Tom English: ‘Duff & Phelps are the boys who cried wolf’

“Can the Duff & Phelps boys explain the riddle of the three new bidders and how they materialised from thin air?”

“Can the Duff & Phelps boys explain the riddle of the three new bidders and how they materialised from thin air?”

Riddle me this. If train A leaves the station doing 60 miles an hour and train B leaves one hour later doing 85 miles an hour, how long will it take train B to catch up with train A?

You don’t know? Okay, how about this one...

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The height of a building is 1554ft. How long would it take an object to fall to the ground from the top? Use the formula s=16t^2 where s is the distance in feet travelled by an object falling freely from rest in t seconds.

You can’t be bothered? One more, then...

A bus travelled 465 miles in 11 hours. What was the speed of the bus?

Haven’t a clue? Fair enough. You know there’s a guy in Russia who could figure this stuff out in his sleep. He’s the boffin’s boffin. The boffinator, if you will. There isn’t a puzzle this bloke can’t solve. He’s big and tall and hairy, lives with his mother and looks like Rasputin. That’s how he got his nickname – Mathsputin. There was one great mystery that stayed unsolved for a century until Mathsputin took a look at it, stroked his beard for five minutes and worked it all out on a blackboard. Somebody tried to give him a million dollars as a prize but he didn’t want it. Said he didn’t deserve it. Then he went home to his mother.

Maybe Mathsputin is ready for another challenge. If so, he should get himself on a plane to Glasgow and get himself in front of the Duff & Phelps boys as they try to explain the riddle of the three new bidders and how they materialised from thin air the second Bill Miller vanished in a puff of smoke. It would be a test of his brilliant mind, for sure.

One minute there’s only Miller and the next there are three more options, all supposedly with deliverable bids, two of them at such an advanced stage that we’re told that one of them could have the club in the bag by Sunday.

Mathsputin: “A simple mathematical equation, x^n + y^n = z^n, tells me that Rangers have been in administration for precisely 87 days.”

Duff & Phelps: “That is correct.”

Mathsputin: “And by using the tried and tested formula an = -S(n-1) + sqrt(S(n-1)^2 + 1) I know that after 87 days you have managed to lock-down the sum total of zero bidders.”

Duff & Phelps: “Right again, oh wise one.”

Mathsputin: “So after 87 days of trying and failing to find anybody who had the money and the bottle to buy this troubled club you are saying that two brand new bidders (plus Bill Ng) have appeared from nowhere and that these previously unheard of consortiums are so far down the road in their due diligence that you may have a binding agreement come the weekend?”

Duff & Phelps: “Er, that’s what we’re saying, yes.”

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Mathsputin: “They told me once that the Poincare Conjecture was unsolvable. They said the theorem about the characterisation of the three-dimensional sphere would never be explained, but me, with my extra-large brain, came up with the solution. But I’m not so confident this time. A mystery UK-based consortium who have risen without trace in a matter of days? A syndicate of people who have never shown any interest in the club have now lodged an indicative offer of about £11m? A secret collective have supposedly done a deal with Craig Whyte for his shares? All in a few days? I have solved some of the most complex questions known to man, but I have to say, the conundrum of the covert consortium and their phantom-like entrance to this mystery might stump even the great Mathsputin.”

Please excuse the silliness, but in ways it’s entirely in keeping with the way this Rangers story is going. On Monday, when Miller withdrew his interest in buying the club we shouldn’t have been all that surprised.

There was always something odd about Miller’s interest, something that didn’t add up. Why football when he was a fan of cars? Why Rangers, a club he’d no connection with? Why Scotland, a country he’d never visited?

Even last Friday, Ally McCoist said he was intending to fly to Tennessee to visit Miller and that was peculiar in itself because if Miller really was intending to make such a huge investment then wouldn’t he have been the one to fly to Glasgow to look at what he was buying, to talk to the staff, to maybe meet with some fans’ groups and ease their fears?

Miller turned out to be a time-waster, but his departure has shone a light on certain aspects of this takeover shambles. Clearly the American didn’t appreciate the attention he was getting from the Rangers zealots but the more interesting part of his statement the other day was on the financial side. A veritable two minutes as preferred bidder with full access to the Rangers finances was enough to frighten him away.

We don’t know how much Miller is worth but, quite obviously, he came to the conclusion he’s not worth enough to scale the fiscal Mount Everest that awaits the new owner, not to mention the desperate flak that this person, or persons, is going to endure from the supporters as the books are brought back to planet earth from their current position in cloud cuckoo land.

There are so few certainties in this tale, but here are a couple. Rangers are going to run out of money at the end of this month.

Unless they can persuade one of these mystery bidders who fell out of the sky to fund the club while their CVA/Newco is being arranged – or not arranged depending on whether you believe that the bidders exist at all - then in all probability we are going to see the greatest exodus in Rangers’ history, we’re going to see the stellar names depart because the club can’t afford to pay them.

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Then what? A belt-tightening regime of profound proportions, a slashing of the wage bill, possibly by half. Rangers need to cut down their running costs by £10 million a year. Woe betide the character that sells Steven Naismith and Steven Davis, Steven Whittaker and Allan McGregor and replaces them with youngsters and journeymen. Unless the secret bidders are the reincarnation of the young and hubristic David Murray then that is Rangers’ fate. That is the best they can hope.

The worst? Well, anything could happen. Liquidation? Every chance. Total cessation? It’s not as insane a concept as it might have once seemed. Duff & Phelps are the boys who cried wolf. They’re talking up these new guys in the same way they talked up Miller and not many people out there are buying what they’re saying. Nobody’s buying the club either. Lots of talk but no action and all the while the clouds above Ibrox grow ever darker.

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