Rangers manager Ally McCoist has insisted he is not about to walk out of Ibrox despite the cash-crisis engulfing the Scottish champions that threatens their very existence.
Rangers’ title hopes have all but ended after the Scottish Premier League docked them 10 points for entering administration, leaving them 14 points behind leaders and arch rivals Celtic, but still in second place.
Administrators Duff and Phelps took charge of Rangers on Tuesday after the British tax authority, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), went to court to seek their administration over an unpaid bill of STG9 million ($A13.3 million) built up since Craig Whyte took control at Ibrox in May.
Whyte’s stewardship of the 140-year-old Glasgow institution has been called into question but even though Rangers could be forced to sell players to balance their books, McCoist was adamant he wasn’t about to quit.
“Not at all,” he told Sky Sports News. “This is my club, the same as it is for thousands and thousands of Rangers supporters. We don’t do walking away.”
McCoist, asked if he trusted Whyte, said: “Absolutely. We have to keep going. We are in a position at this moment in time where the club is maybe as low as it has been – possibly ever.
“We have to put our trust and our faith in getting the club to a better place and the future will hopefully provide that,” the former Rangers and Scotland striker added.
Administration is the process whereby a troubled company calls upon independent expert financial help in a bid to remain operational.
Rangers are also awaiting the verdict of a tax tribunal that could leave the 140-year-old club with a bill of up to STG75 million, according to Whyte.
But despite Rangers’ problems, joint administrator Paul Clark told an Ibrox news conference on Thursday he’d received “several expressions of interest” from outside groups regarding a takeover.
“These will be subject to ongoing discussions and examined in the forthcoming days,” he said.
Clark stressed Rangers would continue as a football club, saying: “We are wholly confident that Rangers will continue as a football club and will not face liquidation.”
He added players would be paid their February wages as normal and that the weekend’s match against Kilmarnock would go ahead.
Earlier on Thursday, Rangers won cross-party support from leading politicians, including British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Both Cameron and Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond – currently at loggerheads over the latter’s plan for a referendum on Scottish independence – said it was vital the club survived.
“I want that club to survive and to thrive,” Conservative Party leader Cameron told the BBC on a visit to Scotland.
“It has an extraordinary history, it has a very special place in many people’s hearts in Scotland and no-one wants to see that club disappear.”
Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), urged HMRC to realise the importance of the club to the country as a whole.
“They’ve got to have cognisance of the fact that we’re talking about a huge institution, part of the fabric of the Scottish nation, as well as Scottish football, and everybody realises that,” he told Al Jazeera English.
This week, Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell said his club, and even Scottish football as a whole, could live without Rangers.
But Salmond insisted: “The most die-hard Celtic supporter understands that Celtic can’t prosper unless Rangers are there. The rest of the clubs understand that as well.”
However, a statement on Celtic’s official Twitter site on Thursday said: “We are very disappointed with the First Minister’s claims that Celtic ‘need’ Rangers and that Celtic ‘can’t prosper unless Rangers are there’. This is simply not true.”
