Rangers takeover: Duff & Phelps claim club has funds to pay full wages

RANGERS have enough money to cope with the players’ return to full wages, according to administrators Duff & Phelps.

The Ibrox squad and management took cuts of up to 75 per cent in March in order to help the club through the administration process, which took a step closer to conclusion on Tuesday when the administrators published the Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA).

If successful, Charles Green’s consortium will take over the club in mid-July although even if the CVA is rejected by Rangers’ creditors, it appears the consortium will take over by buying the club’s assets.

However, it emerged that £8.3million of the £8.5million put forward by Green’s group is in the form of a loan, while Duff & Phelps are due £5.5million before any money is paid to creditors.

Concern about how the club will be funded after the wage bill yesterday rose back to normal levels at a time when there was no gate money coming in, were raised by fans.

However, a spokesman for the administrators last night claimed money is available.

He said: “The funding is in place for the club to operate and function normally until the sale is complete, which should be in July.”

It remains to be seen whether those players who negotiated minimum release clauses in return for agreeing to the temporary wage cuts will look to secure cut-price moves away from the club.

Meanwhile, Fifa and the Scottish Football Association are still corresponding with regard to Rangers.

The Ibrox club successfully overturned their 12-month transfer embargo in the Court of Session on Tuesday after Lord Glennie ruled an SFA panel had no right to impose the punishment under the governing body’s rules.

On Thursday, the SFA referred Rangers’ disrepute charge back to their internal appeals process and a date for that will be set next week.

Fifa were unhappy with the matter going before a civil court rather the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland, but are understood to be more satisfied now that the decision has returned to the football domain.

The SFA had the right to appeal against Lord Glennie’s judgment but decided that such a course of action would contradict the principle that football should sort its disputes internally.

Instead, a new independent panel must decide what punishment Rangers should face for bringing the game into disrepute over their non-payment of tax last season – the main reason they received the transfer embargo and the maximum £100,000 fine.

While the Court of Session’s outcome was heralded in some places as a victory for Rangers, the Ibrox club could now face more severe sanctions including suspension or expulsion from the game, ejection from the Scottish Cup or termination of their SFA membership.

Rangers, who remain under transfer embargo under Scottish Premier League rules until they come out of administration, would have no recourse to appeal, provided the new sanction is in the rule book.

Their CVA proposal showed the club owed more than £21 million to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.