Liar Telling The Truth?
We all know that Dave King should not be in the Scottish game. A convicted tax crook on an epic scale we should be chasing such individuals, not welcoming with open arms. Indeed, if ever there was a club that demonstrated the problems of welcoming major shareholders without question it is Rangers – Old & New versions. But he is here and his recent Rangers ramblings have perhaps finally brought closure to the gaping wound that has created such ill will in our game. Finally someone in charge at Rangers has admitted that New & Old Rangers are different entities.
When Rangers went into administration it was as a consequence of cheating on an industrial scale. Over 30 cases EBT tax avoidance/evasion and of course the wee tax case, followed by the hundreds of ordinary creditors who had been ignored. A football club fueled over the preceding 20 years by the largess of David Murray who duped investors such as Enic and Dave King who lost £millions and via his Murray Group companies which reached a debt zenith of £1bn.
When the axe came the football authorities, fearing “Armageddon” scratched around for a solutions which kept “a Rangers” playing top flight football. They nearly succeeded. I know from people involved that initially, with at voting of 8-4, Rangers would have been kept in with only Celtic, Aberdeen & Hibs set to say No to Newco. Two things scuppered that plan – the attitude of supporters across the land to such cheating and the aggressive, unrepentant dialogue emanating from all associated with Rangers Old & New, such as their Sandy Jardine led march on Hampden.
I always believed a compromise could have been reached. It wouldn’t have pleased all but would have appeased many. It wouldn’t have been for me but I believed that had the following happened, new Rangers MAY have gained access to the SPL;
- An apology and acceptance of cheating
- An acceptance that new Rangers was a new club
- Asking for the new club to continue the heritage & history of the old
Had that happened I believe they would have won the vote (Us & Hibs would still have voted against) and played in the top flight. Instead they took a confrontational route and we know the outcome, which leads to today.
I try not to pay too much attention to them, they are not in our league and have no impact on us but the number of Old Firm fans and the obsession of the media makes that impossible. I therefore found the ramblings of Dave King in today’s papers amusing and enlightening.
Patently this guy is a prize diddy. His latest utterings provide an insight into someone who looks to me to be completely out of his depth, but whose lack of self awareness lets him believe he’s the smartest guy in the room. It is the problem of building your entire business strategy on being a glib & shameless liar. Telling the truth means you don’t have to remember the lie and his ramblings illustrate that he’s forgotten the appropriate lie by the end of each sentence and in such ramblings occasionally the truth will out as it obviously did yesterday.
King was sitting with a carefully chosen audience. There are journalists who would never get an invite to An Audience With Dave, but despite having the poodles assembled Dave has managed to go fantastically off message;
They can’t trade through the season;
The season ticket cash is not enough to get us through to the end of this season, we know that
The fans are mugs;
At this moment in time, Rangers is not something you should be putting other people’s money into.
Raise from the dead;
I would like to see us taking Oldco out of liquidation
The asterisk years:
You might look back and say there was a blip of four or five years in Rangers’ history
New Club:
Putting Rangers back into the old company. It would be back to the traditional Rangers.
That final part relates to my compromise above. If putting Rangers “back” into the Oldco would be going “back to the traditional Rangers” then by definition the existing Rangers, not in the oldco, is not “the traditional Rangers”. If, according to the Chairman, the current club is not the traditional club it surely follows that it is a new club.
We await the outcomes of all the court proceedings and it would be inappropriate to comment here on legal matters, but regardless of what does happen it is good to know that FINALLY we can put the old club/new club stuff to bed.
Dave King has accepted that the current brand of Rangers is not the traditional Rangers and as a consequence, the 3rd Division title was the first title of this new club. Well done to all and good luck this season in your quest for trophy number three.
