With each media appearance Dave King becomes less and less convincing.
Whatever he says the words of a South African judge can be heard in the background, sticking to the same script is becoming more and more difficult.
Yesterday’s interviews were littered with contradictions without a single solid answer whether the subject was players, a manager, loans, share issues or debt.
In his last interview as chief executive Deek Llambias asked whether King had money to invest and who his Nominated Adviser would be.
At Glasgow Airport on March 5 Mr King replied saying: “Yes but when you say ‘I have a Nomad’ ….I think we’ve addressed the money issue. I think the point I wanted to make is it’s not my Nomad. The club has to have a Nomad.
“I think Llambias should understand that. He’s confusing the AIM listing with the club. It’s the club that has to have the Nomad.
“All I have done is, in advance of the change of board, ensured there is another Nomad willing to come in. The club has to appoint them so that process can only happen after the general meeting.
“I’ve got one [lined up] who has done due diligence on the individuals but the key component for any Nomad is the club itself.”
At the end of March the company were removed from the Alternative Investment Market for failing to find a NOMAD.
Yesterday Mr King gave a vague reference to a meeting in London knowing full well that with no platform for selling shares, no auditor and a prospectus showing a solvent company required for a rights issue that it’ll be crisis loans and not share issues needed to keep the lights on.
Updating the situation he admitted: “The long-term strategy is still not to have debt in the club. I’m going to a meeting in London later this week to talk about the share issue.
“To some extent, it depends on the appetite for it. I have to talk to some of the other investors and see if they would be interested in following a rights issue or not.
“It’s uncertain, for example, whether the Easdale block would follow their rights or not. They might.
“Will Mike Ashley follow his rights? He may. They are all entitled to do so, so we have to go through that process and see who will and who won’t.
Should the company ever be in a position to offer a rights issue the combined Ashley/Easdale voting block could reject the move.
After being given fit and proper status by the SFA to become a director the South African based tax convict said: “Now if you look at Rangers, even in terms of the financials, we are in an incredibly strong position. We have shareholders who can fund it and it has virtually no debt. How many clubs in the world don’t have debt?
“For any football club our balance sheet is incredibly strong. We are one of the strongest clubs in the world financially.”
With a General Meeting called by MASH on Friday to get their £5m loan returned Mr King admitted: “I don’t see the Ashley loan being a loan in isolation. In fact, I don’t see it as a loan, quite frankly.
“It is one of those situations we will certainly discuss with Sports Direct. But I don’t think the club should be repaying the loan. If we have to, we will but I’d much rather see funds going into the club, rather than repaying that loan.”
Mr King’s own investment plan has varied downwards over the last 15 months.
In March 2014 he told the Daily Mail: “My view of what it will take to make Rangers competitive again is bottom end £30m but probably £50m — over the next four years.
“From the discussions I have to date I think there are other people who would come with me but I would say I would probably have to put in £30m of the £50m over the period of time. And I could probably get other people to put in £20m.
“Would I be willing to invest £30m despite what happened previously? Of course. Sure.”
A year later those figures had dropped as he told STV at Glasgow Airport: “It’s difficult to say [how much]. I said about £20m in the short term but I’m concerned there’s other areas of the club where money’s needed to be spent as well. I think it’ll be north of £20m in the short- to medium-term.
“The arrangement that I’ve had in the proposals that I gave to the boards was that I would take on 50% of the funding and that I expected other individuals to take on the other 50%. That’s where your Paul Murrays, George Lethems, Brian Kennedys and Douglas Parks all come in.
“It would be a 50/50 split but I don’t see me as carrying the sole burden. Initially we thought £16m to £20m would be the right level for the next couple of years … but right now my indication is that the figure would be higher.”
Three months after sweeping to power promising regime change, accountability and transparency Mr King has yet to invest a penny, last month he provided a £1.5m loan to meet the wage bill.