I HAVE never "got" big business or high finance, which is why I write about sport; had I known my way around a balance sheet or a share prospectus better, I might have had a well-paid job, made my pile and been retired years ago. I prefer the simpler life of writing about sport.
So, when it comes to the current apparent malaise around Rangers FC, I try not to pontificate or put forward opinions. That said, if I was a Rangers' fan, I'd be worried, very worried, by current events.
Sir David Murray has, somehow, swanned off into the sunset, leaving Craig Whyte to soak up all the flak which is currently flying around this Scottish institution. However, the fact is: Rangers' current travails are mostly of Murray's making. SDM is the son of a gambler; his late father had a good-going business, covering various fields of business, but he lost it all through his addiction to slow horses.
His son made an even bigger pile and for a time seemed untouchable in Scottish business. He had the confidence of the money men in Edinburgh financial circles and could apparently do no wrong. Now, his star has dimmed - his reputation is tarnished.
I for one am not surprised. I watched Murray the Younger's rise in basketball. For a time he could do no wrong apparently as he recruited Americans and Scots-Americans to keep Murray International Metals (MIM) ahead of the field and in an effort to make them a force in the game in Europe.
Certainly, MIM won a couple of invitation tournaments, but genuine European success, as measured by success in basketball's equivalents of the Champions League or the Europa League eluded him. He took MIM into a genuine British League, only to be pipped for the silverware there by, of all clubs, Rangers BC. He then bought Rangers FC and its basketball younger brother, shut down the basketball operation and concentrated on the football one.
MIM became Livingston Bulls, which collapsed through a lack of investment and, more-crucially, the lack of a youth policy. They could no longer afford the big-money imports, so they became just another team and folded.
He started a Scottish tabloid Sunday newspaper, the Sunday Scot, recruited some big money, big ego journalists - it failed, he closed it.
We can now see a pattern emerging. For as long as Murray flung money at Rangers, they were pre-eminent in Scotland, but, as with basketball, his sporting model in football was unsustainable.
He got out of basketball and left others to pick up the mess. Now, he has done the same in football. Sir David Murray is now, to some of us, as much of a failed gambler as his father was.
Now we come to Craig Whyte. I know nothing of him, but, I do have a friend in the rugby world who worked for Mr Whyte in his days in plant hire and security. My friend does not have a good word for him and is very resentful of the time his innocent period as one of Whyte's underlings involved him with the police.
"I wouldn't trust Craig Whyte as far as I could throw him", is my mate's assessment. OK, that is just one man's view, coloured by unfortunate association.
That said, Whyte's first nine months or so as "The Man" at Ibrox have hardly been a case of hitting the ground running and producing a Kennedy-style first spell of action and improvement. Since he took over, Rangers have lurched from crisis to crisis, embarrassing headline to embarrassing headline.
Yet, for all this, even with an on-going tax case which, let's not beat about the bush, could yet finish-off the club, Rangers are hot on the heels of Celtic in the annual two-horse race for the SPL title. What does the fact that such a troubled club can still be competing for the big prize say about the rest of Scottish football, by the way?
I couldn't for the life of me see what Whyte saw in Rangers. Nobody can make money out of Scottish football in the present climate. If the club was to be allowed to fail - it is doubtful that, in the current economic climate, a short-term or even medium-term killing could be made from demolishing Ibrox and developing the site.
I can only conclude that Whyte is either, a Rangers' fan (btw my mate who worked for him insists he is a Motherwell fan), who has allowed his heart to over-rule his business head, and has become enchanted by the idea of owning Rangers; or, he is a patsy, put in there to take the flak.
Honestly, I am none too bothered on either score. Rangers are not too big to fail and maybe, if the biggest club went to the wall, the others would stop, think, and put Scottish football's many wrongs to right, or follow Rangers into history.
We live in interesting times, of that there is no doubt.
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