Glenn Gibbons: David Murray’s bad example still being felt up in Aberdeen

The news this week, therefore, that Aberdeen FC has been spared the ignominy of being put into administration only through the agency of a £2.5 million bail-out by major shareholders Stewart Milne and Aberdeen Asset Management will have left the club’s followers more resentful than relieved.

Their unease is unlikely to be tempered by the thought that their troubles (as well as those of most of their fellow members of the Scottish Premier League) are almost certainly traceable to the financial misadventures of a man in another realm, all of 150 miles to the south of the Granite City. The effects of David Murray’s long-term addiction to high-stakes gambling at Rangers are still rippling through Scottish football.

In fairness, it should be emphasised that Murray would probably have been unaware of the potential contagion that might permeate the game as a consequence of his infatuation with his own image as a “player” in the big-hitting European markets.

At least in the beginning, he may not have realised that, in spending mountains of money on well-known (if not always exceptionally talented or productive) players, he was creating a climate in which fellow chairmen would feel the need to compete, for fear of being left behind.

It was a time of mass madness and a collective failure by club directors to recognise and avoid the economic foolhardiness. And yet, it was clear from the start to anyone who paid proper attention to Murray’s modus operandi that his excessive spending could not be sustained by a club with Rangers’ relatively modest annual turnover.

The financial recklessness at Ibrox was almost matched by the readiness with which others attempted to achieve and maintain parity, but no club’s descent towards penury has been more ironic than that of Aberdeen. For decades, after all, Pittodrie, in the control of the late chairman, Dick Donald, had been a monument to prudent husbandry.

The city these days will be awash with fans muttering that “this wouldn’t have happened under Dick Donald” and they will get no argument here. One of the principal reasons for Donald’s safe handling of the club’s economic condition (apart from a natural skill in business that had brought him a personal bank balance of around £35 million) was that he was never carried away by unrealistic hopes, far less expectations.

Even when Alex Ferguson was managing his various teams to multiple honours at home and abroad, Dick knew it was a temporary bonanza, as opposed to a right. He did not anticipate a repeat under Ferguson’s successors and, obviously, saw no sense in unnecessary cash-splashing.

When, for instance, he was persistently asked why Aberdeen had no undersoil heating (cost at the time - £100,000) he would reply: “What’s the point of us having a lovely green oasis at Pittodrie when the rest of the county is under snow and the fans cannae get in frae the pairts?”.

The truly shameful aspect of the economic devastation that has been visited on Aberdeen and others over the past 20 years is that it was both predictable and avoidable. Had Rangers (and Celtic, after the accession of Fergus McCann in 1994) simply been allowed to flex their financial muscle without challenge, they would not have been any further ahead of the pack than they are.

But the others, who could also number the scandalous acquiescence over the launch of the SPL among their deadly misjudgements, would at least have been, in monetary terms, much closer to good health.