THE RANGERS IMAGE PROBLEM

LIVERPOOL supporters must be looking on in horror at the court room battles and legal wrangles surrounding the ownership of the club they support.

However, in contrast to what Rangers fans have suffered, and continue to suffer regarding the sale of their club, the Scousers are getting an easy ride, with the Royal Bank of Scotland appearing to give the club greater support and understanding than seems to have been forthcoming for Rangers from Lloyds

Maybe that has got something to do with the fact there are plenty of folk out there who are lining up to try to buy the Anfield outfit. Just as there was no shortage of interested parties when Manchester City went on the market.

But, despite some big talking by some, which proved to be all hat and no cattle, and other shadowy and equally lacking in substance parties, nobody with the cash needed wants to buy Rangers.

Which begs the question...

WHY?

For at the moment, with debts of around £25M and falling, and with the way the market stands, Rangers could be bought for a knockdown price.

Of course the revenue stream available to such as Liverpool, City, Aston Villa and the others in England, from massive Sky pay outs, plus megabucks via the Champions League, is not available to Rangers.

Though, and even given the fact they suffer the problem of being a big club in a small country, Rangers remain a club with a massive tradition and they could provide a terrific platform for anyone who wished to own a big football club.

Someone whose resources cannot compete with the Americans who are flooding into the market south of the border, or the others from various countries, but who, nevertheless, has substantial means. Indeed, right now Rangers represent a massive bargain. Almost a steal.

So again the question must be posed. Two years after Sir David Murray first made it known Rangers were up for grabs, still no serious and acceptable bid has been made....

WHY?

And the answer.......

Well, Rangers, whether they like it or not, have an image problem. A difficulty brought on by Murray's refusal to take on those whose actions suggest they have nothing else on their journalistic agenda than wishing to damage Rangers.

Nobody needs names spelled out here. Everybody knows who the leading light is... and who his wee handmaidens are.

Would that this campaigner against Rangers was so dilligent in his day-today duties for his ailing paper - at least it is in Scotland - once known as the Thunderer, and once upon a time highly regarded as a paper of record.

For instance, the day before Rangers played Manchester United, he was nowhere to be seen in the splendid Old Trafford, Europa Suite as the reporters from every other daily newspaper who had travelled south, sat down in what was a pre official UEFA press conference briefing to them from Walter Smith.

Is there nobody among the ranks of his superiors in London - where the Scottish sports operation is run from - who know what a mug he is making of them?

Or does the Scottish editor either not know, or not care? Or is he too busy lunching with Richard Holloway, a friend of both the editor and the anti Rangers sports writer?

This man has consistently attacked Rangers supporters for some of the songs he says he hears them singing, while he has with equal consistency, failed to hear any of the offensive songs belted out by the followers of any other club.

Now, not for a moment do I think all Rangers supporters are blameless for the plight their club is in, and I have the record of a column I wrote four years ago attacking them for getting the club into trouble over their singing of the "Billy Boys."

In it, I told them to stop it and coined the slogan - FTP-RIP. It appeared in the newspaper I worked for at the time.

Maybe that was because it fell in with the ethos of that paper's owners, Trinity Mirror, whose flagship paper, the Daily Mirrior, once splashed with a TROOPS OUT! demand at the height of he IRA bombing campaign on the British mainland and in Northern Ireland.

Therefore, my credentials of being balanced and objective are clearly established. Not so the man from the Times.

Fortunately his influence wanes with every plunge in that paper's circulation in Scotland since he joined, just as the Herald's sales figures hit the skids when he was there.

However, the damage he has done to Rangers remains, and that is part of the problem - though not, as I have said, all of it - Murray is encountering as he tries to find a credible buyer.

Murray indeed  is also part of the problem. During his period as chairman - and through the spell when he vacated the chair but remained the most influential figure in the boardroom - there were many inside Ibrox who wanted to pick a fight with those they saw as being fervently anti Rangers.

My information is  Murray often sat in his Charlotte Square office and listened to their plans,  gave them the go-ahead, only to  call to cancel that green light before whoever it was he had spoken to,  had reached the Maybury Roundabout.

You reap what you sow, the Bible tells us, and Murray, by failing to stop what appears as a systematic campaign aimed at the club he owns, now finds it hard to find the buyer he so wants to unearth.

Eventually though someone will come forward. Someone with shrewd enough business acumen to spot the nature of the bargain which is Rangers.

When that happens there are plenty of people within Ibrox who will be only too happy to point the new owner in the right direction when it comes to those who seem to harbour hatred for Rangers.

The Bible will be proved right in then end. It always is.