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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corkcelt
Saw that.
Thought it was a wind up.
Maybe not though.
Soooo Oul’ ermine still peddling the Yea vote is a personal endorsement of Alex Salmond or Nats, bollox
an earlier attempt to leverage the opinions of a few lions met with ridicule
you still offering a bet on No 2:1 and under 70 % ?
M Ex
And Hitler the stupid Kraut!!!
If there is a poorer back 4 in Europe than Scotland’s, they must be absolute garbage. None of Scotland’s back 4 would get near the Celtic team.
weeminger
20:29 on 7 September, 2014
‘And it’s relevent to our future how?’
It’s relevant to how you assess Salmond’s credibility.
He tells us there WILL be a currency union.
He tells us a separate Scotland WILL continue as a member of the EU.
Do you believe him?
HT 1-0
I don’t have a vote in the Referendum, but if I did, and if the only posts I ever read were Ernie Lynch’s – I’d be voting Yes.
1-0 HT
This would be a good final score as well.
DD / Tallybhoy,
Reckon the kids thought I was someone’s granda.
Nice to meet up at the cqn corner with HT and his missus the minx, no wonder you look tired mate!
Sorry minx, just banter…;)
CRC, hope the big yin didn’t bolt with the score I gave him for you…ps, I know it’s a donation, as I’m pi* h at foretelling football results. HH
Phyllis Dietrichson
Nail on the head I’d say.
How good was it to see Paul McStay back at Celtic Park today . Also must say I think Rio Ferdinand is a top bloke he can’t speak highly enough of Paul and Celtic.
Jude
Wee Anya is acracker. The pride of Castlemilk.
Snake Plissken
20:32 on 7 September, 2014
Want to remind us of your comments about JK Rowling?
Lenny on SS2 as pundit on Gibraltar v Poland game. Got to be better than the hunfest in the studio for Scotland game.
Snake. Think its a wind up. A rehash of what some Jimmy said 13 or 14 years ago.
ernie lynch
20:29 on 7 September, 2014
ryecatcher
20:20 on 7 September, 2014
I can only suggest that if you didn’t mind the economic side of Thatcher so much you should vote yes.
So vote no for the economic side of gideon osbourne, call me dave cameron, nigel farage and new labour? Really?
Jude
What’s wrong with Forrest …out for the season .??..excuse my ignorance …been on holiday
Weeminger.if he is and he really wants no: he,s not a very good one
Some the most consistent Yes supporting contributers today don’t even live in Scotland …..
Ernie
Who cares what alex salmon said about thatcher or how many scots voted conservative. This is not about voting for a party or liking / not liking alas salmon.
The voting paper asks if Scotland should be an independent nation. That’s all !!
If the main argument is about currency fine I’ll chat about that but the rest is irrelevant
http://abload.de/img/screenshot2014-09-07ar5k93.png
The orange order should really leave politics to the educated:-P
Weefra
Think you are correct. Will discuss Saturday about the parcel of rogues.
Appols if already posted…………
Billy No’well……….(Language)…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VTY8A1hBiP8
Jude
I found the krauts brand new, and Germany’s the most impressive country I’ve visited. Certain wee things I noticed.The place is full of female pensioners who dress like they’re 21.
In some cases its the old 1690 syndrome, and some on here know what that is.
Faeroes 1-0 Finland.
Pukki must be playing.
HH!!
Gordybhoy64@19.37
Sad story. Prayers will be offered. Kind of puts things in to perspective.
HH
Ernie – I don’t take it as fact but I find it hard to believe that the Govt would hinder so many English businesses by blocking cu.
Europe – some experts say we’ll be in some don’t.
Neither two subjects are high up on my reasons for voting
Stevo
No other significant political party wants a Yes vote….
Either the members of other parties are being disingenuous or it is a vote for SNP
NO THANKS
great weeman
thanks to those that replied to my post at19.37 tonight,
although I would probably have got more replies had I asked for a recipe or pub suggestion,
heres hoping Scotland can get a result for young C tonight
Phyllis Dietrichson
20:31 on
7 September, 2014
I don’t have a vote in the Referendum, but if I did, and if the only posts I ever read were Ernie Lynch’s – I’d be voting Yes.
With you on that one, the no campaign including Ernie just don’t know when to stop the tactics which so clearly are turning people off, made my mind up :-)
weeman67
Oh that hurts!!! Hee hee hee
Sooo ermine
Bets are off then?
Thomas Mueller scored with the 4th header he had in about as many minutes. The warning signs were all there and he was marked by two men but still scored.
He’s a big squealing Jessie at times but he is a very effective player.
Naismith is risking a red card with his flying elbows. He was badly treated in not getting a foul early on but he has lost the plot since then.
Looking like 2 or 3 nil to Germany at the moment.
gordybhoy64
just logged on and read back.
terrible news – will add the lad to my cqn prayer list
COYBIB
Ernie Lynch
Sure
Crap writer who gave a million quid to a side who are going to dismantle the Welfare state and sell it off.
I don’t like her. I never liked her. I don’t like Harry Potter and I consider it to be crap literature.
I am glad we on the YES side have better writers who understand what this is really about.
This is a woman who lived on benefits while writing her first novel which she made her money from who would today have doubtless have been marched off to poundland to work never getting that chance.
The safety net allowed her to do so but she seems to have forgotten all about that.
Another true unionist who delivered the ‘I’m alright Jack’ so stuff the rest of you. A woman so infinitely wealthy that she could up sticks if the going gets tough in the UK.
That is my opinion of her and as she is an anti-poverty campaigner I find it all the more upsetting.
I am entitled to my opinion.
On basis do Sky think McCann is qualified to be a pundit ….tosser
i think the question on the referendum ballot paper should be
“Kirsty Young – aye or naw?”
if more than 50% say aye, then independence it is.