Football News: Best in Class? A question of accountability at Rangers Football Club

ACCOUNTABILITY, DAVID GRAHAM, OZ, NFT, CRYPTO, NEW EDMISTON HOUSE, 150th CELEBRATIONS, PRICE FIXING, GVB AND DOUGLAS PARK DISCUSSED IN THIS - ANOTHER INTRIGUING ARTICLE FROM OUR GUEST BLOGGER.

Accountability is a funny thing. It is something that the best people in senior positions in the business world have no option but to take on their shoulders whether they like it or not. Many thrive when put in a position where they are truly accountable for their actions, or lack of them. Some crumble under the pressure but still accept that being accountable to stakeholders is just part of the job. Unless, it appears, you happen to hold a senior position at Rangers Football Club. In a somewhat unique and not at all ideal turn of events, the Plc board members and well paid executives at Rangers appear not to have to worry about accountability at all.

The latest benchmark for the top people at the club was set recently in Vice Chairman, John Bennett's interview with RTV. "Best in class" is what Mr Bennett says the Rangers Board is striving for. Something which, if it is true, he will require his executive team and his board colleagues to be accountable for. A high bar you might say? Well, yes, but only if they actually are accountable.

There has been much talk over the past couple of years about the dreadful communications performance of the club during the tenure of David Graham as Communications Director. He has now left his post, but was this because he was finally held accountable by the board for the club lurching from one disaster to another on the PR front? Well we, as the "rump of supporters", don't know. The club confirmed to the press that he had resigned but nobody from Rangers has provided any explanation or even formally announced his departure via club channels. Was he held accountable for his actions, professional or otherwise, during this short stay at Ibrox? Rumours swirl around as to the reason for his sudden departure and, once again, supporters are left in the dark.

Then we have two, recent, high profile, commercial disasters. First came the club's foray into Crypto currency and then the ridiculous Old Firm 'friendly' in Australia. The Australia friendly was well publicised at the time and the issues well known, but in a recent interview, James Bisgrove revealed that he couldn't talk about it due to legal constraints. Is the club now being sued by the organisers or sponsors, leading to the possibility of more wasted funds? We don't know. Has anyone been held accountable for the decision to sign up to this? It seems not. Despite it making the club a laughing stock and driving a further wedge between the Board and the support, there seem to have been no consequences whatsoever for the senior decision makers who signed up to it.

Even worse, are the Crypto schemes that Rangers involved themselves in. The club signed up to two schemes, one with an NFT company called Sportemon Go and another with a Turkish Crypto firm, Bitci. Both schemes were promoted to supporters directly by the club.

Sportemon Go went bust only a short time after Rangers signed up to a partnership with them, but Rangers and Castore continued to sell replica shirts with the Sportemon Go logo on them despite the company no longer existing. More recently, new sponsorship patches have been stuck over the top of the Sportemon Go logo on replica kits in an embarrassing attempt at a cover up. Quality once again coming a distant second to profit.

The Bitci scheme, a Crypto "fan token" which supporters could buy, was presented by Rangers as giving supporters the chance to take part in unique Rangers themed experiences as well as being an investment product. These experiences never materialised. Worse, the tokens have lost almost all of their value since launch.

Bitci's partnership with Rangers has been airbrushed from existence as if the whole thing never happened. Their logo was quietly removed from the club website and disappeared off the first team shorts. Those who bought the tokens were left severely out of pocket without so much as an announcement or explanation from anyone at Rangers on what went wrong. Accountability? None.

New Edmiston House is now nine months and counting overdue and more worryingly running millions of pounds over the original budget. Fans money has been poured into the project through commercial packages, a share issue and £100,000 "founders" sponsorship packages without any explanation for the delays and spiralling costs or any accountability for these failures. The opening date has been repeatedly moved back without any acknowledgment that it has actually changed. New, estimated dates for its opening are mentioned casually by Stewart Robertson and James Bisgrove as if the previous, missed dates had never existed. Will it even open in 2022?

The Board were recently happy to use the spending on projects like New Edmiston House as an excuse for the lack of spending on the squad but failed to mention how far over budget the project was and how much of the fans money had been wasted by their inability to run the project properly. Nobody at Rangers has even admitted the problems never mind taking responsibility.

In fact, the entirety of "Project 2022", the club's project to mark our 150th anniversary, has been a mess. Most of the 'events' in the roadmap for this huge milestone in the club's history either didn't take place, were totally mismanaged or simply involved trying to sell things to supporters. If it hadn't been for the Union Bears fantastic display in our anniversary game, you would scarcely know the club had passed such a historic landmark. Has there been any accountability from Stewart Robertson or anyone else for another failed project? Of course not.

In recent weeks, we also saw Rangers fined for illegally fixing the price of replica kits. It was found that the club actually conspired with JD and Elite to inflate the prices supporters had to pay for kits. Dave King, who was Chairman at the time, has publicly stated he knew nothing about this so who within the club was responsible? James Bisgrove was not Commercial Director at the time but Stewart Robertson was Managing Director. Surely this latest debacle would see someone at the club held accountable? Unfortunately not. Not only was nobody's head on the block for this betrayal of the support but the club once again allowed the matter to pass completely without comment. No apology, no responsibility, no communication and no accountability. If circling the wagons was a sport this Rangers hierarchy would be world champions.

John Bennett's "best in class" vision of how Rangers should operate will never be achieved if those in senior positions continue to prefer to pull the wool over supporters' eyes rather than hold themselves and others accountable for the decisions they take. Which begs the question, is the standard real or just a convenient soundbite? Would the major investors in the club allow their own companies to run like Rangers does? Would they allow their senior executives and fellow board members to shirk responsibility for the sort of incompetence we have had to endure? Would they allow them to hide from their 'customers' and shareholders and be indignant about justified criticism? Unlikely. So why is it tolerated at Ibrox?

Following some truly terrible performances on the pitch this season, not least the woeful Champions League campaign, the one man at Ibrox who may, uniquely, be held accountable is Giovanni Van Bronckhorst. Although he is almost certainly not up to the task of becoming a successful Rangers manager, he could count himself unlucky on a couple of fronts. He has been badly let down by a Board that showed an extraordinary lack of ambition, not only after winning 55, but again when reaching a Europa League final and then qualifying for this year's Champions League group stages. He was sent into the Champions League campaign with a squad that was obviously ill equipped for the challenge and arguably isn't even good enough to compete for the title domestically. But he should also count himself extremely unlucky to be the only senior employee at the club who seems to be held publicly accountable for their own actions.

And where is Rangers Chairman, Douglas Park in all this? Price fixing, dodgy Crypto schemes, old firm friendlies, white elephant building projects, Champions League humiliation and trailing in the league, all without a peep out of the man who is ultimately responsible for it all. Happy to let his Board colleagues and employees take the flak. An absent chairman, hiding from accountability. There is a lot of it going around.

Written by Laudrup1972 November 04 2022 09:10:30