Charles Green does not want SPL return for Rangers

RANGERS chief executive Charles Green yesterday ramped up his hostility to the idea of his club ever joining the Scottish Premier League as he set out plans for a share issue he claims he will personally guarantee raises £20 million.

Green refused to accept that adopting such an oppositional stance towards the top flight was counter-intuitive. All evidence suggests any return for investors would require Rangers to be playing in the Champions League and earning the millions that come from competing among Europe’s elite. Access to the competition can only be won through playing in the SPL.

The chief executive remains defiant, however. League reconstruction, semantics and the possibility of Green not being around in years to come would seem to provide the Yorkshireman with the wriggle room to make good on his pledge.

“I want to play in the top league [but don’t assume that] will always be the SPL,” he said. “The SPL threw us out the league. They then stole our money that was due for last year [in prize pot and centralised revenues that were due to oldco Rangers] and are pursuing us to strip titles.

“It’s like coming home, finding your wife in bed with the milkman, asking for a divorce and then a week later asking: ‘Can you forgive me? We’ll make up’. I can’t make up. If the Rangers fans can make up, get on with it. But Charles Green will never forget what the SPL has done and that’s why I am anti going back where we were told we weren’t wanted.

“I can’t affect reconstruction. I don’t know what the Scottish Football League is thinking. I don’t know what the SFA is thinking. We are having a meeting with Campbell Ogilvie and Stewart Regan shortly to see the SFA’s thoughts because we want to draw a line and move forward.

“Scottish football is broken. Attendances are not there, the gates are falling, the interest is falling and it needs to be fixed. Where we are, as the biggest club in Scotland – by fans, by numbers, by any number of multiples – we need to be sat round that table with Celtic and the other people to look at how Scotland can move forward.”

Green says his “personal view is that £20m figure is low”. He is at pains to stress that all the money raised will go “into the club’s bank account” with “not a penny” being skimmed off by current investors who, instead, will bolster their current stakes or see them diluted.

Green expects that in the coming days supporters will 
register their interest in sufficient numbers with brokers Capita – the first step in the flotation, he says, barring “an international disaster” will see Rangers on the AIM market before Christmas – for any slack to be taken up by institutional investors.

“I am a confident guy,” Green said. “There will always be a few doubting Thomases but they are few and far between now. The fans are engaged. There were issues in the past when people tried to raise money and didn’t succeed but that’s not what will happen this time. If we don’t raise £20m then I will buy whatever the shortfall is. I’ve listed or floated maybe 30 companies and done fundraising as well.

“I’d be happy to underwrite it but what will happen is in three weeks time you lot will have my trousers around my ankles saying ‘Charles Green underwrite Rangers’ and took a three per cent fee when it didn’t need doing. The reality is we don’t need to underwrite it as there will be no shares left over. If they’re not all sold of course we’ll take them. We’ve put in £12m when we didn’t know there would still be a club, so why wouldn’t we?”

Green responded to the ‘why now’ question over timing by stating that he was making good on a promise from May – “and contrary to what the people say, I do what I say” – and was determined to allow supporters to buy into their club at a share price they could afford. Suggestions that there may be an immediate necessity for investment with cash reserves potentially running low was not countenanced. Indeed, he decried as an “idiot” Jon Pritchett, who, following on from advising Bill Miller on a Rangers takeover bid in May, had an article published in Forbes this week questioning the sustainability of the club’s business model.

“When we were put into the Third Division I should probably have made 25 per cent of the staff redundant,” added Green. “We haven’t done that. The board and the investors were happy to take on these costs but going forward the reality is there is sustainable model because the wage bill is dramatically down. We have 36,000 season ticket holders, why would we have less next year [if we are in a higher league] with higher prices? As you will see when the prospectus comes out, the broker will produce a note which has his assumptions for the business going forward [that will show] Rangers will be a profitable business, irrespective of what league it is in.”