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11 John Gilligan Rangers presser takeaways as chairman dismisses Dave King EGM call and says club 'down the road' with chief executive search

Rangers FC Interim Chairman, John Gilligan
-Credit: (Image: Reach Publishing Services Limited)


John Gilligan claims Rangers are down the line in their efforts to bring in a new chief executive.

The Ibrox interim chairman took the role as replacement for John Bennett who recently stepped down from his position due to health reasons. Meeting the media for the first time in the job this afternoon, Gilligan explained how their hunt for a new CEO to replace James Bisgrove has been ongoing for some time.

He also revealed the club's desires from their new chief exec in terms of specific qualities they demand of the candidate and he discussed other issues including Celtic's cash gap, what has been "going wrong" at Gers and Dave King's recent calls for an EGM as he bids to become chairman again. Football Scotland picks out the key points...

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How long will you be chair?

I will stay on as long as required. The main priority is to get a chief executive. We are working on that right away. I can stay on indefinitely, I am expecting a few months and a chairman to come in too.

What does the new CEO need to be?

Recruitment in any walk of life is of the moment. The person needs to be multi-faceted and good at everything. He needs to be an assertive character and we are looking much more to provide for the CEO via the chairman. And also for the CEO to have a lot of power day to day and the chairman to be slightly behind that.

They need to have a strong business acumen, experience, they need to have ran businesses where there’s pressure and ned to deliver, it can’t be a comfortable business because the stress and pressure of being CEO of a football club is pretty big. They need to be a good communicator and getting to people. And they need a tremendous work ethic because it goes without saying it’s unbelievably difficult. They need to be a good person. I like decent people.

This is Rangers Football Club and with respect to the other sports [rugby and golf], football is the dominant sport in the country and much more attractive. As a golfer - certainly not a rugby player! - I accept that. We would expect to attract a top-level candidate.

Dave King wants a return

Dave is a major shareholder and he can say whatever he wishes to say. My view is it’s a bit unrealistic. Dave is a real businessman, he knows how shareholdings work. He is a 15 per cent shareholder, the other directors are 10, 12, 13 per cent shareholders. It is unrealistic. He wants an EGM? Again, it is a bit unrealistic because EGMs are invariably called by people who wish to change something. But the current board don’t wish to change. So why would we call an EGM? There is fresh investment coming in to the club. But in fairness Dave is talking about fresh investment, but he doesn’t want to invest. I am not quite sure where he means the investment is going to come from. There will be investment.

Club in crisis claims from King?

I think he has got it wrong. I think it is unfair. What exactly is he saying is not good? What exactly is he saying is going wrong? Give us a plan and tell me. If Dave had some terrific plan to tell me where we are all going wrong then we would read that plan and we would consider it.

Big gap with Celtic on and off pitch

History tells you that happens. Sometimes we are ahead, sometimes Celtic are ahead. At the moment we are chasing. There is no argument there, I am not stupid enough to say otherwise. But we will keep chasing.

Player trading is the biggest success and qualification for the Champions League. It is a kind of Catch 22 – player trading gets you income, Champions League gets you income. When you fail to get it, it is difficult because Scottish football’s level of support, TV, sponsorship etc, you just can’t compare it to England’s. So it is always a challenge, of course it is. It is all about the squad and bringing in players and winning your matches and moving forward.

Can you provide future investment details?

What I meant was the current investors have invested considerably over the years and are willing to do so again. We are open to anyone who approaches us on investment. We get approaches from all over the world from various sources. But it has to be the right people and the right conditions and for the right amount of shares. We don’t want one person owning the club. Dave King's £50million claims? I don’t think you can put a number on it. The gap at the moment is considerable but you just have to win your games, get back challenging for the top spot and then if we get into the level of Europe we hope to get to then the gap can change quite quickly.

Philippe Clement meeting

I was very impressed with the manager. We had a long talk myself and George Letham. He was very impressive. The long and short of it is I don’t talk about football myself, the manager is in charge, we’re here to operate the business and the manager is supported to operate the training academy and football side of things.

We will never interfere in that. The one thing I will say is the manager had been put forward as a spokesperson for the club which put him under undue pressure at times because it’s an area of the business that’s not his. Hopefully I or someone else will pick that up. The manager was very impressive. Does he still have board's full backing? Absolutely yes. Famous last words of endearment!

CEO timescale?

We are well on. We have quite a number of people around it who we can pick up with again. We are moving quickly on it.

Back at Ibrox

I think it will be huge. Winning on the pitch always does everything but it's been a real tough time. I have to thank Mike Mulraney and Neil Doncaster for helping us and allowing us to play at Hampden, because that was a big thing for us. There was nowhere else big enough for us. But this is home, and we're back. It's a phenomenal difference.

It's imminent, we are really hopeful. But we've got to be respectful of local authority approval etc, fire and insurances - it's all the little things now. Structurally, we are pretty much there.

Why is there no appetite for King return?

That's another great question. Again it's not really for me to say, I'm just the interim chairman. But if you look at what's been said and what the guys have been saying, there's a shareholder structure to the business, there's a projection plan. Dave was chairman, Dave's still a major investor and can attend the AGM and ask questions, but there's just no appetite for it at the moment because, one, Dave was here before and he stepped away. Other people stepped up - Douglas [Park] stepped up, then stepped down and John stepped down. There's just no appetite.

Is there a sporting director plan?

It will be full focus on the chief executive because in turn, if we bring in people, we'd really like to think we would be part of that. We've also got a very competent executive team here, heading up commercial and marketing, finance, stadium. We've got a very competent team of guys and girls here. We'll be fine. They're not connected, sometimes people get headhunted and move on. We're in a strong place.