Daily Record issue warning on Rangers crisis
The scale of the financial crisis at Ibrox remains unknown but in September in an exclusive interview with Craig Whyte Traynor revealed that the club wagebill had increased by 20% since the billionaire bought the club from Sir David Murray.
With no European income to supplement the clubs’ cashflow Whyte issued a grim warning about the financial situation regardless of the on-going tax worries.
“I didn’t buy Rangers to watch the club fail,” the new chairman claimed in September. “But hard decisions will have to be made and we’ll start making them very quickly.
“I put myself in the position of owning a football club so I cant moan about it now, although the payroll every month is not something I find enjoyable.
“Decisions will have to be made and there will be pain but no matter the outcome of the bigger tax case we will still be here. Rangers will still be playing at Ibrox and moving forward.
“Yes, we have inherited a mess from the previous management and there are a lot of issues we are working through.
“But the main thing is we have to get real we are stuck in Scottish football and our costs are significantly more than the income we bring in and that has to be dealt with.
“We have to get to the stage where we can at least break even and live within our means. We’re very far from being there at the moment.
“We are geared up for being in the Champions League every season that’s the cost base we’ve got.”
The reality of that cost base, the uncertainty over the tax bill and a sustained title challenge from Celtic has changed the landscape since Whyte’s arrival as new owner in May.
Fergus McCann is possibly the only person to have made money out of Scottish football with others such as Murray, John Boyle and Pearse Flynn finding that their success in other business fields can’t be transferred into the unique world of football. That reality seems to be dawning on Whyte.
As Ally McCoist and the Rangers support plead for further investment the likelihood is that it will only be outgoing business for the club this month with the price for players such as Nikica Jelavic and Steve Davis unlikely to match the value that Rangers currently place on them.
In an opinion piece this morning Traynor warns: “Rangers, as they’ve been known for more than a century, might be killed off and a new club born from the fall-out and recriminations.
“A ruling on the HMRC case is expected this month but there may be a feeling within Ibrox that no matter the outcome of the tax dispute, the best way, maybe the only way, forward is administration or some form of liquidation.
“However, that would require a lot of explaining. All those fans who bought into the new regime but who have since been trying not to think of worst-case scenarios will finally be demanding answers to questions they should have been asking months ago.”
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