chilledbear

I wonder if he would have defended Rangers and condemned Yorkston, if he hadn't been named.

Gordon McKie spent a week poring over the books at Ibrox when the Blue Knights and Brian Kennedy believed their bid for the club might be successful. Bill Miller had been appointed preferred bidder, only to later pull out after realising that his business plan was not in line with the reality of the figures. Yet McKie saw a club that, while at a low point in its history, could be quickly revived. He did the same at the Scottish Rugby Union, where he turned a loss-making business into a vibrant organisation. There were tensions at the end of his six-years at Murrayfield, and he is an uncompromising figure, but McKie left the SRU in a stronger, more profitable state. Kennedy, the owner of Sale Sharks and a former SRU director, wanted McKie to carry out a similar job at Ibrox. As a Rangers fan, the opportunity appealed to McKie, but so too did the challenge of turning round an ailing club that he knew could be resurrected. "Brian asked me to give him some guidance when Rangers went into administration," McKie says. "So I had access to the data room through him. When Brian thought he had the possibility of leading the charge again, I decided to take some time off to assist in the due diligence process. Brian did say he would love me to join him, were he to get it. It was a position that, as a supporter, I would have been very proud to consider. "I studied the commercial contracts, the supplier contracts, budgets, player contracts. The business has been losing money for a number of years on a fairly regular basis, and my view was that if the turnover excluding Europe is circa £35m, then you have to set your stall out to not spend more than that. I felt that if it was managed right, with a good, proper board, then Rangers could very quickly be brought back to break-even. It may never make money, because a club like that is always going to want to strengthen the squad rather than pay a dividend. So when I hear about the profiteering aims of others, my view is that Rangers needs stability, it needs hands-on management." McKie fears that the wrong decisions made by any new owners would still leave the club weak and vulnerable. He does not know anything about Charles Green and his consortium, but is adamant that Rangers need to implement strategies for development that focus on fundamental aspects of good governance of football clubs. "You've got to make sure you're constantly investing in the future and that's done through a proper budgeting board process, which has to be put in place for the good of Rangers," he says. "If they just spend it all on players and do not invest in youth or targeting talent with scouting, and performance management, it's going to be a slow path to recovery. But it's nowhere near as bad as suggested when Miller decided not to proceed."

Silly comment about preferred bidders.

The BBC and Newspaper media were telling everybody that would listen about Whyte. While Supporter Reps were going to meetings with him up to the last days of his tenure. The media may not be flavour of the month, but they are the only way we have found out about the circus and clowns surrounding our Club.

The attention in my mind is on D&P because they are the main players in the sale of Rangers, which is the priority at this time.

Anybody who said a bad word against Whyte at that time, was a shit-stirrer to most fans. The Independent Board were told to shut it.

When have D&P ever moved at that speed?

Is there a reason why the AJ article thread has been closed?

Makes sense. Debt coming down yet they panicked.

One thing we should have learned by now. Don't shoot the messenger.

Is there a problem with this? I was looking for info on Google Chrome. I changed browser from IE to GC, and wondered if anyone had experience of Google Chrome.

He added: â??Within two years of my chairmanship with an independent board, we reduced the debt from about £35million to £18million. â??The bank, believe it or not, at that time were very happy with us. Our arguments with them were more about reducing the debt by another £2million to £16million, in order for them to be totally satisfied it was a sustainable working debt.â? Then, early last year, the bankâ??s position appeared to change â?? for reasons yet to become clear. Will we ever find out the reasons?

SIR David Murray allowed his ego to run riot at Rangers, then made a â??panickedâ? decision to sell the club as it teetered on the brink of ruin. Thatâ??s the explosive verdict of former Ibrox chairman Alastair Johnston on Murrayâ??s Ibrox â??dictatorshipâ?. In an unprecedented and extraordinarily detailed attack on Murrayâ??s stewardship of the club, Johnston claims the tycoon was warned extensively about the dangers of selling to Craig Whyte. He says Murray carried on with the deal because of â??significant pressureâ? from the clubâ??s bankers. And he says a senior boss at the bank told him that Lloyds, who were owed £700million by the rest of Murrayâ??s empire, had â??incentivisedâ? Murray to hand Rangers to Whyte. Johnston, 63, once a close ally of Murray, now no longer speaks to him. In our exclusive interview, he said: â??Chairmen and chief executives are often the subject of fansâ?? ire for selling players, or allowing guys to leave because of unaffordable wage demands and so on. On the the other hand, you take Sir David Murray. â??He got too immersed in the fansâ?? perception of himself â?? as well as his own ego and invincibility, probably. â??In the last few years he lost his business discipline, then panicked when he saw Armageddon coming.â? Murray, who famously boasted in 2000 that Rangers would spend £10 for every £5 spent by Celtic, sold Rangers to Whyte a year ago for £1. The Record has told how, before the sale, a private investigatorâ??s report on Whyteâ??s business record was passed to the Ibrox board. And Johnston, who was ousted by Whyte soon after his takeover, spoke at length about how closely Murray and his Murray Group of businesses were made aware of what the detective had discovered. His allegations are highly significant, given Murrayâ??s later insistence that he had been â??dupedâ? by Whyte. The SFA disciplinary panel who slapped a transfer embargo on Rangers criticised Johnston, and other men on the Ibrox board, for not doing enough to stop the sale. But Johnston said he and his colleagues expressed their concerns about Whyte â??very vocallyâ?. And he insisted there was only one man with the power to keep him out â?? Murray. Johnston said of the detectiveâ??s report: â??It was made available to us and I did see it, like I saw a lot of other information and data that was presented to us or leaked. â??But all that information was shared with the Murray Group, because there wasnâ??t much we could do about it other than jump up and down and scream and shout, which is what we did. â??In terms of something to do about it â?? that is, not consummate the transaction for these reasons â?? then David Murray really looks like the only person who could actually have done something.â? Johnston added: â??There were a lot of inconsistencies in Whyteâ??s personal profile â?? where he lived, who he was registered with, anonymous addresses and so on. â??Liberty Capital, the ultimate guarantor of his so-called arrangement with Rangers, was formed out of a warehouse in industrial Miami where nobody had ever heard of him or the company. â??So we had a lot of due diligence and checked up on him, but that information was fed to the Murray group.â? Johnston, a Glasgow-born expert in sports accountancy, joined the Ibrox board in 2004 and became chairman in 2009. By then, the credit crunch had hit and the fallout was still having a massive effect. And he says Murray was under â??significant pressureâ? from the bank, who wanted a more independent board, to get out of his day-to-day running of the club. He said: â??The bank, rightly or wrongly, thought Davidâ??s presence was so omnipotent. They thought there was really just one man, and the ruling by dictatorship had not worked.â? By this time, Rangersâ?? bankers were Lloyds, who took over the clubâ??s previous bank, Bank of Scotland, at the height of the financial crisis. Johnston said Murray had enjoyed a â??very good relationshipâ? with Bank of Scotland. But he added that it was â??probably too goodâ?, and the bank had loaned miillions to Rangers â??too easilyâ? without proper checks and balances. He went on: â??When Lloyds came, I think they knew to some extent there was a lot of toxic debt. But I donâ??t think they quite realised the extent of it. â??They realised the governance and operations needed tidying up.â? When Johnston became chairman, he was â??shockedâ? to find all discussions involving the bank were dealt with personally by Murray and the Edinburgh team who helped run the rest of his empire, which spans call centres, metal firms and commercial property. He said: â??Nobody at Rangers Football Club knew the bank. The bank didnâ??t deal with Rangers. â??It was totally incongruous in my experience that a bank that loaned a company £40million had no history in dealing with the chief executive or finance director of that company.â? In 2009, two new men were appointed to the Rangers board. One was Murrayâ??s right-hand man, Mike McGill. The other, financial strategist Donald Muir, was the eyes and ears of Lloyds. Muirâ??s arrival was seen as a sign that Murrayâ??s hold over the club was weakening. Johnston said it was a condition of the bankâ??s renewal of the clubâ??s credit facility. He added: â??Within two years of my chairmanship with an independent board, we reduced the debt from about £35million to £18million. â??The bank, believe it or not, at that time were very happy with us. Our arguments with them were more about reducing the debt by another £2million to £16million, in order for them to be totally satisfied it was a sustainable working debt.â? Then, early last year, the bankâ??s position appeared to change â?? for reasons yet to become clear. Johnston said: â??They originally didnâ??t believe in Craig Whyte. Thatâ??s the irony. They were as wary as we were about the fact he was one of the â??here today, gone tomorrowâ?? types that didnâ??t have the money. â??The first time they were invited to meet with Whyte in London, he didnâ??t show up. It wasnâ??t until a couple of months before the transaction concluded that the bank started to believe the deal might be for real. â??David Murray and Craig Whyte got involved around October 2010. It wasnâ??t until around March 2011 when the bank turned on us very badly. â??They started talking much more seriously about Whyte. This was within four or five weeks of the transaction being concluded. â??They basically saw a chance to get all £18million back in one fell swoop.â? It was at this time, Johnston claims, that a senior bank executive told him Murray had been â??incentivisedâ? to seal the Whyte deal. He said: â??I pointed out to the banker that I felt David Murray may not want to sell. â??The reply, and this is a very key statement, was, â??Alastair, David Murray is heavily incentivised to get rid of Rangers Football Club. Let me leave it at that.â?? â??I understood that to mean that certain things would then be triggered in his £700million relationship between Murray Group and the bank.â? Johnston said Murray first mentioned Whyteâ??s name to him in November 2010. He recalled: â??David Murray rang me on my mobile and said, â??I think weâ??ve got someone and this is a really good one. Unlike any others before, heâ??s spent a lot up front. â??â??Heâ??s hired some high-powered lawyers and spent some money on them, and heâ??s hired a high-powered PR team. Heâ??s spent a lot of money on it so he must be serious.â??â? But the sale turned out to be, as Murray now calls it, a â??huge mistakeâ?. Johnston said: â??One of the big giveaways about Craig Whyte was the fact he wasnâ??t worried about working capital. He didnâ??t care about it. â??He was much more concerned about the contracts. â??His modus operandi was, â??How many of them can we get out of, how many of them can we deny paying until at least some of them will drop by the wayside.â??â? In another withering criticism of Murray, Johnston added: â??Whyte didnâ??t put a cent into the club, as we all know. â??Thatâ??s why I was jumping up and down and telling anyone who would listen. But there were only some people who would listen.â? Murray last night declined to respond to Johnstonâ??s attacks. He said: â??I will keep my counsel on this for a future date.â? Lloyds refused to explain why they were so keen to see Rangers sold, or to respond to the allegation that Murray was â??incentivisedâ? to do the deal. They said: â??The deal was a matter between Craig Whyte and Sir David Murray. â??The bankâ??s involvement was in relation to the debt owed by Rangers FC, which was repaid in full, in accordance with all required regulatory checks.â?

Hong Kong Rangers SC ‏@HongKongRangers FT and it finishes 1-0 to #HKSoccer7s specialists Aston Villa. @RFC_Youth were the better side and very unlucky to be out #boysdidusproud

Another day another story. I've become immune to it all now.

You should shop around, give me your money and I'll get a lot more than 2% for you. When was the last time Rangers shares were £2. I don't think they'll wait around for 10 years to be honest.

Only Accountants I have had dealings with, were of the Turf variety.

I think you should be told Gazza is our own PC Murdoch.

Dave King said weeks ago we would be liquidated. I wonder if they know something we don't.

Bayerns keeper took the penalty because they couldn't get enough outfield players to come forward. Unusual for a German team, tho' it sums Bayern up last night. Full marks to Drogba, Cole and Lampard for stepping up to the mark since Di Mateo has come in.

Watched in a social club down in England, more Rangers tops than Chelsea. We all agreed that would be Rangers in 2 years time.

Put it in an Isa. What price do you think Rangers Shares are going to reach? Common sense tells you there are loads of shares better value than ours.

Any links for the Hong Kong results?

2-0 I'll watch BF now.

Come on the jam tarts.