'Douglas isn't a seller and I'm not a seller': John Bennett addresses Rangers takeover talk - full Q&A

Here is everything he had to say in the second part of his two-part interview.

It's fantastic to see the women’s team claim their first league title and the impact of the academy players.

Ross Wilson has rightly used the phrase ‘joined up’. I’ve used the word ‘alignment’ in the past. You need to be joined up and you need to be aligned. If you look at those aspects… I remember the board meeting when Amy McDonald came in and talked about it. We were far from professional in terms of the support and the infrastructure and the funding we were giving to the Women. We were the first in the country to professionalise Women’s football and you are now seeing the tangible results in our Women’s football – European football, they win the league – and that is what Rangers is all about in every aspect of the football department. Men’s first team, B Team, Youth Team, Women’s football, first and foremost win your league. First and foremost win your league, and the Women have done it. I remember saying to them after they won the league, I went to the game where they clinched the league, and I remember saying about the Pioneers in Glasgow Rangers history. I said ‘you are pioneers. You have done this. Here is the bad news, the bar rises and you need to go again. It is Rangers. You need to keep going and keep going and keep going, win that league again and again’. That applies to every team in this football club.

How do you view matters off the field and the business at this present moment?

I think there is a song that goes ‘Simply the Best’ and when it comes to Rangers, you need to be best in class. How do you recruit and attract a Tom Lawrence, who says no to English Premier League clubs to come here? You do that by being best in class, by offering them European football. Best in class also means what you can offer them around that: player liaison, player support and the finest facilities. When I look at the Rangers today, the facilities that we offer our players, our staff, we can now say ‘Auchenhowie is best in class’ and all that support network around them is best in class. You won’t get the players to come if you don’t do that. The infrastructure and support network around them and able to play on the big stage of European football. Again, all of that has required and will continue to require investment. The whole infrastructure of this club and around this club, from Auchenhowie to New Edmiston House, to the pitch at Ibrox, to lifts that were not fit for purpose… Roofs, the roofs were literally falling in. All fixed. I am told by Stewart they will last for 40 years and they better because they cost a lot of money. £23million hard cash in those three years, during the Covid period as well. When I talk about best in class, that goes hand in hand with the bar only ever rising, especially at a club like Rangers. The bar only rises that applies off the pitch as well. I talked earlier about best-in-class support and infrastructure for the players. We want and need to provide that for our support as well. I know the areas of this stadium, from toilets, to lifts, to roofs, that haven’t been fit for purpose and in some places remain unfit for purpose. Certainly unfit for the Rangers purpose and the Rangers standard. We continue to pour money into that to get it right, to upgrade it. It’s interesting, even some of that can be criticised. Very recently, someone made a bit of wisecrack along the lines of “I wonder how many assists new Edmiston House will provide?” You can be damned if you do, damned if you don’t. But we’ll push on with that. I want to provide this support with the very, very best on and off the pitch. Our museum, our venue will provide that. I really want this museum to be there for current generations and future generations. That’s best in class. That’s what the Rangers support deserve. Blue Sky Lounge. Stewart said to me he heard someone having a go at that. “Why spend money on that instead of on the pitch?” You’ve got to do both. We’re doing both. Yes, Blue Sky Lounge is a revenue generator. It has a spin-off benefit in revenue generation terms but also for our fans. What I mean by that is just over 200 extra seats. Of course, it’s not enough. Is it a drop in the ocean? It’s progress.

How do you view the commercial pillar of the business at the moment?

I think under James Bisgrove and the team it’s been a resounding success. That pillar was up and standing before the final one, which was player trading. If you look at the progress the club has made with all aspects of commercial, a resounding success. I’ve been asked how do we view the club’s performance off the pitch in the last two and a half years. Maybe the most honest way of answering that from a personal perspective is this: Rangers, ever since I was a kid, has given me sleepless nights because it’s the team I love, the team I love to see winning and hate to see losing. And up until very recently, the sleepless nights were not only about on the pitch. I lost a lot of sleep on off-the-pitch stuff at Rangers, the finances etc, etc. Especially the end of 2019 and going into 2020 and Covid etc. That was a particularly worrying time, I felt. Not just for Rangers or a football club, but for many businesses. That was a time when many a sleepless night was had. I’m now in a position where I would say to you my sleepless nights about Rangers – and they’re still there – are about on the pitch. That’s how it should be. That’s a barometer of how far we’ve come. But it’s also an honest assessment of the fact it’s only recently that these four pillars have been up and it’s working. Our player-trading model if you really look at it, is months old. Not the investment side of it, not the development of players and investing in players. That’s been years in the making, especially under Ross. Fully planned, fully integrated, joined-up, planned. We’ve sat through board meetings look at that, scrutinising that, questioning that as a board should do. And we’re getting the answers. Look at the player trading model. Two record transfers out of the club. But it only started in January of this year. That’s why it’s only recently my sleepless nights have become virtually all about the football. And that’s the way I want it. Part of the bar rising in terms of expectation is off the pitch. Let’s give our fans the finest facilities we possibly can. I’ve talked a number of times about how I was embarrassed when Amy came into the main board and presented on the women’s football before we professionalised it. I’m no longer embarrassed there. But our facilities for our disabled supporters are unacceptable. While there will be a small provision that we can get into the redevelopment in the Blue Sky Lounge, it’s only small. That’s a piecemeal thing. We need to meet that rising bar of expectation. It is unacceptable for all of us at the club. At the last board meeting we did ask for a dedicated presentation on where are we on that. I’ve had a very brief telephone update on where we are. We want the chairman, myself, the whole board at this AGM to be able to share with our shareholders, with our supporters and the wider public our plans, how they look, timelines and what we’re going to do within the confines of that wonderful stadium. We will do whatever it takes, financially or otherwise. We need to get that right. We’ve been talking about it, ‘Let’s not just do enough’. That’s not the Rangers’ way. Let’s just do enough. Let’s be best in class. Within the confines of that stadium footprint and infrastructure and limitations, can we be the best in the country. That’s the challenge the members of the TRFC board driving this and leading this. That’s their challenge. Bring it to us. We will fund it. We need to get that right.

John, how would you address recent online rumours around takeovers and shareholder interest?

It’s not unusual, certainly for this football club and perhaps other football clubs to be approached about potential investors and some of those come to fruition. Some of those have come to fruition, Stuart Gibson came to us and that worked for both parties. John Halstead, that worked for both parties. Both, terrifically supported investors in this club. And on that both in the Boardroom and outside the Boardroom, I’ve talked in the past about people like George Letham, George Taylor was outside the Boardroom, he’s now in the Boardroom but others who are not in the Boardroom, we have terrifically supported investors. Don’t take my word for that, just look at the facts. They went to the well time and time again to invest major investment on the pitch and major investment off the pitch. There has been speculation about the American group in particular recently, one of a number of groups who have come to talk to us and I believe that will continue to happen. The bit that surprised me was when I was in Amsterdam the noise levels seemed to go up a bit about potential sellers from within the Boardroom. I think I know Douglas Park as well as anyone can know Douglas Park, I know him well and I consider him a friend as well as the chairman of this football club. Douglas isn’t a seller and I’m not a seller. In fact, I’ve recently increased my position above five per cent and when the said American group did approach us I actually took that as an opportunity to sound out most of our big investors to say, ‘Look, where are you? What do you think of this?’ And they rightly said, ‘Not only is there no harm in listening,’ and we do listen, we politely listen to a number of proposals and that will happen again I’m quite sure. No harm in listening, it’s the right thing to do as well from a fiduciary point of view, so we did we gave quite a lot of time to that situation and we listened. But what was very interesting from John Halstead to Julian Woldhardt to people in the Boardroom and outside, absolutely no interest in selling.

Rangers Review (Image: Rangers Review)

Now, I’m also struck by the phrase ‘never again’ in this context. The phrase ‘never again’ was used at a time of regime change if you remember back in 2015. Never again can perhaps mean different things to different people, what I’m trying to get across is this is a board and a group of investors that really believes in ‘never again’ in terms of one individual or one party calling the shots and owning the club. This is my view and I know it’s a view shared by our current board that the ownership of Rangers football club should rest upon a number of shoulders. You know what can happen when one individual or one entity walks away. People can get bored, people’s lives can change, people’s priorities can change so when it’s resting on one set of shoulders as we’ve seen at Rangers football club, things can change. When you have a number of sets of shoulders to carry the load you’re not beholding to one individual walking away or something could befall that individual in their life or whatever. That’s what ‘never again’ means to me and my colleagues.