As a Rangers fan It is worrying to hear but It's no surprise, rumours have been flying about for the past year. I personally blame both Murray & Whyte for the mess that Rangers find themselves in.
But liquidation?? gimme a break there will always be a Rangers Football Club, Celtic were close the the wall 20 years ago, under different circumstances admittedly but they survived and so will Rangers
Big thing about this one though is that with us we didn't owe anywhere near what Rangers owe now. We owed £7m in debt at that time and and McCann acted as a guarantor against that debt and bought 51% of the shares to stop the club going into bankruptcy. He also put the club on the stock exchange and made it a PLC which made the club more money with fans and other people buying into it.
Rangers, on the other hand, have a £49m tax case against them, and a further £24.4m has been borrowed due to the selling of 4 years worth of season tickets so that is MORE debt on top of what there already is. What company and who would actually come in and save them the state that they are in? Look at the amount of money that would have to be pumped into the club JUST to keep them afloat for instance. There is a very realistic situation where Rangers CAN go bust.
They enter administration - which is the most likely outcome - they won't be able to enter into any European competitions so that will be a huge lack of funds. They also receive a points deduction every year that they are in administration as well so they already start off on the back foot as soon as the season starts. Also there is a transfer embargo so they will not be able to bring in any players either except to replace players who have left and an emergency goalkeeper.
Looking VERY grim for Rangers no matter what happens.
but
If Rangers do go into liquidation we may as well close the doors on Scottish football forever, TV deals with Sky/ESPN would collapse. (let's be honest they only invested in Scottish football because of both halves of the Old firm)
Sky's deal is all about the 4 old firm games per season (fact) & I feel that they would never invest in Scottish football just to beam live games of Celtic vs St Mirren/Dunfermline/Inverness (no disrespect to those clubs) because there would never be a big enough audience attracted south of the border.
Disagree with this as well because if Rangers did cease there would be more competition for places in the league and the league places bring different bonus money so with other teams fighting for this space it would help. It's not a huge amount but it would help them. Celtic would be the dominant club but there would be an extra spot for Europe for one of the other clubs too. They may not do well in the qualifiers BUT the money they would get would be huge for them. This would in turn increase ticket sales for the clubs as well with matches like this. "Smaller" teams would have more of a possible cup run as well.
The money that the SPL get for TV rights is a pittance anyway so not much would be lost there but there would always be someone - even if Sky aren't - interested in a TV rights deal for Scottish football so there would always be a certain amount of money coming in.
You just have to look at what it was like before David Murray came to Rangers and prior to 1990. The Scottish game was a lot more open and was a lot more competition as well and I think it would go back to similar competition. The game didn't die then and it won't even if the worse happens with Rangers now.
I think it's wrong to think that Scottish football would die without Rangers because that's like saying the Scottish game wouldn't survive without Rangers and they need them, which in my opinion is rubbish. "Smaller" teams MAY rely in one way on income by playing Rangers BUT they wouldn't die just because they wouldn't be playing them anymore. These clubs are in charge of their own income - not just by purely relying on playing Rangers.
Very dark days for Rangers FC indeed but they can blame no one apart from themselves for the situation that they are in now.