Hamstrung by debt, expensive players, lower television revenues and falling attendances, Glasgow Rangers wants to quit the Scottish Premier League to survive, writes MARK HENNESSY, London Editor
FEW CLUBS EXCITE the passions in quite the same way as Glasgow Rangers. Loved and hated in equal measure, the Ibrox team has dominated Scottish football, along with near-neighbours, Celtic, for decades.
However, Scotland is no longer enough. Millionaire owner David Murray once boasted that he would “spend a tenner for every fiver spent by Celtic” after Rangers’ arch-rival had escaped going under in 1994.
And he did. The reputed £100m spent by Rangers since he bought out a majority stake in 1988 has brought silverware galore to the club, but only of the less valuable local sort and never the prized and lucrative successes in the Champions League.
Now a knight of the realm, Murray began his principal business, Murray International Metals Ltd at just 23 years of age, and became a leading supplier of structural steel after he cleverly exploited opportunities left by a 13-week British Steel strike in the 1980s.
Once listed in the Sunday Times's Rich List as being worth £720m, Murray is now struggling to repay hundreds of millions in debt, and is keen to sell Rangers. Increasingly, the club's bankers, the Lloyds Banking Group, call the shots.
Indeed, on Thursday, Rangers fans warned the bank that supporters would “quickly withdraw business if there is any risk whatsoever of the club’s current situation being worsened by their actions”. The fans want a quick sale, and some dream of emulating the Barcelona model, where the club is owned by those who gather in the stands every Saturday rather than some billionaire who wants an expensive plaything until he tires of it.
The club’s plight has focused political attentions and led the Secretary of State for Scotland, Jim Murphy, to demand assurances from Lloyds that it had not threatened to put the club into administration.
Laden down with £30m worth of debt, Rangers’ fortunes on the field were dismally displayed 10 days ago when they endured a humiliating 4-1 home drubbing at the hands of Romanian minnows, FC Unirea Urziceni. Murray stood down as chairman earlier this year, and his successor Alastair Johnston is now trying to sell the club to South African-based businessman David King, though haggling about figures is ongoing.
King invested £20m in Rangers in 2000 after being encouraged to do so by Johnston, and the Glaswegian-born millionaire subsequently gave some of his shares to his old friend, golfing legend, Gary Player.
Since 2002, King has been the focus of South Africa’s largest fraud case, charged with tax dodging, extortion and money laundering, and of allegations that he failed to pay £183m due in taxes. The case has yet to come to trial.
Even if Rangers is sold, the landscape in which it will have to survive is not going to improve, unless the club can leave behind the Scottish Premier League, which is premier in nothing much other than in name.
The club’s decision to sell the rights to its shirts and other merchandise to JJB Sports in return for a once-off payment and an annual licence was once seen as a master-stroke, but has turned out to be a disaster. The collapse of Irish satellite broadcaster Setanta cost Scottish clubs dearly – particularly Rangers and Celtic, since both of them received royalty fees, along with a share of the £125m payment made to the Scottish league as a whole.
Rangers no longer want to play against St Mirren, Falkirk and Livingstone and the like each Saturday, but pine for higher-calibre opposition, either south of the border in the Premier League, or in a European Super League.
Earlier this month, the club’s chief executive, Martin Bain, favoured the Super League model: “There are a number of big clubs playing in smaller leagues, and I think there will be a wind of change.” Noting the political and national sensitivities involved, Bain said he still believed that Uefa would in time “take note” as the “groundswell” for change grows from major clubs “hamstrung by the environment they are in”.
In 1994, Scottish businessman, David Low was involved in the rescue by Canadian businessman, Fergus McCann, of Glasgow Celtic, which came “within eight minutes of being put into receivership” by the banks. Today, he believes the days of Rangers in the Scottish league are numbered: “It is about money. People opposed the formation of the Premier League in England but money changed hands and it came in. Similarly, people were against the setting-up of the Scottish Premier League but money smoothed many objections. Vested interests can try to be obstructive, but they usually fade away in the face of money.”
