Glenn Gibbons: Steve Lomas misses starting point of Rangers’ financial plight

STEVE Lomas doubtless induced a collective wince among thousands of Rangers supporters when he ended his criticism of the Ibrox club’s business practices with the observation that “this wouldn’t happen if David Murray was still there; he wouldn’t let it.”

To those who have been vicariously experiencing the pain of the Scottish champions’ financial cataclysm over the past few years, the St Johnstone manager’s comment would be a wounding reminder that last year’s change of ownership has proved to be no guarantee of an early end to the ordeal.

If anything, the impression is deepening on almost a daily basis that, in the matter of approving expenditure on urgently needed improvements, Murray’s successor as owner/chairman, Craig Whyte, is even less accommodating than the unlamented Lloyds Banking Group.

Lomas’s outburst was prompted by his conviction that Rangers were unsettling his striker, Francisco Sandaza, by declaring in public their keenness to sign him while making no attempt to come up with the Perth club’s asking price of £300,000.

Even that relatively insignificant fee is these days beyond Rangers’ means. This has been something of an embarrassment for the manager, Ally McCoist, whose plight also seemed to be highlighted by the order from upstairs to send John Fleck on loan to Blackpool within days of the manager’s assurance to fans that such an arrangement was the last thing he wanted.

As a number of the club’s followers have noted on internet forums, it was Murray’s cavalier attitude to extravagance that brought the present penury. But Lomas’s seeming nostalgia for those days, coupled with Hearts’ reported pursuit of an early settlement from Rangers of the balance of the transfer fee they are owed for the full-back, Lee Wallace, amounts to a salutary caution for anyone taking a gloating delight in the economic devastation at Ibrox.

St Johnstone’s prudent management over the years under the now-retired Geoff Brown ensures that revenue from the sale of Sandaza is not essential. Indeed, if the striker maintains productive form, he could help ensure that level of income by contributing to a top-six finish in the SPL, thereby guaranteeing a more substantial share of the League’s annual disbursement of TV money, as well as another two coffer-replenishing home matches against the Old Firm.

But Hearts, with the need to improve their cash flow simply to pay the staff’s wages, are more closely related in condition to the average club in the top division. Their readiness to reduce the sum they are owed by Rangers from £800,000 to £700,000 not only speaks of their worry that their debtors will be incapable of meeting the liability if they are crippled by an impossible tax demand from HMRC, but indicates their own desperation.

By offering the compromise of a cut-price deal in exchange for immediate settlement, the Tynecastle hierarchy have, in effect, revealed their own unawareness that Rangers are as impoverished as themselves; approaching Ibrox with a view to conducting negotiations summons an image of two vagrants playing poker with spent matches.

As it is, both St Johnstone and Hearts (even if the former are in comparatively good health) are now deprived of revenue that could once have been presumed. If, as seems certain, Rangers’ financial muscle continues to atrophy, it seems reasonable to hypothesise that other Scottish clubs – at least to a certain degree – will also suffer.

What we are seeing now is the rippling effect on others of a wretchedness that should be, notionally, Rangers’ in isolation. It is a practical demonstration of the truth of John Donne’s famous assertion that no man is an island.