Rangers investor Stuart Gibson has launched a passionate defence of the under-fire Ibrox hierarchy, insisting “We have senior management at the club who are very much undervalued and under appreciated.”
Lifelong fan Gibson, a property funding expert who is based in the Far East, pumped £5million into the club in October 2020 and reportedly purchased an additional £1m of shares earlier this year to make him the third largest shareholder at Ibrox.
And the powerful Paisley businessman has backed managing director Stewart Robertson, sporting director Ross Wilson and commercial chief James Bisgrove as he claimed the trio get "a lot of undeserved flak”. There is growing unrest among the fans who are looking for change in some senior positions, with a banner spotted during the win over Kilmarnock on Saturday targeting Robertson and Wilson. But, in an interview with podcast This Is Ibrox, he said Wilson is “doing an excellent job and continues to do so" given the lack of "ample resources" he has to work with. He highlighted the record sale of Calvin Bassey to Ajax and fellow Nigeria international Joe Aribo’s transfer to Southampton as "massive home runs" for the club.
Bisgrove found himself at the centre of a storm last season when signing the club up to the Sydney Super Cup with fans raging that they had agreed to take on rivals Celtic in a friendly in the home country of Hoops boss Ange Postecoglou.
It was a lucrative contract but they withdrew after arguing organisers had breached terms of the agreement. But Gibson defended the move and said: “If we won the league, if we didn’t relinquish the league, I would have been happy to go to Sydney and be happy to take £3million for the pleasure of going out there. We never went because other people were in breach of their contractual conditions.
"The way I see it was, James played a blinder. He got a free option to look and see what happens with the league. It gives you the time to get the right information to make the right commercial decision. That’s all James did and the flak he was getting, especially from Club 1872, was just absolute nonsense. I think we have senior management at the club who are very much undervalued and under appreciated.
“His mandate is to explore as much commercial opportunity for Rangers as he can in whatever way he can. If we didn’t relinquish the league I’d have been happy to go to Sydney and take £3 million for the pleasure to go out to Sydney and getting the chance to try and gub Celtic. But we didn’t win the league so we never went because others were in breach of contractual conditions.
"We never won the league and some others never stood behind their contract obligations so that was our get-out. It was a free option. In my own business I’m always looking for free options because it gives me the time to get the right information and make the right commercial decision but the flak he was getting, especially from Club 1872, was nonsense."
Gibson also admitted failing in a bid to build bridges between Club 1872 and the club. He said: “I was contacted by Club 1872 in the 2021 season and was trying to play the role of peace broker. I passed the relationship on to George Taylor when he joined the board with a view to trying to repair that relationship. No one came back to me from Club 1872, George didn’t come back to me either so I assume conversations were happening. I don’t think anything was repaired or anything was fine. Whether anything came out of it, I’m not really sure.
“Club 1872 are having their own troubles beyond their engagement with Rangers FC. I think they’ve got their own internal troubles as well that are going on right now. I think there is a lot of noise going on around Club 1872 right now and I haven’t been in touch with them at all in the last six or seven months. I don’t think it’s repairable. It’s very sad when you’ve got a supporter base and you’ve got the club and they can’t really talk to each other so do it through the media. I think there is a lot of mistrust that has been built up on both sides so as an outside observer, I just don’t think that trust will be rebuilt. Intuitively, I don’t think it can be repaired.”
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