Murray Accounts Spell Trouble For Rangers

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jimbob
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Murray Accounts Spell Trouble For Rangers

Postby jimbob » Tue Dec 02, 2008 3:45 pm

For those who believe money determines success in football, the latest figures from Rangers parent company, Murray International Holdings, are interesting. Debt has gone up, interest payments have gone up and the balance sheet is floating on credit; the most precarious position any company can find itself in, today in the grip of a global worldwide collapse of finance.

Murray’s hired guns, the PR company Media House, will doubtless have a line to put out here, but the facts are there in black and white, and they are irrefutable and deeply troubling to anyone of a Rangers persuasion who holds out hope that they can buy their way out of their present woes:

Murray’s debts are a staggering £759 million. Interest paid alone last year was £39 million. The total turnover of the company, the gauge by which one determines health when compared with the debt, is £529 million.

A company sitting on a debt this size has no room to manoeuvre at all in the present economic climate. Rangers, a mere pawn in the Murray financial empire, cannot hope to survive the storm which has sent entire financial institutions to the wall. The one time idea that somewhere in Scotland some force would prevent the End of Rangers is abrogated by the stark truth; when two of our biggest banking institutions, RBS and HBOS, are on the verge of going out of business in their present form (RBS now 60% owned by the Treasury and HBOS about to vanish into Lloyds) the life and death of a mere football club is small potatoes.

And here’s the best bit. Those accounts are only valid until January this year, BEFORE the financial crisis hit the global markets, and so the final figure is likely to be far, far more worrying still.

Our seven point lead must look even wider today to a Rangers chairman who is running out of both time and money. A fourth title win puts him in an almost impossible position; stick with Smith, and suffer inevitable failure, or admit that the last two years have been wasted, and bring in someone new …….. and fund the new coach appropriately.

I have no doubt that Rangers [I:3667c435]will[/I:3667c435] survive, whether as part of the Murray empire or not, but the question now is in what form they will survive. A Rangers, like we were in the 90’s, crippled, in debt, but also mired in scandal (which will scare off prospective buyers) and leaderless on and off the field …… the gap we open up could be so great as to be unbridgeable for decades.

This title may be the most important one we’ve ever had to win. The panic at Ibrox is palpable. The reason for Murray’s over-reaction last week is now stark and clear; he is a man under far more serious pressure than we ever knew. He is desperate, and his football club is in deep, deep trouble, along with the rest of his business.

Four in a row will do more than hurt Rangers. It could bury them, and although they wouldn’t be dead it would be a deep dark hole from which they might not emerge for many a long year.

At this moment in time, I think back to Murray’s bullish remarks about spending a tenner for every fiver we did. That now looks like the worst ego-trip, the greatest folly, in the history of the Scottish game.

I am sure he now regrets it. But it’s too late for that. 20 Years of Unsurpassed Mismanagement are about to take their toll.

And boy, is it going to hurt.

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