In his stumbling analysis and assessment of Sunday’s Glasgow Derby Tom English revealed that an announcement on the Ibrox takeover is imminent.
More than two days on from that claim nothing has been heard about the American Consortium that are about to bring transformational change to the club as they end Celtic’s domination of Scottish football.
English of course has plenty of previous to go on, most famously being the last Scottish based reporter to stand by Craig Whyte as he led Rangers into administration in February 2012.
Even the Daily Record had become critical of the former billionaire by the start of 2012 but right up the fateful announcement English was reassuring readers of The Scotsman that all was hunky dory with MR Whyte as he steered the club through choppy waters.
At the same time English was working his way onto the airwaves of Radio Scotland. An Irish voice that had the same opinions on Celtic and Neil Lennon as Kenny Macintyre and Alasdair Lamont was an absolute gift to the state broadcaster, a perfect box ticking exercise. was a perfect box ticking exercise.
When the end came for English at The Scotsman he was welcomed with open arms to BBC Scotland where he is affectionately known as House Paddy.
Despite his grand title as Chief Sports Writer, English barely has a clue about what is going on in Scottish football, no-one cares for egg-chasing which is apparently the real love of his life.
When it comes to the big events such as The Olympics, the Commonwealth Games or a Lions Tour Chris McLaughlin picks up the trips and expenses while House Paddy sits in his man-cave delivering flowery overviews that no one in Scotland is interested in.
Just over two months later the club was put into administration while Yer Man at Hootsman turned his attention to The Six Nations.
12 minutes in to Sunday’s BBC Scotland post match analysis.
ENGLISH: I think that the new owners are going to go their own way on this. I’m told, by somebody with a very good understanding of the deal, last week, and it is going on, progressing nicely. They said that there was no way that they new owners would have had that walkabout at Ibrox, if it hadn’t been going, errr, according to plan.
The announcement is, is imminent so, er that’s a new future for Rangers. These are serious people coming into the club.
Collins Dictionary: If you say that something is imminent, you mean it is almost certain to happen very soon.
GORDON: Do we know with any assurance now what that means in financial terms for the football club?
ENGLISH: No, we don’t. Emm, look, look, they want at least 51% of the club, they’ll get that through Dave King’s shares, through John Bennett’s shares, through, through shares from other shareholders, significant shareholders, they’ll get comfortably.
What it means, what it means, are you talking transfers?
GORDON: I just mean, yes, what sort of financial realm are they going to be operating in?
ENGLISH: Financial fair play will determine that, it is not like they will come in, and, spend tens of millions of pounds immediately because they can’t do it, under the rules, you know.
Emmm, but you would imagine that they would come in and spend, a decent, a decent amount of money. We don’t know what that is, we’ve got no visibility on that, it will become obvious in due course, cos, I think that they need to get their skates on now, because, we’re in May now, emmm, and they have a lot of work to do at this club, they have a lot of work to do on the team, putting together the management, putting together the management infrastructure, around, around the management group, they’ve got work to do on the stadium, they’ve got all sorts of work to do and they don’t have much time to waste.
‘Get their skates on’…but English claimed that the announcement of the take over is imminent less than a minute earlier as he rambled through his thoughts like drunken rugger expert staggering out of the toilets at the Brazen Head.
Either someone fed English brief details knowing that he wouldn’t ask any questions or he has just pieced something together from scouring social media and adding in detail published by Keith Jackson and Chris Jack.
According to the club website Dave King’s New Oasis Asset Management owns 12.96% of the shares with John Bennett having 7.11%, taking their combined holding to 20.07%.
It is very likely that those shareholding have been diluted further by the three share issues carried out through the winter.
To reach 51% of the shares the un-named consortium have a lot of work to do, they would need to buy out the six biggest shareholders to reach that stage.
As ever there is no mention of Douglas Park, the second biggest shareholder in the club with 11.54%, that level may have increased from the share issues through the winter months.
Park has also loaned the club £11m, if there is a takeover that he is against the new owners could well be dealing with a request for repayment.
With losses for season 23/24 of £17.2m and likely to be around £25m this season there is no scope for summer spending if the Ibrox club are to remain inside UEFA’s Financial Sustainability Rules, the successor to Financial Fair Play.
The departures of Leon Balogun, Tom Lawrence, Ianis Hagi and Vaclav Cerny will take a decent sun off the wage bill but Jack Butland, James Tavernier, Ridvan Yilmaz, Danilo, Cyriel Dessers, Nedim Bajrami and Robin Propper will still be around. Ben Davies, Jose Cifuentes, Rabbi Marondo and Kieran Dowell will return from their loan spells.
After his crass attacks on Celtic following the tragic death of Shane Warren there must be some mystery reasons why BBC Scotland retained English on their bloated staff.
After this podcast using BBC Scotland equipment Celtic removed the state broadcaster from the invite list to media conferences.
Maybe Tom English should be issuing an apology himself?
If he doesn’t he should be removed from all BBC programming, unless you condone this behaviour?
In which case @CelticFC should never allow English or the BBC anywhere near Celtic Park again!
— Mark Alexander (@mmalexander73) March 12, 2022
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1 Comment
by Valentine's day massacre
English giving it the old ‘ unnamed source ‘ routine ..as per ! What would you say was more abhorrent ? Fake news or an ‘ unnamed source ‘! Either way they are a cheap , tired and toxic and pathetically lazy way to pretend to know the absolute truth .