Adam sings the blues

Parochial and tedious though it may be to announce it yet again, but Celtic once more have a better football team than Rangers. One glance at the top of the Scottish Premier League table will be enough to convince any unbelievers as to the veracity of that statement.

Celtic is also abetter run club than Rangers and a sounder investment for would be football investors trying to decide which side of the Old Firm fence to jump. Celtic supporters are also much better looking and tell funnier jokes than their Ibrox counterparts.

Actually I just made that last bit up, but the other stuff, about Celtic being much better run financially, is all straight from the horse's mouth. In this case the nag in question is Hugh Adam.

Now if Hugh were the kind of paranoid ranter with a major chip on his shoulder about bias against Celtic - the sort who would be writing an article for a blat like this for example - then his comments would more than likely be laughed off along with Hugh's application for membership of Lodge Media Loyal. But Mr. Adam has arguably more of an insight regarding the machinations inside the Death Star than any of us here at NTV Mansions. He has served three separate terms on the board there in the last fifteen years and used to be managing director of Rangers Pools.

In an interview with Glenn Gibbons which appeared in the Scotsman in February, Adam elaborated on his reasons for selling 47,000 shares in the Murray Works team, a fact that was reported in the Herald a few weeks before (see cutting opposite). It was hardly necessary for him to do so because he received the princely sum of £1.15 each for them compared with the £3.45 he got for the other 12,000 he sold three years ago, which tells its own story about the way things are going at the Govan Shityard.

Hence Adam's assertion that Rangers is "not a well run business if you look at the accounts. They have lost £80 million in the last five years. They are not a good buy. They are a damned silly investment. (Hello hello we are the silly boys? - our parenthesis... as if you hadn't guessed) Celtic are better managed than Rangers. They have more heavyweights on the business side."

Phew! Where has this guy been hiding himself? But there's more. He goes on, "David Murray has always had an amazing persuasiveness when it comes to getting people to invest in his business, but the signs are that those sources have dried up. The £40 million worth of shares that ENIC bought a few years ago are no worth about £15 million with no evidence to suggest that they will recover. The money itself that was invested was lost some time ago. Now the latest investor, Dave King from South Africa, will know that his £20 million shareholding is now worth around half, or even less, of what it was when he bought. No proper businessman will want to buy into that."

If they can't get any more handouts, how can Murray expect to recoup these ridiculous financial losses, appease the twitchy bank manager and keep the follow follow brigade happy? Certainly not by selling more Rangers shell suits, Broxy Bears or soap on a rope (nor indeed soap of any description). "Rangers' so-called global appeal is a myth", said Adam, sounding more and more like someone who's been spying on them from the inside on some bizarre undercover sting. "When I was there we did an exercise which involved asking 50,000 supporters on a database to recommend a friend or a relative abroad. A big response was expected - some were even talking about getting 100,000 names. We got back 2,800 names and three quarters of them didn't even know they had been nominated. Despite the claims of international appeal Rangers are essentially a west of Scotland club. The difference (between Celtic and Rangers) is the Irish connection. Many Irish people may support Manchester United or Liverpool or whoever, but they all - every one of them - have an affection for Celtic. The difference is that while the Irish all have an allegiance to Parkhead, there are millions of Scots who not only don't support Rangers but who actively dislike them."

There goes a few more myths then, cruelly exposed by somebody with the inside track at Ibrox willing to blow the whistle on the way Murray runs the show. By comparison, the Celtic suits come out smelling of shamrocks. "They are determined to keep Celtic properly managed while Rangers, with Murray, is a one party state and the man in charge has an allergy to any form of criticism."

Of the Celtic board Adam observes that, "for their pains for doing their job properly - they get crucified in the media, accused of penny pinching. I don't understand it."

Well Hugh, we've got our own theory, but if you subscribe to it you'd only end up in the next bed to us in the paranoia ward.

However, do bear in mind that NONE of this warranted a mention in any of the main Scottish tabloids. Ask yourself this; if, for example, an ex Celtic director such as Brian Dempsey had said about Celtic what Adam said about Rangers, do you honestly believe the tabloid press would have failed to mention it?

GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE
and a gentleman

 

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