King: US investors will get Rangers back to top of Scottish football

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Dave King insists Rangers’ new US investors will lead the club back to the top of Scottish football.

The former chairman was the key figure who initiated talks with US health insurance tycoon Andrew Cavenagh and the 49ers Enterprises, before selling his entire shareholding to the consortium that took control at Ibrox on Friday.

King has revealed to Sky Sports News that he had also been in discussions with a group from Saudi Arabia – but was keen to get the deal with Cavenagh and co done.

The American consortium now holds a 51 per cent stake in the club and has announced plans to plough an additional £20m into the club as Rangers bid to catch Celtic, who finished 17 points clear at the top last season and won a fourth consecutive top-flight title.

Rangers are also searching for a new boss, who should be appointed in the coming days, with King confident the new owners will get that decision correct.

Here’s what the former Ibrox director and largest single shareholder told Sky Sports News…

Why Cavenagh and the 49ers?

“This group of investors I believe 100 per cent are right for the club and I’m saying that now as a supporter.

“I am optimistic about the future, I think it’s someone that the supporters can get behind.

“I wouldn’t be saying this otherwise to the supporters, I truly, truly believe the club is in the right hands.

“I think this decision was the right decision, otherwise I certainly wouldn’t have supported it and endorsed it myself, and I do believe we’re now going to get the club back to the top of football in Scotland.

“How long will it take? I’m not too sure, but I don’t think too long.

“It won’t be immediate, but I do think it’ll be done in a sustainable way so that when we’re back, we will stay back, and that’s not what happened after 55, we got back, but we didn’t stay there.

“This time we’ve got to get back and stay, and I think this new investor group will deliver that, I’m really, really confident about that.”

Were there other options?

“I was in discussions with a Saudi group. At a fairly early stage, I’d satisfied myself they had the funds.

“But the question then was, would they be the right owners for Rangers Football Club? Would they be acceptable to supporters, in my view? And did they have the, let’s say, knowledge and expertise to take the football club forward?

“They had the money. But what they didn’t have was the track record of investing in football clubs. So I was still engaged with them at the earlier stages of what the terms of a financial deal might look like and how it would work.

“When I got a phone call from [ex-Rangers director] Paul Murray, he said ‘Dave, I know you’re talking to people at the moment, but I’ve got someone who I think you should be talking to.’

“After a chat or two with Paul, I was introduced to Andrew Cavenagh and where that worked particularly well is I ended up with the blend of both things I felt that were outstanding.

“If you look at any successful football club, there are really three key pillars to it.

“One is your supporters and the one thing about Rangers Football Club is you’ve always got your supporters through good times and bad times.

“The second one was your commercial football plan, how you’re actually going to run the club, because the supporters’ bums on seats and even selling replica kits is not enough to fund a major football club. You need strong commercial and a total football plan around your transfer policies and incomings and outgoings.

“And then, of course, you need a financial plan to back that. You can’t do all of that without the funding behind it. So you have to get them together.

“What I liked about my initial chat with Andrew and then my subsequent chat when Paraag [Marathe] and the 49ers became more involved as part of the consortium, that kind of blended option, where I felt that they understood sport. They understood the commercial aspects. They’ve done a fantastic job.

“So I felt I had this kind of perfect combination. They had the financial muscle that we need both now and in the coming years, because things don’t always go well and you need to be able to top up from time to time.

“And they had the footballing and the general sports commercial knowledge and expertise. So my main focus from that point on was working with the group but trying to keep the Saudis in the background, just in case this deal for any reason didn’t come to fruition.”

How do you feel about the managerial search?

“When you bring in a new manager, I’d refer to the Glasgow environment.

“Some people think that’s a little bit unfair, but certainly in my experience from Mark Warburton and others who all thought they got the Glasgow thing – until you get to Glasgow, you don’t get the Glasgow thing. Even someone like Steven [Gerrard] that came from Liverpool, where you think is closer to the Glasgow thing.

“You can try and think you understand it, and you can talk to people who’ve been there before, but until you actually get in there, you don’t really get it.

“So I think that’s the factor that I would be wary of. I think that the consortium will consider about bringing in a European manager, who’s maybe got no experience of Scottish football at all, that’s going to go from Champions League qualifiers to the north of Scotland in a drab, wet, windy, horrible Wednesday evening and try and motivate your players and get results out of them.

“I think that is a factor for me, but it’s not something that the 49ers are not aware of.”

What is next for Rangers?

“There will be some cleaning up of the balance sheet and the debt and making sure that the balance sheet is more stable.

“Then I’m hoping – and what I’m expecting – to see is a commitment to a funding plan that will see a significant investment in improving the squad in this window, but will also keep some of the funds available for the next couple of windows to come.

“I’m hoping and expecting that the consortium will continue with the discussions that we’ve had, which is there’s an understanding that there will have to be sustained investment over a number of windows.

“If the idea is not only to win, but to win consistently, which I think is the plan, then we need that consistency of investment as well.

“So I do think we’ve got the right people, we’ve got the right business experience.

“I think it’s a good chance for the club that it’s not a supporter-led board. There are some benefits to that, when you have to go cap in hand for money, there’s an emotional tug to get people to give you money when you need it.

“But against that, there’s almost a supporter mentality when one gets caught up in a series of bad results, it’s a bit ‘fire the board, fire the manager’.

“You’re dealing with 100 per cent of supporters, but it tends to be two or three per cent that dominate the media, and one tends to react to the two or three per cent of the noisier section of that spectrum of supporters.

“So I think having people who are not completely depressed if you lose at home to a team that’s bottom end of the table, and it doesn’t change their view of the world, I think is a good thing for the club going forward in terms of stability.

“Certainly, what I think is necessary for new owners to take the club forward in this new world of modern football.”

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From next season, Sky Sports’ Premier League coverage will increase from 128 matches to at least 215 games exclusively live.

And 80 per cent of all televised Premier League games next season are on Sky Sports

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