Charles Green has let rip with a stunning attack on all the True Blue Rainjurz men that allowed their club to die and undermined the founding father of the tribute act.
The businessman from Yorkshire went in where others feared to go when he attempted a CVA in the summer of 2012 that was rejected by Her Majesty.
As soon as Green set up the new club Walter Smith and Douglas Park tried to buy him out, when those offers were rejected Smith wished the new club every success then took up a role as director which reassured fans to buy season tickets to watch Peterhead and Annan with Kevin Kyle leading the forward line.
Funding the new club wasn’t helped when Allan McGregor, Steven Naismith, Kyle Lafferty and Steven Whittaker refused to TUPE over while Kirk Broadfoot, Lee McCulloch, Lee Wallace and Ally McCoist transferred their salaries over to play against taxi drivers, plumbers and fire fighters.
Green has kept quiet over the last few years but broke his silence to join Andy Gray and Richard Keys in a podcast, the Daily Record reports:
In the Keys and Gray podcast, Green launches a scatter gun attack, branding current Ibrox chairman Douglas Park a ‘lunatic’, lambasting former owner Dave King, hailing his infamous kit deal with Sports Direct and even turning his fire on top team stalwarts and title winners Allan McGregor and Steve Davis. Some of it has to be read to be believed. And even then you might want to check twice.
Andy Gray: Did you buy Rangers with your own money?
Charles Green: No I didn’t. It was impossible to do that because of the debts. We tried to buy it with the CVA as a going concern and if that had happened the forces within the SFA and the SPL couldn’t have put Rangers down into non-league football.
So you needed enough cover to deal with these liabilities. But of course the CVA didn’t go ahead and it was a different story. I also had to pay all the old clubs debts and these are things people don’t recognise.
We’re now classed by the Scottish FA and everyone as a new club. But I had to pay all the oldco’s debts. I used to argue, if we’re the oldco that’s fine, we’ll pay all the debts. If we’re newco we’re newco, we haven’t got the debts.
I was fighting these battles single handed and at the same point we’ve got the Rangers fans saying, ‘We’re going to starve him out, don’t buy season tickets’.
But the point is, when I stepped down, Rangers had cash in the bank, no liabilities. So any black holes that appeared were not on my shift.
What angered me as well was, all these Rangers fanatic players who disappeared to get fat signing on fees because they had freedom of contract, they’ve all come back now. You’ve got Allan McGregor and Davis and all these people. I would never have allowed them back in Glasgow if I was there, let alone in the dressing room.
McGregor did a good job but he’s not the only goalie in the world. My life has always been about principle. It’s black and it’s white.
Richard Keys: Do you know where the money went?
Charles Green: There was no money. The company owed £150m if you add all the things up that everyone was claiming. Right?
All those disappeared over a period and of course, what Big Mouth was saying in 2012 actually came true. If what we now know had been admitted in 2012 the Inland Revenue could not have blocked the CVA and it would all have gone ahead. The debt was only £20m. I could have funded that in an afternoon.
These are the things the fans need to know. I was accosted one day at Longchamp. I had been invited by the Qatari royal family. About six or seven Rangers men had had a good afternoon and were well for wear.
These guys come up and say, ‘Charlie Boy!’. I said, ‘I’m sorry you must be confused, lots of people confuse me with Charles Green who was at Rangers,’.
Three of them were very hostile and very aggressive. They said, ‘You nicked all the money!’. I said, ‘There was no money. I put the money in there. When I started that club there was no money, they had all them debts!’.
AG: Was the Sports Direct deal bad for Rangers?
CG: You’re as daft as them that spout that story. When I buy Rangers our partner went bust at the same time. So the kit deal has ended because JJB had gone bust. So we’ve got no kit for the following year.
All the emails with Adidas and all the emails with Under Armour are all there. People wanted it but they said, ‘Look Charles, we’ve just got the Liverpool contract. We haven’t got the capability to take on Rangers at the same time,’
So all of a sudden, I go and see Mike Ashley, he becomes an investor in Rangers and was happy because he saw Rangers as a great opportunity in terms of merchandising and a whole raft of things. So we go and do a kit deal. Ashley says, ‘OK, if I’m an investor I want to quote,’. I said, ‘No problem, if you beat any offer by £1 you’ve got the contract,’.
We had this big argument and we set up a joint venture. Rangers have 51 percent, Ashley has 49. He said, ‘I’m not doing it, I’ve never had a minority interest,’. I said, ‘OK don’t do it. I’ll go somewhere else,’.
Eventually after about two or three weeks we had another meeting and he agrees. I’ve got no money to run this problem because all the money I’ve raised I’ve got it in boxes and we’ve got all the other problems coming like ‘You’re not going to be able to play in the Premier League, you’re going into non-league football and we might not even give you a license to play,’
You’d have loved that meeting with the SFA at Hampden. I said, ‘OK, I’ll have my own league,’. He said, ‘You can’t because it’s governed by FIFA’.
I says, ‘Well we’ll have two goalkeepers and no-one can score from outside the box. And I’ll just play exhibition matches and I’ll have 50,000 every match. And the rest of Scotland will go bust!’.
Can you imagine these discussions? That’s word for word on my grandchildren’s lives.
Ally McCoist one day nearly started fighting in Hampden. That’s one of the few times I knew he was on my side because most of the time he was on Walter’s side.
But the Sports Direct deal was a fantastic deal. Ashley pays all the bills, Ashley buys all the kit, Ashley does all the merchandising, Ashley does all the delivery. He takes off the costs and the balance we split 51-49.
I was criticised, ‘Charles Green sold the shirts,’. No I didn’t. That was the deal. That contract is in writing. So forget all the crap and the bullshit that gets fed to fans.
I know when I left the club Dave King and his people went round to my investors and said: ‘Charles has lied to you. He stole the money,’. He said he’d keep the company listed on the stock market. No.
When we bought the club, Douglas Park phoned me and said, ‘I’ll give you five hundred grand to step aside,’. I mean, the man’s a lunatic. The legal bills were more than that.
I called them all out. Jim McColl, the world’s richest Scotsman. I said, ‘Sign a cheque and we’ll go’. Nobody had the balls. Dave King was being hunted by the South African Police so he couldn’t do anything. And these are all the people who are now running the club.
You two live out here. You know the wealth out here and you know the people out here who would support me. None of them were in the first round because that’s where all the shit occurs. People from this region with the investments, who have all got interests in other clubs as you know, they don’t want to go into that market. So Charles goes in, deals with all the crap and then stage two comes along. But we were stopped stage two. We were even stopped stage one which is why I said we’ll go and play non-league football in the UK.
RK: Did you save Rangers?
CG: I said that to these guys in Paris the other year. There’s two options. Either I’ve saved Rangers and you’ve just won your 55th trophy. Or I didn’t save Rangers and you’ve won your first competition. Well done lads.
AG: Were others trying to save the club when you became the preferred bidder?
CG: Every day it was going to be the Blue Knights, it’s going to be Jim McColl, it’s going to be Brian Kennedy, it’s going to be a group including Graeme Souness.
What angered the Rangers fans was never ever was my name mentioned yet I was working in a data room, picking up bills. But one day Duff and Phelps rang me up and said ‘Charles, just to let you know, you can stop all work. We’re selling the club today to Bill Miller,’.
They made an announcement the next morning that Bill Miller had bought Rangers for £5m. We all know the reason why that collapsed, the threats against his children and the threats against him by the vile elements of Rangers. He walked away from it so I stepped in.
This is how my mind works. I’m an uneducated lad, left school, went down the coal mine. But I’m wider awake than half of them when I’m asleep.
So I knew these people but they never had the balls to put their hand in their pockets, put the money on the table and take the risks.
After losing to Malmo on Tuesday night there are strong reasons to believe that a repeat of the events of a decade ago are about to hit the new club.