ALLY McCOIST has kept his powder dry on Craig Whyte as the full extent of Rangers' financial meltdown has unfolded in recent weeks, but it soon becomes apparent he wants the club's new prospective owners to be everything that the incumbent is not.
It has taken a considerable amount of time for the myriad skeletons in Whyte's cupboard to be exposed – like lifting a shoplifting schoolboy by the ankles and shaking him vigorously until every last pocketed lollipop has fallen out – and McCoist doesn't want to have to go through all that again.
Three groups have submitted their best offers for the club to administrators Duff & Phelps and each will be weighed up before one is bestowed with 'preferred bidder' status. One consortium, the Blue Knights, is well-known to McCoist. He has spoken regularly to Paul Murray, the former director fronting the group, and, with supporters groups on board, their loyalties seem fairly clear.
The motives of the other two groups, however, are less obvious. McCoist admitted he didn't know Bill Miller, the American fronting another bid – although Herald Sport understands there was an attempt on Miller's part yesterday to contact the Rangers manager – or Bill Ng, the Singaporean businessman leading a Far East consortium. Both men insist their intentions are entirely honourable but McCoist, as the club's de facto leader these days, wants to discover it for himself.
What are their plans for Rangers? Do they have the resources to carry it through? Why are they interested in buying the club? McCoist was quick to clarify that he was not suggesting there was any skullduggery afoot, but his repeated use of the words "transparency" and "clarity" yesterday seemed to echo the Rangers support's wish for any prospective owners to be as open as possible about their plans. "I think the one thing that the supporters deserve is transparency," said McCoist. "We must know who we are dealing with and we must know as soon as possible what their plans are for the club for the future.
"I think the one problem, or the biggest problem that the supporters and indeed everybody has, is the unknown quantity. We don't really know at this stage who the other bidders are. Of course, as Alastair Johnston [the former Rangers chairman] said on TV, that's not questioning their ethics or what they want to do with the club. All it is, is that, naturally, people like to put a face to a name and hear from them and let them have an opportunity to speak to the fans and the staff about where they want to take the club. I think that's very important.
"If I was a potential new owner and I was at Ibrox last Sunday [for the Old Firm game] and the Friday [legends game versus Milan] and at Motherwell on the Saturday, that might be a good enough reason to buy the club, because those three occasions were fantastic and just about summed up the football club for me."
McCoist's role has grown extensively in recent weeks, to the point where training and selecting players for effectively meaningless matches has become almost secondary. He hopes to meet with Miller and Ng before the bidding process is concluded and felt it would be in the interest of both men to hear what he has to say.
"I'd imagine I'd be able to offer quite a lot, because I don't think there is anyone else really at the club who can offer anything at the moment in terms of playing staff, in terms of Murray Park, in terms of the team, which is the biggest thing at the football club," he added. "So I would be pretty surprised if they didn't want to speak to myself, just because of the position we are in at the moment. As part of potential purchasers' due diligence, I think it would be an obvious thing for them to want to meet myself and talk about the team, the players and the club and all that kind of stuff.
"But also from our point of view, the management staff, the playing staff and indeed everyone within the club, I think it would be very important that I can get an opportunity to ask the potential purchasers what their plans are for the club in the future because I would probably expect to be the only person, certainly one of the few people, who could represent the club and ask those questions.
"I'm 100% aware of the responsibility I have and I'm trying to ask the correct questions to the right people. If I meet them [the potential new owners] I will tell the supporters everything I know, unless in a business sense they ask me not to. There's absolutely no point in me going to meet them if I can't pass on the relevant information to the supporters and the public."
McCoist admitted he has almost become inured to the regular revelations about Rangers' financial health, but he remains upbeat about the future. "I'm positive because of the conversations I've been having with the administrators," he added. "They've told me they can now see a possible out through a CVA and a bit of light at the end of the tunnel, which is what everyone wants. They haven't closed the door on liquidation because you can't – it's still there and it's still a threat.
"At the same time we have to remain positive. The fact that we've got three parties interested in buying the club is good and we're just waiting on the administrators and how quickly we can get down to 'preferred bidder' status. When that comes, then hopefully that will be another step in the right direction."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article