The people currently at the helm of Rangers International Football Club (RIFC) do not have their troubles to seek.
Having seen off Dave King up then pops a new group of pretenders trying to sieze control of the Ibrox empire.
Last week the mainstream was all breathless and giddy at the idea of Mr Graeme Souness in brogues at the top of the Marble Staircase put there to guard Brian Kennedy’s Quantum.
Even better the former player manager of Rangers was willing to do it all for free!
It was, of course, nonsense.
I understand that ‘Blue Knights Lite’ have been making noises about offering below the market value for RIFC shares.
However, I fear they are likely to be rebuffed.
Some of the major players in RIFC have already offered Blue Pitch Holdings and Margarita Holdings around 7p per share and that was refused.
I understand that this new chivalric order have offered much much less.
For the avoidance of doubt anyone who wants to control RIFC will need to buy shares, millions of them and at a price that is acceptable to the shareholders.
It really is that simple.
This, dear reader, is not complicated.
If anyone wants the club that currently plays at Ibrox then they will have to buy it.
As has already been reported here RIFC/TRFC had engaged the services of an agent based in England to move players out of the door at Ibrox.
Last week he contacted Sevco and angrily informed them that three people, who are all based in England, were contacting clubs and telling them to stay away from the players that he was trying to place.
I understand that two of these chaps are ‘football men’ and the other is in the media.
The trio carrying out this….err…lobbying are all imbued with a high degree of Rangerness.
There were deals almost done on four players and negotiations were at a delicate stage, but due to these interventions one was called off completely.
Not surprisingly the RIFC folks are hopping mad about this.
What the club was planning for this summer during the transfer window was for 5-6 players to leave for a combined fee of around £2 million with a substantial saving on the wage bill.
That is why the agent was hired.
The terms that were offered to Kris Boyd and Kenny Miller indicates that, finally, financial common sense is extant at Ibrox.
This is very different from what was happening when Charlie and the boys were running the show.
A well placed City source said last week that what had pertained in the early days of Sevco was “the financial equivalent of a Roman orgy”.
I concede that the idea of Charlie in a toga is rather a worrying image, but the point was well made by the chap from the Square Mile.
Last week I also learned that when the inaugural accounts of RIFC were being prepared Deloittes queried the salaries being paid to the football management team.
When the figures arrived the auditing folk assumed that it had to be a typo and sent them back.
No, what they had been seen was correct the manager of the first team really was paid more than the Chief Executive!
In fact the manager’s number two was also paid more than Graham Wallace and it wasn’t just salaries that were as mad as Nero at the Ibrox Coliseum.
Everything was the best, the most expensive hotels and restaurants it was a boom time spending spree.
It was as if Viv Nicholson had been given a football club to run.
To run into the ground…
Now the tough job is for the people in charge is how to introduce financial sanity and quickly.
The issue of Murray Park continues to perplex these tasked with finding the cash to keep Dick Advocaat’s vanity project going.
Their preferred option is to divest themselves of this financial albatross, but that is not proving to be easy.
Sevco Scotland was set up to make the original investors rich and it achieved that.
The initial £5.5 million was returned rather quickly with an extra £3 million attached.
Then there were the service contracts that Mr Graham Wallace characterised in his 120 day Review as “onerous”.
Even without taking into account those nice little earners that irks the current RIFC regime, to take £5.5 million and turn it into £8.5 million isn’t bad business at all.
It is worth remembering that Sevco Scotland Limited was set up as a short term high profit project.
Subsequently, the long-term emotional welling of the customer base didn’t really figure in the game plan.
I get that the home crowd at Ibrox are angry about this, but they’re now targeting the wrong folks.
So today Mr Letham is due his money and the upward only contracts of various members of staff go to the next increment.
The mainstream media will, of course, do their best to convince the Ibrox mob that the days of bread and circuses are not over.
However, the sad truth is that the Vandals have already left with a substantial pile of loot up the Edmiston Way.
The glory that was Sevco is of another day
