albaowls.myfreeforum.org

Got this emailed to me today :

There is an interesting week or two coming up at Ibrox.

First of the mark will be their old friends Greater Manchester Police, who will move up a gear in their campaign to bring the dozens of the perpetrators of last year's riot to justice.

I hear around 50 people are set to have their 15 minutes of unwanted fame as various steps are taken to identify miscreants. Rangers will oblige by interrupting the military music and national flag waving on Saturday with the modern equivalent of the Wanted poster campaign.

The reaction to this could be varied; have you ever seen several thousand people drop to tie their shoe laces simultaneously? Me neither, and I don't expect it will happen when Chelsea take the field on Sunday!

Sir David Murray has already referred to the Manchester riot as being just one of the things that have made Rangers a more difficult proposition to flog, so the timing of Greater Manchester Police could hardly be worse.

I understand Murray is likely to receive a firm offer for Rangers within the next couple of weeks.

The offer will be for £1 (yes, one pound sterling), with £30m to be paid over seven years on condition that all existing debt is transferred out of Rangers before the sale, and working capital left to sustain the club until season ticket money arrives in a few months.

If Rangers debt was swapped into Murray International Holdings (MIH) the offer would allow Murray to dispose of the club without significantly increasing the net debt position of MIH, who already reflect Rangers debt in their accounts.

MIH would be able to immediately recognise a solid £30m asset (monies due from the new owners), payment of which is deferred over seven years, and would no longer have to support a loss making division. Rangers are on MIH' books at a value far higher than £30m, but that value looks soft compared to a straight £30m debtor.

Murray would be able to leave the club having sold for considerably less than he invested, no doubt with trumpets heralding his generosity, while the new owners would hope to be granted enough goodwill to enable them to work through the legacy financial constraints and rebuild the business back to a level the club previously enjoyed.

The plan is being referred to as the Broken Mirror Plan, as the combination of seven years payments to MIH combined with a further seven years of the JJB deal, is likely to bestow the same period of bad luck. But then things will be fine, they hope.

As for needing to sell a player for £3m this week; we were all wondering why. £3m is not a significant figure when compared to the Rangers or MIH debt, and the loss of a key player could tip the balance in the league (as it did last year); surely any continuing business would not be under pressure to reduce borrowings by just a few percentage points?

True, but £3m might cover 100% of MIH' cash exposure over that £30m figure I mentioned above; with this in the bank the deal ticks a lot of boxes. Not for all Rangers' directors, though, commercial director, Stuart Cain, has had enough and resigned.

Radio silence is being maintained on all of this by the media, of course, old loyalties die hard.