Mike Ashely’s a billionaire. So is Bill Gates. But what else do they have in common? Neither of them are likely to spend a penny making Rangers great again. I sighed. We know the Club is a shambles and each and every-one running the business comes from the same rat bloodline as Whyte, Green , Ahmad, Stockbridge, Easdale, Ashely, Llambias, Leach and a host of others who also ran (past go and collected a nice slice of cash). Poor Somers, the scrambling self-serving slithering wet fish who really did dismiss the red card protests as an anti-apartheid demo, still bleats that he isn’t getting enough cash. Given the disintegration he is presiding over, it’s not a stretch to say that he is being overpaid for harmful failure. Sadly, UK corporate boards have long rewarded failure in an immoral, if not illegal way. Somers should be ashamed when he looks at himself in the mirror each morning, assuming he can find one large enough. I deride. Every single one of this rabble has woken each day with the selfish thought ‘what can Rangers do for me?’. This contrasts with all those who want the keys to Ibrox. Whichever combination of these suitors gets the keys to Ibrox is a welcome and frankly essential change for the survival of our Club, be in absolutely no doubt. Get beyond any minor reservations and personal or petty squabbles and see the big picture. Look at the empty stands and tell me how the incumbents will get bums back on seats? You tried? The charm-free zones that are the Easdales are the closest thing to ‘leadership’ the Club has had in recent times but are a truly remarkable pair. Central Casting would struggle to conjure up two more detached, stubborn and menacing characters. With a procession of bumbling crap CEOs under them they have presided over a loss of custom that would indeed make Gerard Ratner’s eyebrows jump. Is this ‘a platform for stability’, a vision for the future, a positive for the Club? You decide. They maintain they are Rangers fans, but then oversee a quite feeble attack on Murray and King ‘for selling Rangers for £1’. They admit live on TV that their knowledge of Ally McCoist’s contribution to the Club merits a ‘not a lot;. Hey they don’t need to know about Morton, Meiklejohn and McNeil or Shaw, Simpson and Shearer, Greig, Caldow or Young. But a rudimentary knowledge of events at the Club in the last 4 years would be helpful. Did their belligerent and smarmy media advisor let them down badly? You decide. The thought of handing over Ibrox, at any price, let alone the meagre sum of £10m, has made fans shudder and finally start to come together with a common cause. The Ashley loan defies belief, not just because it virtually hands control of a ‘sacrosanct’ asset to Sports Direct but, against a backdrop of reality, is simply bad business. As we’ve seen, revenue is plummeting and this move will stunt it by a further £10m in no time. It’s like taking a new big mortgage out knowing you’re going to be fired from your job. Madness. Is it just short sighted self preserving panic or a deliberate manipulation in favour of an external third party? You decide. Although slow to gather pace its great to see more and more fans contributing to the various fan initiatives out there – nearly 2.5% held by fan Groups. It may still be small, but in the upcoming EGM, the future of the Club will be decided by a wafer thin margin. With your actions, fellow Bears, YOU decide. The Rangers business is broken and there is no apparent ability or desire among our esteemed leadership to address this. Just continue to carve up the assets and the revenue. A modern ambitious football business is fuelled by its revenue. Revenue is the petrol that fires the engine. And revenue, as assessed by the Annual Football Money report, falls into three categories, broadcast, matchday and commercial. That’s bona-fide. The first of these categories is the one the Club has least individual control over, its largely a collective bargaining effort and we know that Scottish football has little clout in the market. Only the Champions League can make a meaningful impact and that has been out of the reach of our Club for some time, even if we were led by the moderately competent. Let’s leave that aside. Matchday revenue is traditionally a function of quality entertaining football and/or a keenly fought and tight competition. But paradoxically we find ourselves facing a genuinely competitive challenge this year, with a real prize at the end of it, and matchday revenue has crashed. And its not a question of pricing or a new cost of living squeeze. Is it the poor quality football? Well yes perhaps to an extent, we know we have squandered a golden opportunity to redefine our football philosophy, and have ended up with an aged, dispirited rump of pros coasting to their pensions. Its not pretty or inspiring. Ally McCoist bears some responsibility for this. But this doesn’t fully explain the collapse in attendance – we’ve watched dross many times before in great numbers. Its not that people have lost faith in the team, its that they’ve lost faith in the Club. And that takes us back up from the dugout to the directors’ box and the third main component of Club income, the commercial side. This is where the business men, the CEO, marketing, FD, directors etc have their chance to shine. To excel, to put bread on the table to feed a hungry football department. The Annual Football Money report states that ‘sizeable commercial deals are key to success’. Matchday revenue is, as a proportion of overall income, becoming less important than the truly distinctive commercial deals we can aspire to. We are, after all, known worldwide. Sir David Murray always cited our retail contribution as our golden goose, a net contribution into the Club of £6-7m per year from a turnover in excess of £20m. That he eventually jettisoned this for net annual income of £4.8m from JJB Sports seemed cheap given his previous boasts, but when seasonally adjusted on the David Murray bullshit scale, perhaps £4.8m was reasonable enough. Given we could generate this 10 years ago, isn’t it reasonable to think we can aim for at least similar in the near future? Well we’ve all seen the horrific reality of our retail income last year. Less than £1m. Mr Ashely, on record in a rare interview, described this as a great deal…for Sports Direct shareholders. Well given how much potential Rangers revenue, thanks to an onerous contract, was being diverted from the Club to Sports Direct it would be. And that ladies and gentlemen, is the crux of the Ashley problem – it is in his interests to stunt our commercial interests in favour of his external Sports Direct interests. Do we really want a man running our Club, through placemen and simpletons (you can decide which Board member goes in which category) who places the interests of a third party above the interests of Rangers FC? If anyone argues otherwise, they’ve lied. We must rid ourselves of our onerous contracts and we must rid our Club of those who, quite maliciously, defend these rotten, vicious and destructive arrangements. Participate in the fans groups, back all the alternatives and vote them out, out, out. Only then will we regain our Club and our future. And one other great virtue...... ...our Pride. A good read!
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 07:06:06 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015