The abdication of Dave King
RANGERS CHAIRMAN CALLS TIME ON AN EVENTFUL REIGN:
For me, it (the title) wasn’t the focus. I got involved because I had to
DAVE KING enjoys his reputation as the most inscrutable of individuals. Even those who know him best have long given up second-guessing his next move.
Rumours that he was about to serve notice on his near five-year stint as chairman of Rangers have echoed around the corridors of Ibrox for weeks.
Still to witness a major trophy being lifted and with the club yet to turn an operating profit under his watch, truthfully, few among the Light Blue legions envisaged him departing at this juncture. So much for supposition.
In the end, as the shareholders at the club’s annual general meeting learned yesterday, a combination of factors convinced the man from Castlemilk the time was now right.
While year-on-year losses, the last of which was £11.3million, are scarcely cause for celebration, King feels the issuing of fresh share capital in the New Year will finally square the ledger and make ‘ad hoc’ decision-making a thing of the past.
He takes comfort not only from the recent on-field asset valuation by new director of football Ross
Wilson — potentially as high as £103m — but from ever-improving commercial predictions.
He also made no secret of his considerations for his business interests beyond Rangers. They have suffered through a lack of personal attention since 2015 and will get his full and undivided focus in short order.
Yet, perhaps the overriding consideration was a purely emotional one. Despite investing tens of millions of pounds and more hours than he cared to remember in saving the club he grew up supporting, it became, proud as he was to be chairman, an onerous burden.
‘I think I enjoyed about seven minutes of it the day we beat Celtic in the semi-final at Hampden,’ the 64-year-old admitted. ‘Those seven minutes didn’t last long as I’d a meeting straight afterwards which took me back to reality.
‘So I think about seven minutes. Out of five years, that’s not bad…’
That Rangers are in a better position now than when King and the so-called ‘Three Bears’ rode to the rescue in 2015 is not worthy of debate.
Struggling to get out of the Championship, the much vaunted ‘journey’ back from the lower leagues took many a wrong turn.
Now joint top of the Premiership, into the final of the Betfred Cup and competing in the Europa League proper for the second successive year under Steven Gerrard, the rate of progress in the past two years has been startling.
There is every chance it all might culminate in the most memorable season in a generation.
Notwithstanding the reasons he gave in that regard, it’s still curious that King isn’t minded to delay his departure until the summer.
‘It’s our summer holidays now in South Africa,’ he explained. ‘I’ve told the MDs that, when they come back from the summer vacations, I’ll be back in their faces.
‘For me it (the Premiership title) wasn’t the focus. It never was. I didn’t get involved because of that. I got involved because I had to and I wanted to.
‘I just think the time is right. There is a good new structure in place. I’ll be as happy if they win the league whether I’m on the board or not.
‘I want Liverpool to win the league. I’ve been waiting 30 years for that. I don’t have to be on the Liverpool board to enjoy that.’
For his first love from Glasgow to even be in the running for a first title since 2011 is an achievement in itself.
Upon taking control in 2015, King quickly appreciated how distant such an ambition was.
‘The club was in a far worse position than I had envisaged,’ he recalled ‘I thought the situation would be dire because of what insiders were telling me.
‘They were trying to give me an insight into how (Barry) Leach and (Derek) Llambias were cutting corners.
‘I still felt there would be an infrastructure in place. However, it had been institutionally demoralised. They weren’t doing any maintenance. Even the health and safety stuff was being ignored.
‘The level throughout astonishing.
‘A lot of the money initially had to go into the stadium and into health and safety. We had to make immediate improvements to the stadium. Otherwise, they would have shut it down. of degradation the club was
‘The amount of cash I wasn’t able to put into the team at that stage was disappointing, but we really had no other option.
‘Did it set us back? I don’t know. Maybe that had more to do with the managers.’
Mike Ashley and his placemen still cast a shadow over the club. Despite King’s numerous attempts to draw a line under Rangers’ involvement with Sports Direct, each month seems to bring another expensive court case yet no resolution.
It remains the main regret of his tenure and is the reason why he will remain as a director of Rangers Retail Ltd.
‘It’s not something that’s threatening the club or will make a big difference to our finances but I will stay on to fight that,’ he said.
King’s assertion, though, that there is nothing between his club’s commercial performance and that of Celtic is intriguing. ‘If you look at the revenue streams, the commercial sales, season-ticket sales, we’re pretty much the same as Celtic,’ he insisted. ‘The advantage Celtic have got at the moment is they’ve had a good track record of player trading. ‘We don’t yet have the pool of players where we can use player trading as an immediately reliable source of income.’ King’s detractors do not need to look far for evidence that suggests the club is not in quite as bright a place he claims to be leaving it in. The losses in the accounts over the course of his tenure suffice. The soon-to-be-former chairman’s counter-argument is to
point at the assets on the pitch, the healthy season-ticket renewals and the money gained from successive Europa League campaigns. To him, it all equals a prospering business.
‘Over the last three years alone, we have invested in excess of £30m in our playing squad,’ he said.
‘This component is by far the largest contributor to our losses.
‘By my judgment, the present performance on the pitch and the present condition of Ibrox and Auchenhowie are, in themselves, sufficient justification for the losses that we have incurred since 2015.
‘Wearing my supporter hat, I can easily rationalise that the accumulated losses are justified solely by the progress of the team.’
The Gerrard factor helps, of course.
Not just a far bigger name than Mark Warburton and Pedro Caixinha but a far more competent manager, he has restored Rangers’ star quality.
‘We have now got a manager at Rangers that is fitting of the image and reputation,’ said King.
‘That has helped me a lot with the corporate and sponsorship side of things.’
The optimistic mood of the meeting was, predictably, darkened by issues of the past. Suggestions that HMRC overestimated Rangers’ tax bill in 2012 may have been denied by the Revenue but that wasn’t enough to satisfy one shareholder, who asked if the club planned to take the issue further.
‘I have no idea if HMRC have done anything wrong,’ King replied. ‘But my view is that there are allegations out there and if they turn out to be substantially true — as much as the club is not affected by that — as a shareholder, I would be willing to file an action against HMRC and then donate the money to the club.’
Leaving his own bombshell news to the end of his speech at the Clyde Auditorium, King said: ‘The crisis is now finally behind us and normal activities can resume.
‘In order to have smooth succession planning, I, therefore, advised the Board last month that this will be my final agm.
‘If I complete the fundraising the way I want to, the club will be in the best state it has been in for 40 years.’