3 days Ago By [email protected] (Keith Jackson)
Let's start by wishing John Bennett a full and speedy recovery now that he’s stepped back out of the cauldron of chaos at Rangers . At his core, Bennett is a fundamentally decent man who was so desperate to do the right thing for his football club that he was willing to plough something in the region of £24m of his own personal wealth into its coffers. And yet the outgoing chairman ended up being vilified and eventually even demonised by angry swathes of his fellow supporters, which was the most unedifying travesty of it all.
The truth is Bennett acted with entirely the best of intentions even though the last few months of his time in charge were fraught and utterly exasperating. He was both blindsided and betrayed at crucial moments over the last 12 months which is why he was left carrying the can and taking personal responsibility for the carnage which was being created all around. Of course, he made mistakes too along the way but Bennett’s biggest failing was very probably being too trusting and going about his business in the belief that those around him wanted Rangers to succeed every bit as fervently as he did.
He positively willed the likes of Michael Beale and James Bisgrove to do well in their respective roles without recognising that this B team was doing more harm than good. And it was only after Bisgrove had jumped ship to Saudi Arabia that the unsuspecting Bennett was forced to look under the bonnet to discover - to his absolute horror - the full extent of the damage. It was when he first realised that Rangers would be locked out of Ibrox for the first few months of the campaign that the stress levels began to soar to intolerable heights and from that moment Bennett was locked into a losing battle.
Having worked diligently to eat into the huge financial wastage which he calculated was costing the club around £10m a year, suddenly Bennett was faced with spending a small fortune in order to clean up the catastrophic mess which Bisgrove had left sitting in his office drawer. He also had to front it up by breaking the disastrous news to a support which was still simmering in anger over the surrender of a potential domestic treble over the final weeks of the previous season. They blamed Bennett for just about everything they could see in front of their noses when, behind the scenes, he was actually moving the club in a more positive direction after years of internal infighting, boardroom bloodletting and ultimate mismanagement.
He attempted to provide Rangers with a unifying presence at its helm as well as a more calming, moderate and measured governance. But Bennett was surrounded and undermined by so many malign actors that his task became impossible and, as a consequence, having been placed in charge of a basket case, Bennett now leaves behind a bin fire. He has been swallowed up and spat back out again by a club which he cares passionately about and that is a desperately sad state of affairs.
But the prospect of dousing this blaze with two more years of Dave King and his gun powder brand of leadership all feels, well, a bit too Trumpian for comfort. The South Africa based businessman has thrown his hat into the ring for a second term in the top office but Rangers might be better to thank him for his offer and quickly dismiss the idea as a step backwards in the wrong direction. King might claim to have a plan to make Rangers great again but if that means returning to the days when he would start a fight in an empty Blue Room, then it’ll be a regression the club would be better off avoiding.
That he himself stood down following a bitter fall-out with his successor, Douglas Park, points to the residual bad blood which caused Bennett so many difficulties in his attempts to bring various boardroom factions together. Now that the peacemaker has been forced to throw in the towel, if King and Park are put back on a collision course the collateral damage could be spectacular and, let’s face it, over the last 13 years Rangers have had quite enough of these ego fuelled sideshows and circuses. King may have been the right man in the right place ten years ago when he picked the fight with Mike Ashley which would eventually see him seize control of the club along with Paul Murray and John Gilligan in March 2015.
But it also started a personal feud with Ashley which cost the club many millions of pounds and which was only fully resolved after Bennett settled into the position and encouraged common sense to prevail. It is indeed ironic then that Gilligan is now taking over the chairmanship, albeit in a caretaker capacity, as he too grew tired of the endless rounds of bickering and back-stabbing during King’s tumultuous reign before stepping away from it completely. He’s unlikely to have any wish to be corralled back into the same bad tempered movie all over again.
The fact of the matter is that, after nearly a decade of fan ownership, what Rangers really need now is a new script and a fresh start - not a throwback to the same old snarling, suspicious faces. There are some seriously wealthy and credible potential investors out there, on the other side of the Atlantic and maybe even further afield, who would look upon the club as prime for a full scale takeover. It was not all that long ago when, during his shot in the chairman’s seat.
Douglas Park headed one of them off at the pass, reacting with outrage and hostility to an offer of a £60m cash injection from American businesswoman Kyle Fox. Park simply would not entertain any notion that Rangers might be better off in the hands of others, if their investment was not similarly steeped in emotion. As unpalatable as some may find it, that now seems like the smartest way forward for a club which is in dire need of some clear headed thinking, fresh progressive ideas, new money and a thorough leadership reboot.
If that is the enduring legacy of Bennett’s last stand then who knows, maybe one day he’ll look back and think it was all worth it after all..
