Rangers takeover: Odd case of Rangers bidder who doesn’t want to buy club

SOMEBODY once did a poll about the most-asked questions of our lifetime. You know the kind of thing: What is the meaning of life? Is there a God? Do aliens exist? When is the world going to end?

Us veterans of this Rangers story have a whole new set of conundrums for whenever the next survey is done on the planet’s greatest puzzlers and somewhere in there will be a question about Brian Kennedy and his interest in buying this football club. Kennedy says he doesn’t really want to buy, but says he will if he has to. He says the deal would have to make commercial logic but then talks about the “social responsibility” he feels in keeping Rangers on the road.

He won’t let the club die, he says, but wonders if he’s suffered a lobotomy in getting so involved in their drama. So ponder not about God and aliens and the end of time and have a think about what on earth Kennedy is up to.

You tell him that a world of hassle awaits him if he’s successful and he replies: “Don’t remind me. Have you been talking to my wife?”

You ask about his friendship with Graeme Souness and the role the former manager might play in his administration. “Central midfield,” he responds, with a chuckle.

You tell him that his nonchalance about the deal is bizarre, that he sounds too relaxed about it to be serious and he meets that one with a breezy response, too.

“I’m just a chilled-out kind of guy. I can take it or leave it. I’ll take it if I have to, but I’m also happy to leave it as long as somebody else takes it. This Paul Murray is favourite. But somebody needs to stop the club going into extinction. That’s genuinely the situation. What you’re seeing is actually how it is. You’re not missing a thing. I don’t have a tricky bone in my body.

“I know this sounds a bit smarmy, but I feel a social responsibility and, if I have to, I will do everything I can to make sure this great institution doesn’t disappear.

“I didn’t wake up four weeks ago with the intention of buying a football club. Maybe I’ve suffered a lobotomy without realising it. If nobody else does it, I’ll be there – if it makes sense.”

This is the analogy he draws: “He’s a player, right? A player who has not been selected for a first-team game. He’s about to go on the beer with his mates when his captain gets in touch and says ‘We might need you, don’t start drinking just yet’.

“Your heart is telling you one thing and your head is telling you another,” says Kennedy. “You’re thinking, ‘I don’t really want to play, I want to have a pint but, if I’m needed, I’ll play as hard as any of the rest of them, I’ll give it 100 per cent’. But, if you can get away with it, you take a way out. That’s the position I’m in. It’s half-hearted. It is. But if I have to step in, I will.”

This is all sounds like a flight of fancy, but Kennedy is a very serious businessman who has already met the administrators at least twice, who has also met Ally McCoist and who has taken regular soundings from Souness.

His track record demands respect even if he is at pains to play down his own level of interest.

So what would he do if all other bidders melted away and he was the last one standing?

“The administrators have to present a clean sheet and all the debt and all the legacy stuff has to be put in the CVA [Company Voluntary Arrangement],” he says. “They have to deliver that. It’s going to be tough enough without having to deal with any of that. That will be conditional on any offer by any bidder. They recognise it and I’m sure they’ll tidy it up quite nicely.

“Put it this way, these things have to be tidied up or else there is definitely no Rangers. I think it will be. I’m pretty confident.

“I wouldn’t let Rangers take over my business life. I would be very low profile, I would appoint a chairman, a chief executive, a finance director, put together a very strong board and they would get on with running the business and I would very much take a back seat.”

He’ll lodge his bid today. “Yeah, I’ll put my best foot forward and see what happens. I have a number [the price he is offering] but the number is reflected by the fact that the business is going to need working capital going forward and you don’t want to be wasting all of that on the asset up front. I don’t know what bids they’ve had and I don’t know how real the bids are. Only time will tell. If I was in their position, in order to bring people to the table, you have to make the club as desirable as possible and the more talk there is of bids then the more desirable and the greater chance you have of getting maximum bids from interested parties.”

That’s the situation, he says. Nothing more, nothing less. You wish him luck. “Are you wishing me luck that I get it or that I don’t get it?” he asks, with a laugh.

Enigmatic? Just a little.