Intention and Execution

The new season approaches fast and my current mood is that to have any chance of winning the 24/25 title, it will take an incredible combination of new players adapting quickly, young players reaching new levels of maturity, some experienced starters joining, some long overdue injury luck, a seismic change in refereeing standards in key games, and last but not least, our support finding some belief once again.

As a Rangers fan I am fairly weird - when it comes to matters on the park I am an almost perennially “glass half full” supporter with an unstinting belief that football can change fast.

Regarding Rangers matters off the park, I am the definition of a small “c” conservative – if you want radical change then I will be the last in the queue and you better have the whole thing mapped out for me. 2011 changed me, I am as risk averse as you will find, I desperately want trophies but I also want lessons learned so there is a club for my grandchildren.

However, in the here and now, we have a summer of discontent. A fatigued support reading in to mixed messages, angered at communication shortfalls, bewildered by the stadium delay, and worried for the footballing season ahead. Is my glass still half full?! See my first paragraph – I always believe there is a chance. But it feels a bit different this time, like the clock is ticking on patience and we have a building clamour for change in the boardroom, with chairman John Bennett the focus of most ire.

So this is where the small “c” conservatism comes in….

We have been here before with previous chairman Douglas Park who when asked at the 2022 AGM what the 5 year plan was he answered "To win as many trophies as we can, to build a team that can win as many games as we can and to reinvest in the club as much as we possibly can.” That overly simple and obvious reply was the beginning of the end for Douglas Park and many in the support lost faith and Park’s huge financial contribution to our recovery and successes were effectively forgotten or dismissed. I argued at the time (small “c” conservative remember…) that we would rue the day we chased Rangers men like him from our board and asked if we had learned anything re ownership of our club.

Now we have John Bennett in a similar firing line. Some justified and some not. In September 2022, after accusations of lack of communication Bennett, then a director, delivered a two-part Rangers TV interview, it was wide ranging and most notably expanded on the “4 pillars” strategy, but in many quarters it raised more questions than answers. But some of the points in there remain pertinent and echo today.

For example he admitted that the club’s communication to fans were inadequate in articulating what Champions League money meant in reality for the club finances – jump forward and we still have a massive issue communicating effectively with the support on where our club is financially and what that means – the gap gets filled with rumour and guesswork none of which is positive.

On fan communications Bennett stated in 2022 “Never will we take them (the fans) for granted. That's why I'm annoyed at some valid, valid criticism, observations, that our communication with our fans hasn't been good enough recently. Let's fix that. They own the club, they're the lifeblood. It's not just a phrase, they own the club.”

But in the last few weeks the clamour for comms from the chairman (or anyone on the board or executive team) to say something/anything, seemed almost unanimous amongst the support. I say almost unanimous because as usual I was contrary and went on record to say I don’t need to hear platitudes from the club, I just wanted to know there was total focus on the mission critical jobs in hand to get us ready for the new season. But that’s just me… But even I recognise that communication is an issue that hasn’t been fixed.

Then we have the Stadium delay. This issue is unquantifiably bad – the problem with this whole thing is that fans can forget what you say or do, but they don't forget how you made them feel. And if we are standing at Hampden in a shitty seat watching Scott Wright come on to save a game that feeling will be palpable.

So let me be clear John Bennett is not immune from critique and analysis of his performance – it has to be this way and always should be for every single person at our club – this is how high standards are born and maintained.

However, my instinct is not to call for Bennett to leave after only 15 months in the chair – just like for Douglas Park I am defensive on what happens next to a good Rangers man who has put his money where his mouth was. I am also against burning through investor/directors that I actually trust with the future of our club. In short, the board are going nowhere so we need to make it work. Let me try to give balance to the debate.

James Bisgrove was appointed Chief Executive on 31^st July 2023 and lasted less than a year. Let’s be clear - the CEO (or Managing Director under the previous structure) is the person running the show day to day, not the chairman. The chairman is usually responsible for the overarching strategy, culture and governance and the CEO owns the performance of their company. Bisgrove’s departure was much earlier than expected and dare I say, opportunistic. Would he have been able to jump from his previous Commercial Director role straight to CEO of Al-Qadsiah? Who knows but the generous opportunity afforded to him as CEO of Rangers certainly didn’t hurt. Would Bisgrove have flourished in to an effective and successful CEO of Rangers if he’d stayed? Again who knows? But personally I’d have been surprised to see him survive the current stadium debacle and general discontent amongst fans because the buck stops at the door of the CEO.

For me there is a very strong argument that Bennett has inherited many problems from Bisgrove’s departure and has been unceremoniously landed with 100% of the responsibility at the most critical juncture of our 2024/25 preparation. If James Bisgrove was still here he would definitely and rightly be the main subject of fan scrutiny.

But “Bennett appointed Bisgrove!” you can say – yeah he probably had the most significant say in his appointment, but chairman is a strategic position and the chairman can and should outlast multiple CEOs if need be to maintain integrity of strategy amidst any shortfall in performance, and this can be seen time and again in the corporate world.

Speaking of strategy and the call for radical change, John Bennett took over as chairman on 4^th April 2023 as Douglas Park departed. He has been in position for only 15 months. Our support ask for change, but we forget that from the outset Bennett has been proactive with his power as chairman and recognised the need to completely revamp the executive team and structure, with several high profile departures and new appointments. Apart from a change from a Managing Director to CEO structure with Bisgrove’s appointment, Ross Wilson’s Sporting Director role was split and a new Director of Football Operations Creag Robertson was appointed the month before Bennett. The now departed Zeb Jacobs was promoted from Head of Coaching within our Academy to Academy Director in June 2023, also in June 2023 Karim Virani was appointed new Chief Commercial Officer, a Director of Medical and Performance Dr Mark Waller was appointed in July 2023, a Chief Financial Officer James Taylor was appointed in September 2023, and critically the last piece of the exec team was appointed with the creation of the Director of Football Recruitment Nils Koppen in December 2023.

All these appointments point towards the day to day implementation of the highly visible “4 pillars” strategy (ticket income, commercial income, European football, and player trading) – regardless of who is chairman there is an almost certain likelihood that this strategy stays firmly in place. But look at those dates of appointment of the key executives – more or less a year on average. This executive team (currently without a CEO which is a problem) is in its infancy and despite patience being a precious commodity amongst our support, they must be afforded time to deliver and then be judged. And whether it is under John Bennett’s chairmanship or not, it will be under the very same strategic vision.

I have long tried to position the importance of our investor/directors such as Bennett and Park, in fact I have at times been gushing in my praise in how integral they have been in underpinning so much of the losses we endured as we front loaded investment post 2016, and navigated the existential (and now forgotten) financial challenge that was the covid lockdown.  It should be made crystal clear that title 55 was achieved not by prudence but by our investors doubling down and putting up the funds that made the difference– in March 2020 we had massive player liabilities due to be paid of over £25m, this coincided with Dave King leaving, and our investor/directors and especially Park and Bennett picked up the sizeable slack and backed Gerrard with even more that summer – and it paid off. It was undoubtedly one of the best calculated decisions in Rangers’ history and our investor/directors were at the heart of underwriting it. That needs to be said because I’m not sure it is understood as it should.

The “failure to build on 55” narrative is blind to the subsequent and absolute need to rationalise the expenditure given the huge outlay that preceded and the huge covid impact – if you want a reason for the lack of spend in 21/22 blame the disastrous Malmo result.

I have also long suggested that thanks to this prolonged investor/director financial support model, our fan base in general have become totally inured to the substantial losses we were deliberately enduring year on year through our recovery, and when the day came for the true realities of self-sustainability arrived, some of us would not be able to handle it. Maybe that day is here?

Our chairman John Bennett is an investor and owns 5.51% of our club. In the latest accounts we learned that he had an outstanding loan to our club of over £7m on a favourable interest rate. We do not have detail of what it was used for, but whatever it was, it was needed and he stepped up.

There is another factor that it is important to stop and dwell on. John Bennett provides our club with a revolving credit facility.

This means that John Bennett provides our overdraft, again on very favourable terms. This means we are not at the mercy of any bank or financial institution for this facility. This overdraft is utterly critical to the day to day functioning of our club during fallow periods of income (usually February onwards) and if you want to know what kills companies and football clubs, it ain’t debt, it’s lack of cashflow. So this is important, very important. And unless we have an alternative lined up and in place that makes John Bennett very important too.

So here’s the kicker – you may have a problem with the board, you may have a problem with John Bennett as chairman, you may be able to list why you want him and his board to step aside and that’s fair enough – but if your answer is for “another rich guy to fund your hobby” (copyright Martyn Ramsay) by covering that perennial shortfall in cashflow, or to go to a bank for an overdraft, then you haven’t thought this through.

As a support we are absolutely correct to lament bad decisions, especially when they are multiple and repeated. I am not blind to these and I am not attempting to dismiss the many that have occurred while John Bennett has been a board member since 2015. We need trophies and we need them yesterday. But there is also a danger of unintended consequences which are not always apparent immediately.

Our boards’ good intentions are demonstrable time after time, year after year, the problem is that the bad execution of strategy is too. The answer to our current predicament is simply to follow the strategy, do it better and execute the 4 pillars year after year. Footballing success will follow, it has to.

The gifts our city rivals received in 2012 were many, but the biggest was the gift of continuity. Our biggest problem right now is that they have had an ability to fine tune and master fiscal disciplines and their own 4 pillars over a long period to the point where it is baked in.

So with that in mind I now look to the new exec team, and a new CEO must be brought in as soon as the current priorities are navigated. From there I want to see some continuity, to see the strategy implemented with discipline, cool heads, and identifying and correcting wrong decisions quickly (for there will be more). Easy to say but hard when patience is short. It will all be judged by what we are seeing on the park, and that’s life at Rangers.

We have until the end of August to rebuild the squad as much as we can and Phillipe Clement’s job is to help his board as much as the board’s job is to help him. Our job is to support the players on the park especially through August. Then it’s down to the players to show they are worth that massive wage bill and we’re back to talking football. I believe the correct intentions have always been there, we now need the correct execution from top to bottom on and off the park.