Robbing Billy to pay Laxey

30% interest!  Nice one, Newco Rangers, you’ve got yourself a deal there.  Suggestions that your business plan has been, and remains, unsustainable and extravagant are patently absurd when you can borrow at the kind of rates a Zimbabwean pimp would get at the height of the ZWD’s recent hyper-inflation episode, although it’s probably worth noting that Zimbabwean businesses are currently borrowing at slightly less than half of what Laxey are charging Newco, solvent ones, anyway.

An administration would be a severe embarrassment to the Newco, less than two years after its incorporation, but in many ways it would be a boon, allowing the club to offload all the high earners and establish a breakeven trading platform.

It is utterly incomprehensible why they have not called in the admins, which itself shines a light on management processes inside the club.  No one seems to be asking, “What next?”  Getting deeper into hock with a hedge fund is ruinous.  Notions that if the loan is turned into shares would be a soft landing for the club are absurd.  This is a hedge fund.  A HEDGE FUND!!  The more shares they have, the more exposure they have, the higher return they will demand.

Need some new players, tough, pay my money.  Ticket sales down, that’s disappointing, cut back and pay my money.  Got some maintenance work to do, I don’t care, pay my money then see what’s left.

Keep your eye on the sale and leaseback plan, although not until September.  They should commission a brass statue of a Newco season ticket holder, touching his toes, with the motto ‘Brace yourself’ below.

The only question left is who will be the complicit front man for season ticket sales this year?

Most people are only beginning to realise the consequences of the events of 2012, or what it means to be a zombie club, walking around, not quite the same as before, with various groups randomly gorging on you.  Nothing will ever be as it was.  Ever.  They should’ve listened, before high-fiving Sir David Murray, then Craig Whyte, then Charles Green.  It’s not like we didn’t tell them.

If you’re in the football business, rule number 1 is: Pay your bills.  Every other rule, value and aspiration cannot be met without this rule.

Many thanks to everyone who submitted questions for last week’s Celtic Forum.  The minutes have been published, and are available here.

If you would like to read the new CQN Magazine, GO HERE to read properly, and for FREE, the graphic below is just a taster.
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