If you where to push them, most Scottish football fans, outside of Parkhead of course, would admit to being envious of the Ibrox giants.
In terms of domestic league titles, with 52 wins they’re the most sucessful team in the world, a record they’ll more than likely hold until the end of time, given the state of the SPL. They’ve won the League cup more times than any other team in Scotland, they play in a UEFA 5-Star accredited stadium and have a history and heritage that, no matter what side of the divide you find yourself on, is something to behold.
Still, being a fan of Rangers is not as easy as it sounds. For all the success the club has enjoyed over the years, continued success sets expectations from the fans and the media: expectations the club are finding hard to match.
As it stands today, there are worrying signs both on the field as off it. Walter Smith is threatening to leave, the owner wants to sell the club (but no one is buying), club debt is showing no signs of reducing and the side is falling behind arch-rivals Celtic.
Smith, in his second spell in charge at Ibrox has been dithering over new contract talks unless funds are made available to bring in new talent. The loan signing of Jerome Rothe was effectively Rangers’ only bit of business in the transfer window this season, thin pickings for a club that normally spends the cash over the summer.
Walter Smith clearly has a vision of where Rangers need to be in the short to medium term, and being second to Celtic is clearly not it. Whether Smith, and for that matter his management team Ally McCoist and Kenny McDowall, all out of contract in January will remain depends largely on the faith they have in the ability of new chairman Alastair Johnston to move the club forward.
Johnston, a native of Glasgow though now living in the US is a successful mover and shaker in the sports world, having been behind the massive endorsement deal for Tiger Woods. But at Rangers he faces an unenviable task.
It’s no secret that the times are ‘a changin’ at Edmiston Drive. With the club’s debt rumoured to be around the £28m mark, Johnston is keen to emphasise that the clubs bankers are still onside, but it would be a mistake to assume that they’ll let that situation continue for much longer.
Johnston’s main task is to make Rangers either a (more) sell-able asset, through a period of consolidation and downsizing; or, in layman’s terms, to stop spending. That process has been in place since January, well before Johnston arrived. The club has gone through a period of streamlining the squad, remove the deadwood draining the clubs resources, and have put the less desirable assets up for sale.
Brahim Hemdani, rumoured to be earning £14,000, didn’t play a single game last season was moved on. Andy Webster was loaned to Dundee United, Christian Dailly has left on for free, while De Marcus Beasly, signed for £700k made only a few fleeting appearances last season has yet to play in the current campaign. Andrius Velicka, bought for £1m was quietly loaned out to Bristol City, Charlie Adam was sold to Blackpool. Maurice Edu, probably earning anywhere between £10,000 to £13,000-a-week remains on the books, despite playing a handful of games last season. Like Beasly, he seems to have learned the secret to invisibility.
In a bid to raise more money for players, Kris Boyd, the club’s top scorer was put up for sale in an attempt to save another £11,000 a week. Surprisingly for a striker who likes to score for fun, there where no takers, possibly because of the bad publicity the player has had and, as George Burley will testify, a reputation for being “difficult”. Barry Ferguson another player who, like Boyd bleeds blue, and who has also aquired a reputation as an awkward character, was less lucky (or more, depending on how things go); he was sold to Birmingham for £1m.
But you can only streamline so far until the squad you retain is unable to compete on the big stage. And this is the conundrum Smith finds himself in: forced to sell players to trim the wage bill, he’s expected to keep winning every week and deliver another League title, yet at the same time is unable to bring in new (and cheaper) talent to keep the dreams of glory alive. Compared to the apparently cash-rich Celtic, Rangers are in danger of downsizing themselves out of the competition.
Put another way, the much maligned biscuit tin has moved across the Clyde to Govan.
Reading any interview with Johnston, you hear the voice of a marketing expert. He talks about ‘branding’, ‘package’, ‘corporate ambitions’, ‘business model’ and ‘external financing’. These are terms your average football fan won’t be too familiar with, but in a nutshell, what Johnston is saying is that Rangers, far from being just a football club, are in fact also an asset, a luxury good up for sale and available to the right bidder.
It’s not been disclosed in the press or the grapevine, but so far no one has come forward to make a bid for Rangers. And bearing in mind that Rangers are a big club, this is surprising – thanks to its near monopoly in Scottish football, European football is assured every season, the stadium is practically full every week and the print and TV media ensure you’re never out of the headlines.
There could be many reasons for this, but our guess is that the main reason is that enormous debt, a fragile relationship with its banks and possibly even the one thing that makes Rangers so unique: it’s history and it’s associations.
Rangers have a reputation for anti-Catholicism through its historical affiliation with such Protestant bastions as Unionism and the Orange Order. While the club has done much to distance itself from these associations – Rangers have long ago stopped its policy on not buying Catholics – through their Pride Over Prejudice/Follow With Pride campaigns, in todays clean-living image orientated society, these are maybe not the sort of things that corporations or investors may be interested in.
Johnston faces a tough task, a classic example of chicken and egg. From a footballing point of view, keeping his manager and his team onside is a key priority – the last thing Johnston and Murray want is to find a new manager in January. His sucess in keeping Smith depends on his ability to find funds with which to appease his manager and the fans, no doubt concerned at the gap developing at the top of the table.
Without Smith, the club may be less of an asset to investors. With Smith, he’ll have had to have promised more funds to spend on players, pushing up the debt, angering the banks and driving away potential buyers.
Whatever happens, the situation needs to be turned around soon. Johnston is keen to avert all talks of crisis, but defeat tonight against Sevilla, coupled with a defeat against Celtic on Sunday and a continuation of the indifferent league form, and Johnston, on the back of the pressure from one segment of his consumer base – the fans – may well have to change his mind.
