I was bemused to note on Sunday that Lee McCulloch has joined the growing bandwagon of Rangers employees current and past who have attacked Craig Whyte but apparently absolved David Murray of all blame for Rangers predicament.
Yes, there are positives that Rangers can point to as we seek to rebuild, but it is absolute nonsense to suggest that all would have been great in the world if Craig Whyte had paid the PAYE and NIC, or if David Murray had continued to own the club at the mercy of Lloyds bank.
We are in Division 3 without European Football because David Murrays years of mismanagement led him to sell up to Craig Whyte.
Whyte may have failed to pay PAYE and NIC, but Rangers could not afford that £10M demand from HMRC, and would have had to sell half the squad in January 2011 to meet that requirement. Why he didn’t do so is for him to explain.
Of course, Whyte’s management of the club was shocking and incompetent at best, but Murray “sold” the club to him. Either Murray never undertook due diligence, or undertook it, knew all about Whyte, and decided to sell anyway. He left Whyte a football club with a yearly £10M deficit that would only be recovered by European participation, and selling players.
He also left him the risk on that possible EBT liability. As Paul Murray stated last week, his counter offer to the offer made by Whyte requested that Murray retain that risk, and own any liability. Murray refused.
Whyte took a legacy that could hardly be worsened, and managed the impossible, by indulging in a number of questionable transactions that strangled the capacity of the club to generate any type of money.
So, it is understandable that there is still anger towards Whyte. I should know, as I am still angry at him selling these Arsenal shares, and for mortgaging off future income to Ticketus, amongst his many sins, but the lauding of Murray from Ally McCoist in particular is infuriating.
While some of the more gullible in our support are happy to believe Murray will sue all involved in slandering the Rangers name over the EBTs, they have apparently forgotten his only action against the press when he did own Rangers, was when his personal reputation was questioned. He spent 20 years allowing anything to be written about the Rangers support, about Rangers players, and basically everyone else connected to Rangers but him. He also allowed Martin Bain to mismanage Rangers on a grand scale.
Everything negative that has happened to anger the Rangers support in the last 20 years has either been attributable to the mismanagement of the club financially by Murray, or to the negligence of the club with regards to allowing Journalists and bloggers to lie about Rangers on a daily basis.
I’m not about to jump on the David Murray bandwagon, and neither should any other Rangers fan.
Bill
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