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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Good second half from Scotland, got a run for our money at least.
James McCarthur was shite. Bad night for the boy.
ernie lynch
21:45 on 7 September, 2014
———————————————-
Very much so, the only qualification required is that the benefactors be underprivileged, and have permanent residency in the country.
If there is anything left in the coffers, it could always be distributed to the poor starving children in Africa.
IdealisticCSC.
setting free the bears for Res. 12 & Oscar Knox but saying no to CQN racists
21:47 on 7 September, 2014
What about that fantastic games of 5s on Sat morn? 11 each
BlackandblueCRC :-)
P
Aye, you are of course correct.
I have this unfortunate trait of biting sometimes, more fool me, I will desist, thankfully as long as I don’t break Paul’s rules I will still be able to post on here.
With respect, you are a bit harsh on Ernie tho, he is no an idiot, he is a total insult to the village idiot.
HH
Moonbeams WD. Wee Oscar’s our Bhoy and Kano’s our mhan.
21:45 on 7 September, 2014
The problem with your point is that I have never said the Scots aren’t capable of running Scotland.
Whereas the nats have said we need a currency union, membership of the EU and NATO, and to have the queen as head of state.
So could you please tell us why you think we can’t run Scotland by ourselves?
Ernie
WHO are you???
WHO pays you???
Parcel of rogues the lot of yeez.
White settler scumbags.
Ernie
I asked a question. You are for keeping the Union.
Can you answer the question please?
It’s not a difficult question to understand. Is it?
MWD says AYE
CRC
So at least 3 have fallen ? including you :-)
Ernie…,
All points directed at MWD have been answered, each and every one of those conditions can be changed by subsequent Scottish governments. The nats will only be part of the transition
crc
It was a good game and our plan, to let you score all those early goals and run the legs off you, nearly paid off.
What’s this about being black and blue? I only kicked you wance.
I see that the cyber Nats are still trying to attack ernie at every turn, accusing him of not answering questions while if course not answering his questions.
The whole of the Nats campaign is summed up like this. It leaves a bitterly divided society on 19th.
Not good.
MWD I asked you about council tax freeze and Scotland not raising tax via it’s existing tax raising powers. Did you ever respond? Did you investigate?
The SNP have been bribing us much like Tory govts of old. Once a yes vote is secured who is going to pay the bill?
16 roads – Celtic über alles…
21:52 on 7 September, 2014
I see your scheme is still a work in progress.
ernie lynch
21:53 on
7 September, 2014
Have the nats said we need them, or merely that we’ll have them? After all those are not the same thing.
The bullying of ernie on this site is simply disgusting.
Neganon
Seconded
Canamalar.
I’m actually beginning to believe our Ernie is a Hun. His whataboutery is of Astounded of Forehead proportions!
I don’t believe he has ever answered a question put to him with a direct answer.
It is laughable.
MWD says AYE
NegAnon2
21:57 on 7 September, 2014
You need to grow up as well
HH
CRC
Tonight .. We took on the world champs in their own back yard .
We frightened the lederhosen off them
The ref was a disgrace right up until our corner when there should still have been at least a minute left
We can be a nation again … YES
All this talk about currency union, the Scottish people will decide which currency we will use. If WM block currency union, so be it. We will use the Scottish pound. One financial institute already stated, Scotland would probably be better off going down that route. WM shove yer pound. KTF
Weefra HH praying to Wee Oscar.
Pfayr,
C’mon, you know as well I do, how a result tonight can effect a vote, just like the overdrive with the smsm lately.
I try to keep out of the politics on here, best I keep it that way.HH
Neil canamalar Lennon hunskelper extrordinaire
21:56 on 7 September, 2014
‘Ernie…,
All points directed at MWD have been answered, each and every one of those conditions can be changed by subsequent Scottish governments. The nats will only be part of the transition’
##
But the nats are telling us that we need these things.
That’s the reality, here and now.
They’re telling us that.
And I want to know why they think we’re not capable of running Scotland on our own.
Ernie are you neganon?
Ernie
Bj will be a pm and bj will be the pm. I just hope it has nothing to do with Scotland.
Neganon / PFayr
Which part of asking Ernie a question is bullying?
Give me peace.
Same old same old retort on here when someone has an opinion questioned by many. It’s ridiculous.
NegAnon2
21:57 on
7 September, 2014
I can’t recall ever getting nasty in a discussion on the indyref, so I’ll assume I don’t fall into the Cybernat category. However, do you think any aspects of the No campaign have been divisive?
Or is the divisiveness simply an aspect of a Yes/No argument?
Sipsini
Perhaps …but that was not my point …
You’re suggestion I had drank too much was insulting
Ernie
Go on. Just one thing?
MWD says AYE
weeminger
21:57 on 7 September, 2014
ernie lynch
21:53 on
7 September, 2014
‘Have the nats said we need them, or merely that we’ll have them? After all those are not the same thing.’
###
Why would we want to have them if we don’t need them?
That would be like keeping stabilisers on your bike when you don’t need them, or wearing armbands when you can swim.
Any nats on tonite ?
Sipsini
I seen your seat today, I thought you had PL’s role :-)
MWD
My comment wasn’t directed at you
Come
Question
Nationalism
Neganon, bang on brother
Divisiveness is never a good thing.
Vote NO! Vote Trident.
ProudtobeaBrit.CSC
Mother England save us from ourselves
Well played, Scotland.
Ref was a disgrace.
Should have been 2 red cards for the Germans.
In reality, no injury time played.
HH
without getting involved in the political debate I think Ernie gives as good as he gets,
don’t think he is bullied,but he can come across as a smart ass
“The bullying of Ernie Lynch…”
As a concept, that’s up there with “the exit from liquidation”
Neg
Are you Ernie? Mmmmmm ;))))) Hahahaha belter.
neganon
No more than I would have expected from you. There will be no repercussions on the 19th regardless of how the vote goes. You really do have to get a life. I DO live in Scotland, Sth Lanarkshire to be precise. I can assure you there will be no fallout in this area whatever the outcome. Please stop stirring the excrecia.
Weefra HH praying to Wee Oscar.