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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What a goal Aiden !! Fantastic
Wouldn’t see the point of taking up seats in Westminster if the referendum was won
Goal! McGeady
Oh, ya fekin beauty…….Aiden, take a bow……!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Great goal Aiden son!
HH!!
Germany v Scotland .. 7;45 kick off .
You politicos carry on trying to change each other’s minds …
Me … I’m gonna go for a few pints and cheer on WGS and his team of bravehearts ;)
Scotland versus Germany on Fox Sports One at 2.30 pm Eastern here in the US.
It’s a wonder Houghton didn’t choke while praising McGeady.
McGeady spin then left foot curler into top corner. Magnificent. Shut up Ray Houghton.
Well done Aiden.
Well done R.o.i
2-1
HH
Ireland win 2-1 in Georgia – and the North score 2 late goals to win 2-1 in Hungary.
Two cracking goal Aiden, well played Ireland..
If whoopi goldberg married peter cushing , would that make her a “whoopi cushing”?.
Well done to both Ireland’s today.. great start to their campaigns.
Aidenho!
Grat result for Ireland, but that makes it even harder for us now….
And if Fanny Craddock had married Gordon Ramsay then that would have been a pair of right Fannys in the same kitchen.
ernie lynch
16:50 on 7 September, 2014
Most scots don’t join the British Forces because they want to go to war
Most Scots join the British Forces because it’s the only employment available to them
ernie lynch
18:46 on 7 September, 2014
Go and stitch some patches on to your cardigans elbow.
Gettin skelfs aff ma scroll button these days.
Just watching a news article on c4 .. About 100m Chinese grannies who dance in public areas
Locals complaining about the noise .. Some have pelted the grannies with water bombs but recently threw human faeces mixed in sand :(((
One woman who was interviewed said the smell was disgusting and ” it took me 14 minutes to clean my clothes ”
;(
adi_dasler
18:27 on
7 September, 2014
What were the teams at CP today ?
Attemdance ?
Celtic lined up: Douglas, Jackie McNamara, Tommy Boyd, Tommy Johnson, and Tosh McKinlay. Maestro, Petrov Moravcick Big John James McAvoy and Martin Compston.
Substitutions aplenty thereafter: JVoH Bobby Petta Simon Donnelly, Harald Brattbakk came on first half. In the second period Johnathon Gould, Macca, Mark Burchill, Paul Raymond. and Willie McStay along with Willie’s lad came on. There were one or two others that elude me, but Davie Farrell, and the wee guy from Gary Tank Commander made an appearance in the Hoops.
Attendance was 25,000 according to the official site.
Macca’s goal was a joy, turned the clock back, to contort his body (he”ll not be looking for any burds tonight) and volley a shoulder high ball, with power across the goal into the net.
Great goal.
His ma cut my stitches out last week.
jamesgang.
I am watching game in Bayern Munich Supporters pub round the corner from my hotel.The pub is also just round the corner from the main train station Hauptbahnhof.We visited the Alliance Arena Stadium today,fabulous stadium.Did you get caught in that Thunder and lightning and the hailstones today.We did soaked through.
I was clearing out my late German Grandfather’s closet and decided to give all his old clothes to the local charity shop.
I handed over the bag of clothes to the shop assistant who was rummaging through it when a horrified expression formed on her face.
“How dare you bring this uniform in to my shop” she exclaimed angrily. “This is a symbol of pain, shame and humiliation.”
Hugely embarrassed at this turn of events, I quickly took back the bag.
“I’m truly sorry” I said. “I had no idea he was a Rangers fan.”
bournesouprecipe said at
18:14 on 7 September, 2014
Thick Together
____________
Surely a wind up . . . and the flag is upside down!
T
Marrakesh
That’s a really impressive claim to fame pal ;)))))
What percentage of people on this blog wear cardigans with elbow patches.
Ireland/Georgia was extremely poor, WGS won’t lose any sleep when he watches a re-run of that game. Brilliant goal by Aidinho to win it, but that apart it was rubbish. My heart is still pumping from the hurling but the fitbaw did nothing for me.
So many CQNrs would have punted Aiden for £3m or less when he was here
Some even proposed a swap with Liam Lawrence
And they still lecture managers with their bombast
McGeady winner for Ireland… http://t.co/zszM6ixibS
I have a cardigan with no elbow patches, which groups do I join?
Bad result for Scotland in Georgia tonight unless they are capable of winning over there too.
See Scotland / Poland / Ireland being quite evenly matched in terms of players.
Thinking Scotland have the best tactical manager out of all 3 teams though.
eddieinkirkmichael
17:56 on
7 September, 2014
ryecatcher
17:19
Scottish Labour MP’s decided the outcome of election to Westminster twice; 1964 and Feb 1974 …. Both short-lived Parl; total period of Lab Govts – under two years.
Would they not have decided 195i outcome which was also a short lived parliament.
setting free the bears for Res. 12 & Oscar Knox but saying no to CQN racists
Do you think Aiden will come back ?
I think he was made to play for Glasgow Celtic. Remember his gallus when he first got into the team………..real off the seat stuff.
Would have been better if that had been a draw for Ireland but well done Aiden McGeady.
I expect nothing for Scotland tonight but watch out for Gibraltar – they are not the joke they are being made out to be.
They’ve had some decent results.
San Marino they ain’t.
Marshall in ahead of McGregor. Another Fenian conspiracy unearthed.
Hope Davy is capable of another Barcelona-esque performance.
Sipsini & Lennybhoy
We can walk the streets in safety now the debt has been cleared to csc :)))
Good to catch up with some good Bhoys & Ghirls and their gangs today.
BCW
I now have another face to a name.
Can we get Paul Scholes on a season long loan please :)))))