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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Does Charles Green own the rangers crest or is it Mike Astley it’s certainly not sevco
Sky Sports News HQ @SkySportsNewsHQ 3m
Scotland XI to play Germany: Marshall, Hutton, Whittaker, Martin, Hanley, Morrison, Fletcher (C), Mulgrew, Naismith, Bannan, Anya.
BCW
Me there was a great game for a great cause today. That’s what we should be talking about IMHO.
Ernie Lynch
I dislike it because it overlooks the reasons why they did it – the despicable behaviour of the Labour party.
My opinion of Thatcher’s economic policy is that it was vandalism and despicable but the effect that had on the communities of Scotland (and elsewhere) was the true wickedness of the woman and that is what people objected to more. It is a fair argument.
I would say that they are linked.
The Commonweal hes been overlookit.
Maybe you should read Ane Satyr of the thri estatis.
You might learn that our social values as a nation are far more developed and run far deeper than just a 19th-20th century political phenomenon.
Thatcher attacked what generations of Scots held dear – we all remember there is no such thing as society. That was the fundamental reason for her loathing over all things.
What were the teams at CP today ?
Attemdance ?
Attendance :)
just watched a excellant you,tube on john guidetti
its john guidetti.-skavlan 2012-09-08
sorry cant do the link
its a swedish talk show in english.
comes across as a really nice guy
talking about his life in africa playing in his
bare feet with the local kids.
i hope we can hold on to him for a few years
its worth a look
Philbhoy
Couldn’t agree more – a handful of sad pretentious political blowhards who pollute this fine blog with their boring, boring tripe and try to come across as if they are so right and everyone else is so wrong .. BLAH BLAH BLAH
In reality – we just don’t care and wish they would bugger off to their own blog because we don’t give a crap ….. – and we know who you are …
Neil canamalar Lennon hunskelper extrordinaire
Is Mike Astley Rick’s wee brother, I think we should be told…
Starry …,
:) ooops
So the CQN unionists are moving from “it will be a no victory” to “even if you vote for independence we will look for ways to deny you it”.
True colours coming out now then?
starry
Mike Ashley disnae look like any bodies “wee” brother.
Embramike,
Who ur they ?
snake plissken
18:27 on 7 September, 2014
Boring get a life
Tom McLaughlin
What else did you expect?
embramike
I was reposting a post by BCW and agreeing by putting my name on his list!
If you see what i mean!
Jmccormick…
If Mike Ashley is Rick’s brother….it looks as if he might have eaten him.
Hasn’t been seen for years
NevergonnagiveyouupCSC
Neil canamalar Lennon hunskelper extrordinaire
You should be so lucky :)))
tom mclaughlin
18:32 on 7 September, 2014
You have bored us to death get a life sado
Ashley / Astley
Bet ye Mike is a better singer than Rick.
ryecatcher
True enough.
GIVE US OUR BLOG BACK!!!!!
C’MON THE CELTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I miss the songs debate
Georgia have a big but suspect defence and a couple of players we might have to keep an eye on, but wouldn’t think much should stop Scotland picking up 4 points minimum against them.
Ireland games could go either way – not much between either of them with similar styles of play. Games v Poland could be decisive.
North down 1-0 now in Hungary.
Sonn be poppy season though……help ma boab.
1-1 Georgia v RoI
Gaelic fans
Who were the 2 counties to do double?
Who did those double winners defeat/score/which year?
Just interested Celts
Snp opened the door to Thatcher in 1979-
After a labour govt became the second country after Pinochets Chile to implement monetarist/friedmanite policies.
This was due to the IMF insisting on ‘structural adjustment’ after bailing the country out.
Healeys public expenditure cuts allowed thatcher to point out her implementation of monetarist policies cut less than healey.
Fine example….then as now of labours selective memory syndrome…or as most ordinary people see it- betrayal
Not even mentioned the winter of discontent and piles of rubbish everywhere
Or the devolution betrayal …
I mean you would hardly think Alistair Darling deregulated the banks or Tony took us into wars we are still seeing today.
Hope all who attended charity game enjoyed themselves
HH
Poppy’s anyone
Soon not sonn…
Georgia v Ireland is a pish poor game.
Like the Ireland top ‘tho.
Make a good Celtic away top.
HH!!
Jmccormick
I remember a brilliant TV chef called Fanny Craddock…….She is still a legend in ma hoose.
If Davy Weir would have married Fanny Craddock….would it have made her Fanny Weir?
And if you follow the recipe from the greatest cookbook ever published then I’m sure all your doughnuts will turn out like Fanny’s
Ginger
18:23 on 7 September, 2014
Great display of gingerness by Alan Quinn in the Ireland game
Onlyafewofusleftcsc
What about this for a display of ‘gingerness’
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bw4G3SxCYAADe21.jpg:large
cmonthegingersCSC
“Many Congratulations to @beramangela & his wife Angela on the birth of their first child Pirlo Kayal”
So Beram Kayal calls his new son Pirlo !!! Congrats Beram HH
ryecatcher
Stop with the Hector Nicol jokrbook or you’ll have to join in the upcoming referendum result debate/rammy.
If Fanny Craddock had married Ed Balls father, she would have been Fanny Balls.
A few of those on here!
:-)
HH!!
Tom McLaughlin
18:32 on 7 September, 2014
‘So the CQN unionists are moving from “it will be a no victory” to “even if you vote for independence we will look for ways to deny you it”.
True colours coming out now then?’
####
You made two statements which were factually incorrect.
I pointed that out.
I appreciate your annoyance but there’s no need for that retort.
I have to say I was surprised that anyone thinks that a yes vote would mean that Scottish Westminster constituencies would be abolished.
The SNP have made it clear that in that event of a yes vote they would contest seats at the Westminster election and take up their seats if they won.
I sometimes think people don’t have as much of a grasp of these matters as they’d like to think.
But anyway, in the scenario I outline I could see there being traction for such a second referendum, especially if, as predicted, Labour won.
But why the concern? Surely the nats wouldn’t be afraid of the result of a second referendum?
Aiiiiiiiiiiiiiden….worragoalson….
McGeady scores again and puts Ireland 2-1 up in last minute away to Georgia !
What a goal Aiden!