Rangers administration: ‘Potential £134m debt figure is worrying but changes nothing’

ALLY McCoist has played down the significance of Rangers’ potential £134 million debt, saying the revelation by administrators Duff & Phelps on Thursday had not changed his perception of the state of the club.

Instead, he insisted that he shared the administrators’ belief that a positive outcome for the club had become steadily more likely, and pointed out that roughly two-thirds of that figure could be wiped off the bottom line.

The Rangers manager also said that, while he had met would-be Rangers owner Paul Murray and potential bidder Brian Kennedy, he had yet to meet any representative of the other two groups who have tabled offers for the club – an American company and a Singapore-based consortium.

“The figure [of £134m] has been reached with a potential £75m tax bill,” McCoist said. “Potential £24m to Ticketus” – the full figure is actually £26.7m – “so there’s nothing as yet concrete. There’s £100m worth of debt which would be up for debate, so as worrying as the headlines are, I think that’s all they are – they’re headlines. I don’t think anything’s changed. It’s not bothered me in the slightest.

“I don’t think anything has come at us in the last 24 hours that hasn’t already been there is what I’m trying to say. The administrators have been making positive noises and that’s where I am at the moment. If they are positive, then that’s got to be a good thing.”

McCoist revealed some time ago that he had spoken to Murray, who heads the Blue Knights consortium, and to Kennedy, who had his initial offer for Rangers was turned down but will make another if that is required to save the club from liquidation. The manager said that he had let it be known that he was ready and willing to meet the other two groups at any time, and believed that the club’s supporters deserved to be told more about the bidders’ plans. “I’ve made myself available. I’ve spoken to the administrators and I’ve told them I’ll be available wherever and whenever they want. I’d imagine I’d be able to offer quite a lot, because I don’t think there is anyone else really at the club who can offer anything at the moment in terms of playing staff, in terms of Murray Park, in terms of the team.

“So I would be pretty surprised if they didn’t want to speak to myself, just because of the position we are in at the moment. As part of potential purchasers’ due diligence, I think it would be an obvious thing for them to want to meet myself and talk about the team, the players and the club.

“But also from our point of view, the management staff, the playing staff and indeed everyone within the club, I think it would be very important that I can get an opportunity to ask the potential purchasers what their plans are for the club in the future. And indeed [from the point of view of] the supporters, because I would probably expect to be the only person, certainly one of the few people, who could represent the club and ask those questions.

“The one thing that the supporters deserve is transparency. We must know who we are dealing with and what their plans are for the club for the future. If I meet them [the potential new owners], I’ll tell the supporters everything I know, unless in a business sense they ask me not to. There’s no point in me going to meet them if I can’t pass on the relevant information to the supporters.”