Dave King believes that he can turn Sevco into a European force backed only by matchday incomes with supporters providing half of the investment needed to succeed.
The man described as a glib and shameless liar by a South African judge is confident of taking control of the distressed club at an upcoming EGM.
With Mike Ashley setting up deals to ensure that the bulk of the club’s retail profits heads to Sports Direct, income streams are restricted for any new regime at Ibrox.
Inheriting a £10m loan and other onerous contracts awaits Mr King if successful before he gets to turn his thoughts to a new playing squad, management team and urgent maintenance work on Ibrox and the state-of-the-art Murray Park Academy of Stars.
Yesterday, to an invited audience, Mr King laid out vague notions of how he can rescue the club, afterwards he spoke to the Daily Telegraph and brushed aside fears that he would be inheriting an infrastructure that is designed to crash the club into administration.
Discussing the onerous contracts Mr King said: “It may be dilapidated – there may be contracts in place that are out of balance. If they are commercially compromising, we would seek to have them overturned.
“If they are merely commercially astute negotiations by one party versus another party who didn’t have equivalent commercial skills, then maybe we have to live with that. I don’t believe, either way, that it would be significant, because the major asset is still the fans and the short term key to success is to reconnect with them and get them supporting the club again.
“But it is important that we start looking at the commercial contracts that have been negotiated to the extent that they might be inappropriate or will not stand scrutiny. Or they might turn out to be perfectly fair – other than Somers’ (Mr David, chairman of Sevco) strong indication in the email, we can’t really be sure.
“I’m assuming that if Somers felt sufficiently strongly to send that email out that there is some form of irregularity. I certainly expect to see some form of irregularity in the contracts with Sports Direct.
Looking at the cost of setting up a club capable of winning the SPFL and competing in the Champions League Mr King answered: “Tens of millions of pounds – I’m not sure how much exactly. I’m concerned about the dilapidation of the stadium, for example.
“In November I was talking about an initial injection of £16 million but that was in football terms and I wasn’t aware that the stadium might need millions of pounds spent on basic repairs. As with all these situations it’s likely to be more, rather than less.”
As to finding the donations to make the club competitive Mr King says he will pay half of the bill with the remainder coming from fans.
With the club facing liquidation in the spring of 2012 less than £1m was raised for the Rangers Fans Fighting Fund with attention focused on finding a sugar daddy.
Explaining his funding plan Mr King said: “ I would be willing to provide half the amount needed as long as, collectively, fan and fan groups provide the other half. I’ve been delighted at the extent to which the fans’ groups have been united over the last couple of months. I hope that the average fan gets into a shareholding position.”