Rangers - BBC Sport (original) (raw)

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Former Rangers chairman Dave King says he is "available" to return to his former role and claims the club is "in crisis".

Rangers announced on Saturday that John Bennett had stepped down as chairman "with immediate effect for health reasons".

Bennett, who took over from Douglas Park in April last year, has been replaced in the short term by former club director John Gilligan.

The Ibrox side are without a CEO following James Bisgrove's departure in May, and are already five points behind Celtic in the league after just five games.

"I just hope John is well because I don’t know how tough it is being chairman at Rangers at any time," King told TalkSport, external.

"But having seen John stepping down, under normal circumstances I would expect someone from the board to step up.

"And when I heard that the board have decided to go outside and get a head hunter and try and get a chairman, a CEO – the job at Rangers is very, very different from chairing a public company.

"Right now the club is in crisis, the extent of it I don’t know, only those inside do know.

"But certainly the operational issues within Rangers are a challenge.

"A lot of the policy, procedures and processes have been in place at the time that I stepped down have been hollowed out during Douglas' reign.

"And I thought if no one is going to step up and we're going to have to go to some external city-type appointment – I'm absolutely certain will not take the club forwards – but as the leading shareholder, perhaps I can step up for a period of time.

"So I've made an announcement. I'm available to do that. I think something has to happen fairly quickly. The club lacks leadership in all aspects of the club."

King also criticised the circumstances which led to Rangers playing home games at Hampden Park at the start of this season, following a delay to works on Ibrox's Copland Stand.

"Something as simple as a stadium, you don't have to be smart to know that if you've got a project like that, it must start 10 minutes after the team finishes the last game in May," King said.

"If you’re going to be open to Ibrox for absolutely vital European, Champions League qualifiers, where Ibrox is a huge advantage for Rangers. We've seen it against bigger and better teams.

"And to have started that project with some of the steel still in China just indicates a lack of basic project management, basic management skills.

"And I’m afraid that's what’s happening right throughout the club at the moment.

"I think it needs someone to step in quite quickly. So just throwing my name in, it's now up to the board, I guess, to decide what they want to do with it.

"I think there's two major objectives. One is to reintroduce the operational policies, controls, procedures, processes that have gone missing over the last couple of years and get the club up to speed there, and secondly, to find a new investor.

"A two-year period, is the time I was thinking of where I can, first of all, get the club up and running properly and have a proper plan going forward as to how we're going to bridge the gap."