Director seen as 'enemy within' ends association with Murray

DONALD MUIR, the man branded as "the enemy within" by Rangers supporters during the club's search for a solution to their current financial predicament, has ended his formal association with owner Sir David Murray.

Alastair Johnston, the Rangers chairman, yesterday issued a withering assessment of Muir's influence at Ibrox since his appointment as a director in October 2009, two months after Murray resigned as chairman and director of the club.

Muir, a business troubleshooter who advised other companies within Murray International Holdings, was regarded by his critics as the effective representative of Lloyds Banking Group on the Rangers' board as strict financial conditions were laid down in terms of investment in the playing squad.

While this was denied by sources close to Muir, Johnston has now made it plain he regards Muir as the key figure in what he described yesterday as a "compromising" relationship between Rangers and Lloyds.

"Let's be very clear on the situation with Donald Muir," said Johnston. "It's a condition of our credit facility agreement that Donald Muir is the representative of the bank on the board.

"It was put in place a couple of years ago, by the predecessor of the guy we now deal with at Lloyds, and it's been terribly compromising to have. It's actually terribly compromising for Donald Muir as well.

"It's very tough to engage in conversations at board level about strategies with the bank when we know that the bank guy is sitting there. It's been denied by a lot of people, but I'm telling you what the issue is right now. I decided that I might as well.

"From my understanding, Muir's relationship with the Murray group terminated on 31 March. I don't know what that means to what we are doing at Rangers."

Asked if he now expected Muir to leave the Rangers board, Johnston replied: "You have to go through the right mechanisms of how you get on and off a board. That can be an easy or a difficult process.

"I've had this discussion with David Murray but as long as the bank, who pull a lot of strings east of Falkirk, are insistent on Donald's name being on the credit facility, that's that. I think that Donald Muir was imposed on David. Donald did a very good job for the Murray Group. I'm not here to blame David for any of this."

In apportioning culpability for the problems Rangers have faced over the last few years, Johnston had no such hesitation in aiming his sights firmly at Lloyds.

"What happened when I came to the club was that the banker that was involved with us refused to talk to our chief executive (Martin Bain] or to our chief financial officer (Donald McIntyre]. Forget the sports bit of it, from a business point of view it was one of the most stupid aberrations that I've ever come across and I said that to the bank when I came in.

"All the communications had to go through Donald Muir and Mike McGill, the other director appointed at the same time as him, although essentially it was more through Donald than it was Mike. So a lot of stuff got lost in translation.

"If the bank wanted to talk to our management team, we talked to Donald Muir and then had Donald Muir tell us what the bank said. That necessarily created a bit of misunderstanding, to say the least. After about six months I said this was the biggest, nuttiest thing I have ever heard. It was so stupid for the bank to do this. You have got to get in a position where you deal directly with our senior management team. To be fair, fortuitously or for whatever reason, the guy involved with the bank got replaced and then the situation became a whole lot better. The communication got a whole lot better with respect to what the business plans were, what the bank was expecting, what it didn't expect. For the first six months, when I first came in here, there were business plans flying around back and forward I didn't know what the latest one was.

"Where the bank haven't got it, and I won't speak in absolutes here because they have improved and they are improving, is that they haven't quite grasped that a year ago was when we should have been dealing with things like Madjid Bougherra's contract situation, not now, in terms of maintaining our value and our opportunity to sign him and extract value for him in the transfer market if that happens.

"So when I say they compromise us, I mean they compromise our ability to plan three-year cycles. They have been fairly assiduous at saying ‘while we are willing to look at this on a case-by-case basis we're never going to give you carte blanche to think it's all your money, if you get into the Champions League we'll want part of it'. Therefore we're never very sure what's going to happen and therefore our management team is wary of doing certain things that, in the long run, might come back and haunt them.

"There's no question that the success Walter Smith has managed to bring, in spite of the financial problems, has distracted some people from what the bank has done. I do think the bank has had the luxury of an experience that, much though it's been great for the club for the last couple of years, the more we are successful, despite all this pressure, the more the bank will think we can keep going with this."