The Ibrox Legacy

The current marketing campaign exhorts The People to secure their legacy by buying a seat at the stadium John Brown played for.

That certainly is an issue at the moment for some of the home crowd at Ibrox.

Many of them are in a quandary.

Deference is their default setting.

They live to obey.

However there are now two centres of authority competing for their fealty.

There are the folks at the top of the marble staircase and the King across the water.

Many of the Bears are confused and that is causing them emotional discomfort as their worldview is an essentially simple one without any intellectual complexity.

The marketing people at Ibrox were very clever to use the “L” word because it taps into the need to believe that Rangers didn’t die in 2012.

The legacy issues that Graham Wallace inherited are not the kind you would like to leave to your children.

The crippling costs base is essentially made up of two main components.

Firstly, there are the staff costs that TUPEd over in 2012 from Rangers (1872-2012).

Then there are the fixed costs that Charles Green put in place during his period at the helm of HMS Sevco.

Chairman David Somers was moved to state publicly that the nine players signed last summer by Super Ally on very generous personal terms was “unsustainable”.

These players are on upward only contracts and everyone on these deals will get a fatter pay cheque after July 1st this year.

I am reliably informed that if the full unexpurgated version of the 120 day review is published in its entirety then it will be explosive.

This is what Graham Wallace wants.

However, some in the Blue Room would just like a sanitised summary to be published.

Bullet points, but no shots fired.

The logic of the situation screams out for a controlled administration, but everyone with a major shareholding needs to agree to this.

Getting that unity has proven very difficult and time is running out for this cost cutting move to be achieved in the current season.

The same club fiction has to be kept to which means that this would be considered a second insolvency event and hence a twenty five point penalty would be incurred.

Of course it would be better to do that this season, with the league won than in a Championship next season with full time teams like Raith Rovers having a go.

Moreover, the shareholders will have to fund any Administration which is something else they didn’t sign up for.

Like going to Galway they really shouldn’t be starting from here.

The home crowd at Ibrox have, of course, bought into the club/company fiction.

It helped them to remain in denial about the death of their club in 2012.

They believe it to such an extent that it is enabling them to take part in the killing of another club at Ibrox.

Dave King has put a match to the Light Blue touch paper and some of the faithful now apparently believe that they can kill the company to save the club.

Meanwhile the people who run RIFC/Sevco have to deal in reality.

The company/club/celestial entity has a crippling cost base, insufficient revenue streams and major assets encumbered by a contingent liability which prevents access to normal borrowing.

Oh, and the stadium that John Brown played for is in serious need of major refurbishment.

All of those problems originated before Graham Wallace walked up the marble staircase last November.

Now that is quite a legacy he has been left to deal with…

If I were him I would take a seat.

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