FANS CAN’T WALK AWAY FROM THEIR CLUB IF IT DOESN’T LIVE UP TO EXPECTATIONS. BUT OTHERS CAN...
IF the merry band running Rangers right now really do bear deep debts of gratitude to those who did the heavy lifting in returning the club back to the top of Scottish football, they have a funny way of showing it. We saw that when Dave King stepped down as chairman in March of last year. King spearheaded the campaign that eventually saw the ousting of a reviled board in early 2015. He took the flak as the public face of the operation, delivered the cash to become major shareholder, claimed Mike Ashley tried to get him put in jail over Christmas during some legal jousting.
Yet, when it came to leaving the building in March 2020 after five turbulent years, things all got a little, well, odd. He put out his own statement through selected journalists. A response from Ibrox came after 10 o’clock that Friday night to confirm Douglas Park, whose Three Bears consortium had helped facilitate King’s takeover, was now running the show.
Park didn’t mention King at all. Of the statement’s 360-plus words, the Johannesburg-based businessman merited just over 30 of them. All shoehorned into a single sentence.
‘I want to place on record our sincere thanks to Dave King for the important contribution he made as chairman of Rangers FC,’ said deputy chairman John Bennett.
And that was that. The 10th paragraph of 12. A salute of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it proportions to a guy, who, by common consensus, had stopped the club falling off the face of a cliff — even if he didn’t get everything right afterwards.
King insists publicly there was no falling-out. He has to be taken at his word. Yet, his official farewell, given his place in the history of the institution, felt utterly inadequate. And small-time. Maybe even petty.
Of course, the people who really kept Rangers going after the financial meltdown of 2012 were the supporters. The people who filled Ibrox through thick and thin, from the old Third Division back to the Premiership, who bought season tickets, subscribed to share issues and saw so much of their capital frittered away on bad players, bad contracts and bad decisions by all sorts of characters.
Now that Rangers are finally back as domestic champions, those fans are also entitled to wonder just how much of the mouth music directed their way by the current custodians — particularly during this year’s attempts to raise money through yet another share allocation — really holds water.
Whether speaking to Rangers supporters or dipping into social media to test the temperature, it is clear their first full house following the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions, against Malmo in the Champions League qualifiers, was as shambolic off the park as on it.
Those who have committed to VIP packages — ‘the pinnacle of sporting hospitality in Scotland’, according to the Rangers website — have already received a concession there is ‘a number of areas’ to be examined in the way the Club 72 facility in the Sandy Jardine Stand operated.
It didn’t mention the word ‘sorry’, but at least those paying around £2,000 a season for access have had some kind of admission things were not as they should be.
It is those further down the food chain — the rump of the Rangers support, a group that don’t even appear to have a fan organisation capable of representing them any longer, far less getting someone on to the board — who really ought to be thinking seriously about their treatment in the wake of everything that has gone on in recent years.
A sizeable number of punters didn’t get in until after kick-off on Tuesday evening thanks to chaos involving smartcards and QR codes. By all accounts, if you did manage to gain admission and find a seat, getting to the food kiosks was a military operation to rival the sacking of Troy.
Yet, the correspondence sent out to address what unfolded only made matters worse. Totally tone-deaf, it kicked off by pointing the finger at supporters for trying to get in without a valid ticket — and ended with a formula for getting into future games that seems more complex than calculating the gravity of dark matter.
These supporters have been bombarded by endless marketing material and demands to carry on digging deep for the good of the cause in recent months.
They’ve been asked to buy a torrent of expensive shirts and T-shirts and travelwear and ‘anthem jackets’ from a sportswear firm whose debut season was notable for a public apology over its merchandise.
They’ve been asked to cough up for shares, Trophy Tours, a new Edmiston House, a Champions Wall, fan tokens from a Turkish cryptocurrency firm. It never stops. Add in a ticket-related scheme called MyGers that carries a membership fee and splits punters into tiers based on their ‘engagement’ with certain products and you can understand why some Ibrox fans are growing restless.
Particularly when the reward comes in a ticketing set-up that clearly failed spectacularly in its first big test of the season and a team that entered the most financially important game of the campaign looking undercooked and ill-prepared.
Rangers should have looked to build from a position of real strength this summer, particularly given the mess Celtic have been in. Instead, they brought in free transfers in Fashion Sakala, who looks pretty raw, and John Lundstram. Nnamdi Ofoborh, another freebie, is unable to play, due to an issue discovered with his heart.
Yes, Rangers are trying to change from a club dependent on shareholder loans to something more self-sufficient. That involves having to improve finances. Yet, player trading was to be a pillar of the business and there is little sign of that kicking in yet.
They need to show themselves capable of utilising the market — albeit a depressed one — and getting top dollar for talent. Assistant manager Gary McAllister also said after Friday’s cup win over Dunfermline that the coaching staff are still looking for new players, so where is the cash going to come from now?
Sooner or later, in addition to considering why the board seem to spend more time crossing swords with folk than building real political power behind the scenes, there is going to have to be a greater focus on the work of sporting director Ross Wilson.
Steven Gerrard topped off Rangers’ return from oblivion by winning ‘55’. His nature suggests he would have seen that as a platform to power forward, but he hasn’t been given a transfer fee to spend on the first team, is still waiting for Connor Goldson to sign and has been reduced to throwing the ball into Glen Kamara’s court as he stalls over a new deal.
Defeat to Malmo is on the manager, of course. A team with that wage bill should have handled the 10-man Swedes comfortably. Yet, the former Liverpool captain is perhaps entitled to wonder exactly what thanks he is getting in return for winning a league title that once looked an impossibility.
Fans have little choice when they don’t get what they want. They can protest or stay away, but, when all is said and done, they are emotionally bound to their side. They can’t switch clubs or look at other options. Gerrard can.
That is not to say he is. But he can.