Bryan Jackson has claimed that Douglas Park is the ideal man to be chairman of a football club in desperate times.
Jackson steered Hearts, Motherwell and Portsmouth out of administration via a CVA with the financial position at Ibrox suggesting that his skills could soon be required.
Park has kept a back-seat since being part of Dave King’s concert party in 2015 but last Friday he was thrust into the spotlight when King walked away.
Apart from a couple of comments in a club statement after King departed nothing has been heard from Park who has built up a large card dealership and coach hire company.
That line of business will be suffering badly from the current Lock Down but with his new role at Ibrox Park has to ensure that the bills continue to be paid.
Without going into any level of detail Jackson told the Sunday Post that the Ibrox club couldn’t wish to be in better hands.
As with most problems, an awful lot of it comes down to how you view the situation. If you are talking about Douglas Park as an example, of course these are very testing times.
That holds true for all football clubs just now – it applies right throughout all walks of life. In this case, he is a man stepping into an extremely high-profile role at a time when there are unprecedented restrictions on the business but you have to keep things in context.
This isn’t someone jetting in from another continent to take over, but the vice-chairman stepping up. His support and commitment to the club goes back decades.
He is also a very successful businessman, who will be well used to having to deal with difficult situations. One would imagine becoming chairman has been an ambition of his for quite some time, and now he has achieved it.
If you are the sort of person who relishes a challenge, then this is your moment, because all clubs will have a need for strong leadership right now. When you have got that, my own experience would tell me that people invariably rise to the challenge – individually and collectively.
And I am talking about desperate situations, in which players and employees are facing up to the prospect of job cuts and wage reductions.
In November the club accounts revealed an expected shortfall for this season of £10m which would suggest that the money should be running out about now. No account was made for the sums owed to Sports Direct, Hummel/Elite and Memorial Gardens.
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Last season’s accounts revealed monthly expenditure of around £4.5m with the bulk of that going on the wage bill. This season Steven Gerrard has added Filip Helander, Brandon Barker, Jordan Jones, Jake Hastie, Sheyi Ojo, Greg Stewart and Joe Aribo. Jermain Defoe, Allan McGregor, Borna Barisic and Steve Davis have all recently signed new contracts as has Mr Gerrard.
