Hutton Signs for Tottenham Hotspur.

An excellent article from thee-tims website. I don't normally subscribe to the stories that come from that particular fanzine but this hits the nail on the head.

David Murray and his Laptop Loyal Friends

Before I start on the subject of this article, which concerns itself with the state of Rangers as seen through the transfer window, let me warn you; this might turn into a condemnation of the sporting press. I feel they should be saying a lot of what I am about to say, and I am not so much frustrated and angry as I am puzzled as to why they haven’t yet, and indeed probably won’t. The steady slide of Rangers is certainly newsworthy; they are, after all, in their chairman’s words, the second biggest institution in this country after the church. I daresay that puts the Scottish Parliament third, unless Murray Holdings has that spot; yet every single time an MSP breaks his or her pencil it makes the papers. Writing about the press and their role in what has come to pass is inevitable.

They’ve moved much of the transfer window agenda, and whether they know it or not they’ve certainly gifted us an advantage, because although they’ve printed all Rangers spin, they’ve also, inadvertently, contradicted much of it and allowed us to see the truth. Let me be frank before I start: I rarely write about watching Celtic. I love the club without equivocation, and that tends to put the blinkers on me. There’s simply no objectivity when it comes to our side, and I don’t even try. That’s why in the ten articles I’ve written for the website only one has really talked about our team on the field.

Two have been defences of individual players, one has been a discourse on how the game can’t police itself and the rest have been about the sports media and Rangers, our joint enemies in the quest to assure a Generation of Dominance. First things first, then, before I get accused of ignoring objective fact vis-à-vis Celtic, let’s acknowledge the elephant in the living room. At the present time, four points separate the two teams and we all know who has the advantage. Furthermore, we are all well aware our team is not setting the heather on fire at the present time. Performances have been lousier than a vegetarian curry cooked by David Bellamy. We look decidedly average, as though our players have lost the spark.

Our frustrations and anger are born out of our genuine concern that a Rangers team which can grind out results may just do it and an awareness that our own side is not operating at anywhere even near its full potential. Rangers are getting by right now on winning ugly. In straight terms, what they are doing out on the park puts Davie Dodd’s own ugly factor firmly into the shade. Whilst teams have won things doing it the ugly way in the past, I really don’t think this Rangers team is made of the right stuff for that. Their lead is built not on solid foundations of their own but on the detritus of our own bad December, when we let them get on top. Rangers’ form is patchy at best.

In staring at the elephant too much we’ve forgotten that fact. Their defence, widely regarded in the Scottish press as being as secure as ours is leaky and unreliable, has, perhaps you will be surprised to learn, conceded precisely the same number of goals as ours. Our forward line, indeed our team, which has often been accused of lacking firepower, has scored one goal more ………… and with the inclusion of Barry Robson there’s even more where that came from.

The most creative force in our side, Shunsuke Nakamura, has spent a long spell out injured, and has returned ………… just as Daniel Cousin is being tipped to move away, at a time when he’s their top scorer. Most importantly, the cancellation not once but twice of our home league match against them has allowed the press to make the four-point gap into a significant factor when, as recent history suggests, that gap will probably be down to a single point when that game is finally played. Recent history does not win games, of course, but at Fortress Parkhead we have bested Europe’s cream. At home we always win, when it matters ………… which is why I pay little heed to those screeching voices which love to remind us of how Smith has already triumphed at Celtic Park since returning.

With nothing to play for that day we played like a side with nothing to play for, and got what we deserved. It won’t happen this time. That said, let’s look at what’s happened recently. When Celtic signed Andreas Hinkel at the start of the month it was the opening salvo in the transfer war. What none of us could have predicted was that Rangers response would be a three-fold embarrassment of the highest order, starting with their fanciful Moonbeams Park redevelopment plan.

My last article for this website was written on that very subject, so you’d think there wouldn’t be much more to say on that ……but there is. Some new information has come to light. For the last few years, Rangers have done very little in terms of the January sales. What none of us knew then, what I myself only found out yesterday, and thanks to Paul67 for this, is that Murray International’s financial year ends on January 31st, the day the transfer window shuts. It will be a while before we know how interesting this year past has been over at Cosa Del Murray.

The 2006-2007 figures weren’t finally published until September last year, and one would imagine the new figures won’t be available for a while yet, but we can draw our conclusions as to what they will say based on what the evidence of our own eyes shows us, both about what has been going on at Rangers and with Murray as a whole since the September accounts of last year came out.

The financial press, alone of Scotland’s media, have published the facts as they stood in January of last year. Based on what was published in the annual report when it finally came out in September, the overall debt of the Murray empire stood at £643 million. The value of the company’s assets stood at £788 million. After a number of calculations, the overall assets-versus-liabilities equation put the Murray Empire’s available funds at £142 million. On the surface, this sounds healthy. Most of the on-paper value of Murray Holdings lies in property. No-one who reads this site can be unaware that Ibrox Stadium’s value has been grossly over-inflated in years gone by. Indeed, this was one of the principal reasons Murray was able to keep the debt wolves at bay as Rangers drowned in red ink. It would not surprise me to learn that much of his empire is similarly valued, or rather over-valued. Equally interesting are two further facts.

First, net debt rose substantially during the 2006-2007 financial year, from somewhere in the region of £430 million to the ghastly £643 million total. Whether or not this was down to exceptional outgoings, perhaps in land purchasing or something, it hugely inflated the debt figure and put serious strain on the company. A similarly bad year would wipe the company out. Evidently, this has not been such a bad year, but that it has been bad can barely be disputed. In fact, if this year saw a shrinking of that debt it must have come at a great cost. Of the £643 million debt, £527 million falls due over the course of the next four years. These are the hidden facts behind the leaking of the plans to redevelop Ibrox and the surrounding area.

The value of land owned by Rangers in that area has climbed to a sufficient level that the books look slightly more balanced. This will allow greater flexibility in borrowing and spending. It does not take a great leap to conclude that this massaging of figures is all that’s keeping the many threads of the Murray Empire intact. In times of such dire need, it’s important that as many sectors of the Murray Empire are operating well as is possible. One of those sections, of course, is Rangers ……… what the accounts call Football Operations.

Last year the figures were inflated by the JJB deal. This year, Football Operations was able to post a nice extra chunk of cash on the final day of trading. The final day of trading, friends. And as the story behind the leaking of the plans to redevelop Ibrox has been made clearer by the knowledge of how the Murray accounts work, we can now look at the Alan Hutton deal in its full context.

In selling Hutton, and in being able, retroactively, to sell Cousin, the end of year numbers at Rangers allow the Murray Empire to pretend all in that particular garden is rosy. If it costs them the title that is small potatoes compared to the cataclysm facing the company if they’d don’t start plugging the growing holes in the dam. What has happened during this transfer window is that we’ve been given a small glimpse of the chaos going on within Murray’s business empire as a whole. What we see when we peek through the curtains is something akin to a natural disaster happening before our eyes.

For nothing which happens in the Murray Empire can be separated from the malaise any longer. Each part of that empire connects to the rest ……… and to sever one part is to kill the whole thing, stone dead. The fate of Rangers is inexorably bound to Murray. The press, which was orgasmic with delight when he shifted £50 million of debt from the shoulders of Rangers FC and put it elsewhere in his empire, has never even considered the opposite side of the equation ……… that on the day the rent comes due on Murray Holdings, it will come at Rangers expense. That day inches ever closer, and Rangers, like every other part of empire, are feeling the squeeze ever more tightly. Again, we can only speculate as to how bad things look at the most central point, but a compelling picture builds from the outside, like the mild discolouration that starts to appear on the skin of an apple when it’s rotting from the inside.

The Scottish press has aided Murray in his quest to keep things looking nice and neat. Certainly, they assisted in pushing the redevelopment plans into the public domain, fulfilling Murray’s double purpose; first in keeping the price of his land holdings in that area nice and high, and secondly in trying to demonstrate vision to Rangers supporters who have become increasingly sceptical in years gone by. They have good reason to be. The redevelopment plans also had the effect of covering the initial moves to sell Alan Hutton. This deal, one of the biggest to happen in Britain during the transfer window, is the gap in the curtains we were never supposed to peer behind. The closest title race in years is ongoing. Rangers have not won a trophy in the last two seasons, and although they have a place in the League Cup Final, this will not appease fans who hoped for a league flag. It seems a very curious time to be selling players, and yet this transfer window has been notable for Rangers doing exactly that.

Alan Hutton’s transfer saga seemed never to end. It came with more twists and turns than the Indy500. It has its murky aspects, and some of the finer details will never be publicly known, but I think any right-thinking person would conclude from the evidence that the player himself was never going to be allowed to turn down the move. The Scottish press role in this sale should not be underestimated. They were fully behind Rangers right from the first, and actually, before any club had made enquiries, gave birth to the £9 million figure. The Scottish press built the legend of Alan Hutton, and then helped Rangers sell it.

Spurs bit, and then bought, whilst other clubs stood scratching their heads. Who can look, seriously, at the player and place that value on him after what amounts to a half a season of promise? As yet, no comparison is possible with Andreas Hinkel, but one would imagine a German international who won a move to La Liga would be valued higher than a player who has played all his football thus far in the SPL, most of it badly. Yet, we were able to sign Hinkel for a quarter of what Spurs just gave Rangers. The excuse of Premiership prices can only be used so much.

What our eyes and ears tells us is that hype has surrounded Hutton since the season began. When Juan Ramos was asked, initially, about Hutton his response surprised us. He had never heard of the player. This was after the initial bid had been made, and accepted by Rangers. Neither Daniel Levy nor David Murray had reckoned with either Ramos’ response or that of the player himself; he gave the move the thumbs down almost at once. Then began the most bizarre transfer saga in recent Scottish football history.

Murray invited the player in for talks, and allegedly sent Martin Bain down to England to resurrect the deal after Spurs called it off. Hutton was told to consider his future, which he did, concluding, again, that he wanted to stay at Rangers, much to the distress of Murray and Bain, who’d coerced Spurs into making another bid. This time they tried a new tack; they did something almost unprecedented in British football. They offered the player a cut of the transfer fee in order to go. Consider that for a minute. Since the first bid, Rangers never changed their stance in that they were reluctant to let the player leave.

Smith himself said, surely with tears in his eyes, that everyone at Rangers wanted the player to stay. Yet, they offered him a reputed one million pounds to lay aside his own professed loyalty to the club and pack his bags. The evidence suggests that this too failed to sway the player, but he was dispatched down to Spurs for talks anyway, and whilst down there was “persuaded” to make the move. We will never know what intense pressures were put on him to make him go, but we can look at the mess Murray is in and make a guess. There was no prospect of a red carpet return once he’d gone down to London.

Even as talks were ongoing, Walter Smith and Kris Boyd were telling the press the player had changed his mind about staying in Scotland and was chasing the money on offer in the EPL. It was as blatant as any move could have been, and even Hutton must have seen the writing on the wall. Equally bizarre were some of the pronouncements made during the on/off transfer saga of Daniel Cousin. Early in the season, as the player was being touted as the Next Big Thing someone at Ibrox leaked details of a £3 million clause in his contract. At the time we were told it would be activated in the summer, but as we drew closer to the transfer window things altered ever so slightly. We started to hear whispers that it might just apply during the January sales. This prompted a statement from Martin Bain, on the 31st of November, which is worth examining in full. He said; “"I am disappointed that someone has chosen to bring into the public domain details of a contractual agreement with a player. There is an exit clause in Daniel's contract, but it cannot take effect until the end of the season. And the fee required under the terms of the deal is £3m." Firstly, the “someone” in question was clearly in possession of a copy of the contract, because the press had every detail of it. This means the leak came either from the player’s camp or from Rangers’.

This statement was followed by a typically fawning piece of what passes for journalism from the pen of Mark Hateley, where he said: “I think that would be a blow because he is an important part of the Rangers squad ……… It's a period of rebuilding for Walter and he would like to hold on to key players and I think Daniel comes in to that category. He is a top-class striker with loads of experience who can score goals.” A bare two months later, the clause Bain had denied existed was activated, and Mark Hateley, writing again in the Daily Record, had likewise changed his tune when he wrote “Yesterday was a good day for Walter Smith at the January sales. To quadruple the money you paid Lens for a player who is no spring chicken at the age of 30, and who only came to this country last August, is a superb piece of business.” I will not labour the point, which is that although Hately’s crayon drawings appear in the Record he is very much David Murray’s bitch, and without the Record’s willingness to let him publish propaganda-disguised-as-fact would doubtless, instead, be a breathless contributor to the Rangers News. He is living proof of how far standards have fallen. Standards have fallen at Rangers too, especially in terms of the players they are able to attract.

Much has been made of the inability of ourselves and our friends across town to get the cream these days, in blatant ignorance of the likes of Nakamura, Gravesen and Jan the Man signing for Celtic in recent years. What they really mean is that Rangers are no longer able to attract the cream, not even the rotten, ninety day old variety, as evidenced in their failed attempts to sign either Steve Banks for fifty grand or the Polish boy from Dundee Utd, who described as “derisory” Rangers wage offer earlier this month. Two stories which should have brought them joy instead ended in tears, and gave us our two funniest moments of this window. First was the strange tale of Giorgios Samaras. Waking, the other day, to find he was linked with Rangers was the closest I have come to being concerned about a Rangers signing story in many, many years. I was appalled, in fact, that Celtic, who had been tracking the player for two or more years, had missed the boat on such a glaring opportunity to get him into the Hoops. I was greviously worried that we would squander £4 million on Kyle Lafferty whilst Rangers would snap up a class act for a veritable bargain basement £2.5 million. My worries were in vain, though.

The Sharp Suited Man has won almost every contest he’s had with Martin Bain (save the perma-tan sweepstakes) and this was to prove no exception. The minute Celtic registered interest the prospects for Rangers changed dramatically, and realising this they dropped out of the race rather than face the prospect of being snubbed. Our very entry into the equation scared them off ……… and prompted one of the most unintentionally funny Radio Clyde moments in recent years, when one of their pundits told the furious Rangers fans the reason they were unable to close the Samaras deal was that they were “busy trying to complete the sale of Alan Hutton.” This is closer to the truth than many will ever want to admit, and gave us a moment of great mirth which I thought would be the highlight of our transfer window amusement. How wrong I was proved to be, when the very next day we completed the signing of Barry Robson as Rangers dithered over a first installment of the transfer and the signing on fee.

This second humilation at our hands would, in itself, have been enough to send us into paroxysims of joy ……… but even this was about to be outdone, as the entire upper echelon of Rangers took a speculative punt on an Italian striker, which ended in tears, and has prompted some questions of its own. Andrea Carriocola is a name most of us will be unfamilair with, but we’ve been told Rangers have been tracking the player “for months.” Assuming this is true, it appears odd they would leave it up until the last few hours of the transfer window to make their move. Particularly as the player was formally offered for sale at the start of the month. Indeed, reports in Italy in the last week stated interest from both Brescia and Torino, and declared that despite interest from clubs “outside Italy” his preference was to stay in the country.

These reports are available online and elsewhere, and I daresay the club should have been aware of them before sending over Martin Bain, Walter Smith and the Ibrox medical team ……… in short, everyone required for the completion of a transfer deal of that type. They held talks all day, and the Scottish press was kept fully updated except for as to the final fee, but were given just enough information to encourage jumping to conclusions and so they began to spin it ever higher ………… four million, five million, six million, seven million. At the point the numbers became ridicuous I took a calculated stab in the dark and predicted to my mates that the deal would never take place and that Bain and Smith would come home empty handed and instead sign some third-rate sap we’d never heard of.

I am happy to have been proved wrong. Instead, the entire Rangers team was “stranded” in Italy because of bad weather, and aside from one loan signing, were unable to bring in any new players. Carriocola, in the meantime, was the subject of a sustained press assault on both Radio Clyde and Radio Scotland, as his scoring record was rubbished and his decision not to opt for the SPL was described as a lack of ambition on one channel and was ascribed to international cap ambitions on the other, prompting a well respected Italian journalist they’d brought on to discuss the deal (presumably when it still looked on) to say “he’ll not attract much attention from the Italian national coach playing in Serie B ………” a hitherto unknown wrinkle which caused more laughter yet in my house. I also noted that his scoring record was available from numerous sources, and hadn’t disuaded Rangers in the first place.

Chick Young offered us his own explanation for why the deal was not done to Rangers satisfaction; it was very complicated. I would imagine this remark was not sanctioned by Rangers press office, as Brescia closed it without any apparent difficulty. Being gazumped by a Serie B side is bad enough; to have it ascribed to unprofessionalism, when the entire top flight of Rangers is over there trying to get it done, is something else again.

A question arises from this botch-job, and it raises a few issues of its own, and leads me to speculate further: why in the Hell did Rangers take all their heavy hitters to Italy in the first place, to negotiate a transfer the Italian press was widely ridiculing as without hope of success? During the Daniel Cousin saga, Walter Smith was asked if he was happy to let the player go, and he made a comment I thought was odd at the time, and in light of yesterday’s Italian Job fiasco is odder still: He said: "Managers have decisions to make in terms of identifying players and then they pass that on to other people to deal with. It's the same when someone comes in for a player. Martin Bain will ask me if I am happy to let that player go. So you still have the decision-making part of it.

The bit that has been taken away is the bit that you would want taken away - dealing with the financial matters and contracts.” Walter Smith was clearly stating his lack of involvement in Rangers transfer negotiations, stating all these matters were the purview of Martin Bain. Yet, there he was yesterday, in Milan, involving himself in precisely those matters. I cannot help but wonder if the entire Carriacola deal isn’t more smoke and mirrors, with the entire Rangers delegation being sent to Italy to give merely the appearance of deeds, rather than because there was a realistic chance the deal would go through. The Scottish press, which never examined the goal scoring records of Filip Sebo, Filipio Maniero or Francis Jeffers, had Carriacola’s records to hand, as though they’d had them in advance, and set about to rubbish the player the moment the deal fell through. In the meantime, all the heavy hitters were stuck in Italy and unable to get further work done.

The announcement detailing the loan signing of Steven Davis, which had been reported on various Rangers and Celtic websites, as early as ten thirty that morning (although some mixed him up with Simon Davies) was delayed and then released late, as an obvious sop to a furious support who’d been looking for a major deal. Were Rangers entire top tier sent to Italy to waste the final day before the window closed? Were they sent to squander the last hours of the window on an impossible sale, because had they been here in Scotland the Rangers fans would have expected real money to be spent? I think I answered the question earlier, in my persual of Murray’s finances.

Daniel Cousin and Alan Hutton were sold to plug holes, not to raise capital for transfer fees. They were sold in an effort to keep the whole Murray ship from sinking without a trace, regardless of what that means to Rangers. They are no more now than our poor relations. On the field they hold a slight four point lead, soon to be overturned. Off the field they lag so far behind us we’re practically out of sight. Celtic did their business during all this quietly, smoothly and with a little one-upsmanship thrown in for good measure.

In the end, we took two of Rangers’ reported targets, signed one of Asia’s most promising players, stole a great prospect from England and completed the signing of a German international right-back, for a quarter what Spurs paid for their big signing of the window, with all that entailed. We won the PR war this year, friends, and although the Scottish media did not report it that way it’s a fact nonetheless. Rangers were embarrased, they were snubbed and acted not as champions-to-be but like a drug addict doing the rounds of the pawn shops. We are the Champions. That’s not going to change this season. The future’s bright. Yes, it’s green and white.