According to Dave King, the Rangers boardroom messed up the Ibrox stands and cost the team a Champions League position.
The former chairman has been watching from a distance while the club’s “home” games have been played at Hampden Park because the hierarchy botched the summertime renovations to the Copland Road stand, causing supplies to be delivered later than expected. King attributes the Light Blues’ loss in their UCL qualifying match against Dynamo Kyiv to the “soulless” atmosphere present in the national stadium.
King feels the club should not have begun the work unless they had a guaranteed return date and strategy as well as the materials in place. King stated last night that he’d be open to a stunning comeback as chairman to replace the departing John Bennett. And the club has paid a heavy price for that kind of mismanagement.
On a scale of one to one hundred, he commented, “I find it astounding that we could have started a project if we did not have all of the equipment.”
“From a management perspective, regardless of whether you oversee British Petroleum, a fish and chip shop, or a Kentucky Fried Chicken, there are basic management concepts in place. The renovations should never have been started.
“The board and operations manager should have been under supervision, and there should have been a compliance and control environment surrounding it.”
“You don’t start a project like that unless, when we finished the first game of last season, mid-May whenever it was at home, within a minute or the next morning that team should have been in. Because being at home at Ibrox with our atmosphere, where we are formidable, even against the biggest teams, we are formidable at Ibrox.
“We needed the Champions League money, we needed to be playing at Ibrox. Hampden Park is soulless, I’m sorry, it’s our national stadium, but it’s soulless. And if that material wasn’t there, the chairman of the board or whoever should have turned around to the poor and said we’re sorry, it doesn’t happen if the stuff is not here. We cannot start this project knowing the key steel is still in China. We’ve scored these own goals, we’ve got so much wrong and what this club has got to do right now is get back to basics.”
