Rangers administrators 'could sell off club's assets' to keep it alive

Administrators of Rangers could be forced to sell off the crisis-hits club’s assets to keep it alive after the collapse of their preferred bidder appointment.

American tow-truck businessman Bill Miller withdrew his £11.2m offer for the Ibrox club on Tuesday, having been named preferred bidder on Thursday.

Duff and Phelps have claimed three interested parties submitted offers for Rangers after they granted Mr Miller preferred bidder status, without him having to pay any of the £500,000 exclusivity fee that they previously stated was required.

However, none of these bids has been independently verified and it is unclear if any of them involve figures who have previously been touted as "interested parties" in Rangers.

On STV’s Scotland Tonight, football finance expert Neil Patey warned that a fire sale of the playing squad is on the horizon should administrators not have a takeover completed by June 1, which is when severely reduced contracts agreed by the players earlier this year will run out.

He said: "I still think Rangers will exist in some shape or form next season, but I think now the value is coming down.

"The administrators will be selling this for less than they were a week ago. I think it will become marginal as to whether they can sell assets to support it or sell it as a going concern."

Professor David Hillier, from Strathclyde University’s business school, also told Scotland Tonight that the situation at Rangers had reached a critical stage.

He said: "The administrators will have the option of cutting costs massively and also of looking for buyers of some of the club’s assets, such as property, in potential lease-back transactions.

"At the moment though, the club is definitely two steps back."

Questions have also been raised over the viability of the three "bids" the administrator’s claim to have received for the club since they accepted Mr Miller’s offer.

Mark Dingwall, of the Rangers Supporters Trust, said on Tuesday’s show that "it’s a little peculiar" that Duff and Phelps claimed they had three further offers on the table that they believed they could accept by the end of the SPL season on Sunday.

Mr Dingwall added: "I think particularly in the last week fans have been faced with a choice of Bill Miller, even if you didn’t agree with him, or the club ceasing to exist."

He also told Scotland Tonight that the 65-year-old American walked away from Rangers because "his pockets aren’t deep enough" having carried out some due diligence on the club.

Sports writer Graham Spiers told the programme that the administrators, the fans and Mr Miller had not "covered themselves in glory" in the latest twist in the long-running financial debacle at Rangers.

He said: "We wouldn’t probably be in this position if Rangers had paid some of their tax to her majesty and obeyed other rules. So my pity for Rangers is reserved to a degree.

"I think Rangers are going to have a severe limp for four or five years."

Mr Spiers said that from his understanding Mr Miller was "by far" the bidder with the most finance available to him. He added: "But we come back to this - this great, proud institution of Rangers Football Club - nobody wants it, nobody in Britain wants it and nobody around Britain seems to want it either. Rangers really are suffering because of the sins of their past fathers."

The 140-year-old Ibrox club appointed administrators on February 14 after HM Revenue and Customs had not been paid around £9m in PAYE and Vat since Craig Whyte’s takeover last May.

Since then, administrators have revealed the club is in debt of up to £134m depending on the outcome of the first tier tax tribunal against Rangers for paying players and staff using an employee benefit trust.

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