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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Terrible miss from Tomas Muller…….he looks out of sorts tonight.
Scotland could get lucky here tonight.
Great tackle by Whittaker……..on himself….
ryecatcher
19:53 on 7 September, 2014
Yes I agree. Anyone who vtes yes in this referendum is by definition a “seperatist” not Necessarily a nationalist. There is a difference, so he should not be labeling yes voters as “nats”. He knows that but he continues with his attempted wind up drivel.
German fans visibly shocked as they realise Scotland can afford to leave the world’s best left back out of the squad for tonight.
HunsandtheirhyperboleCSC
Very unlucky Scotland
Some strike from Charlie.
Offside though
I’m guessing this “narrative” from will go the same way as the “Maribore shtick”………just wait.
Oh for 1 player who knew it was a ball and not a hot potato
Anya…..some player….better singer…..
Charlie coulda dined out on that one for years..unlucky Chaz..
Ach well
Muller scores
Muller has that ability….to hang in the air….
Poor from the goalie…
Oh dear………
Typical German goal…..
Muller atones for his earlier sitter
If Marshall takes a step back before jumping he might a stopped that.or am being unfare
camera …lights…action……………
Damage limitation here now.
Keep the score down please Scotland.
Thinking goal difference could be critical in this group.
Boateng and his bloody pinpoint passing…….does yer heid in….
quonno – 19:14
“With his approval of the forty per cent rule, Callaghan was the real turkey who voted for an early Christmas.”
I would imagine all the shipbuilders, steel workers and miners who voted in the 11 SNP MPs who then went on to vote for Thatcher in 1979 felt the real turkeys as she proceeded to annihilate their industries just as everyone, including the SNP, knew she would.
setting free the bears for Res. 12 & Oscar Knox but saying no to CQN racists
19:29 on
7 September, 2014
Quonno
As I said. once you peddle that nonsense with such relish and frequency, you lose the right to complain when you get a little back.
Stop squealing to Paul.
Spell out the lie that I posted.
see mcgeady won it for the republic – must tune into rte to see how ray Houghton deals with that
Yes to Scotland scoring. Just like my postal Yes vote that’s winging it’s way back home.
Hello again. Who got 1690???
GerryBhoy
19:59 on 7 September, 2014
So when Salmond said about Thatcher
‘WE didn’t mind the economic side so much’
who exactly did he mean by WE?
Did he mean nats or separatists or something else entirely?
I mean obviously he would have meant the Scottish Tories i(412,000 votes at the last Westminster election), but who else was he referring to?
Ernie – when is that quote from? You bring it up a lot.
TBJ, one patch would overbalance me, I would end up talking round in circles as one patch would overbalance me
We cld do worse than sign Anya seeing how Forrest is out for the season.
Scotland doing better than Brazil at this stage so that’s positive, isn’t it?
Weeminger…
Ernie bang on with his quote from 2008
Alex Salmond: Scotland ‘didn’t mind’ Thatcher economics – The …
http://www.scotsman.com/…/alex-salmond-scotland-didn-t-mind-thatcher-econo...
20 Aug 2008 – ALEX Salmond has said Scotland “didn’t mind the economic side” to Margaret Thatcher, but disapproved of the “social” implications of her …
Old history shot through with personal prejudice. Today’s politics and sociology are moving components in the current day. The issues at stake are today’s and they need to be dealt with by the people of Scotland, not those of the south east of England or by Bullingham Club members.
ScrollingCSC
Got a text that some clown in the Orange Order made some threat of armed resistance by the Orange Order in the event of Scotland becoming Independent. Tell me it isn’t true or maybe better again tell me it is true.
I visited the Dortmund stadium two summers ago. Wouldnt let me in because they were doing a bit of welding.
Health and Safety and all that.
Ended up in the toon centre for a pint.
I remarked to a local that the city wasnt the nicest, 60s and 70s style buildings, not a patch on Glasgow’s architecture etc.
‘You can thank your Lancaster bombers for that’, Wolfgang replied.
ernie lynch
20:13 on 7 September, 2014
GerryBhoy
19:59 on 7 September, 2014
So when Salmond said about Thatcher
‘WE didn’t mind the economic side so much’
who exactly did he mean by We
This referendum is about whether Scotland will be an independent state or not. It is NOT a yes or no vote for Salmond or the SNP. All of my extended family members in Scotland will be voting yes, apart from one. They have all been Labour voters, so it is not a vote for the SNP as you continue to mis state. So give that a rest too.
Thanks!
Ryecatcher – so a six year old quote talking about a period aa generation and more ago. And it’s relevent to our future how? There’ll be ample opportunity to get rid of Salmond and the SNP if his history bothers you.
Meant to add that Wolfgang took a shine to me when I told him who my team was. He went on to give the fans of now defunct club a bad report for their behaviour there in 99, unsurprisingly.
ryecatcher
20:20 on 7 September, 2014
The source of the Salmond quote.
http://iaindale.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/alex-salmond-margaret-thatcher-truth.html
I can only suggest that if you didn’t mind the economic side of Thatcher so much you should vote yes.
Good evening all.
Just about to dine, but what I have come to the conclusion, EL is an MP. Don’t know which side, but a definite MP, crapping himslf for his cushy job. IMHO. KTF.
Weefra HH praying to Wee Oscar.
Marrakesh…..lucky you didn’t fly into Frankfurt then……
Allegedly the German air controllers at Frankfurt Airport are renowned as a short-tempered lot. They, it is alleged, not only expect one to know one’s gate parking location, but how to get there without any assistance from them. So it was with some amusement that we (a Pan Am 747) listened to the following exchange between Frankfurt ground control and a British Airways 747, call sign Speedbird 206.
Speedbird 206: “Frankfurt, Speedbird 206 clear of active runway.”
Ground: “Speedbird 206. Taxi to gate Alpha One-Seven.” The BA 747 pulled onto the main taxiway and slowed to a stop.
Ground: “Speedbird, do you not know where you are going?”
Speedbird 206: “Stand by, Ground, I’m looking up our gate location now.”
Ground (with quite arrogant impatience): “Speedbird 206, have you not been to Frankfurt before?”
Speedbird 206 (coolly): “Yes, twice in 1944, but it was dark,… and I didn’t land.”