Tag: Rangers

The Scottish Football Association (SFA) decision to deem Dave King “fit and proper” to become a Rangers director has proved widely popular. It is popular with Rangers fans because they believe the South African-based businessman will help fund the club back to what they call its “rightful place.” And it is popular with other fans because they believe he can’t and/or won’t. At face value, the decision is disgraceful. SFA regulations identify specific criteria by which a putative director’s fitness and propriety can be gauged. One is whether “he has been convicted within the last 10 years of…an offence liable to imprisonment of two years or over.” In August 2013, King received the world’s most famous 41 convictions for breaches of South African tax law, all of which were “liable to imprisonment of two years…” Another is whether “he has been a director of a club in membership of any National Association within the five-year period of such club having undergone an insolvency event.” Again, King fits this criteria like a glove, having been a Rangers non-executive director throughout the “five-year period” before it entered administration in February 2012. However, the SFA has “discretion as to whether or not such a person is fit and proper…after due consideration of all the relevant facts…in its possession and knowledge, including the undernoted list which is…illustrative and not exhaustive.” This gives the...

For an awkward few days in July 2012 there appeared to be two “Rangers” football clubs on the go. One was what is now called “emerging from administration” – by going into liquidation. And the other was seeking permission to play at Brechin City in the Scottish League Challenge Cup – permission granted by the Scottish Football Association creating an entirely new membership category, specially, and so far solely, for them. There appeared to be two Rangers on the go again last week. One was in court, claiming that their finances were secure and that fans’ threats to withhold season-ticket monies were not a “major concern.” The other was lambasting fans – in a club statement published during the court case – for “creating financial difficulty for Rangers” which could “only damage the club.” Rangers are currently the subject of a covert takeover bid – albeit one hidden in relatively plain sight – by South African-based businessman and lifelong fan, Dave King. King, however, does not want to pay market rate for Rangers, or any rate at all if possible. So he is using fans’ current discontent to deprive Rangers of much-needed season-ticket renewals income, unless or until “fans” receive security over Rangers’ Ibrox Stadium (initial demands for security over Rangers’ Murray Park training complex have been dropped, for reasons as yet unclear). The vehicle for this was to...

It is little wonder that Scotland’s Mainstream Media (SMSM) get a hard time when, aside from any perceived Celtic/Rangers/Old Firm bias, they make such elementary errors. The Rangers International Football Club (RIFC) interim results revealed operating losses of £3.6m between July 1st and December 31st 2013, which the Daily Record and the Herald newspapers called “the seven months to the end of last year/2013.” And this from a media which spent weeks trumpeting Rangers manager Ally McCoist’s annual salary as £826,000 when this figure appeared in RIFC’s first full accounts, over big blue letters stating “For the 13 month period to 30 June 2013.” So it wasn’t as if the SMSM had no elementary errors from which to learn. Meanwhile, the results boosted Rangers fans’ campaign to have potential benefactor Dave King’s money installed at Ibrox. This from fans whose hatred of former benefactor David Murray has inspired an unofficial rebranding of the club’s Murray Park training facility as “Auchenhowie.” Learning from past errors is obviously not all-the-rage in Scotland. RIFC directors took comfort from RIFC’s reduced operating losses, from last year’s headline-grabbing £1m-per-month to £600,000-per-month. Rangers’ “enemies” took comparable comfort from the “material uncertainties” over RIFC’s ability to operate “as a going concern.” Most Rangers fans have recoiled in horror at both. Rangers are, of course, far from the only football club to put a “spin” on ghastly...