David Murray plays the innocent when it comes to EBT’s, he might fool Ibrox fans, but he certainly won’t fool Celtic fans…

It was inevitable that David Murray would be drawn into this debate sooner or later.

With Manchester City all over the news and the Ibrox club dragged back into the spotlight with them, somebody was always going to hand him a microphone.

That somebody turned out to be Graeme Souness.

Murray appeared on Souness’s podcast alongside former Crystal Palace owner Simon Jordan to go through all of this, as reported by the Daily Record.

You honestly couldn’t make it up.

I spent yesterday on this subject, first with the documents sitting in Companies House, and then with the Record’s refusal to use the word liquidation.

Both of those hit a lot of nerves across the city.

And now the man who started it all has turned up to play the innocent.

Simon Jordan looked at the very same scheme at Crystal Palace and turned it down, which rather gives the game away

To be fair to Jordan, he asked the question that needed asking.

Here is what he put to Murray:

“Can I ask you about these EBTs? Because I turned it down. When Palace got promoted to the Premier League, I had a look at it and I thought to myself, I’m not sure about this offshoring, image right structure, non-recourse loans.

“I could save £2m or £3m per year, but I am going to get HMRC at some point, because they don’t like football.”

So there you have it.

The owner of Crystal Palace took one look at it and knew HMRC would come calling.

He could have saved himself two or three million a year, and he still walked away.

Yet we’re expected to believe that David Murray, the big businessman with the head office and the auditors, couldn’t see what Jordan saw?

Seriously?

Murray says he only rubber-stamped it because the auditors signed it off, as if somebody else was running Rangers 1872

Here is his answer:

“It was brought forward to me as a valid scheme and I rubber-stamped it for two reasons. Our auditors signed it off; the Rangers auditors signed it off in the accounts.”

And then:

“So it was being audited at Rangers and audited at my head office at my company. So one would believe it is a valid scheme if you have gone through six different lots of audits.”

Brought forward to him.

Rubber-stamped.

It’s always somebody else’s fault, isn’t it?

This was a scheme that paid more than £47 million in tax-free loans to players, managers and directors between 2001 and 2010.

You don’t rubber-stamp £47 million by accident.

And if it was all so valid, why was the club later found guilty of failing to properly disclose the side letters that went with it?

You don’t keep quiet about something you believe is above board.

He wasn’t duped, and there’s no doubt he knew exactly what he was doing.

Murray’s other line is that the club was “targeted” by HMRC, to be made an example of.

Targeted.

The Supreme Court ruled in favour of HMRC in 2017.

That’s not being targeted, that’s being caught.

In fairness, he did admit that he made decisions based on “vanity and not sanity”.

But vanity is paying too much for a striker.

This was a decade of cheating on an industrial scale.

What’s even more hilarious is that the host of this little love-in was the recipient of an EBT himself

Graeme Souness received £30k from Murray through the very scheme they were sitting there discussing.

He claimed it was tax free and for “scouting work”.

Scouting work.

No mention of that on the podcast though.

Not a word.

So you had the man who ran the scheme being asked about it on a show hosted by a man who was paid through it.

And the only one in the room asking a proper question was the former owner of Crystal Palace.

The amount of people being wheeled out to defend all of this has been comical.

First it was talkSPORT calling a liquidation a relegation.

Then it was the Record and its “plight”.

Now it’s the man himself, telling us the auditors said it was fine.

Who’s next?

Their fans are busy deflecting from all of this, but nobody is falling for it

Their answer has been constant references to child abuse and the Celtic boys club, and how it’s going to finish Celtic off as a club.

I wrote about that at the start of the week, so I won’t go over it all again.

But make no mistake about why it’s happening now.

It isn’t concern for anybody who suffered.

It’s deflection, plain and simple.

What they do not like is how the Manchester City case has brought their club firmly back into the spotlight once again.

Fourteen years on, people who had forgotten all about it are asking what actually happened at Ibrox.

And the answers aren’t pretty.

More than £47 million in tax-free loans.

A Supreme Court ruling against them.

A liquidation.

Murray told Souness he’d like to be remembered for Gascoigne, nine in a row and 35 trophies.

Of course he would.

But he’s the man who brought EBT’s to Ibrox and then sold what was left of Rangers 1872 to Craig Whyte for a pound.

That’s what he’ll be remembered for – and no amount of cosy podcasts will change it.

He might fool the Ibrox fans with the innocent act.

They want to be fooled.

But he certainly won’t fool Celtic fans.

We watched every minute of it.

They CHEATED.

It’s that simple…

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