Fergus McCann Versus David Murray

Stephen O'Donnell

Description

Fergus McCann Versus David Murray charts the changing fortunes of Glasgow's two great footballing rivals as shaped by two business moguls. Both men came to prominence in the 1990s when new methods of governance and finance were taking hold of football. At the start of the decade, under Murray's chairmanship, Rangers were the dominant force and the club went on to win a record-equalling nine consecutive league titles. Their success, however, was built on an extravagant spending strategy, which caused a financial catastrophe. Celtic, by contrast, were struggling in the early 1990s, thanks to a complacent and nepotistic board of directors. But McCann took charge of the club in 1994 and turned things around. The new owner left Parkhead having won the league, rebuilt the stadium and left his shares in the hands of supporters. It was Murray, however, who was lauded in the media throughout his tenure at Ibrox, while McCann was chastised. Ultimately, though, their legacies would be utterly different from those misleading media portrayals.

Sujets

• Central Scotland
• Glasgow

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 27 juillet 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785317347
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2020
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Stephen O Donnell, 2020
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
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Print ISBN 978 1 78531 643 2
eBook ISBN 978 1 78531 734 7
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword
1. Before the Flood of Money
2. High Noon
3. The Longed-For Breakthrough
4. If You Build It, They Will Come
5. A Double-Edged Sword
6. One in a Row
7. Distortion
8. The Bhoy From Brazil
9. A Turning World
10. When the Sky Deal Fell In
11. Fade to Whyte
Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgements
T HE author would like to thank the following people for their help during the writing of this book: Tom Boyd, Colm Clancy, Gregor Clark, David Faulds, Tom Grant, Sandy Jamieson, David Kelly, Steve Fitzpatrick and friends, Matthew Leslie, Richard McGinley, Matt McGlone, Ally Palmer, David Potter, Andy Ross, Brendan Sweeney and Alf Young. Additional thanks to the staff of the Mitchell Library in Glasgow and the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, and to everyone at Pitch Publishing, especially Jane Camillin. Writing is a solitary activity but a book is always a combined effort, so thanks again guys.
Foreword
A GENERATION ago, British football clubs were British owned. Owners tended to be local butchers, bakers and candlestick makers. Turnstile income was all that mattered and the larger the population of the town, the bigger the club tended to be. Banks didn t lend to football clubs and, consequently, everyone lived within their means.
All of that changed in the 1980s following the elections of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Both promoted deregulation of financial markets, cultures of easy money and increased corporate activity.
Football clubs started to change hands, and in 1988 David Murray acquired a controlling interest in the old Rangers, which valued the club s share capital and bank debt at 12.5m. The club s new parent company, Murray International, was already carrying bank debt of circa 40m, meaning the whole Rangers enterprise was entirely dependent on bank borrowing from the outset and well before it was liquidated 20-odd years later.
Across the city at Celtic, the financial climate change passed unnoticed until it was almost too late. The directors lacked vision, commercial acumen and money, and were eventually forced out after a two-year war of attrition with shareholders and supporters. Fergus McCann arrived and acquired a controlling interest in a deal that valued the club at 13.5m before the share issue to supporters at the end of 1994.
In late 1992, I had flown to Montreal to meet Fergus McCann. The purpose was to try to persuade him to back my plan for removing the Celtic board and to support a substantial capital investment. In his apartment his first words to me were, Hello, Mr Low, who are you, why are you here, and what do you want? I loved that, straight to the point, no bullshit and a characteristic that was not always appreciated during his time in Scotland.
Fergus had always been adamant that any investment he made would go straight to Celtic and that he was not prepared to buy shares from the outgoing directors, given their mismanagement of the club s affairs. However, on 4 March 1994 he was confronted with that very dilemma; the old board had no choice but to surrender their positions if the club was to avoid receivership, but the change in control would not take place without acquiring their shares. Protracted negotiations ensued over the course of the day and Fergus eventually agreed to set aside some money to buy the directors shares. It was the only time I can recall getting him to change his mind about anything. That deal sealed the change in control. It was a momentous day in Celtic s history. The game was over and the rebels had won!
This book deals with two contrasting styles of personality and management: Rangers under the control of the risk-taking and bank-financed David Murray, always living on the edge and pitted against Celtic, now controlled by Fergus McCann, and with a business plan that promoted financial stability, steady improvement and operating within its means.
The Murray model was always going to be popular with fans, as it appeared to provide limitless amounts of money to buy better players, greater football success and never-ending football domination over their oldest rivals. McCann s plan was more difficult to implement and required focus, discipline and patience.
Rangers dominated the 1990s and won nine league titles in a row. Celtic supporters, manipulated by a Rangers-leaning media, became increasingly agitated at the Celtic board s refusal to pursue the risky buy now, pay later policy of their rivals. Despite this, and against the financial odds, Celtic managed to win the league and prevent Rangers from winning its coveted tenth league title in a row. However, that didn t stop a section of the Celtic support booing McCann when he unfurled the league championship flag at the start of the following season.
The other major and often overlooked difference between the two clubs was in the calibre of experience of their boards of directors. Unlike Rangers, Celtic was listed on the London Stock Exchange and had a board of directors that understood the importance of good governance and sound financial practice. These characteristics were important in providing the continuity of management needed after McCann s departure in 1999. McCann s real legacy was a management structure and ownership profile that provided continuity of philosophy to this day.
Under Murray, Rangers fared less well. During his ownership, the Bank of Scotland continued to lend his companies seemingly endless amounts of money, but all that stopped with the financial crash in 2008 and the takeover of Halifax Bank of Scotland by Lloyds TSB the same year. The lending stopped and the club had to start downsizing and paying off bank debt. The whole debt orgy had lasted an exceptional 20 years. Financial profligacy and greed had dominated the sporting landscape, distorted on-field performance and ended with a trail of insolvencies and, in the case of Rangers, liquidation. Extraordinarily, it wasn t the bank debt that finally brought about the death of the club, but unpaid taxes due to Her Majesty s Revenue and Customs (HMRC).
The Murray years should have been recognised as exceptional, and the current, more stable financial landscape as the norm. Lessons should have been learned, but that wasn t to be in the case of Rangers. A new club was formed in 2012 with the assets of the liquidated club; it successfully applied for membership of the Scottish Football Association (SFA) and the then Scottish Football League (SFL), but after a difficult birth the new club has inherited the worst financial attributes of the old one and continues to live outwith its means and is financed by directors loans.
Celtic now has a considerable and embedded economic advantage over Rangers, as well as everyone else in their domestic league. This can all be traced to the structures put in place by Fergus McCann in 1994 and followed by successive boards since. However, at the time of writing, a new and unforeseen financial threat has emerged that s indiscriminate in nature. The coronavirus is a human tragedy and a financial catastrophe for spectator-based sports, which has the capability to redefine the football industry s entire financial model.
David Low
May 2020
1.
Before the Flood of Money
D URING the 1990s, the seemingly eternal rivalry in Glasgow between the city s two great football teams, Celtic and Rangers, appeared to take on a new, ultra-modern dimension in the shape of the two institutions recognised and successful owners, Fergus McCann and David Murray. Over the course of the decade, these two businessmen came to be considered among the most well-known public figures in Scotland, due almost entirely to their roles at their respective clubs, and to outside observers, certainly at first glance, it may have seemed as if Murray and McCann had been hewn from the same rock. Both were driven, headstrong, self-made men, ready to trample over anything or anyone who had the misfortune to get in their way, and in coming to prominence when they did, the pair also found themselves favourably positioned to exploit the commercialisation and corporatisation of football that was taking place over the period of their involvement in the game.
Yet the two men could hardly have been more different. Murray, the Rangers chairman, at times appeared to be on a never-ending mission to indulge his ego, an unabashed showman, who was prepared to take extraordinary risks with his own, and in particular with other people s money, in the unshakeable belief that his plans would always come to fruition in the end. McCann, by contrast, Murray s counterpart at Celtic Park, gave the impression of a relatively low-key figure, who was happy to beaver away behind the scenes at his club while displaying almost no interest in the dubious distractions of the PR game or in manipulating his public profile in any way. His primary concern, it seemed, was with making money, and in March 1994 he invested almost his entire fortune in Celtic in a bid to effectively relaunch the st