Rangers administration: David Murray claims Celtic would toil to thrive without Rangers

SIR David Murray has disputed Celtic’s claims they could thrive financially in the absence of Rangers and has warned that Scottish football would face a damaging “domino effect” without the Ibrox club.

Peter Lawwell, the Celtic chief executive, insisted last month that Rangers’ demise would have “no material effect” on his club. He was speaking on the day Rangers announced their intention to go into administration.

Former owner and chairman Murray, in an interview with Sky News, insisted Lawwell and Celtic are mistaken in any belief that the disappearance of Rangers would not have an adverse impact.

“Well, they’re bound to say that, I’d have thought,” said Murray. “It’s a good moment for them to take the high ground. I think where they’ve got it wrong is I wonder how many season tickets they’ll sell because a lot of people buy a season ticket because it’s Rangers.

“If it becomes a one-horse race, if you look at any league that’s a one-horse race, the crowds will dwindle. It’s not my position to talk about Celtic but let’s take in general, a typical Saturday if Rangers go up to Aberdeen and they take three, four, 5000 fans, how many they take, the expenditure and petrol, the economy, tickets, that will all be lost.

“You’re not going to regain that with a club coming in. I then think the Sky deal, the TV deal is all about four Rangers and Celtic games, with no disrespect it’s not about Motherwell against that, and that’s not criticising Motherwell at all. So I think the domino effect of this will make Scottish football greatly reduced of interest level, media level and fans turning up for games.”

Murray was also dismissive of the notion, mooted again at the weekend, that Celtic could relocate to English football in order to find a more profitable level of competition. “They’d probably like to,” he said. “We’ve also wanted to but I don’t think that the English... I’ve been involved in meetings years and years ago with the English authorities. Do they need Rangers and Celtic? The teams at the bottom, turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.

“They’re not going to want Rangers and Celtic. I thought years ago the sensible thing would have been to put Rangers and Celtic in lesser divisions and let them work their way up, and throw money into the lower leagues and give some money back, but that didn’t happen.”

Football League chairman Greg Clarke, meanwhile, ruled out any chance of Celtic joining League One or the Championship as suggested at the weekend. Club sources have insisted that is not the case and Clarke himself said it would be “disrespectful” to the Scottish football authorities to enter into any such talks.

“We have absolutely no intention of having any discussions with any club from another national league regarding membership of our competition,” said Clarke.

“This would be highly disrespectful to the Scottish FA and Scottish Premier League and will not be countenanced by the Football League.”