Rangers: Alistair McCoist’s “Pearls Of Wisdom”

Editorial | Article posted on January 24th, 2025

Rangers: Alistair McCoist's "Pearls Of Wisdom"
By Mark on Jan 23, 2025 in Finance, Latest, Scottish Football | 0 comments

It is tempting to leave this page blank, both in homage to Len Shackleton's famous chapter on "The average directors' knowledge of football" and because so much of what Rangers boss Ally McCoist has said this past week has left people speechless. But the sheer magnitude of McCoist's folly deserves the fullest possible exposure. Talk of the new Rangers aping the old by going into administration has lit up Scotland's traditional and social media since word got out last Thursday that Rangers' first-team squad had been asked to consider taking a 15% pay cut and had declined so to do.
Chief Executive Gordon Wallace's claim that "no offer had been made" met with merited contempt and parody when he added that it was "more of a conceptual discussion about the possibility of some sort of reduction." One contributor to the Celtic website Kerrydale Street's 'Next Sevco Discussion Thread' suggested that Wallace might have "made them a conceptual discussion they can't refuse." And it was easy to imagine the players suggesting that Wallace consider discussing the concept of "getting tae ****." But Wallace's descent into the linguistic world of Brian Glanville-isms (one for the teenagers) was a momentary aberration. He has, after all, spoken the only sense so far on the subject of the restarted Rangers' finances, telling last month's AGM that "the current operating structure we have is too high even for the top division never mind the lower leagues."
McCoist, meanwhile, has made daily media forays since the wage-cut story broke, each containing at least one moment which left you thinking "did he really say that?" Throughout the Rangers saga the portly supremo has unceasingly tried to portray himself as a man of the people. His claimed willingness to take a personal pay cut is a prime example of this. Just as it was… er… the last time he took a personal pay "cut," after Charles Green's Ibrox takeover in the summer of 2025. 'Super Ally's' super salary was actually cut from £750,000 to £600,000, although details were not in last March's Rangers share prospectus, unlike remuneration for other "key employees" (it was how we discovered finance director Brian Stockbridge's £200,000 bonus for Rangers' third division triumph). Ally's salary was simply "commensurate with his experience and the payment received by people similarly employed in the football industry."
It later emerged (in "Charlotte Fakes" material which timeously re-appeared this week) that McCoist received £62,500 arrears of pay in early 2025. Although this figure equated to five months at the difference between £750,000 and £600,000 per annum, (the equivalent of, say, the start of the football season