Tom English: 'Rangers can't afford to be emotional over Ibrox name'

Published on Tuesday 8 December 2009 22:37

AMID the confusion at Rangers, Alastair Johnston wants the fans to know one, incontrovertible, truth. On Monday, when dealing with speculation about the naming rights to their stadium being sold for much-needed cash, Johnston came over all Churchillian and announced that "Ibrox is non-negotiable".

• Rangers chairman Alastair Johnston says the naming rights to Ibrox will not be sold despite the club's debts

His defiance at the club's annual general meeting drew applause from the shareholders gathered together in the Bill Struth Stand and, no doubt, relief among the throngs of Bears who would have seen such an act as a betrayal of their history. Anyway, it's not going to happen now. At least it's one less thing for them to worry about in these disconcerting times.

After all, imagine the mortification of Rangers having to play their football in Curly Wurly Park. That kind of thing has happened before. York City play at KitKat Crescent. And in America, the Mecca of the branded stadium? Take your pick: Arrowhead Credit Union Park, Big Sandy Superstore Arena, Bojangles Coliseum. How much cash did they pay to get their daft names on those sports venues? Not nearly enough.

So Johnston has a point. Keep Ibrox sacred. Only I'm not sure he's doing the right thing here. Rangers are 31million in debt, they are toothless in the transfer market, and, despite what they say about not having to sell players in the January window, they could still lose their most important players.

If, say, Manchester United – where a plague has befallen Sir Alex Ferguson's defence – come in with a 4m bid for Madjid Bougherra, will the good people at Lloyds recognise the offer as a bit of a liberty taking exercise and turn it down, both in the interests of team development at Rangers and because Bougherra is, in any case, probably worth more than 4m in the English market? Equally, if a Premiership club make a play for Allan McGregor, will the bank think of what damage his loss might do to the team and to the morale of the fans, or will their first – and only – thought be about the debt and the bottom line?

Rangers need revenue, not even to grow, but to stand still. And they need it quickly. Shutting off a potential source of revenue is a decision borne out of sentiment, but in their current plight you have to wonder if Rangers can afford to be emotional about such things. There's no sign of an owner on the horizon, so these impecunious times look like continuing for a while yet. No new players on the way in and always the threat that their marquee names will be on the way out just as soon as a half-decent offer drops at the door of Donald Muir.

Stadium naming rights is a complex business. It's not that easy to attract a sponsor for a start, especially not in this economy. And it's even harder to attract the kind of sponsor with a name that will prove agreeable to the fans. Every sports club – apart from the Americans, it seems – wants to avoid ridicule. Ibrox suddenly unveiling itself as the Andrex Arena is not going to play well with the fans no matter how much cash is involved. When people think of rebranding, they think of the ridiculous without having a debate about the possibilities of such a plan.

Johnston should have given it credence. Over in Dublin, when the new Lansdowne Road opens for business, its official name is going to be the Aviva Stadium. Most punters are still going to call it Lansdowne Road, so having the name of an insurance provider over the door isn't going to upset them, especially since Aviva are forking out 4m a year for the next ten years for the privilege. This is for a stadium that will have little high-profile, televised sport played in it in comparison to Ibrox.

It would be interesting to see the reaction of Rangers people had Johnston announced at the agm that Aviva had tabled an offer of 40m to take over the name of the stadium for a ten-year period. Would the fans still see it as non-negotiable? Or would they say: 'We can do a lot of good with 40 big ones and, hey, it'll always be Ibrox to us.'

And that's the point. It will always be Ibrox to the grassroots. And these deals tend to end after a decade in any event, so it will revert to Ibrox. The name will never die unless a company wants to renegotiate a really long-term arrangement for really long-term money, in which case, ker-ching!

This is the reality that has faced a lot of clubs around the world. In Germany alone, most of the big football stadiums have big brand names and few of them would make you cringe. Bayern Munich play in the Allianz Arena, Hamburg in the Nordbank Arena, Wolfsburg's stadium is called after Volkswagen, Stuttgart's stadium after Mercedes-Benz and their training complex after Porsche. Those companies are paying big money for the privilege. For the teams in question, the cash might be the difference between signing a 4-5m player every summer – or not; the difference between winning a trophy – or not.

Johnston has ruled it out at Rangers, which is a bit of a surprise. He comes from the world of golf where everything has a price, where branding is as natural as breathing, but not when it comes to his football club. Non-negotiable, he says. That's a phrase he's going to be using a lot in the period ahead. When Walter Smith asks for a few quid to sign a new player or to bring in a guy on loan, he's going to get one of those Johnston non- negotiables in reply. Ibrox will always be Ibrox, as far as the chairman is concerned. Judging by Lansdowne Road prices, that's about 40m worth of intractability. Worth it or not?

Golf great emerges as a real loser off the course

HOW many are we up to now with Tiger Woods? How vast is his infidelity? Has he had more mistresses than majors? The first three we could keep tabs on, then there was another and another and over the weekend they started popping up all over the place. All white, too. Don't think that's gone unnoticed in black America. Way to go, Tiger. You've only gone and turned most of the population of the world against you inside a week. That's a hell of an up and down.

What do we know about him now? That he's a sordid and sad individual. That pretty much covers it. The greatest winner on the golf course is the greatest loser off it. I'm not sure that any of us need to read any more testimonies from his former conquests to confirm that view. Alas, we're set to hear a lot more from this bunch of desperadoes.

And Woods? Let's just say that when he reappears on tour the fawning in the press room had better stop. If any good is going to come from this, I hope it's going to bring an end to the sycophancy towards Woods among many sections of the American and British golf press. After years of kowtowing to the guy, it's high time we took the literary equivalent to a 3-iron to his windscreen to the notion of Woods the Untouchable.