TANGLED UP IN BLUE: THE RISE AND FALL OF RANGERS FC by Stephen O’Donnell
If the wider, football-conscious world is aware of just two things about Scottish football, they are surely as follows: firstly, that there is a virulent rivalry in Glasgow between the city’s two great teams, Rangers and Celtic, based on a religious divide; and secondly, that Rangers recently suffered a catastrophic financial collapse, which ultimately led to the club’s insolvency.
Split into two separate, but closely linked, sections, Tangled Up in Blue: The Rise and Fall of Rangers FC gives the full account of both of these stories.
Stephen O’Donnell explores how Rangers first became associated with hard-line Protestantism, dominating Scottish football for decades without ever knowingly signing a Catholic footballer, until the feted arrival of Maurice Johnston at Ibrox in 1989.
He then switches focus to the club’s financial affairs, as Rangers’ unsustainable spending brought the club to the brink of collapse and, despite the hidden benefits of an illegal tax avoidance scheme, resulted in its liquidation.
Read our review here: Book Review: Tang (footballbookreviews.com)
(Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd. August 2019. Paperback: 320 pages)
Fergus McCann Versus David Murray charts the changing fortunes of Glasgow’s two great footballing rivals as shaped by two business moguls. Both men came to prominence in the 1990s when new methods of governance and finance were taking hold of football.