DAVE KING admitted he is basing his Ibrox rebuilding plan on Fergus McCann’s business model.
The South African-based businessman will refuse to run the risk of the unsustainable strategies employed by former owner David Murray.
King, alongside his current ally Paul Murray, sat on the board during the Murray era, a period of lavish and crazy spending that ultimately helped bring the club to its knees before being forced to offloaded to Craig Whyte for just one pound.
King now claims that he and Paul Murray had been led to believe that Murray’s personal finances could cover the spending and he was not in a position to do anything about it once the truth came to light. Both King and Paul Murray, as Directors, had a duty to the company to “do something about it” and King’s latest revelation simply proves the point that they are NOT fit and proper persons under the SFA rules, to be allowed to take over the new club.But, with the general meeting of Rangers shareholders now set for March 4 in London, when King and his allies hope to assume control of the stricken club, they insist they have now learned lessons from past mistakes. A little bit late you would have thought!
Unbelievably, King now points to McCann’s 1990s revamp of Celtic as an example of how it should be done.He said: “Fergus’ model was a more responsible model.
“It was a managed approach and he did very well, whereas David’s model was fine as long as he had the money to put into it.
“It’s one thing if you’re [Chelsea owner Roman] Abramovich and you’ve so many billions that spending a couple of million doesn’t really matter to you.
“Ultimately, even big clubs can hurtle down the leagues quite quickly when a dominant owner isn’t around any more.
“We’ve gone through event risk – an unforeseen event negatively affecting the company – (surely you mean the clubs?) too often after 135 years of ups and downs in football terms.
“It’s been turmoil and this board has to make sure we’ve a funding and financial policy to make sure we never even have the responsibility of event risk again.”
King, with his criminal record, carries a lot of baggage, of course, having pled guilty to 41 different contraventions of South African tax law.
He paid a £4,500 fine for each contravention, as well as settling a £40 million tax bill. This tax case creates a huge headache for both the exiled Glaswegian and the SFA who will have to once again re-write the rulebook to accommodate the Ibrox clubs.
King’s involvement as an investor and director in the Murray board is something else he admits he will have to answer to if he wins his battle for control and has to face up to an ‘interrogation’ from the Scottish football authorities.
One thing is for sure – Dave King is no Fergus.
