While Keith Jackson and the rest of legacy media wander around giddy at the prospect of transfer war-chests, spending splurges and basically an end to reporting on Celtic winning trophies, Simon Jordan has added a note of caution to the frenzy stirred up at tea-time on Wednesday, don’t mention Leeds United too loudly.
Becoming a feeder club to Leeds United is a far more likely outcome that becoming the Ibrox 49ers playing out of a futuristic 80,000 seater stadium with retractable roof, hover pitch and a six star hotel complete with VIP helipad.
The Sunday Mail broke that yarn in 2008, four years later they were laying their favourite club to rest.
In the 24 hours since Jackson broke the news for the Record’s army of Readers no-one has dared approach Leeds United or the San Francisco 49ers for a reaction. A ‘no comment’ or Leeds United were approached is enough to add to the story.
Leeds Chairman Paraaq Marathe has been central to standing the story up, as a businessman he’ll always be on the look out for potential investments, as Jackson and the lads at the Record know fine well there is a guy in South Africa that has been trying for years to shift his rapidly diminishing share in the club founded by Charles Green in 2012.
Dave King was so desperate to get rid of his once 18% stake in the club that he agreed a three year buy out with Club 1872. After a few instalments that fell through with no takers since. Today his take is down to around 12%, reduced with every fresh issue, two of which have come since the start of December.
King might be the largest shareholder in the club but it brings him no influence, the Blue Room door is closed. Douglas Park and John Bennett are no longer on the Board but with £23m of interest baring loans the current regime have to run every deal past them, the last thing that Patrick Stewart wants is a demand for a loan to be repaid.
Wednesday’s story looks like a desperate attempt by King to sell up, tentative talks taking place with someone linked to Leeds followed by a call to a favoured messenger to dress the story up with top spin.
In the unlikely event that four different shareholders, all with around 10% agree to sell up, and a buyer shells out 20p per share what happens next?
The Record will run with the 49ers fantasy for a few more days but former Crystal Palace owner Jordan understands the business of football and isn’t quite as starry eyed about the prospects at Ibrox.
Jordan explained to an excited Jim White:
Let’s make an assumption that it can be orchestrated. What’s the benefit to Rangers? Rangers, in Scottish football are a unique phenomenon. Scottish football is worthless. Rangers and Celtic are not. And I don’t mean that disrespectfully because the broadcast deals tell you that.
Why would they invest? Because there’s a European landscape. Because Rangers operate with a turnover of £80/90million. Because Celtic come with a bigger turnover.
The rest of the clubs are in the £10m or £15m bracket so there wouldn’t be any interest in those, unless you’re a Scottish fan. Dave Cormack buys Aberdeen because he’s got an affiliation with there. My friend Gordon Scott bought St Mirren because he’s got an affiliation with St Mirren, not because he’s going to make any commercial headway.
Jordan added:
Rangers represent commercial opportunity due the brand, size and scale of this club. Not because of the Scottish Premiership, but because they can compete in Europe and attract the benefits of European football.
Now the question is, how much benefit is there for Rangers in this by having a change of ownership. They’ll have some more cash but is it a mechanism?
If they are invested in clubs like Leeds that have opportunities to go into the Premier League which is incredibly valuable to be involved in, what you don’t want is Rangers being utilised as an opportunity to provide feeder cub mentality for clubs like Leeds Utd. Because your vested interest in the ownership model is primarily with Leeds.
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