Ibrox and it's dependency on UEFA money in general and CL money in particular goes way back to 2007/08 when SDM brought Walter Smith back and those in the know in the game i.e the SFA knew Rangers situation and rather than step in covered it up.
In 2006 Rangers published debt was £6M and EBT contributions had peaked at £9.19M. Within a year there was a dramatic reversal with debt rising to £16.5M and EBT contributions almost halving to £4,998,000. Its as if the EBT bill had either arrived or was known to be on its way. In 2008 debt was up to £21.6M and EBTs down again to £2.29M and in 2009 debt peaked at £31M with EBTs flattening at £2.3M.
What pushed the debt up was the transfers in totalling £29M in 2007/08 plus wages of course, offset to a degree by £19M from 3 player sales for good money. The players brought in at huge expense then won three titles on the trot which brought in CL money and allowed the debt to come down to the £17/£18M that Lloyds then recovered when CW stepped in.
The point is that without CL money the debt would have continued to rise and Lloyds would have insisted that players be sold, so the whole survival business model was predicated on access to CL money from 2007. Given the lengths the SFA went to save them after administration I am more convinced than ever that Rangers should not have been granted a UEFA licence to play in the 2011 competition because of unpaid tax (the known wee tax bill) but the Gods of football finally got tired and intervened, in the shape of Malmo and Maribor.
Had Rangers qualified CW could have gone back to the Ticketus well for advances on the CL money to keep the club afloat as it was paying wages it did not have the money in the bank to pay. As it was they lost and as CW said himself last night, with no money coming in, the only way he could keep them going was to hold on to the tax and NI due and use that to pay wages of players that should never have been recruited in 2007/08 in the first place.
Had Smith's transfer spend of £29m gone to servicing the then small £6m debt and the core tax bill of £24M at that time, Rangers would never have gone to the wall.
I am convinced BDO will tell this tale eventually and it will be part of the historic facts of their Downfall story rather than rumour or conjecture.
The men guilty of crimes against Rangers AND Scottish football are SDM and Walter Smith along with every Rangers supporter who gloried in their financial stupidity.
