JOHN BENNETT invested much more than just money into Rangers.
Aside from ploughing in over £20million, the outgoing chairman gave his heart and soul to the club, along with his time and expertise.
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Sadly, that commitment was to the detriment of his health.
After a turbulent reign at the top, Bennett stood down at the weekend.
It has left the Ibrox club without a chairman and chief executive.
But Dave King, the man who first brought Bennett to the table, insists none of that matters right now.
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The former Gers chairman insisted: “I’m sad it’s come to this, but I have mixed feelings.
“I’ve got, at a very personal level, a sense of relief because I have been speaking to John fairly regularly over the last couple of months.
“I understand his position and I’ve been offering him personal support because I know what he’s going through.
“Being chairman of Rangers is an incredibly difficult task.
“I’ve sat on many public company boards, a lot bigger than Rangers, and it’s just completely different.
“It’s not about governance, it’s not about the things that a non-exec board member would expect to find at a club.
“So I think John was having to deal with the legacy that he picked up.
“When John took over as chairman, I don’t think he expected to find what he did and have to deal with such a lack of operational support.
“The club had been hollowed out. There was no management support, there was no operational support. I think John went into that situation because, on a personal basis, he loves the club. You can’t doubt that for a moment.
“He’s invested very heavily into the club, probably way beyond his original intentions.
“So I had a huge amount of empathy for what he was going through on a personal basis.
“I know it was affecting his health and I totally understand that because the pressure is enormous.
“It does get to you. It doesn’t just stay in your mind, it can translate to your body, that’s the reality of it.
“So I was constantly saying to him, ‘John, just be careful because you’re not well and you’ve got to look after your health and your family as well’. The club is the club.
“So I’m pretty sure he’s got it right because it does get to a point where the club’s current situation is really not fixable.
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“It’s not as if you can sit there and say, ‘Well, OK, I’m going to tough it out, there is a plan in place and there is a way forward’.
“At this moment I don’t think there is a way forward.
“So it’s in John’s personal interest for him to leave now.
“He has been incapacitated with his health, in terms of having the energy, having the health to do what’s got to be done. It was right that he steps down.
“And on a personal basis I’m pleased for him and his family that he’s done that.
“I think it also protects his legacy at the club because I think his is a good one.
“He initially came into the club at my invitation.
“He invested, he’s been a passionate Rangers supporter and he was a great supporter to me during my time on the board when tough decisions had to be made.”
King is ready to make a sensational return to Rangers.
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Following Bennett’s shock resignation, the Castlemilk-born tycoon has outlined his two-year plan to rescue the club once again.
The 69-year-old believes he can offer strong leadership and stability — insisting he would NEVER have sanctioned the work that led to Gers being evicted from Ibrox.
King said: “I find it truly astonishing. I mean, on a scale of one to a hundred I’m going to zero, that we could possibly have started such a project if we did not have all of the equipment.
“Just from a management point of view, I don’t care if you’re managing a Kentucky Fried Chicken or a fish and chip shop or you’re managing British Petroleum, there are certain management principles in place.
“We should never have started the renovations.
“The management goes from the board to the operations manager. There should have been supervision of this, there should be compliance and control of the environment around it.
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“You don’t start a project like that unless, after the final home game of last season was played, a team should have been ready to go in the very next morning.
“Being at home at Ibrox with our atmosphere, where we are formidable even against the biggest teams, is so important to the club.
“We needed the Champions League money, we needed to be playing at Ibrox.
“Hampden Park is soulless. I’m sorry, I know it’s Scotland’s national stadium, but it’s still soulless.
“And if that material wasn’t there, the chairman of the board or whoever should have turned around and said, ‘We’re sorry, it can’t happen, the stuff is not here.’ The project should never start when the key steel is still in China.
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“We’ve scored these own goals, we’ve got so much wrong and what this club has got to do right now is get back to basics.”
By attracting some outside investment, King believes he can once again turn the club’s fortunes around.
And he has vowed to be open and honest with the long-suffering Gers fans.
King stressed: “I don’t want platitudes. I think the board more recently have put out too many platitudes.
“There have been interviews on Rangers TV and I’ve watched some of them. In fact, I couldn’t get to the end of most of them because they were just platitudes.
“You need to be honest with supporters and say, ‘This is what we’ve done’. You say, ‘I’ve opened the cupboard, this is what we’ve found, it’s not good but this is what it is’.
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“But this is what we are going to try and do about it and these are the kind of timeframes we think might be possible if things go well and, of course, things don’t go well.
“If you get knocked backwards, pick yourself up but go forward again.”
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