A Response to Today's Comments By Sir David Murray
Today our Chairman has came out swinging in answer to some of his critics and some of the aspersions related to the ongoing attempts to sell one or more of our star players.
In an interview with the Evening Times, he discussed some of the reasons we are having to sell and some more general comments about the new fiscal prudency with which the club is being ran.
However, they still do not show the full picture and there are many questions related to his comments that still remain unanswered. This short article highlights some of these key questions as a rebuttal to today's interview.
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"If we go back to last year; it was a tremendous season. However, it is obvious that our runs in the two domestic cups and, of course, the memorable run to the UEFA Cup Final had a detrimental affect on winning the league. I think any fair-minded Rangers fan would agree with that.
The economic climate has minimal effect on the club's trading. Revenues might be marginally down, but that is it. Costs have not increased because of it. The mention of it appears to be a deflection of the problems that have been created by those in charge of the club.
"We are no different from any other business. Our static overheads are too expensive and we have less revenue."
Who allowed the overheads to become too expensive? They haven't become too expensive because of the credit crunch. Murray should be looking at both himself and Bain over this issue.
"You have to look to the future and analyse where additional revenues are going to come from outwith an extended run in Europe. We had to take these things into consideration because the Club must be run professionally and financially correct."
Correct.That is what the fans are asking for and yet Murray seem to take umbrage at that for some reason.
"Yes, we could continue to spend money but we would develop more problems and the Club would not be in a good condition. What we must not do is play into the hands of our competitors by scoring own goals in the media.
"We have to stick together and if we do that then we can come through this situation successfully."
Murray's definition of sticking together seems to be that everybody has to stick with him. What about Murray sticking with the support for once? Perhaps he should try practicing what he preaches?
"I accept as the Chairman of the Club I am not immune to analysis or criticism"
Murray IS unable to handle it though...
"We are a great Club with a great history but we must remain positive. This mischievous element that we have is only going to destroy the things that they supposedly care so passionately about."
...so much so that those that criticise him are described as "mischievous"
"I genuinely believe that the plans we put in place when Walter came back has been knocked off course by a couple of factors in a very, very difficult economic climate which I believe will become markedly worse before a recovery in the future."
The factors are Walter wasting money in transfers, not qualifying for the CL and an inability by the directors to control costs, all of which have nothing to do with the economic climate. He really should stop throwing in that red herring.
"What I'm doing is not panicking. It is a controlled management of the Club. We have a financial facility with the bank and we must work within that framework."
Trying to sell our top scorer reeks of panic, although it appears to be a necessary evil that someone has to go. I wonder if anyone looked at a cashflow before the Cuellar cash was spent?
"I spoke to Walter and confirmed the need to bring in funds to compensate for the fact we are going to make a loss this year. However, if we don't sell any of our players during this window then we don't sell any of our players during this window."
Very astute, but he doesn't explain what the implications for the club's cashflow are. (Apologies for the use of sarcasm.)
"I think most Rangers supporters must realise that our overheads are too high for our income."
I believe most do realise that. However, there are only two people to blame for that and they should have taken action earlier to prevent it.
"What can happen is when you announce that you are ready to sell then it can happen that regular first team players are targeted when you would rather that was not the case. I have a responsibility to run the business properly. It's easy for people to be critical, but they are not offering any solutions."
If you don't explain what is happening then it's difficult to offer solutions. Perhaps if Murray had followed up on his broken promise to appoint a fan onto the board then fans would be able to offer solutions.
We saw the club being taken to the limit of its borrowing in 2004 and it is happening again just over four years later. The way that the club is being run proves that there is need for a genuinely independent non-executive director(s).
"As a Rangers fan, I can understand why people are questioning why we are doing it but it's not just about the short-term, it's about the long-term financial stability of the Club."
I have seen no sign of long term financial planning for the club in the last 10 years.
"The trimming of the squad has started with the departures of Jean-Claude Darcheville and Chris Burke and Rangers want to get to a situation where they work with a smaller group bolstered by a fine crop of younger players."
I'm sure that was also said five years ago as well. There is a sense of deja vu about all of this
"At the AGM in October Walter made it clear that the squad was too big and that we didn't need 28 full time pros and going forward he would run with 20 and younger players."
Please explain why we have 28 pros then, and why nobody is answerable for allowing the squad to get that big.
The support are still unaware of how the club is going to finance itself next season if the worst happens and we don't qualify for the Champions League and that is something that we do deserve an answer to. Now.
