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New Rangers chief has chance to set fire to outdated bowling club committee and drag club out of a pub – Keith Jackson
Any question is only as valuable as the response it elicits. And, more often than not, that in itself depends entirely on the calibre and credibility of those giving out the answers.
Yes, over time, what they say may eventually provide a retrospective stick with which to beat them but only once it’s become obvious that they weren’t to be properly trusted in the first place. And usually, by then, it’s already too late.
The damage has been done. The question was not worth the breath required to make it. And, after all these years of attending all varieties of annual general meetings, few should know this to be true better than the well-meaning and long-suffering fans and shareholders of Rangers Football Club.
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Regular attendees over the last decade or so will concede this yearly yah-boo gathering marks the start of panto season for a depressingly regular reason. And they will know too that the 2024 version is unlikely to be any more meaningful than the rest, given that the top table will be almost entirely made up of men who are doing no more than holding the fort, waiting for their successors to take up the temporary seats at the head of the boardroom.
That should not in any way be taken as a dig at caretaker chairman John Gilligan, who looks like having to hang around longer than expected now that the move to appoint a permanent replacement in Malcolm Offord appears to have crashed and burned.
Gilligan had to be shoehorned into the position earlier this year after the strain of the job impacted so heavily on the health of John Bennett that doctors advised him to step away for his own good. And he probably deserves a standing ovation for his efforts at holding the club together at this stage in his seventies at a time when Rangers were toppling towards another full blown, underpants-on-heads crisis.
Bennett too deserves to be shown gratitude and considerable empathy given the vast amount of money he has willingly ploughed into the coffers as well as the effect it has had on his personal life never mind the wellbeing of his bank balance. Ironically, after a sustained period of mainly mean-spirited mismanagement headed up by Dave King and Douglas Park, Bennett was moving Rangers in the right direction.
In a relatively short time at the helm, Bennett had been making some serious headway in modernising the club’s operations from the inside while rebuilding some of the bridges torn down by his predecessors to the outside.
Costs were being brought under control, contractual wastage was being slashed and burned and bad practice was being purged. But, just when Bennett was beginning to make real progress, he was blindsided quite spectacularly by the actions of James Bisgrove – a CEO in whom he had placed his complete and unstinting trust.
Not only had Bisgrove botched a close season renovation of the Copland Road stand but at the same time he had successfully engineered his own escape route to Saudi Arabia. And Bennett was left to front up the carnage left behind, knowing his own reputation as a leader had also been trashed beyond repair.
In truth, he was guilty of being a bad judge of character but the enormous price he has paid for it has been profoundly unfair.
The catastrophic cost of this betrayal also obliterated the books, with Bennett forced to hire Hampden for millions of pounds and throw even more cash at getting the building project completed. And then there was the collateral and devastating damage done to the relationship with a support which, having been rendered homeless, was never going to be able to forgive and forget the inconvenience and thunderous embarrassment of it all.
So chances are Bennett will not be thanked for his service and Gilligan will have to make do with having his presence tolerated behind the top table when the fans converge on the banks of the Clyde on Thursday morning in this endless search for answers.
But the man they really need to hear from - incoming CEO Patrick Stewart - will not be available to address the questions that really have to be asked. The former Manchester United head honcho has agreed to take on Bisgrove’s role but not until December 16, giving him an 11 day buffer from the AGM. He’ll also begin work 24 hours after Philippe Clement has faced Celtic at Hampden in a League Cup Final, the prospect of which many of these shareholders will already be dreading.
What they need to hear from Stewart’s own mouth is that he has the mandate to make the changes required to drag Rangers towards a brighter, more professional future and to drive the club’s decision making process from front and centre.
That, before pocketing his first pay packet, he has both sought and secured cast iron assurances that his new job is to provide and impose proper leadership and not simply to facilitate the wishes of the men who will be bankrolling his wages.
Effectively Rangers have been a fan-run enterprise ever since King, Paul Murray and Gilligan released it from the gouging clutches of Mike Ashlay back in 2015. They were the right men in the right place at a critical moment in the club’s history because, for the most part, they had its best interests at heart.
But almost a decade of Celtic dominance later, this old boys’ network has been exposed for what it is - a hopelessly myopic, outdated bowling club style committee with a command centre stuck somewhere between a pub on Paisley Road West and a Chinese restaurant in the city centre.
Stewart has to prove he is a modern, bold, innovative, clear thinking strategist who will not be dictated to or influenced by the matchday mood in the Louden Tavern or the Ho Wong. That he is willing and strong enough not only to stand up to the egos of the money men on board but, when required, to whip them into line.
That he is a man of genuine substance and vision rather than a shiny faced, neatly presented fly-by-night or another nodding dog who offers up only what his paymasters want to hear. Over the past decade In Bisgrove and former managing director Stewart Robertson, Rangers have paid a hefty price for the hiring of false Dons.
It’s a great pity the new man won’t use this AGM as an early chance to prove he is cut from a different cloth. But when Stewart does finally clock on for his first day in the job, what he says and does will provide the real answers to the questions which should matter most to fans and shareholders alike.
