouraging supporters not to renew their season tickets, then changing tack by saying that the chief executive, Graham Wallace, should be allowed to complete his 120-day review of the business, before returning this week with another fusillade in the direction of the board. King, convicted on more than 40 counts of tax evasion in South Africa, accused the opposition of a lack of integrity and honesty.

 

But, among the array of head-turning schemes associated with disenchanted fans and the directors, the most preposterous is surely the demand by the former to be handed security over Ibrox Stadium and Murray Park as part of their renewing season tickets. This is like insisting that M&S give customers security over their flagship Oxford Street store in exchange for a pledge to buy more merchandise.

 

The entire season-ticket phenomenon, in fact, has been warped into a grotesque caricature of its traditional place in the game and led to the utterly meaningless and misleading question: “What happened to the fans’ money?” This clearly ignores the fact that, when a ticket is bought, the money becomes the seller’s while the buyer gets the ticket. It’s not complicated. At the core of the Ibrox morass, however, there ought to be a warning that the fans should be careful what they wish for.

 

Institutional investors collectively make up a large majority of shareholders, but each has actually spent a comparatively tiny amount on acquiring their equity. If they continue to be harassed, they could consider the venture not to be worth the bother, sell off the assets and close down the business.

 

http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/spfl-lower-divisions/glenn-gibbons-rangers-fans-playing-dangerous-game-1-3381635

[chilledbear 16]

I have never been a big supporter of King, but if Gibbons is against, I am warming to him.

 

On another note, no wonder newspapers are in decline, far better written blogs than this, and better researched.

 

Come back D'Art.

[the gunslinger 3,366]

gibbons is just another trolloc running scared of king.

[BrahimHemdani 1]

I have no idea about this journalist's background or allegiances but he echoes everything I've been saying these past months

 

King has also shown himself to be as inconsistent as many who have become involved in the propaganda war at Ibrox, at first encouraging supporters not to renew their season tickets, then changing tack by saying that the chief executive, Graham Wallace, should be allowed to complete his 120-day review of the business, before returning this week with another fusillade in the direction of the board. King, convicted on more than 40 counts of tax evasion in South Africa, accused the opposition of a lack of integrity and honesty.

 

But, among the array of head-turning schemes associated with disenchanted fans and the directors, the most preposterous is surely the demand by the former to be handed security over Ibrox Stadium and Murray Park as part of their renewing season tickets. This is like insisting that M&S give customers security over their flagship Oxford Street store in exchange for a pledge to buy more merchandise.

 

At least some on here will be pleased that he is not using the movies analogy!

 

One wonders what scheme Mr King will come up with this week. I am convinced that he will do a u-turn on the ST's. There would be no point in him somehow acquiring control of the Club and at the same time encouraging its fans/customers not to buy ST's or would there?

[andy steel 0]

I'm happy to let you know, in that case, that he is sans pareil in the Scots media for detesting us and cheering on the Hoops.

 

I am not being facetious when I say that if he's against it, we should be for it,

[Mountain Bear 0]

I can't recall Glen Gibbons ever putting a positive spin on anything Rangers related, so no surprises here.

 

However, Gibbons excels himself in this particular piece.

 

He starts with a reference to the old Club's "liquidation".

 

Then Gibbons gets some basic numbers from the accounts wrong; £9m is the non player salary cost, he states it's the total.

 

We then get the condescending assertion that all Rangers fans want is another sugar daddy to splash the cash, rather than acknowledging that the main issue is a fundamental breakdown of trust.

 

Clearly on a roll, he then ridicules the ST trust proposal, in the process demonstrating that he doesn't realise that a season ticket purchase is a pre-payment for services which are to be delivered in the future.

 

But then we get the big finish, the idea that institutional investors, fed up with the revolting peasants, would sell off the assets and close down the business. Where did you get that from Glen? Did Jack feed you that little gem, or did you come up with it all on your own? You need 75% shareholder approval to sell off major assets or close down the business. Do you think you'd get that for such a scorched earth policy? Who would they sell the assets to and what would they be worth if not as part of a going concern football business (£5m last time...)?

 

Unprofessional tosh.

 

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[the gunslinger 3,366]

I have no idea about this journalist's background or allegiances but he echoes everything I've been saying these past months

 

 

 

At least some on here will be pleased that he is not using the movies analogy!

 

One wonders what scheme Mr King will come up with this week. I am convinced that he will do a u-turn on the ST's. There would be no point in him somehow acquiring control of the Club and at the same time encouraging its fans/customers not to buy ST's or would there?

 

hes an ira supporting scumbag of a yahoo who hates rangers and fears king and his money.

[Scott7 6,002]

"Old club"?

 

Is that "old" as in "venerable" or "old" as in "former"?

[andy steel 0]

I suppose pushing the concept of Rangers as a wee club is an acceptable substitute for the original script, which was entitled 'The Death of the Huns'.

 

But it's a bit rich slagging us for the actions of successive boards who aren't even Rangers fans. Can hardly be a culture when it has been operated from without! Even Murray was an Ayr fan, should we expect an article berating the ingrained culture of Ayr United?

 

Boz, man.

[aweebluesoandso 290]

Never read the Scotsman in my life, but this Gibbon monkey seems another one of the Green Brigade press bigots who put their hatred of Rangers, before their Journalistic professionalism. If indeed he is a journalist rather than a Tim blogger.