Those old enough to remember Record Breakers will call Roy Castle famously singing that “dedication’s what you need” if you want to be the best.
Well, Rangers always talk about being the “best in class” and yet one department continues to be desperately lacking despite the board’s obvious dedication to get us back on solid ground – communication.
During the summer and, after qualifying for the Champions League, in particular, fans were, rightly, expecting to see the squad strengthened will real investment to make sure that we could cope with the rigour of both continental and domestic football. Even Giovanni van Bronckhorst looked certain that there would be new faces coming in.
We all know what happened next though and, as seen by the release of the club’s accounts, there is a pretty obvious reason why no further funds were given to Ross Wilson and the manager to spend – the £20million or so spent to pay back loans and settle unfavourable antecedent contracts.
Why didn’t the board just tell us this at the time? All it would have taken is for the chief executive or chairman to calm expectations by saying what the short-term plans were and that a significant outlay had already been made.
We might not have been happy about it, but we would have understood. After all, this isn’t a couple of million we are speaking about. What we had to pay Mike Ashley alone would have covered the fee for Evander, who has been tearing up the Europa League for Midtjylland.
All the board has done, by keeping silent, is turn a positive into a negative and increase the pressure on themselves, the manager and, ultimately, the team.
Best in class? Never mind dedication, communication’s what you need.
Those of us who realise how our club has had to work over the last ten years knew that there would be debt to pay and the money earned in this would go towards that and future development .Only someone who is out of touch would not be aware of what the current board have done to keep us afloat and build the team and the club to where it is now . The nonsense stories that the money had disappeared into the pockets of the board members shows a lack of trust and respect which is something these guys have earned . They run the club not the madcap element of our support who would bankrupt the club spending money on nothing but players . Its important we win but we have to exist to do it,