Tom English: ‘Do you, Mr Miller, have the foggiest clue what you’re letting yourself in for here?’

THE word of the week on the Rangers front was clarity. Ally McCoist was delighted that at last there was clarity on Rangers’ future, Duff & Phelps announced that now they had clarity on the preferred bidder they could move on to the next stage of this tortuous saga.

Bill Miller mentioned clarity in another form of words. A fresh start, he called it. A new beginning. Out with the financial recklessness and the hubris and in with the fiscal responsibility and the humility – just after they take a torch to tens of millions of pounds of debt, that is. The new and improved Rangers will achieve ultimate clarity once the smoke clears from the giant bonfire Miller is intending to light with a thousand unpaid invoices.

Clarity? Well, apart from the confusion and the contradictions. Confusion and contradictions on what happens with player contracts in a newco situation, Duff & Phelps saying one thing and PFA Scotland saying another. Confusion and contradictons on negotiations with HMRC, Duff & Phelps saying one thing and the revenue authorities saying another. Confusion and contradictions on talks with the SPL on future sanctions, Duff & Phelps saying one thing, the SPL saying another. Confusion and contradictions on Craig Whyte, Duff & Phelps saying he’s no impediment to a sale but financial experts saying he could still potentially block the newco through the courts. Confusion and contradictions on the nature of Miller’s bid, Duff & Phelps saying it’s unconditional but the actual detail of it revealing conditions at every turn.

Apart from those items and, er, maybe another dozen, it’s all crystal clear, the most transparent thing of all being the fact that Miller could decide after two weeks of due diligence that he doesn’t want to buy the club after all.

And then what?

The money runs out soon. Could they reheat the Blue Knights bid and get it accepted by all parties in time to avoid a winding-up order?

They’d have days to do it. You’d have to doubt it, you really would.

So all the eggs are in Bill Miller’s basket. Everything rests with the “Tennessee tow-truck tycoon” who has never been to Scotland, not to mention Glasgow, not to mention Ibrox on a match-day or otherwise, whose grasp of the particular madness of football in the west of Scotland must be slim, whose understanding of the intensity of the position he is about to (maybe) assume cannot be anywhere near the level it ought to be.

Last week, a reporter from Chattanooga went on television and said, well, he didn’t really know much about the businessman because he keeps a kinda low profile.

That is what Miller is used to. He’s used to the quiet life, the only questioning of him coming at the annual meeting of Miller Industries and even then it’s been a bit of a love-fest because Miller Industries is a rock-solid company that is still doing well despite the economy being in the toilet. His interaction with journalists and bloggers up to this point has been positive because Miller’s story in business is largely upbeat. There’s been no need to pry. He’s not used to his life being scrutinised.

All early indications suggest that Miller is no Whyte, that his millions, though probably modest in the grand scheme of things, would appear to be his own and not borrowed à la the bloke who went before him. But he’s going to inherit Whyte’s legacy whether he deserves it or not. In the beginning the Rangers support looked at Whyte as a man who was a saviour until proven a shyster. Having been burned once, they are more likely to look on Miller as a shyster until he’s proven a saviour. They are now coming around to the view that he’s the only show in town and their protest has been quietened somewhat, but there must still be fear, a deep apprehension of Miller and his motives.

In a bizarre saga, one of the stranger elements is that the man who would be king has yet to set foot in the country. He’s the preferred bidder now and still there would appear to be no sign of him fetching up to have a look around. By all accounts, Ally McCoist is going to see Miller in Tennessee rather than the other way around, an arrangement that does nothing to dispel the rumour that the man who might be about to buy a brand he surely hopes to exploit worldwide doesn’t even have a passport.

You could paper the walls of the Ibrox dressing rooms with questions for Miller whenever he turns up. All sorts of complex issues about incubators and asset sales, oldcos and newcos, but there is a more straightforward line of enquiry. And it is this: Do you, Mr Miller, have the foggiest clue what you’re letting yourself in for here? Do you know the passion and hysteria that exists around this club? Do you know about the pressure to deliver? The obsessive need to beat Them? Have you heard the one about football fans saying their club is like a religion? Lots of fans say that and think they mean it. Rangers fans say it and you know it’s true. Do you know that you’ll not just be an owner and chairman of a football club but a type of God to so many, many people who will either worship you or abuse you from one Saturday to the next? You’ve never been here before. You think you know what you’re doing in terms of hard business? Fair enough. But do you know about the rest of it?

Maybe yesterday would have educated him. Picture Miller sitting down to breakfast. He logs on to see what the Scottish papers are saying and comes across one of the broadsheet titles that has a grainy picture of Whyte sitting on a train on its front page. No quotes, no story, just Whyte looking out the window of the 4.23pm from King’s Cross. Miller might have thought, ‘What’s interesting about that?’ What indeed? It’s one of the inexplicable wonders of Old Firm life. It’s interesting because... it is.

Then imagine Miller hitting on the Daily Record website. Front page splash: “GERS TYCOON, 65, DATES BECKY, 37 – BILL’S BEAUTY QUEEN LOVER”.

This is what it’s like, Bill. This is the reality. You’re not your own man anymore, you’re public property in a way that I seriously doubt that you comprehend. What do we know about you? You divorced your wife of 33 years in 2007. Court papers in Fulton County, Georgia, cite irretrievable breakdown for the split. Lorraine, your ex, kept the house (five bedrooms) in the Atlanta suburbs, you held on to the places in Florida, a waterside mansion with its own private boat dock plus a luxury apartment with views of the ocean.

Welcome to the scrutiny, Bill.

After the divorce you hooked up with the lovely Becky, a past winner of the Miss America Touch of Class competition, a former holder of the Miss Georgia Peach title, not to mention being Miss Elite Florida as recently as four years ago. Becky runs her own interior design and fashion business (Bellagio Designs), loves partying, is a devotee of Twitter and has a dog called Abby.

We are slowly learning more about Miller’s life but, really, how much can he know about ours in this basket case of a football country?

Get the passport sorted, Bill. Haul ass. This thing is a lot more complex than you might imagine.