In the range of events I never thought would possibly happen, David Murray appearing on a podcast with Graeme Souness discussing EBTs is right up there! You would expect the master architect of the scheme that destroyed Rangers and a recipient of an EBT, paid when he was Blackburn Rovers manager, would keep well away from this subject. That they did not, tells you a great deal about the personalities of both.
Murray credited himself with giving Rangers nine-in-a-row and Gascoigne, and admitted to the sins of ambition and vanity. Ambition, that football fault which is so similar to being just perfect. Always be aware of characters throwing that around as their fault (I’m not going to mention our former vain and ‘ambitious’ character).
His technical defence was that auditors for Rangers and Murray International Holdings (MIH) both signed off on his EBT scheme. True, but wholly irrelevant. A quick explainer:
An EBT is a loan. Employers loan staff money every day. Crisis loans, relocations loans and loans to cover health-related issues are common. If it is a short-term matter, or in a small company, little or no paperwork is required. At other times, the loan needs to be formally written up. These loans can also be forgiven (often happens when a crisis loan is issued). No problem with this and no employment tax is due.
Rangers EBT scheme effectively paid footballers, managers and execs with these types of loans, however, for the footballers (at least), the loans were contractual obligations, with a clause which meant they never had to be repaid. In 2017, the UK Supreme Court ruled that these contracts were disguised renumeration and that employment taxes were due on them.
The contract invalidated the EBT structure. MIH possibly did not have the same contractual arrangements, so EY, their auditor, would be untroubled by the scheme. The point David Murray did not address, was whether Rangers auditor – Grant Thornton – were informed about the contractual nature of the club’s EBTs.
Grant Thornton are unlikely to defend themselves against this contagion, but no one pursued the firm for poor advice in relation to the signing of Rangers accounts. It is not credible to suggest that Grant Thornton knew of these contracts and no one has claimed they were told.
In adopting an ‘innovative tax strategy’, Rangers knew a challenge from HMRC was possible. They would have got away with it, were they not raided by City of London Police in relation to the Jean-Alain Boumsong sale to Newcastle (then managed by Souness). This transaction was subject to investigation by the Stevens Inquiry. That issue is worth an hour of your time reviewing the characters involved in the UK game at the time.
When this was going on, other things were crumbling around Murray. The Bank of Scotland went bust and was sold, with new oversight and a different appetite for his largesse. Rangers won three successive leagues in the run-up to administration, they were solvent and could have chosen to set money aside from Champions League qualification to offset a potential HMRC settlement. Instead, they returned to the roulette table year after year.
If I had my way, I would build a statue to David Murray outside Celtic Park. He has done more for our success than anyone not directly connected to Celtic. Without his navigation, Rangers would never have been liquidated, and Celtic would not have removed that “World’s most successful….” writing from the walls of what he vaingloriously called Murray Park. Celebrate the man, he is a gift to generations of Celtic fans.
Also, when he dies, I’m open to offers on writing a book.
326 Comments- Pages:
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- »
Shoot
Goal ⚽️⚽️⚽️
HH
I see their podcast omitted to mention those sneaky side letters 👀too
“I feel very sorry for Airdrie and their supporters but we’re running a business. We have given them repeated warnings and felt they were playing on our good nature.”
D Murray
Murray credited himself with giving Rangers nine-in-a-row and Gascoigne, and admitted to the sins of ambition and vanity. Ambition, that football fault which is so similar to being just perfect. Always be aware of characters throwing that around as their fault (I’m not going to mention our former vain and ‘ambitious’ character).
—————————-
I am not going to mention him, while mentioning him.
Very very poor comparison to make.
I met Murray several times in a work capacity. Absolutely horrible man.
murray has come above the parapet presumably because of the book ‘Mettle’ about him, rangers (old co.) and business.
Interestingly, it is published by Reach Sport owned by Reach PLC.
Before 2018, Reach plc was known as Trinity Mirror plc. Trinity Mirror, in 2015, they had to pay a certain Paul Gascoigne (he was one of many) £188, 250 in damages for phone hacking.
Small world.
Bordering on an obsession….why not ask questions about how the Club is run,and who carries the can for the Nancy debacle, which will run into millions wasted
If we’re going to do ‘who was responsible for Nancy and the cost’ better not bother with the lack of a football department, recruitment & coaching/development.
Leave that till later.
I also met Murray through work. His first question was if I was one of them. (first name + green shirt). I proudly told him I was. There was immediate mutual dislike. I found him creepy…very creepy.
A statue of a hun, naw ta.
We only dominated because Thems was awful? Thought it was the strategy of our Enron guys in the boardroom.
And the jaded old dig at one of our most successful managers.
Old Firmery is degenerate.
Is MON still our manager
Tax issues apart I seem to remember ibrox was valued way about its value to make the accounts look a bit better.
He did alright with his cherry picking of assets mostly land along the m8 corridor and around Edinburgh Airport, how did he manage that?
Any new fitness and conditioning guys at Celtic Fc yet
“In the range of events I never thought would possibly happen, David Murray appearing on a podcast with Graeme Souness discussing EBTs is right up there! You would expect the master architect of the scheme that destroyed Rangers and a recipient of an EBT, paid when he was Blackburn Rovers manager, would keep well away from this subject. That they did not, tells you a great deal about the personalities of both”
———–
Those personalities?
Might be breathtaking arrogance and enormous lack of self awareness.
Equally though, the podcast might be an attempt (driven by fear) to land messages and influence the narrative.
It might work but it might not.
The Man City will run for months.
Plenty of opportunity to very publicly connect how R1ngers and Man City destroyed the integrity of the national game in Scotland and England, respectively.
A better angle, IMHO.
Inform the world the Scottish Football authorities established a precedent for DEALING with cheating on this scale ..
… one the English Football authorities must not follow.
dessybhoy on 2nd October 2026 1:23 pm
Tax issues apart I seem to remember ibrox was valued way about its value to make the accounts look a bit better.
He did alright with his cherry picking of assets mostly land along the m8 corridor and around Edinburgh Airport, how did he manage that?
________________________________________________________________________________________
Dessybhoy
I’m not expert in asset management and ahem ‘acquisition’ but I’d image 2 questions were asked to kick off negotiations,
‘which school did you go to’? and
‘how old is your granny?’
The Murray item, really, is him giving us two fingers, know we can do nothing about it
kinglubo
KINGLUBO on 2nd October 2026 1:44 pm
The Murray item, really, is him giving us two fingers, know we can do nothing about it
kinglubo
——————
nothing he says, non of the excuses he makes, non of the deluded others done it ………..
nothing brings the original rangers back to life.
Personally, I think him and souness look daft.
lest they forget, ………….
newsnight scotland rangers special
Wealth Offtheradar
Wealth Offtheradar
259 subscribers
Subscribe
194
Share
Ask
Save
76,806 views 15 Jun 2012
gordon brewer with guests mark daly, douglas fraser, jim spence and richard wilson discuss rangers fc being liquidated
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHxst2slWU0
Celtic 6-0 Hearts 1981
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2_5KbzEmcI
I stopped reading when BR was compared to a cheat. That’s our most successful manager since Stein. It’s a strange Celtic fan that thinks in such a way.
I suspect RDS (Rodgers derangement syndrome) will progressively worsen over the coming weeks and months as our season implodes and June comes closer.
A fan who takes no joy from our successes and looks forward to our implosion isnt exactly what anyone would class as “normal”
Who said that ?
I heard Dan Neidle who Paul67 put us on to on the radio this afternoon. Tax expert, his blog is a good read into the more boring but still important aspects of Citys transgressions.
He was talking about the extra payments made to Mancini, and how they’d not paid 12m in tax on them. Blatant tax evasion, with some solid evidence that the Man City CEO at the time bit only knew about the side deal but that he was involved in negotiating it.
The emails are so damning, it’s surprising how little he did to cover his trails
DN said he thought there was clear unlawfulness there but he couldn’t say if or when HMRC would recommend criminal proceedings or that a criminal investigation hadnt already been started. He said they’d have been aware of it when the emails were first leaked eight years ago.
Mancini was paid for consultancy work for a club in Abu Dhabi.
4 days coaching for €2m per year, theres no record of him ever going there.
Interesting point Paul makes about Murray doing more for us than anyone else outside of Celtic. Of course you could say – Rodgers, Ange, MON last season and the players – that he’s done more than anyone inside Celtic as well!
JAMES1955 on 2ND OCTOBER 2026 3:39 PM
Who said that ?
—
No one, James. Best ignored, mate.
Lovely day for a bounce match v Falkirk, at Lennoxtown. Possibly some game time for Jota, from what was being muted on one of the podcasts earlier. Not that we’ve a clue what is happening, from the club itself.
What is it that Paul67 sees in Rodgers that the 53,000 heids stuck up Rodgers erchie simply stubbornly refuse to see?
Is it that DD was obviously 100% correct about toxic Rodgers given Rodgers non reply?
Is it that Rodgers was being found out by one after another SPL skint teams as well as his European consistent failure to learn lessons after Rodgers many countless thrashings at the hands of CL level elite teams, whom Rodgers approached as though he was playing Ross County?
Is it that Rodgers said out of one side of his mouth that he was very happy with the PLC’s help during the Transfer Windows, and then when Rodgers managerial skill-set could not get a tune out of the players that the same Rodgers said he was happy with, and then resorted to, “I didn’t buy these players, it was the club who bought them.”
If DD had dragged his erchie off of the Golf courses much earlier than he did, then Rodgers might have been out of the door before he blew 40 million CL money vs Kiarat Almaty, and 12 million plus their wages on 2 wingers who could not cross the road if their lives depended on it, Tounekti and Bally somebody.
Is it because Celtic fans have been ruthlessly dumbed down in the 3 decades since 1994 when Thatcher-Murray-Souness all seated trap was pulled after the deaths of 97 Liverpool fans, introducing all seating which does f’ck all for safety and everything for boredom and now data collection removing football fans privacy of their personal details, etc????
Is it because Timdom has been replaced by Dimdumb were Jungle Revolutionaries have been replace by all seated woke dullards?
Are Celtic ever likely to be the “best fans in the world” ever again, who could see our would-be oppressors coming ten miles away down the road, instead of becoming the insufferable, weak, lame, suckups, who are incapable of learning any lessons EVER again?
Rodgers got away with taking the utter piss out of you all because as soon as he set foot off the boat he saw you all falling for the PLC’s same club lie ticket stunt in 2016, allowing Rodgers to become the one eyed king in the land of 53,000 dim dullards.
Its not Paul67’s fault that you are all willfully blind and can’t cope without your Rodgers cuddly toy, it’s YOUR fault!
Celtic are in decline because of you, not the board.
The board are financially verified by 53,000 dullards.
Yes…that is were I would begin with the great Celtic healing before it rots itself out of existence.
👍
Sinn Fein have never been the same party since they put Liberal policies ahead of they’re traditional Working Class policies
SF are now untrustworthy.
Speaking out of both sides of they’re mouths.
Putting Working Class Irish people’s interests to the back of an ever lengthening queue.
Betraying poor, salt of the earth, Irish people.
Speaking out of both sides of they’re mouths as they grandstand over the Garvaghy Road incident, which was probably a security forces stunt to lay bare the sheer hypocrisy of the SF chancers, as SF’s duplicity has made them look cheap and sleekit, just as bad as they’re SNP double act.
Unnacceptable!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HTZtSqfWIAE9v4M.jpg?name=small&format=webp
You are a prick
Nay
If you go a small bit out of your way, you should be able to track down an article on this week’s IrishNews by a journalist called Brian Feeney.
Brian in that article will take you through 200 years of orange order history in Portadown.
Have a read of that prior to comparing the Orange Order to refugees.
The coverage MacIntyre gets on Sky is a disgrace, Fitzparticks maw got more ,and I’m not joking
AN DUN,
It’s the Multi-Monicker. Best just ignored.
Ave Ave
I’ve never met a Celtic fans that takes no joy in our successes.
*fan
It’s not often I log into this site these days, and there is much that Paul67 says which is disagree with.
However, I cannot let his description of Murray as the “master architect “ go without comment.
It is a thing of great beauty and one which, I sincerely hope, was deliberate.