Rangers spin can’t take away the disgrace

By TOM ENGLISH
Published on 14/02/2013 00:00

Not that anybody needs to look at a calendar to check, but today marks the first anniversary of Rangers entering administration.

To mark the event, there have been various retellings of this grim story in the media this week, Rangers getting in on the act themselves with a documentary – The Rising – airing tonight.

The in-house version of events might be worth a look if only to figure out how they managed to dress up the humiliation of their recent past and turn it into a positive. The Rising? It’s a little too early to say, don’t you think?

While we’re in reflective mood, this is my take on one aspect of what has happened at Rangers. Some wish to call them Sevco, but I don’t. They play in blue, they play at Ibrox, they draw massive crowds, they are the source of the same kind of obsession from across the city as they always have been, so they are Rangers. If they were a new club, then Celtic people would ignore them, but they don’t and they can’t and they never will.

But here’s the thing about acknowledging them as Rangers. Same club, same history, but same unpaid debt and, therefore, same disgrace. That hasn’t gone away. That stays. Charles Green takes the good stuff and torches the bad, he walks away from millions of pounds worth of debt (newco when it suits him) and then acclaims Rangers’ supposed newfound wealth.

One year has passed since they went into administration and nobody should forget why it happened. It happened because Rangers brazenly refused to pay a bill to the taxman of upwards of £15 million and there is no amount of Green bluster that will wipe that from the record.