Tom English and Ibrox investors…there is no quick fix for the Ibrox club. Where Celtic find themselves today began 30 years ago, it didn’t happen overnight
Eric Knott 
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The word investment seems to be being bandied about an awful lot lately in relation to the Ibrox club.
Tom English is just another in a long line of people to discuss it.
It was a big part of his article yesterday on new Ibrox chairman, John Gilligan.
Since the new club crawled out of the grave of the old one, I don’t think a season has gone by where “investment” hasn’t been discussed.
It’s almost a case of just like the “R*****s are coming”, investment is coming too.
And it’s still coming.
But it has yet to come.
Like the R*****rs.
Looking at his article on the new Ibrox chairman yesterday, it’s clear that Tom English doesn’t get this concept either.
In fact, nobody in the SMSM seems to get it.
The word investment is bandied about week after week in conjunction with the Ibrox side.
In fact, it has been for 12 years now.
At this point, it’s clear the SMSM does not get the concept of investment.
Working in a business myself where a lot of investment in the company happens, the concept of it is very clear to me.
Investment by it’s very definition, is an asset or item acquired to generate income or gain appreciation.
Keywords here: generate income or gain appreciation.
The below paragraph from English indicates clearly he does not understand the concept of investment:
The memory of the chronic Mike Ashley era has not faded either. Charles Green, Imran Ahmad, Derek Llambias, Barry Leach, David Somers – all these and more still have the capacity to make some on the current board break out in a cold sweat.
The chronic Mike Ashley era.
Mike Ashley was, and I use was, because he was the last chance the Ibrox side had before now to become a solvent, profitable business.
The Ibrox fans did not like the fact that Ashley wanted to put the brakes on the ludicrous spending and loss making that went on at the club.
The Ibrox mentality has always been to spend your way to success.
It doesn’t look like that will ever change now.
There was a whiff of sanity in the way John Bennett wanted to run the club.
But in the end it looks like that wish for sanity at Ibrox took it’s toll on John Bennett’s personal sanity.
So let’s return to Mike Ashley.
It is ironic yesterday that Craig Whyte was back in the news, you know?
The billionaire with wealth off the scale?
When Ibrox had a real billionaire in the building, they drove him out the door.
Ashley is worth £5.6 billion.
He didn’t amass that fortune by being stupid in his business dealings.
He invested an awful lot of his money in developing his main company, Sports Direct, and without going into too much detail, he did it to generate income, and for his business to gain appreciation.
Which it did, and it has appreciated hugely over the years.
When I say Celtic had a very lucky escape in 2015 after Mike Ashley vacated Ibrox in the wake of Dave King’s beer hall putsch, I very much mean we had a lucky escape.
Ashley is ruthless in his business dealings.
And had he remained in situ at Ibrox, there is no doubting he would have turned the club around and made them a sustainable force in Scottish football.
To think he had all those billions behind him as well….
So, while English states it was a chronic era at Ibrox, he clearly misunderstands what Ashley’s intentions were.
He intended making the Ibrox operation another profitable and sustainable business to add to his vast portfolio.
The £10 million loan he intended securing while using Ibrox as security would most likely have been re-invested in the club, and used as a starting point to gain solvency.
He had already invested £10 million of his money into the club in January of 2015.
But ultimately, Ashley was investing in the club to gain financially himself, because that’s what investment is all about.
The club could have become solvent, and self-sustainable, generating decent profits, and the investors would get their return, just like people who have invested in Celtic get theirs.
What followed after Ashley sold his stake in the club was a continuous stream of soft loans from the club’s directors.
These were real Ranjurz men, who loved the club, throwing their own money into a black hole, in the vain hope they might eventually get a return on their investments.
But since the club has never turned a profit since 2012, and has existed pretty much on the generosity of it’s directors, they have in reality, pissed their money away.
So, when the media, and the likes of Tom English talk about investment at Ibrox, what has gone on at Ibrox since 2015 is their perception of investment.
Mike Ashley is the very reason nobody of note is willing to invest in the club.
Because anybody of note knows that the Ibrox club drove a successful billionaire from their doors.
A figure of £50 million to close the gap on Celtic is consistently being mentioned in the media of late.
Do they really think that a Sheik from Saudi Arabia, or some American consortium is going to come along with that kind of “investment”?
Investment, by their definition, is give us the £50 million to buy quality players so we can catch Celtic.
That’s not how it works.
Nobody is just going to hand over £50 million, and expect nothing in return.
Not like those poor misfortunate “Real Ranjurz men”, who by the way, do actually expect to get their money back at some point.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg on how deep the Ibrox club is in this financial hole they find themselves in.
The days of the Sugar Daddy are well and truly over due to UEFA’s financial sustainability regulations.
Nobody will be allowed to walk into Ibrox and just hand them £50 million quid.
English was happy to indulge in Gilligan’s ramblings about investment:
We get approaches from all over the world from various sources,” said Gilligan of would-be investors.
But it has to be the right people and the right conditions and for the right amount of shares. We don’t want one person owning the club. Rangers’ future is, in part, being determined by their past and their understandable fear of having another ownership cataclysm on their hands.
At the same time, without an influx of major investment from the outside – in other words, revolution with the change of ownership that would come with it – it is hard to see how this financial picture changes dramatically at Ibrox any time soon. There is a plan and I am here to bring stability to the enforcement of that plan,” said Gilligan, who later added: “We’ll be fine… we’re in a strong place.”
But for all of Gilligan’s optimism and dedication to duty, there continue to be more questions than answers at Rangers
Yes, I’m sure they get approaches.
But when the people involved in said approaches take a look under the hood, they run a mile.
The right people and the right conditions are a million miles away currently.
And as for the right amount of shares?
Any share issue over there will generate little to nothing, as shares are now so diluted they have about as much value as bog roll.
In fact, I’d say bog roll is actually more valuable.
And English’s idea of a major influx of investment from the outside?
It’s never going to happen.
Nobody is willing to throw money into a black hole.
And Gilligan has said that no one person will be permitted to own the club.
So nothing is going to change.
It’s all a pipe dream.
Mark my words, they’ll still be talking about investment in ten years time at Ibrox.
If they manage to survive that long, that is.
There is no quick fix for that club, they are trapped in a vicious cycle.
As I said in the headline, where Celtic finds itself today began 30 years ago.
If the Ibrox side ever decides to get real, that’s the kind of time-frame they’re looking at.
But let’s face it, they’re never going to get real over there, are they?
So some rich sheikh/American is going to walk into the bigotdome and say here’s £50m, go overtake Celtic and just pay me back whenever, aye right, also with the financial rules in place it just can’t happen, it’s because of murrays cheating years that weren’t punished that huns believe rules don’t apply to them but now it’s eufa enforcing the rules not sfa hun fans. You mentioned Ashley being shown the door, there was also an American investor looking at the huns and the huns threatened the investor and his wife. To quote one of the bigotdome heroes, huns has sown the wind and are now reaping the whirlwind, couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.
Mike Ashley was no saviour. He did a deal where only Sports Direct could sell Rangers shirts, around £60 a pop & Rangers FC got 50p a Jersey. That is why he got chased. That is hardly ‘investing’.
They had the chance in 2012 to build something new from the ashes of the toxic Oldco. Instead they chose to inherit the old sectarian ethos & now find themselves no further forward than 2012. I personally think that new theRanjurz will never be anywhere near as successful as the Oldco.
Good luck to any possible ‘ investors ‘ in Ibroxland because as soon as they open up the books to scrutiny ,they will soon see how much of a basket case clumpany theRangers is . Can you imagine the sheer look of horror and revulsion on any money person’s face when the forensic examination of the accounts becomes obvious ? Geez! If theRangers board are lucky they might get a ‘we’ll be in touch later’ utterance , then bolt the course rather quickly . And if their luck is out it could be a ‘ sorry ,I need to call the Finance Minister in Holyrood,..then call the cops ‘ scenario !
Big Mike Cashley is still riding them like a Blackpool donkey via Castore football shirts n school jumpers. He’s still filling his pockets with their giro money.
S Taylor, where did you get the detailed financial side of the Ashley deal?, hopefully not from the glib and shameless one, and his media allies?.
Failure to accept the root cause of a problem will always lead to failure to eradicate it.
Therefore, as a consequence of not accepting this is a new operation which only started up in 2012, they have had their heads in the sand ever since the demise of the old, now extinct club in 2911, and in fact, long beforehand.
They cling on to fictional “records” and “achievements”. Claiming 55 titles for a twelve year old club, is not only ludicrous, it’s downright embarrassing!
Claiming a “world record” number of trophies won, (118), equally embarrassing!
To their absolute disdain, we have actually hit the trophy haul they claim by adding theirs to that of an extinct club, and we will probably equal the league title haul of the same two clubs combined this season.
Unless of course this new club also decide to enlist the past successes of a certain other old extinct Glasgow club, Third Lanark who won the league once, Scottish Cup twice, Glasgow Cup four times, Glasgow Charity Cup four times and also shared it two more times. So if they really want to add extinct club achievements to theirs, with thirteen additional trophies to their name now, we have a whole lot of catching up to do!
As Andy C says, Big Mike, is still making money from the Ibrox hordes to this very day. Fair play to him. The man is a legend.
Hail Hail.
Please learn the difference between it’s and it’s. The illiteracy is embarrassing. Same with James Forrest, blogger
It’s is to be used to abbreviate it and is, and only to be used when you are saying it is. Which is the context I used it in. Look it up.
The delusion that they are the same club us what’s killing them, this insistence they didn’t get liquidated is the reason they’re in the mess they are in.
With this notion comes the same old sense of entitlement and misplaced superiority complex and they can’t admit they’re a new club or 12.5 years of saying otherwise makes them look even more absurd.
Anyone who has read the book “Rebels in Paradise” by David Low & Francis Shennan knows that when Fergus McCann was in the process of taking over Celtic he could have purchased it at a fraction of the money he used to save the club if he had waited 24 hours,but he wanted to save the legacy of the football club.
In 2012 when they got liquidated the chance for them to rebuild was lost.
Excellent article. In the early 2000s Celtic had caught up with Rangers financially and in response Narcissist Murray implemented the EBT strategy to try and stay ahead of Celtic. That was a deeply flawed model that would be challenged by their beloved Majesties Tax collectors. Even if the 2008 financial crash hadn’t forced BoS to call in the Rangers debt, that EBT model was in it sustainable and would have likely brought them down on its own. Then fast forward to 2018 when they are back in the SPfl. Not content to build back slowly with a sound long term football and finance model they implement again a deeply flawed model. They install Gerrard and they ramp up the the wage bill to enormous levels and make expensive signings on enormous wages that meant they couldnt afford to properly renew anf extend the contracts of their successful assets. Fast forward.a few years and they are poor on players assets with player leaving for nothing. That model was all don’t to stop our 10, but again it was a broken short term model. And as of today they are trying to trying to reduce wage bills and sign players for for future sell on but it took Celtic 20 years of that model to be where we are today. I also think if Celtic extend their stadium to 70,000 capacity then it will be all over for Rangers for this entire century. Life lesson is, build the right model slowly and sustainable and take risks in small increments instead of looking for shortCuts.
Only way out to seek investment is administration 2. But would the present directors want that?
John M
says:
26th September 2024 at 1:46 pm
Only way out to seek investment is administration 2. But would the present directors want that?
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First administration as its a different club from the one that died.
AJSCtech
says:
26th September 2024 at 8:24 am
‘.. Then fast forward to 2018 when they are back in the SPfl..’
—–
Its impossible to return to a place if you have never been there before.
The new iteration of this club were advised by the right people in 2012 ,ditch the old entitled supremacist ethos,buy young players from across the world cheaply,sell when it makes sense,becomes a self sustaining profit making machine.Which they would have done with their huge fan base.They ignored all of this advice due to their “ethos” which is backwards,counter productive and frankly right up our street,long may it continue.