Glasgow Rangers celebrates their 140 year anniversary after being founded in 1873. The club is the most winning club in Scotland with 53 Scottish Premier League titles, 32 Scottish Cup titles, 25 Scottish League Cup titles and one European Cup title in 1972. Being under administration and with the life of the club in the hands of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Costums was not how the club wanted to celebrate the anniversary, but how has it come so far? Great Dane takes a look at the dark clouds hanging above Ibrox Stadium.

Graig Whyte took over the club for the amount of £1 in May 2011, six months after he launched his bid. The Scottish business man bought former Chairman David Murray’s controlling interests (85.3 percent) to his company Wavetower Limited with promises of an immediate £5 million injection to the manager’s summer rebuilding plans and money to improve Ibrox Stadium. Furthermore, the incoming majority shareholders promised a further £20 million of spending over the next four years and guaranteed to settle the clubs debt with Lloyds Banking Group.

After he had taken over the club, Graig Whyte said to The Telegraph that:
Graig Whyte. Photo: EPA
“As a keen Rangers supporter I now look forward to helping the club secure its future as a leading force in Scottish and European football”.

When Whyte bought the club, he also bough the issue of a tax liability for payments of players into offshore accounts, which could be up to £30 million.  This did not seem to be a problem for Whyte, as he said that he was confident that Rangers would win their HM Revenue and Costums tax case.

However, the Glasgow Rangers board members and particularly the Independent Board Committee – which was created for examine the bid – expressed doubts with Whyte and his cash pledges:
“The IBC and Wavetower have differing views on the future revenue generation and cash requirements of the club and the IBC is concerned about a lack of clarity on how future cash requirements would be met, particularly any liability arising from the outstanding HMRC case”.
Alastair Johnston

Mr. Whyte started his career as club owner by suspending the director Martin Bain and the Chief Executive and Director of Finance Donald McIntyre. Furthermore, he removed Alastair Johnston as Chairman along with board member Paul Murray.  While Johnston was one of the critical tongues against the ownership, Bain was behind a rival buy-out bid.

After being removed as Chairman, Johnston said to the Stock Exchange:
“I'm not going to make any comment with respect to the current circumstances at the current time, except that I will say - as a lifelong Rangers fan and a real one - that the 26,000 other shareholders in Rangers, as well as the hundreds of thousands of other supporters need to remain vigilant and continue to exert pressure on Mr Whyte to support the club financially as he has publicly committed to do”.
And followed up with: "Rangers fans must stay on him. I would be the first to congratulate him if he was to be pictured with the SPL trophy this time next season”.

After a negative start for Whyte, he could in June 2011 tell The Telegraph that the club had sold more season tickets than the year before.  The promised money for improving the team also resulted in the signings of players as Dorian Goian, David Weir, Steven Whittaker, Sasa Papac, Bougherra and Lee McCullock.  However, this was not enough for Rangers midfielder Steven Davis, according The Telegraph.
Steven Davis. Photo: PA

In August 2011, Rangers went into discussion with HMRC over appealing a £2.8 million tax liability, from the former regime of Murray, as it was “direct and unwanted legacy of the previous regime”. However, they were left small chances of winning.

At the same time, the club failed to qualify for Champions League with a defeat against Malmö FF and thereby missed a considerable income. On top of that, the club was forced to pay £10.000, by the Court of Session, to two layers that represented them against UEFA in a case about sectarian singing against PSV Eindhoven in the previous season. Normally £10.000 would not be a tremendous amount of money for a club like Glasgow Rangers, but their financial problems were now well-known in public. This led to the Rangers withdrawing for co-operating with the Herald newspaper and its sister titles as they felt that the media had afforded too much publicity in the financial travails.

As the skeletons started to come out of the closet, the tax authorities sent sheriff’s officers to Ibrox Stadium as a part of pursuit of the £2.8 million incurred under the Murray regime. After the visit from the sheriff’s officers, the tax authorities decided to freeze a part of Rangers bank account. The visit also exposed a potential liability of £35 million plus penalties of £14 million in relation an Employee Benefit Trust which was used before Whyte came to the club. To make things even worse for the investor, Telegraph Sport found suggestions that Whyte had mortgaged four years worth of ticket income in order to ensure cash flow. Whyte denounced the suggestion, saying that it was ‘a whispering campaign against him’.

Roddy Forsyth, journalist at The Telegraph, gave Whyte some back up in an article explaining how some of the guilt lies with former stockholder David Murray:
Ruddy Forsyth
“Sir David Murray’s tenure at Ibrox is encapsulated in his boast that if Celtic spent £5, he would outlay £10 and – as was pointed out in these pages when Craig Whyte assumed control of the club – Murray’s cash did bring in almost exactly twice as many trophies as Celtic over the period of his ownership”.

In September 2011, the club came under threat of administration because of a £50 million claim from the tax authorities. The claim from HMRC was as mentioned before, that Glasgow Ranger had wrongfully used the Employee Benefit Trust to reclassify regular salaries as loans that avoided income tax and national insurance, for a decade. In relation to this, Whyte said to the Telegraph Sport, that he would actively seek to leave SPL and join the Premier League to secure Rangers future and that he considered running two teams, one on each border. Another idea was to create an Atlantic League:
“[Joining the Premier League] is clearly something that we would like to see examined, it is something we are working on behind the scenes. But there are other potential ideas in terms of European leagues, joining some of the Nordic countries, the Netherlands to create a league”.

In the middle of all the darkness, Whyte was able to spread some light by announcing that he had paid the £18 million debt to Lloyds Bank by turning it over to his own holding company. In November 2011, the annual figures also showed that the debt was reduced from more than £27 million to £14.06 million. However, the clubs ‘net current liabilities’ rose from £21 to £34.4 million. Then late in November, Graig Whyte announced to the Stock Exchange that he had been banned from being a Company Director by the UK Insolvency Service in June 2000 until 2007. This caused the Scottish FA to investigate him, as their Articles of Association says that individuals would not be allowed to be appointed to a club’s board if:
“He has been disqualified as a director pursuant to the Company Directors’ Disqualification Act 1986 within the previous five years”.

Something the club was later punished with, by the amount of £50.000.

Once again things got even worse for the Rangers as the club failed to publish the audited accounts for the previous year. On top on this, RFC was also found legally bound to refund £7.7 million to debenture holders. Graig Whyte found it time to put Rangers in administration, within ten days, to avoid further tax investigations. He also approached the HMRC with a proposal for a Creditors Voluntary Agreement, to pay off the outstanding debt. If this was allowed, Rangers would be able to emerge from the administration within a month, and thereby still be able to qualify for Europe. However, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Costums wanted to put the club straight into administration, which happened on the 13th of February 2012.

The administration caused a ten point’s penalty for Rangers in the league, making manager McCoist appeal for support from the fans, in order to make it for the title. Meanwhile, the rival club Celtic spread salt in the bleeding wound by saying that they did not need Glasgow Rangers to make it in the top.

Graig Whyte hired the financial advisory company Duff and Phelps as the clubs administrator, and they were quickly to announce that the club will survive, but they needed to secure £9 million. The administrators were not the only one to back up the club as the Scottish First Minister made it clear that Rangers was crucial to Scottish football, as well as the sponsors announced that they were still behind the club.

One of the administrators, Paul Clarke, revealed on a press conference that they had found a ‘invisible’ loan on about £24 million from the company Ticketus:
“Our understanding is that the funds from Ticketus didn’t come through the company’s account. They went through a parent company account, so we haven’t got visibility on that and that’s what we’re trying to get through Companies House”.

The funds from Ticketus were found to have been used by Whyte, to take over the club. Something he defended in a 1500 word statement, by saying:
“The arrangement with Ticketus - which was a three-season deal NOT four, as has been reported - was originally to provide additional working capital as had been the case previously under the old board. My corporate advisors came to me with the proposition that it was entirely possible, as well as highly beneficial, to negotiate a deal with Ticketus that would allow us to complete the takeover and maximise working capital for the club's day-to-day business”.

The pressure on the club and  Mr. Whyte himself led him to step down from three director roles to concentrate on the club. Meanwhile, the fans had met with the former director Paul Murray about a possible takeover.

In the start of March, the administrators stated that the Glasgow Rangers had to save £1 million a month until the end of this season and that there had to be cut downs in the squad. This led to the two players Greg Wylde, and Mervan Celik offered to leave the club without any payoff, while other squad members refused to take a cut in salary. Then on the seventh of March, the administrators announced that they were seeking a swift sale of the club after failing to agree-cost cutting measures with the players. However, only three days later, they could make another announcement, that they had now agreed with the players, saving the Rangers for a little time.


The nightmare for the Rangers fans is not over yet. The future of the club depends on how the ‘big tax case’ goes, which can go on for years, and if the skeletons keep rambling out of the closet.  Latest news is that Paul Murray has gathered a group of investors to take over the club, but will they be allowed? And can they save the sinking boat? Only time will show… Hopefully for the fans, and Scottish and European football; Rangers will still be here the next, many seasons.