Jim McColl has told Daily Record readers that the Fenway Sports Group have no interest in investing at Ibrox.
The veteran tyre-kicker gave a weekend podcast that suggested that FSG, owners of Liverpool, had discussed getting involved with him at Ibrox but has been forced to quickly back-track on that claim.
McColl has twice before been sniffing around the club without putting his hand in his pocket and is again on the scene to give supporters hope that Celtic’s run of success can be brought to a halt.
Equating the Ibrox operation with Celtic is the easy option but as Stuart Gibson discovered recently once you look under the bonnet, or at the accounts, the two clubs are poles apart.
Over the last four years Celtic’s turnover has been double or treble that at Ibrox with the southside club only outscoring their city ‘rivals’ when it comes to running up debt. Celtic directors haven’t been providing an annual subsidy in return for diluted shares with the eight times champions self-sufficient. Dermot Desmond hasn’t been cold shouldered by the Takeover Panel.
While Celtic announced a five-year kit deal with Adidas that some have speculated could be worth £50m the Ibrox side need to find a kit supplier from July 1 with Sports Direct and Hummel/Elite waiting for their pay-out from broken contracts.
Disregarding those facts McColl turned to the Daily Record to reassure Ibrox fans that their club is in great shape to attract fresh investment although it certainly won’t be coming from the owners of Anfield.
“Having listened back to that interview I realise it does sound as if I’m talking about the same people who are at Liverpool. What I meant to say is the people I’ve been talking to want to put in a place a similar strategy to the one being used by Liverpool.
“It’s important I make that clear before I have Liverpool on the phone asking what I’m talking about!”
And yet McColl is adamant his mystery backers are deadly serious when it comes to the idea of investing in a British club – and they are indeed attracted to the potential reach of the Rangers brand.
He added: “It was probably a bit of blue-sky thinking at first but it does make a lot of sense because there is certainly a renewed interest in UK clubs.
“Rangers and Celtic are up there in terms of potential with any of the others in the UK and these people knew of my involvement at Ibrox in the past when I got involved with Paul Murray to get rid of the people who were in charge at that time.
“I gave my shares away to the supporters after that but I’m always quite keen to see if there’s something that could be done to help out.
“At this stage though it hasn’t gone any further. Yes, I was approached but this was before the coronavirus outbreak.
“Right now, as far as business is concerned, it’s a case of fire-fighting on a daily basis. When this all settles down and the world begins to normalise then we can begin to take another look at our options.”
The mystery buyers sound like the same folk that have been waiting in the wings for the last 15 years without showing face.
Once they get to the Data Room they might discover that cold shouldered Dave King remains the biggest shareholder, Ibrox needs massive maintenance after close to 20 years of neglect while the cost of paying out on the legal claims and refreshing the first team squad could cost the best part of £100m before running costs inline with Celtic kick in.
[ad_pod id=”rezonence”]
Over the last two seasons Celtic have raised £45m from selling Moussa Dembele and Kieran Tirney, over the same period King brought in £2.2m from the transfers of Josh Windass and Daniel Candeias.
A vignette of nonsense. Is anyone going to write about how King is still a director and biggest shareholder, still in a concert party and still cold shouldered. A whole of of smoke and mirrors for the dumb going on here. https://t.co/jeIGvgpi2o
— David Low (@Heavidor) March 30, 2020
