Warning from Blue Knights comes home to roost

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o Newco Rangers have £1.2m in the bank and the courts have just arrested £620k, leaving circa £600k available.  In early September.  Football clubs have their cash high water mark in June, after season ticket money arrives, with the low-point coming the month before, so is liquidation just around the corner?  Not necessarily.

The club has a couple of significant problems: it’s short of money and has significant monthly outgoings, but it also has assets, and may have buyers for those assets.

Murray Park is an outrageous folly and should be sold immediately.  Protests to secure it have been acts of self-harm; swallow your pride and sell.  This is a football club in acute danger, pretentions of grandeur, and Murray Park is exactly that, should be shed immediately.  Albion car park and the Edmiston House office building are superfluous property assets and could be sold without stopping football operations.

Mike Ashley has an asset Newco want back – stadium naming rights.  He could repatriate these rights as a sweetener in a deal to buy Murray Park, Albion and Edmiston.  Newco could leaseback the training ground, Sports Direct would be able to build a stonking big tracksuit shop on the Albion site and the club could boast to fans that they negotiated back Ibrox naming rights.

This might sound like a bitter pill but it will keep the lights on a little longer, makes irrefutable sense and is relatively painless.  The original Rangers existed for over a century without Murray Park, one of Scotland’s best run topflight football clubs’ Motherwell, train on a school sports field, Newco Rangers could do the same.  A little humility right now would be good for them.

There remains a problem: cumulatively, these assets are unlikely to be worth more than the £4m the club hope to raise in their proposed (not underwritten) share issue.  This is still not enough to see them through the season.  Expenditure for the last season accounts are available, 2012-13, averaged close to £3m per month.  The club will need close to £20m between now and season ticket renewal time.

Creditors must be paid or the club will go into administration.  To pay creditors, without sufficient income or credit, more assets must be sold, specifically Ibrox.

If they go into administration before selling Ibrox, don’t expect events to follow a similar path to the one Duff & Phelps took when administering Oldco Rangers.  Duff & Phelps were appointed by a liquidation specialist with a specific remit.  They even tried to sign a player.  Newco in administration would follow a more conventional route: redundancies would take place and assets would be sold to pay creditors.

Ibrox is the only significant asset administrators would have to sell.  It could generate enough to pay creditors in full and get the club through to the end of the season.  Finding a buyer would be the main challenge, but as we all now know, the club can stand or fall, but whoever controls Ibrox can continue to get a rental return from successor club.

An administrator could dismiss the manager and some other highly paid staff, reducing costs to a more manageable level, and pay ordinary creditors in full.

Newco Rangers need to finish in the top four to be in with a chance of promotion, which would be a challenge, but not an insurmountable one with the right manager in place.  They could be a top flight club next season.

This is not how fans wanted the Newco to progress but after they were unable to raise more than the £5.5m Charles Green’s consortium put on the table to buy Rangers assets, the future was mapped out.

Costs for police, insurance, electricity, IT, office staff, security and the million other items needed by a football club who occasionally host 50,000 people will be no less than circa £17m p.a – before you employ a footballer.

Newco’s income could rise from the £19m they earned in season 2012-13 (though possibly not this season), but there’s just not enough money to run a football team.  Scottish Premiership football would be a chastening experience, the levels of austerity required going forward would be draconian.

Fans can protest that they are watching the same old club all they like, but it’s not going to look anything like the Rangers you or I have ever known – and I knew them under John Greig.  And here’s the nub, the most optimistic financial projections are based on Newco selling the same number of tickets Oldco sold.  Would a Newco competing alongside St Mirren and Kilmarnock sell any more than the 23,000 season tickets they’ve sold this year?

The long-term financial fundamentals remain unchanged.  In 2012 the Blue Knights concluded there was no viable future for football at Ibrox if Rangers were liquidated.  Two years later all the evidence reaffirms that position.  This is a dead multi-club franchise.

Looking forward to the Maestro Match tomorrow.  See you there.

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  1. Lennybhoy

     

     

    Closet is it……….gonna kiss you lol, n more lucky you ;-)

     

     

    Can anyone tame the green n white tiger HT, am gonna tell his maw? (see wat i did there)

     

     

    H.H

  2. st patricks day 1956

     

     

    21:50 on 6 September, 2014

     

    ron bacardi

     

     

    21:33 on 6 September, 2014

     

    There should be ban on any religious based marches – orange, catholic, unionist, republican. Forget about supposed rights to ‘march’, just an excuse used by bigots on each side

     

     

    You are right, Ban the lot of them.

     

    SPD 1956

     

     

    ———

     

     

    Whilst completely respecting your opinion, I’ll point out that Republican parades are not, and never have been, ‘religious based’.

  3. Jamesgang

     

     

    Lol, I like a good ‘civilised’ debate! The surprise might be Gandolf played by Paddy McCourt does battle against Mordor I.e Ibrox.

     

     

    Ryecatcher

     

     

    There’s Rangers the idea and Rangers the club. Let’s see what dies first.

  4. HT

     

     

    Might b his best……….was gallussness of the highest order, but was not his most important

     

     

    pedantCSC

  5. thelurkintim

     

     

    Completely agree but for me the technique required for his goal at Dens makes it his best.

  6. Thank you guys for your prays and good wishes for Father Liam.

     

    The people of Fanad will ensure his first Mass at St Mary’s will be remember for years to come.HH.

  7. bournesouprecipe

     

     

    22:01 on 6 September, 2014

     

    Wolfe Tone………..fine Protestant and Father of Repulicanism.

     

     

    ———

     

     

    Don’t, you’ll confuse them.

  8. 16 roads - Celtic über alles... on

    Paulo Di Canio, another genuis.

     

     

    One of the bravest, however not the most intelligent Celt ever – the bold Anton Rogan himself.

     

     

    Legend.

     

     

    HH.

  9. Reckon the most important goal scored by a Celtic player in the last 25 years, was one by Alan Stubbs deep into injury time in November 1997 v Deadclub at Paradise.

     

     

    Really do think it was the goal that stopped Deadclub getting to 10.

     

     

    If thems had won that night it was game over and 10 in a row was a certainty.

  10. Hamilton

     

     

    Likely that that they did.

     

     

    OK – this has got me thinking. Which MU players from their 68 European Cup winning team would be worthy of replacing a Lion?

     

     

    Maybe Charlton would have got into the team but, despite their big names, I think that man for man we had the better players in every position.

     

     

    Maybe Shay Brennan for Jim Craig?

     

     

    George Best would have got into any other team but Lennox and Johnstone were irreplaceable on their form that night.

     

     

    Crerand was good but no Bobby Murdoch.

     

     

    I will continue to ponder the question.

  11. Dallas,

     

     

    The board are shooting themselves in the foot re: the GB.

     

     

    I reckon you’re probably in the same age group as me, like a lot on here, I know times have changed and rules have to be adhered to, a lesson that the GB have to learn.

     

     

    Most of us sang our hearts out to songs that is probably banned now, but, if memory serves me right the songs mostly kicked of from the jungle…point being we might not have the jungle anymore but we do/ did have a similar vocal support that kicked of the songs.

     

     

    Believe me when I say how much the huns I know despise the GB for what they bring to the atmosphere in Celtic Park.

  12. Dallas Dallas where the heck is Dallas on

    Hamiltontim, I’m with you about not discussing the Green Brigade more.

     

     

    Those who don’t like them have an agenda against the Green Brigade’s so called agenda.

     

     

    The Green Brigade have made mistakes but if they are criticised by some of our support who only see them as the problem, there are two sides to every story.

     

     

    Talk of the Jinky & Buzzbomb testimonial. Davie Hay set up Bobby’s goal with a great run and cross and Kenny scored a hat trick in the second half. I’m sure the game was a few days after Kenny’s famous winner through Ray Clemnce’s legs at Hampden.

     

     

    I was there with one of my sisters and her pal,both were in tears when Jimmy and Bobby did their lap of honour.

     

     

    Those around us wanted Davie Hay re – signed that night as Chelsea still owed us money from his transfer. Unfortunately, we didn’t but did get the majestic Pat Stanton in at the start of the next season.

  13. bournesouprecipe on

    Lennybhoy

     

     

    They were all the same, only in the beginning but instantly all fell out with each other after the reformation and formed a gazillion wee churches.

     

     

    Keep the faith

  14. Jamesgang

     

     

    will redirect your prayers for Father Liam Shiels through fandapatriot

     

     

    mediumsareweCSC

  15. 16 roads - Celtic über alles... on

    In terms of intelligence in a football sense, the Maestro was without equal.

     

     

    Sheer class.

     

     

    Wee Barmy thought that he was Paul McStay, a poor, poor imitation however.

     

     

    HH.

  16. Some times you take things for granted.

     

     

    But I promise the whole time we had Henke I pinched myself cos I knew we were living in the presence of someone very special.

     

     

    CRC says the CQN 5 a side Bhoys feel much the same about him!

     

     

    HH jamesgang

  17. Lennybhoy

     

     

    I cannot tell a lie :O( I was gon for beer and then up the road…….thought about it for a nanosecond …..Lennybhoy will be going for a train..safe home my friend :O)

  18. bournesouprecipe on

    big nan

     

     

    Ahh Bonnie Scotland…..where the boys in blue redetermine the meaning of sectarian.

     

     

    BSR still says yes.

  19. 67Heaven ... I am Neil Lennon ....The angels are with Wee Oscar in Heaven.. Ibrox belongs to the creditors on

    quonno

     

     

    20:51 on 6 September, 2014

     

     

    They might not attend them but, like myself, the vast majority would support / respect the right to ‘commemorate’ (Nationalists and Republicans)

  20. I must be older than i think, my first ever cup final seared the names of Fernie,Collins,and ,Charles Patrick Tully, forever in my memory banks! but its all subjective, because i then went on to salivate over Dunky McKay,Johnny Divers,Charlie Gallagher,Lisbon Lions,Davie Hay, George Connelly,where do you stop?

     

     

    wearingtheHoopsmakesyouLegendinmyeyesCFC

  21. thelurkintim

     

     

    Like it says in the ford ad, forgive him he is an idiot!

     

     

    IAmThatIdiotCSC

     

     

    HH jamesgang

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