Walter Smith defends debt free Rangers
Smith returns to the Ibrox dug-out for tonight’s fund raising match against AC Milan and believes that the clubs problems are largely due to Whyte.
Backed by Murray, Smith went on a massive spending spree on his return to Ibrox to replace Paul le Guen splashing out fortunes on Steve Davis, Kyle Lafferty, Kenny Miller, Maurice Edu, Nikica Jelavic, Kevin Thomson, Andrius Velika, Lee McCulloch, James Beattie, Steven Whittaker, Steven Naismith and Madjid Bougherra.
That spending spree brought Rangers three SPL titles while Celtic balanced their books in the transfer market but Smith believes that the club finances were in good shape when Murray sold out to Whyte for £1.
“I think there is a lot of misinformation put out to suit whatever party,” the former Ibrox boss claimed. “I tend to put things into compartments. At the end of last season, Rangers Football Club was in its best financial position for maybe 70 or 80 years. They had no debt.
“Craig Whyte told us he paid off the remaining £18m to the bank so that meant Rangers were debt-free. The EBT case that everyone keeps talking about has no influence on Rangers until the judgement comes. The judgement, when it comes, would obviously have a detrimental effect if it goes against. If they win it, fair enough.
“I am reading it is Dick Advocaat’s fault, Walter Smith’s fault, David Murray, Walter Smith’s fault from years ago. You can make your judgements on what happened previously but the fact is that none of that mattered. In May of last year, all of that had disappeared.
“The club had managed to cut £16m off the overall debt, Craig Whyte gave the other £18m to the bank.
“Rangers weren’t a business going into administration or anything like that. How many businesses can take £16m off their debt during a period of recession? That’s what happened, therefore the directors that were in place there were doing a job.
“As chief executive, Martin Bain seems to have come out this worse than anybody. He could be quite proud of what he did, handling a situation with the bank, having me moaning at him for not spending any money, having fall-outs with him and different things like that.
“He seems to be getting vilified only I think because he stood against Craig Whyte’s buying of the club.
“The previous people ran the club in a manner they thought was best. They were successful enough on the field and were meeting the bank’s criteria over those three years. Under protest on my part, but we were meeting them. You can’t say it was badly run in that period of time.”
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