The Wallace blueprint: How Rangers chief executive sees the club going forward



Just three weeks into his role as Rangers chief executive, Graham Wallace will stand for re-election alongside the rest of the existing directors at Thursday’s long-awaited AGM.

Wallace hopes the outcome will end the boardroom war that has raged at Ibrox over recent months and that common ground can be established for the future.

He denies the club is close to a second period of administration, but the financial future remains complex and uncertain. Wallace witnessed the red card display aimed at the current board in recent match at Ibrox, with fan groups threatening a boycott should they remain in place.

Right direction: Rangers chief executive Graham Wallace (right) has penned his ideas for the club

Rebel shareholder leader Jim McColl admitted recently Wallace had been under consideration as a potential appointment by their camp before he joined the other side.

Seen by some as the one potentially unifying figure at Ibrox, Wallace was questioned by Sportsmail on numerous issues ahead of one of this week’s showdown.

WHAT DO YOU HOPE WILL HAPPEN AT THE AGM?

I really hope Thursday can be a defining moment for the club. We all want it to be decisive. The shareholders will exercise their right to vote for the individuals they want on the board. Regardless of the result, I really hope that, come Friday morning, everyone focuses on how that energy and investment can be used in a positive way.

Someone like Jim McColl is a very experienced businessman with extensive world-wide networks and, I’m sure, has the best interests of the club at heart. Those are very powerful tools that can help us as we look to grow the club.



ARE YOU CONFIDENT THE CURRENT BOARD WILL PREVAIL?

I wouldn’t wish to be presumptuous. All I would say is that over the past few weeks I have spent a significant amount of time meeting shareholders and institutions to talk about the club and my vision. That has been very positively received, so if that is an indication of potential support for myself and the board then that is quite encouraging.

I believe the board as constituted has the skills and experience to take the club forward.

Driving force: Wallace alongside current manager Ally McCoist

WHAT IF SOME OR ALL OF THE FOUR REQUISTIONERS – PAUL MURRAY, MALCOLM MURRAY, SCOTT MURDOCH AND ALEX WILSON - ARE ELECTED?

If the shareholders in their collective decide that, I have no issue in working with any of those individuals providing they have the best interests of the club at heart.

If you go back a few months to when the requisitioner group was brought together under the leadership of Jim McColl, what were they trying to do? They were trying to improve the standard of governance at the club. They were trying to strengthen the board with credible, experienced business people.

It may be different individuals from those they had in mind, but I think the skill sets of those introduced (Wallace, chairman David Somers and non-executive director Norman Crighton) have considerably strengthened the board compared with three months ago.

I think Jim McColl is on record as agreeing with that and taking a step back. He has given me his personal backing.



BUT THAT HAS NOT QUELLED THE ANGER AMONG THE SUPPORTERS, HAS IT?

The red card display at the recent match was very powerful. It reinforces that a significant number of match-day attendees are not happy about several things.

It is incumbent on me as a chief executive to develop a process to understand what those issues are and how we can work together to make things better.

The consistent messages from the supporter base are that they want financial stability, proper governance and controls and business conducted in line with the values of the past at Rangers - integrity and professionalism.

With my relatively fresh eyes, I think there are elements of supporter engagement where we could do better. That is something we’ll absolutely do over the coming weeks and months.

Uncertain: Rangers' financial position is still in some doubt after all the changes

HOW DO YOU REBUILD TRUST? FAN GROUPS HAVE ALLUDED TOWARDS A COMMERICAL BOYCOTT IF THE CURRENT BOARD REMAINS IN PLACE. INFLUENTIAL SHAREHOLDER SANDY EASDALE SAID THAT COULD BE ‘A FATAL BLOW’.

My style is to try and earn that trust through demonstrating that we are listening, we do care and we absolutely have the best interests of the club at heart.

We have to demonstrate we deserve their trust and have appropriate plans for the short, medium and long-term development for the club. In doing that, we should be able to earn sufficient trust for talk of boycotts to become something of the past.



Top: Rangers' Fraser Aird holds off Ayr's Brian Gilmour during their Scottish League One match

FINANCE DIRECTOR BRIAN STOCKBRIDGE HAS SAID THE CLUB COULD BE DOWN TO £1 MILLION IN THE BANK BY APRIL. JUST HOW SERIOUS IS THE FINANCIAL SITUATION?

There is sufficient cash in the business for the club to be able to continue to trade in the short to medium term.

There has been external comment made that the business is potentially teetering on the edge of another administration. I can categorically quash that. It is not the case.



WHAT MEASURES HAVE BEEN TAKEN SINCE YOUR APPOINTMENT?

It’s no secret that we have a cost base that is out of line with our ability to generate income. You saw that with the £14 million loss announced for last year.

We have already started to look right across the business and seeing where that money is being spent.

‘We want to build a very successful club but it also has to be sustainable. We need to be very organised and disciplined.

We know we have got some significant challenges ahead of us but we have a clear vision of how want to move forward.

With the right framework and people in place, there is no reason why we can’t take this club back to where it once was. But that is not an overnight project.

I’ll be sitting down with the manager this week. We have started to map out our thinking and vision for the next several years.



COULD THE CLUB AFFORD TO REJECT A SEVEN-FIGURE OFFER FOR LEE WALLACE IN THE JANUARY TRANSFER WINDOW?

We have not even debated any of the existing team leaving the club. Until Alastair and I sit down and look at evolution of the squad it would be inappropriate to make a specific comment. What I can say is that Lee Wallace is a very important player to this club and one we value very highly.

Too easy? Aird celebrates his first goal of the game in Rangers latest victory

EVERYONE AGREES THE CLUB WILL NEED MORE EXTERNAL INVESTMENT IN THE FUTURE. HOW WILL THAT BE BROUGHT IN?

Before we go to any investor to talk about specific sums of money we have to have a very clear idea of what we are using that money for. So that an investor would say there is a solid commercial plan.

We are potentially 18 months away from the top division. We want to be competitive quickly and we want to be competitive in European competition. So how do we get from where we are now to there?

We need to do it in a structured way. We need to look at the cost base, the football operational cost base, at our youth development programme and how quickly we can bring that talent through.



WOULD A SALE AND LEASEBACK OF IBROX BE CONSIDERED AS A FUND-RAISER?

Categorically, no sale and leaseback has been considered in respect of Ibrox. One of the strongest things a football club can have is ownership of its home ground. I don’t see any reason why that will change.



Important: Wallace will stand for re-election at the club's AGM

WHAT ABOUT NAMING RIGHTS FOR IBROX?

There are a number of commercial arrangements and contracts we are looking at. We are in the process of determining what make sense going forward.



WHY HAS ALLY McCOIST’S OFFER OF A 50 PER CENT WAGE CUT NOT YET BEEN ACTIONED?

I think that situation was exacerbated by the change of chief executive in terms of getting it closed out. We are in the process now of having it finalised. It will be done imminently.

HAS STOCKBRIDGE REPAID THE £200,000 BONUS HE RECEIVED FOR RANGERS WINNING THE THIRD DIVISION TITLE?

Brian took the decision some time ago to repay the bonus he received in the previous year. He has now repaid that to the company. It has been in the public domain which is rather unfortunate for any individual.



BUT CAN YOU UNDERSTAND THE ANGER TOWARDS A FINANCE DIRECTOR WHO HAS PRESIDED OVER A £14M LOSS AND A CULTURE OF HEFTY BONUSES AND PAY-OFFS?

Brian was a member of a board and decisions made with regard to expenditure were made by the board. This wasn’t something Brian was doing on his own.

There has been a lot of call for his position to be reviewed. In common with the rest of the business, part of my approach is looking at the whole organisation and making sure we are equipped and skilled going forward. That applies to Brian as it does anyone else in the organisation.



CAN YOU RESPOND TO SUGGESTIONS ONE OF THE RESOLUTIONS AT THE AGM COULD LEAD TO A £500,000 SHARE BONUS FOR STOCKBRIDGE?

There haven’t been any specific indications or discussions as to how that would then benefit any individual executive.



SO IT WOULDN’T BE AN AUTOMATIC AGREEMENT THAT IS ACTIVATED?

That’s not my understanding of it.



WHAT ABOUT YOUR OWN APPOINTMENT AND ACCUSATIONS THAT THE NEW DIRECTORS HAVE YET TO PROVE THEIR ‘INDEPENDENCE’?

It doesn’t overly concern me. The process of my appointment was a combination of referencing in the financial and sporting community. A professional headhunter was engaged and I went through a series of discussions and interviews – as did a number of other candidates.

I’ve no qualms about the process that was followed. I think my independence is clear. I have no personal links to any of the previous regimes.

Always a battle: Rangers Jon Daly holds off Ayr's Scott McLaughlin

JIM McCOLL SAID THE REBEL GROUP HAD ALSO CONSIDERED YOU?

I didn’t have any conversations with Jim McColl personally. I think my name had come up from a number of different routes as the requisitioner camp were looking for potential candidates if they were successful. It was the same way the existing board were looking to strengthen the board here.



THE FANS ARE DEMANDING GREATER TRANSPARENCY. WHO IS BEHIND THE MARGARITA HOLDINGS AND BLUE PITCH HOLDINGS INVESTMENTS?

Blue Pitch and Margarita are owned by high net-worth private individuals who wish to remain private. There is information externally as to who those individuals may be.

They have been long-term investors in the club from before the IPO. The identity of those investors was well known to the board at that time and members of the requisitioner group were part of that board.

In overall terms, the decisions that are made in terms of running the club are made by the board. There have been inferences that people from the club’s past are somehow pulling strings. There are no external influences.



MANCHESTER CITY OPERATE ON A DIFFERENT FINANCIAL PLANET. CAN YOUR EXPERIENCE THERE REALLY TRANSLATE TO RANGERS?

A lot of the underlying pieces and philosophy are very similar to the Manchester City experience. Okay, we don’t have Sheik Mansour’s chequebook, but the principles are very similar in terms of how you run and build a club.

When I joined City, they were 11th in the Premiership and a lot of the facilities and operations needed an overhaul. That’s what we spent two-and-half years doing.