Glenn Gibbons: Dave King rues being swayed by Sir David Murray charm

DAVE King’s publicly declared intention to seek retrieval of the doomed £20 million investment he made in Rangers 12 years ago reinforces the claim by Graeme Souness a decade earlier that David Murray’s greatest gift was a persuasiveness that convinced wealthy acquaintances of the wisdom of parting with substantial sums of money.

The then manager of the Ibrox club intended the observation as a compliment, but it is one that is unlikely nowadays to be endorsed by King and other, similarly distressed would-be profiteers.

The financial hit, as the value of the shares purchased at the time plummeted towards virtual worthlessness within a short period, would have been painful enough. But, perhaps even more wounding, the readiness with which King pledged the dough suggests a gullibility – or at least a naivete – that does not square with the usual characteristics of a man reputed to have been so hard-nosed in his own business that the South African authorities are accusing him of a range of offences, including large-scale tax evasion and racketeering.

Intriguingly, King is suing Murray on the grounds of the latter’s failure to disclose “the true financial position (of Rangers) as far back as 2000”. This alleged deception is precisely the accusation most commonly hurled at the present owner, Craig Whyte, by King and a multitude of fellow character assassins in the weeks since details of the potentially fatal nature of Rangers’ condition began to enter the public domain. The severity of his condemnation of Whyte may be construed in itself as an indication of King’s animosity towards Murray.

King’s susceptibility to Murray’s charms is made to look all the more embarrassing by the refusal of other well-known plutocrats to have anything to do with Rangers. In another of his notorious outbreaks of flannel to one of his established, compliant media poodles while crowing over the stampede among the rich to back his stewardship, Murray boasted that “Tom Hunter and Trevor Hemmings will soon be on board.” Neither man ever came anywhere near Ibrox.

Perhaps significantly, the South Africa-based Scot hints at the possibility of other major (failed) investors joining him in his recovery mission. In his lengthy statement the other day, he noted: “Other shareholders may feel deceived like I do and wish to take similar action”.

Reflecting on the circumstances that unfolded during Murray’s tenure as owner-chairman, it is a surprise that other providers of big money, most notably ENIC (English National Investment Company), have not already pursued the legal action now promised by King. It was in 1996 that the Joe Lewis-owned ENIC put up £40m for a Rangers shareholding in excess of 20 per cent.

Within three years of the transaction, their representative on the Ibrox board, Howard Stanton, was so disenchanted by quarrelling with Murray over transfer spending that he resigned. By then, ENIC’s stake had already shed considerably more than half of its value. Eventually, having failed to find a buyer, they sold their interest back to Murray in 2004 for just over £8m.

The experiences of King and ENIC, especially in the light of this week’s revelations by the former, lend further credence to the words of the former Rangers director, Hugh Adam, in an interview with The Scotsman ten years ago that has been frequently referenced by Rangers watchers: “He [Murray] is not a businessman in the long-term sense of planning and prudence. He’s more of an impresario.”

Rangers’ wounds give clubs nerve to rebel

News that ten of the country’s leading 12 clubs are to gang up on the other two, Celtic and Rangers, amounts to a guarantee that those snipers who regularly target the SPL are never likely to run out of ammunition.

The objective of the summit meeting of the ten next week is to reach agreement on ways of re-structuring their organisation, with particular emphasis on a change to the established voting procedure. The present ludicrous system – frequently roasted by this column since the day of its adoption 12 years ago – demands an 11-1 majority on serious issues such as constitutional matters, disbursement of revenues, and so on.

This yoke was hung around the necks of the original eight non-Old Firm members who defected from the SFL to form the new league in 1998, and the chairmen of those clubs, scandalously, accepted it as meekly as any other beasts of burden.

Seemingly mesmerised by the promises of unprecedented prosperity made by Fergus McCann of Celtic and David Murray of Rangers, none among the eight appeared capable of peering beyond the veil of gold and seeing a disturbing truth: that the big Glasgow clubs had engineered the secession solely in the belief that, one day soon, they would be able to negotiate their own television contracts.

The urge to join in the predicted bonanza may be understandable, but there is surely no forgiving anyone the failure to spot immediately the implications of a ballot in which a measly 20 per cent of the body would have the power of veto. Did they really believe that resisting the Old Firm would result in their being left behind? Did none among them realise that the so-called superpowers had no power at all, on the grounds that a two-team league was not then, is not now and never will be feasible?

Now the successors of the mules of ‘98 are suggesting they have found the nerve to rebel. It wouldn’t have anything to do with Rangers being possibly mortally wounded, would it?