Rangers takeover: Ally McCoist dazed and confused by SFA report

Manager is stunned by revelations about former Rangers regime but rails against logic of punishing fans and staff

ALLY McCOIST admits his feelings towards members of the old Rangers hierarchy have been changed by the excoriating evidence presented in the SFA’s report into the sanctions imposed on Ibrox club.

On Wednesday, Rangers’ appeal will be heard into the 12-month registrations embargo and £160,000 fine with which they were hit because of the malfeasance that occurred under the stewardship of Craig Whyte. The club’s owner was banned for life from holding office at a Scottish football club after failing to forward employees’ PAYE and NI contributions in the nine months before the club plunged into administration in February.

Rangers’ attempt to reduce their punishment will centre on the fact that Whyte acted alone with others at the club powerless and in the dark about his business practices. Yet findings presented to the Judicial Panel make plain that board members and former owner David Murray were fully aware of Whyte’s unsuitability as a buyer of the club, which he purchased last May. He did so despite a dossier supplied by a private investigator hired by Rangers’ Independent Board Committee that detailed Whyte’s history of closing down businesses and leaving behind tax bills running to hundreds of thousands of pounds, and the inability to verify that he had the disposable wealth or funding claimed of him.

The revelations contained in the 63-page document portray Murray in a particularly dim light. In contrast to being duped, as he has subsequently claimed, they reveal he simply ignored the contents of investigator’s report presented to him by chief executive Martin Bain as evidence for why he should back out of any deal with Whyte. Murray ignored these findings and instead ordered Bain to obtain sale approval from the board, which he refused to do. Murray, the report contends, was determined to plough on with the takeover because he was under pressure to sell by Lloyds’ Bank, who Rangers then owed £18 million, in order to relieve pressure on him over Murray International Holdings’ liabilities to them in excess of £700m.

McCoist appeared in a state of shock at Murray Park yesterday. Asked if the written judgment would cause him to view long-term associates and friends in a different light, McCoist replied: “I’ll be 100 per cent honest with you, of course it will. I will be keeping my views to myself but I will read the whole thing.”

He went on to acknowledge the folly of the Whyte buy-out. “It certainly looks the wrong decision to sell to him. You have to be honest, it’s arguably the worst year in the club’s history. Some of the football results weren’t good enough either. I am not just saying everything is down to that. We have all got to take responsibility. At this moment in time, you would have to say it doesn’t look a great decision.”

Yet, McCoist also railed against the decision-making of the three-man independent Judicial Panel who judged the club’s breaches below only match-fixing in terms of severity. Although the Rangers board issued a vote of no confidence in Whyte when he took over, the independent panel’s view was members of the board “could have made public the activities of Craig Whyte, of which they were aware or ought to have been aware”. Rangers’ lack of a whistleblower has been put down to the Rangers owner acting alone and in clandestine fashion.

However, the report sets out that Whyte, who they claim set out to not pay any tax, required a certain complicity from the club’s financial controller Ken Olverman – despite having no knowledge of the Ticketus deal and a host of invoices that were filed for sums amounting to seven figures – and remained unexposed because directors, such as John McClelland and John Greig who resigned last September, never raised their suspicions beyond their own circle.

Meanwhile, the publication of such damaging material five days before the appeal is to be heard by Lord Carloway, Spartans chairman Craig Graham and former Partick Thistle chairman Allan Cowan was declared “strange” by McCoist. Transparency and clarity, which he demanded in wanting the names of the original panel made public, does not appear to have been welcomed by the Rangers manager in this instance.

“I am not sure the timing of it was ideal. Well, it’s not,” he said. “Whether it does [prove prejudicial] or not, there’s probably only three men [who] can tell you. You would hope it wouldn’t, but you would have to say the timing of it, at best, would be questionable.”

McCoist stands by his belief a ban on signings was not the appropriate sanction to be applied for his club. “It is the people who have done nothing wrong who are suffering. It’s the team, supporters and staff. Those are the people suffering, through no fault of their own. I do appreciate there has to be a punishment but the non-signing of players could be horrendous. That could relegate your team because effectively would have to play kids.”