How Club 1872 can become key Ibrox players again after failed buyout

When they bought half of the stake that Sports Direct retail magnate Mike Ashley owned in the Ibrox club in the June of 2017, they became the second largest shareholder behind the then chairman Dave King with 10.71 per cent.

For an embryonic organisation that had been in existence for less than a year, it was quite a coup. The future looked promising. The statement which announced the purchase appealed to more supporters to sign up. “Together we can achieve great things for our club,” it read.

The calamitous Craig Whyte and Charles Green reigns were still fresh in the memories of Rangers fans at the time and the ultimate goal of 25 per cent plus one share – which would give them the power to veto any major decisions – was appealing.

READ MORE: How fan-owned Hearts are closing the gap on Celtic and Rangers

It seemed an eminently attainable objective, an inevitability even. George Taylor, the Rangers director and major shareholder who is the head of investment banking in Asia with Morgan Stanley, was certainly firmly in favour of them realising their ambition. “My hope is that direct fan ownership will become the biggest individual owner,” he said in 2015.  

Fast forward to the present day, though, and the outlook is not quite so rosy.

There have been numerous and in some cases quite spectacular director resignations. A bitter fallout with the club board has not been resolved. And complaints from members about communication, governance, independence and transparency abound.

There was an unsuccessful attempt – which quickly became acrimonious and led to the police being called in - to oust the Club 1872 directors by a group of disgruntled fans who called themselves The Requisitioners in 2021.

Their website states they currently have 5,500 contributors. But the attendees at an annual contributors’ meeting in Glasgow city centre last month could have been shoehorned into a telephone box.

King announced that he had withdrawn from his agreement to sell his 14.47 shareholding to them for £13m due to a poor uptake shortly after that gathering. “Despite my previously stated intention to extend the agreement, it has become clear that this will be futile,” he said.

He outlined five reasons why he felt “Never Again”, as the campaign to attract 20,000 “legacy members” was dubbed, had failed. He pinpointed the challenging economic climate and the fact that the existence of his boyhood heroes was no longer in jeopardy as factors.

However, along the M8 at Tynecastle the number of Jambos pledging to the Foundation of Hearts every month has remained steady at well over 8,000 despite the departure of Vladimir Romanov, the Covid-19 pandemic, a controversial demotion to the Championship and the cost-of-living and energy crises.

It is a similar story at their cinch Premiership rivals Motherwell and St Mirren as well as the lower league outfits who are owned by those who sit in the stands with a pie and Bovril on a Saturday afternoon.So what has happened to Club 1872? Why have they failed to build on their early promise and fulfil their vast potential? Why are they now only the sixth largest shareholder? And what, if anything, can be done to turn things around in future?

Ronnie Johnston, a co-founder of Rangers First, was a vocal opponent of the merger with the Rangers Supporters Trust. His stance angered many, resulted in him being savaged on social media outlets and even, he is convinced, led to his car being vandalised. He has not been entirely surprised at what has transpired since.

READ MORE: Fergus McCann's adviser fears Celtic are vulnerable to Qatari takeover

“I voted against the merger,” he said. “I did so because I felt the existence of both Buy Rangers and Rangers First created healthy competition and drive. I thought if they put them together that spark disappeared. I was criticised and called all sorts online. In fact, I got shredded.

“I had parked my car in the same car park for 15 years without anything happening to it. One day it got vandalised. And it was the only car in the car park that got vandalised. It was easy to put two and two together.

“I thought: ‘What have I done recently that could have caused this?’ It seemed very strange to me that it was around the time I was saying: ‘You have to keep them separate and have different objectives’.”

Ricki Neill, who appears on the All About The Gers podcast every Monday with former players Charlie Miller and Derek Ferguson, was another director of Rangers First who had reservations about the marriage. He was particularly uneasy about officials within the Ibrox hierarchy at that time being actively involved in the union.  

"I regret not fighting harder to keep Rangers First as an independent group on its own,” he said. “But I felt it was the right thing to do at the time. I thought that everyone coming together and fighting for the same thing would be good. 

"But if I could turn back time, I would keep them separate. I think the two groups worked well. Whenever the Rangers Supporters Trust did something, Rangers First would always try to outdo them. And vice versa. 

"But Rangers didn't want to deal with two different supporters' groups. They only wanted to deal with one group. I think it was very much club led. Still, we did everything the right way. Somebody once said to me 'you're a director, not a dictator'. That stuck in my head. We put it to our members and they voted in favour of it.”

Within just eight months of being launched, Club 1872 was left, albeit briefly, with just one director following a raft of resignations. And the only member of the board was Rangers company secretary James Blair.

It was a bizarre turn of events for a group which had promised to hold the custodians of the club to account when they started out. “It didn't fill you with confidence in them,” said Neill. “Looking at it from the outside, you thought: 'That’s a bit strange’.”

Alex Wilson - who had, along with businessman Scott Murdoch, former chairman Malcolm Murray and ex-director Paul Murray, tried to oust the old Rangers board at an AGM in 2013 – was one of those who stood down at that time. 

“I resigned along with a couple of other directors because of differences I had with James Blair over how the club should be run and its rules,” he said. “I just thought the right thing to do was to step away because I didn’t agree with some of the things which were happening.”

Neill believes the progress which Rangers have made since – they have won the cinch Premiership and Scottish Cup, reached the Europa League final and Champions League group stages and finally, after years of posting heavy losses, recorded a £6m profit - has been responsible for the early interest in fan ownership waning among his fellow supporters.

"I know a lot of people might not agree, but I think we are in a really good place now as a club,” he said. "Fan ownership is quite a hard thing. Fans are paying all this money in and they get nothing back.”

READ MORE: St Mirren bouncing back from £1.6m losses by putting own fans first

Wilson, though, remains adamant that the need for fans to hold a substantial stake in the club and have a meaningful say in its day-to-day affairs is as great today as it was when he was actively involved in the aftermath of the 2012 meltdown.

“I think Mr King is wrong to say that the crisis has become a non-issue, has diminished to a degree, is no longer relevant,” said Wilson. “That is absolute nonsense. It was such a major event in the club’s history. It will take generations to forget it. I know he has still got a significant shareholding, but I think he has had his day and should move on gracefully.

“It might be real pie in the sky, but in the early days of Club 1872, we did have chats about whether we could get enough money in from fans to get a level where we could buy enough shares to get to 25 per cent plus one share. That was always the dream.

“When you get to 25 per cent plus one in corporate life, you have a blocking stake. So if we ever see some of the behaviour and the characters that we had prior to 2012, the supporters have a blocking stake on major strategic and commercial moves. That should still be the ultimate ambition.

“Even in these hard times, and times are hard for a lot of people, if you can get enough people who are prepared to put up a little donation, even just £5 a month, I would have some degree of confidence that a supporters group could buy shares at market value from current directors and move towards that utopia of 25 per cent plus one.

“But the whole thing is going nowhere as things stand. It needs a highly effective and unified supporters organisation that can drive the membership, share a vision and get people excited about it.”

READ MORE: Dave King withdraws from Club 1872 deal as Rangers share bid fails

Johnston, Neill and Wilson all believe that copying the Foundation of Hearts blueprint and bringing in office bearers with a high level of professional expertise and proven track records in business would go a long way to reviving the organisation. 

The chief executive of Tesco Bank, the general manager of the IBM technology division in Great Britain and Ireland, a partner in accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers as well as a corporate lawyer, a chartered taxation adviser, a sales director and a business adviser currently sit on the foundation board.

Is it any coincidence that the total contributions received passed the £15m mark this month?

“If I have a personal regret, it is that I didn’t put myself up for election to the Club 1872 board at the outset,” said Johnston, who was a founding director of Kwik Fit Insurance. “What happened in my view was that, to be blunt, they ended up with people running it who didn’t have an understanding of how they should behave.

“Early on, they created an associated subsidiary company called Fans Voice Ltd. Sorry, but you don’t see George Taylor coming out and slaughtering the SMSM (Scottish mainstream media). It is just not something that a corporate entity does. If Club 1872 is to have a future then it needs a professional board established.

“Probably the best example of a working fan ownership scheme is the Foundation of Hearts. They worked well with Ann Budge and it has flourished. They have established themselves as the third force in Scottish football again and will be hard to shift.

“Club 1872 needs people who can liaise directly with the football club in a credible fashion and realise that if they are party to certain information they may not be able to share that information. It just needs professionalising. Until that happens, it is a mess.

“Rangers’ average home attendance is 50,000. At Hearts it is 18,000. Pro-rated, we should be able to do three times as well as them, minimum. Could we get £4.5m a year going in? That principle would surely attract the club to support and participate. But you have to deal with the club properly. If you do that, the club will welcome it.”

READ MORE: Fan ownership pioneer on the way ahead for Scottish champions Celtic

Wilson, a former HR executive at BT, Ford, Guinness, Grand Metropolitan and ICI, concurs with Johnston.

“Other clubs, not least Hearts, have shown that if you can get all the fan organisations together under one umbrella and bring in some good, capable people it can be very powerful,” he said.

“I don’t think Club 1872 has made any progress of any significance over the last two or three years. I thought the deal with King was ludicrously ambitious. They were never ever going to get the subscriptions to the level needed to make it work. It lacked commercial reality to a degree.

“It’s relationship with the club when I was there wasn’t bad. It could have been better, but we certainly met with Stewart Robertson (the Ibrox managing director) on a few occasions and it was always open. There seems to be a degree or enmity between the club and Club 1872 now, which is a bit of shame.”

James Irvine, a retired solicitor who specialised in complex international litigation and arbitration, was elected onto the Club 1872 board in 2021. Wilson would like to see far more directors with that sort of background brought in. He knows they exist among a vast worldwide support.

“Laura and Joanne (Club 1872 directors Fawkes and Percival) have put and lot of time and effort into it,” he said. “They have stuck with it. But they certainly don’t have the status or experience there is at the Foundation of Hearts. And they keep getting voted back in.

“I don’t see people of the same calibre standing for election. Club 1872 should have asked themselves that question. I don’t think there is much self-awareness or introspection about what they need to do to move it forward. They are treading water.

“Don’t get me wrong, there is willingness and dedication there. All of them are devoted to the cause, unquestionably. But I don’t see the degree of experience and capability at senior levels in major government or commercial roles that is needed. And I don’t see any efforts being made to find people like that.

“People have to step forward. How do you break that deadlock if nobody is stepping forward to be voted in? You have to find them. I go to the games with a few people who have or have had senior roles at major organisations. So the latent potential to refresh that body already exists within the supporter group.

“How do you identify it? How do you get them to be prepared to step forward? I am not sure the current group have that mindset. It is as simple as that.

“Laura and Joanne have put the hours in, they have put the sweat in, they are doing the role. They should be recognised for the effort they have put in. But replicating the Foundation of Hearts, with major players who clearly have the vision to drive it forward, is the way ahead.”

READ MORE: Club 1872 detail new Rangers share plan as Dave King pulls out of deal

Neill travelled across the world to drum up support for Rangers First – he attended the ORSA (Oceania Rangers Supporters Association) conventions in Thailand and South Africa when he was a director – and is concerned that those people who parted with their hard-earned cash to ensure the long-term stability of the Ibrox club have been let down.

“I hope Club 1872 works it out,” he said. “But something needs to happen to make the fans want to jump on board with it again. I wonder if they need a revamp and a whole new board. They need to freshen up and make a new start.”

Club 1872 did not respond to a request for an interview.