‘This story will dominate the first half of the season’ ‘major problem for Clement’ ‘major disadvantage’ SSB expert on the Ibrox closure

Roger Hannah has alerted listeners to Super Scoreboard that the closure of Ibrox will be the biggest story in the first half of the season.

After internet rumours a club statement on June 20 revealed that Ibrox wouldn’t be ready for the start of the season, a rogue Asian supplier was blamed with contingency plans in place.

Almost three weeks later there has been no update, no alternative home venue announced or timescale set out for the reopening of Ibrox.

Neil Doncaster promised fixture flexibility on June 27 but any club thinking about swapping fixtures to help out the newest member of the SPFL for self inflicted problems.

This is no act of God or accident, it isn’t a waterlogged pitch but the result of poor planning and preparations trying to increase capacity by 600 for additional revenue.

Mainstream coverage has been very light, most were happy to go with Ibrox being closed for a month with an unknown employee sacked, later the Daily Record dumped the blame on former CEO James Bisgrove.

Speculation is rife on social media about the extent of the problems, December or January seem the more likely return dates with Hannah opening up on Super Scoreboard last night about the timescale and issues involved.

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Write this down, this story will dominate the first half of next season because no-one knows when Rangers will be back at Ibrox. That is a major problem.

We were discussing there the problems for the Rangers board in terms of finances- this will be a major problem for Philippe Clement and the players because they want to play at Ibrox in front of a big home support, it gives them a massive advantage over the majority of other clubs. They don;t want to be playing home games away from home.

All that it will take, early in the season, a couple of slip ups, you know, not having those Champions League qualifiers at Ibrox is a major disadvantage to Rangers.

So even in a sporting context, in a football context this is a huge problem for Rangers.

Earlier on Hannah said:

29 minutes

I don’t think that it does the club any credit whatsoever that there is just a wall of silence round about this issue at the minute.

I was actually saying to Andrew (presenter McLean) off air before the show. I don’t think that it has dawned on a lot of Rangers supporters the significance and severity of this story.

You know, a lot of Rangers supporters will be away of holiday just now, the first couple of weeks of the school break. It seems an awful long time until that first home league game against Motherwell, I think it is the 10th of August it is pencilled in for.

My suspicion, and it is only a suspicion is that it will be at Hampden, simply because, as you made in your first point Rangers fans don;t want to go to Murrayfield, they don’t want to go to Edinburgh.

Rangers fans already pay quite enough money to the football club for Season Tickets, for hospitality, for merchandise, for everything that goes with supporting their football club. They don’t want the extra expense of having to go to Edinburgh.

I think that Rangers might just have to bite the bullet and go to Hampden, pay for this new pitch, the pitch at the minute is being relaid after the concerts of the summer, actually the initial idea was to plant the seeds and let it grow, that takes six to eight weeks and Rangers don’t have six to eight weeks.

If Rangers want to go to Hampden Rangers are going to have to pay to lay down a pitch, they are probably going to have to pay people who probably won’t be able to get to games.

There is then the added complication of hospitality. Are they able to offer at Hampden the same hospitality packages that they would have done at Ibrox? Even down to the minutia, things like who serves you your bowl of soup, is it the same people that are contracted to do so at Ibrox because there is another company contracted to do that at Hampden.

So there are a whole heap of questions that you want answered, every single Rangers fan wants answered and at the minute Rangers aren’t communicating because they don’t have the answers.