Murray's Intriguing Plans for Celtic Football Club

Dave Murray has claimed that Robert Maxwell contacted him to discuss a cunning plan to buy Celtic- and merge them with Rangers!

It is one of the many hard to believe tales from the book launched by the former Rangers owner, for over 20 years he dominated the Scottish media before grasping a pound coin and a vow of near silence as the consequences of his Ibrox reign unravelled.

During the first decade of Murray’s time at Ibrox, taking control in November 1988, Celtic found it increasingly difficult to live with the schemes and scams that Murray introduced to Scottish football.

With just 8,000 seats at Celtic Park the clock started to tick down on the Kelly and White families with the introduction of the Taylor report which required all-seater stadiums by 1994.

Other than the enclosure in front of the Main Stand at Ibrox, Murray inherited an all-seater stadium, adding the Club Deck in the early nineties which was funded through Debentures sold to the Gullible and Deluded. The building works were supplied by Murray Metals at a business cost, naturally, as you’d do for the club you love.

From the early nineties it was clear that Celtic needed a change in ownership, direction and outlook with a variety of interested parties coming forward.

Gerard Wiesfeld and Willie Haughey were prominent but from Canada Anglo Scot Fergus McCann emerged, someone who was mocked in the media but understood business far better than Murray ever did despite the fawning coverage that ‘Sir Duped’ received at the time from his pool of media cheerleaders.

Nothing was too much for Murray whether it was a Super Casino in Govan or a six star hotel with helipads for wealthy fans jetting in for top European matches at the 70,000 seater Ibrox which included a roof and retractable pitch to allow it to be used for concerts and other sporting events.

Writing an autobiography, Murray has indulged in a massive wave of PR work to promote a book washing his hands of the death of Rangers despite depriving the NHS, Armed Forces, hospitals, schools and pensioners out of millions of pounds in order to stay competitive with Celtic.

Most of his media favourites have moved on but a new generation of reporters still refuse to ask telling questions or call out the answers put forward by the man that grabbed a pound coin from Craig Whyte and done a runner.

Without any follow up question such as the time of the conversation BBC Scotland published:

He also told BBC Scotland News about a business proposal offered to him by media mogul Robert Maxwell in a phone call one day.

Murray told BBC Scotland News: “He said I am thinking of buying Celtic, we could put Rangers and Celtic together as one and they would be a big force.

“I said I don’t think you know the script up here, I don’t think it is practical and I don’t think it would work.”

And there you have it, another glorious one sided tale of how Murray was some of mover and shaker that he could determine the future of Celtic. Or, if you think I screwed Rangers just be grateful that I never sold out to Maxwell.

With Tom English, Kenny Macintyre, Alasdair Lamont, Jane Lewis and Steven Thompson on the payroll of the BBC their standards are as low as the most desperate click-bait newspaper website, duping their readers at every turn.

A date for this incident wasn’t requested by BBC Scotland but it was apparently soon after Murray borrowed £6m from Bank of Scotland to buy Rangers. At that stage, December 1988 Celtic appeared to be in good health, they had just won the Double with hospitality boxes and a range of facilities built into the expanded South Stand.

The Daily Record serialisation of the yarn did provide some detail, making Murray’s claims even more ridiculous.

Aimed at folk with a reading age of a 12-year-old, Murray recalls:

Football still has the capacity to shock and amaze and one telephone call just weeks after I had bought the club still astounds me to this day.

My son Keith came racing through to where I was sitting at home and said, ‘Daddy, a man is on the phone wanting to speak to you.’

I asked him who it was and he said, ‘Robert Maxwell’.

So one of the most powerful men in the UK just happened to have Murray’s home phone number with his son answering while super-duper successful Daddy was sitting in the kitchen reading about how brilliant he was in the Record, Sun, Herald, Express, Daily Mail and Scotsman?

The fantasy continues:

Now Maxwell still owned Oxford United and Derby County at the time and had a stake in Reading so I assumed he was on to talk about a player.

But when I picked up the phone, the voice boomed down the line, “David, it’s Robert Maxwell… I want to buy Rangers from you and then I want to buy Celtic and merge the clubs.’

“I checked my watch to see if it was happy hour.

“I can’t remember my exact response but it was fairly terse.

“I remembered that he had tried to do something similar with Reading and Oxford United and a planned team called the Thames Valley Royals.

“Needless to say, we had no further contact.”

Some might say that there never was any contact, that Murray made the whole thing up or embellished it incredibly knowing that his media messengers would swallow every word and add their own top spin for the mighty Captain of Industry.

There is no way that Murray sat on that blockbuster story for over 30 years, out dining on succulent lamb with his closest friends he is bound to have slipped ‘Did I ever tell you about that phone call from Robert Maxwell’ into the conversation.

If Maxwell was genuinely involved he’d have got one of his secretaries to contact Murray’s secretary to see about arranging a meeting, probably in London or somewhere exotic.

A big show would be made of it, Murray’s ego would be deeply massaged before Maxwell started to plant the seeds of his cunning plan with the perk of having buckets of money on hand.

Fortunately sometime in 2011 Murray’s son shouted ‘Daddy, there is a man called Craig Whyte on the phone that wants to speak to you’. Or was that introduction the other way around?

Maxwell died in a boating accident off Tenerife in November 1991, Whyte is still around and is bound to be interested in setting the Record straight on the work of self-pitying fiction shared by Murray over the last few days.

NOTE FOR THE GULLIBLE: EBT’s are perfectly legal but there is a certain way to operate them, it is best to stick to the rules rather than apply your own interpretation simply because you know that you can do anything that you like in Scottish football with no media scrutiny.

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