Rangers On Brink Of Administration?

Alastair Johnston in the Rangers trophy room.

Apparently Chairman Alastair Johnston has admitted that the club could go bust if they were to lose the ongoing battle with HMRC over taxes.

The club have always defended against these claims and as such the investigation has been going on for over a year now putting constant speculation that they could be hit with a large bill anyday.

These comments were said to have came in the wake of recent talks with would-be owner Craig Whyte and half-yearly figures indicating that the club owes £29m.

The club suffered a drop in pre-tax profit from £13m to £9m, turnover decreased by £4.1m to £33.7m and there was also a 4.9% decline in the number of season tickets sold, together with a reduction in sponsorship income.

Now later on that day after nearly every media source was running the story that Rangers could be in administration the club released this statement to the London Stock Exhange.

DJ Rangers Football Club Plc Statement re Press Comment
01 Apr 2011 - 16:54

TIDMRFC

Further to some press comment today following the release of our Interim
Results, we would like to clarify that our Chairman did not state that the Club
could go out of business.

Moreover, we would refer interested parties to the section in the Interim
Results (paragraph 7) that covers the current position with the HMRC enquiry and
importantly to the fact that the Club continues to vigorously contest HMRC's
challenge and in doing so continues to receive reassuring opinion from tax,
accounting and legal specialists.

The directors of The Rangers Football Club plc accept responsibility for this
announcement.

I guess that ended a few hours of wild rumours and false accusations but we haven't heard the last of this and it will no doubt resume early next week.