David Murray apologises to Rangers fans over sale of club to Craig Whyte
Former Rangers owner David Murray has apologised to supporters for selling the club to Craig Whyte in a move that triggered their catastrophic financial implosion.
The 73-year-old oversaw a glittering period in Gers’ history after taking control in 1988 before things started to unravel.
Amid an investigation into a controversial EBT tax scheme he had deployed in order allow the club to continue their lavish spending, Murray sold Rangers to mysterious businessman Whyte for just £1 in 2011.
The following year Rangers entered administration and were then liquidated before having to start again in the fourth tier of Scottish football. Whyte was arrested in 2015 and charged with taking over the club by fraud but was acquitted by a jury two years later following a seven-week trial.
Murray – in an extract of his new autobiography ‘Mettle’ serialised in the Daily Record – wrote: “More than a decade after the event, the question I still frequently get asked is: ‘Do you regret selling Rangers?’ The answer is always: ‘No…my time was up’.
“Honestly, 23 years was too long. We had enjoyed the greatest success in the club’s entire history but it was time for change. But do I regret the sale to Craig Whyte? Absolutely. I apologise. It was a huge error of judgement in the middle of a financial crisis. Looking back, I had made a huge mistake.”
Murray also revealed how he was contacted by media mogul Robert Maxwell regarding the possibility of merging Rangers and Celtic.
“Football still has the capacity to shock and amaze and one telephone call just weeks after I had bought the club still astounds me to this day,” he wrote.
“My son Keith came racing through to where I was sitting at home and said, ‘Daddy, a man is on the phone wanting to speak to you’.
“I asked him who it was and he said, ‘Robert Maxwell’. Now Maxwell still owned Oxford United and Derby County at the time and had a stake in Reading so I assumed he was on to talk about a player.
“But when I picked up the phone, the voice boomed down the line, “David, it’s Robert Maxwell… I want to buy Rangers from you and then I want to buy Celtic and merge the clubs’.
“I can’t remember my exact response but it was fairly terse. I remembered that he had tried to do something similar with Reading and Oxford United and a planned team called the Thames Valley Royals. Needless to say, we had no further contact.”