Hamza Igamane Rangers to Lille latest as clubs wait in wings
However, it is understood the 22-year-old's representatives have had contact with Lille chiefs and held talks over personal terms.
French outlet Foot Mercato is now reporting Igamane is "very excited" about the prospect of the move, which could fetch Rangers over £10 million.
They could team him up with World Cup winner Olivier Giroud as they look to both strikers to replace Canada star Jonathan David.
Rangers signed Igamane for £1.7m from AS Far Rabat in his homeland and could be about to earn a significant mark-up after just a year.
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Daily Record
an hour ago
- Daily Record
Sir David Murray's biggest Rangers regret is giving keys to Craig Whyte
The former Rangers chairman will release his autobiography on July 3. Regrets? Sir David Murray has a few. Selling up after 23 years as chairman of Rangers isn't one of them - but giving the keys to Craig Whyte most certainly is. Millionaire metals tycoon Murray was the man who bankrolled an era of glitter and gold at Ibrox. Over the course of his two-decade run as Rangers owner and chairman, he estimates that sums close to £80million were invested by himself and his businesses. That hefty wedge of notes brought an array of international stars to Govan and with it a haul of trophies. Fifteen league crowns, 20 domestic cup wins and a European final. These were the best of times to be a Rangers fan. And yet Murray now stands accused of being the person responsible for setting the club on a course to wrack and ruin. The man who famously vowed to spend a tenner for every fiver slapped down by Celtic has been left with the legacy of being remembered chiefly for the EBT gamble that has cost the club so dearly. When he bought Rangers from Lawrence Marlborough for £6m in 1988, the Ibrox outfit had a spending power that allowed it to compete with the richest clubs in England and across Europe. But by the time mysterious Scottish businessman Whyte offered to take the club off his hands for a solitary pound coin, Murray's Rangers were struggling to keep up with city neighbours Celtic, never mind competing with the continent's biggest clubs. Faced with difficulties in his metals empire, a global economic recession and a disastrous early Champions League exit at the hands of Lithuanian minnows FBK Kaunus, Rangers were already operating under close scrutiny from their bankers at Lloyds Banking Group. Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! 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With an investigation brewing into the controversial £47million EBT tax scheme Murray had deployed in order to continue signing big names, he decided the time had come to escape the suffocating pressures of the Ibrox boardroom too. But by handing the keys to the club to Whyte in May 2011, he had sealed the club's fate. Within nine months the club's operating company would lurch into administration and then liquidation. What's followed has been decade and a half of torture for a Rangers faithful forced to watch as Celtic have lifted 13 of the last 14 league titles. The club continues to battle against the fallout from that astonishing collapse to this very day. Now in his new book Mettle - which is being serialised in today's Daily Record - Sir David apologies for the role he played in the demise of the Ibrox institution. He writes: 'More than a decade after the event, the question I still frequently get asked is: 'Do you regret selling Rangers?' The answer is always: ' time was up.' 'Honestly, 23 years was too long. We had enjoyed the greatest success in the club's entire history but it was time for change. But do I regret the sale to Craig Whyte? Absolutely. I apologise. It was a huge error of judgement in the middle of a financial crisis. Looking back, I had made a huge mistake.' During discussions with Murray, Whyte gave assurances he had the cash to not only wipe out the club's debts but also further funds to upgrade Walter Smith's squad and Ibrox itself. As it turns our, this Walter Mitty character had neither. It was the Daily Record that revealed he had struck a deal to mortgage off future season-ticket sales with finance firm Ticketus just to raise the readies required to complete the transaction - a fact that was kept from Murray, along with the fact Whyte had previously been barred from acting as a company director. The former chairman later claimed he'd been duped by White - a line he sticks to in the book, 'As it happened, Rangers went into administration in 2012 after failing to pay a multimillion pound HMRC tax and VAT bill,' Murray, now 73, explains. On the Rangers tax case he is clear that the factual amounts charged by HMRC assisted in restricting others parties in acquiring the club. They chose to gross up the payments through the trusts, increasing a non grossed up claim of £23.5 million to £37 million. Interest of £10.4million was then applied. A penalty of £23.5 million was then added which is virtually the maximum allowed with HMRC citing the illegal nature of the schemes. In effect, a base claim of £23.5 million became more than £70 million. The penalty was appealed by the liquidators then ultimately withdrawn in full by HMRC, who belatedly agreed the allegation of illegality was unfounded. He added: "Administrators described their 'widespread' concern at the Ticketus arrangement, where the club were paid money upfront for season tickets sold for multiple seasons to help cashflow. 'I deeply regretted and still regret selling the club to Whyte. And I freely admit that if the information had been available to me at the time I would not have gone through with it. My decision was taken in good faith. There is only so much information out there. 'After someone has been disqualified for seven years it is not that easy to carry out checks. But I was in a situation where we had been endeavouring to sell the club for four years. We had received proof of funds. We had a legal document confirming he was going to spend money on players, eventually, once he had paid back the loan. 'He met the criteria that were in his offer document. What we wanted to do was get debt out of the club. 'The phrase 'debt-ridden club' was being used a lot. Whyte made a statement that the club was never in better financial state when he took it over. I thought: 'I hope to God I have done the right thing. I've passed it on. This is a guy saying he is going to spend money on players, on health and safety and do Ibrox up.' 'That was a legal offer document which you were entitled to feel would be honoured. I know others had doubts. Paul Murray was keen to buy the club. I had nothing but respect for him. He's a Rangers fan and wanted what was best for the club. 'But at that time he was not able to make a satisfactory offer. He wanted debt left in and the tax case put to one side. There have always been suggestions that I was under ferocious pressure from the bank to do the deal but that was not the case. 'The bank wanted their money back, of course, and I had made it clear that I wanted out of Rangers. At that time we were going into recession and people were not exactly queueing up to buy football clubs. Lloyds wanted out of the football industry. 'I wanted out but if we had known about the Ticketus issue we would never have done the deal. If I could turn back the clock, I would.' Whyte would later be cleared at a High Court trial of buying the by fraudulent means. But Murray remains unhappy about the way the case was handled. Looking back on his first interactions with the Motherwell -born businessman, he said "Whyte seemed quite affable and plausible. I remember someone asking at the time: 'Does this pass the sniff test?' and yes it did. He was Scottish, supposedly a Rangers supporter, he had the money and of course there was a Stock Exchange document there. 'If you can't believe that, then what the hell can you believe? A journalist asked me at the time if our due diligence should have been more thorough. It's easy to look back and say: 'Yes, of course it should' but anyone typing Whyte's name into Google back in 2011 would have found one article from years before. Nothing else. 'It seemed strange. There was even a rumour that everything about him had been removed from the internet. I've no idea how true that was. What Whyte had that other potential bids did not was the backing of a reputable legal firm. 'The fact he was clearing money into their clients' account and the fact that they confirmed they had sufficient funds to complete the transaction that was being negotiated goes a long way to being positive confirmation. 'So many aspects of the Whyte trial still rankle with me today. For starters, I believe it should have taken place in Edinburgh or another town. 'I've had it recently confirmed that prior to the trial, it was stated that anyone with knowledge of the case, with shares, bonds or a season ticket at Ibrox at the time of the indictment could not be a juror. 'Now Donald Findlay [Whyte's defence lawyer and former Gers vice-chairman] was a prominent season ticket holder, shareholder and club director. I understand that as a defence counsel, he wasn't subject to the same strict criteria as those on the jury. 'But I wish he had been, and it still doesn't sit well with me to this day.' The bitterness felt by the Rangers faithful shows no sign of relenting either. Murray understands that - but he hopes they will take on board the situation he and the club found themselves in as the world economy suffered its biggest downturn since the Great Depression. Against the financial crisis, the businessman was faced with a life-threatening medial procedure to fix an aortic aneurysm, something he reveals in the book for the first time. 'It has now been 14 years since I relinquished control of the club and there is no doubt that my legacy was tarnished,' he writes. 'The first 15 or 16 years of my tenure were outstanding from both a sporting point of view and a business perspective but the final few years were tricky and took a lot out of me. 'When we were in that tight period I ploughed a lot of money into the club. I worked out that our company had put just short of £80million into Rangers during my time at the club. Others, including Dave King, invested seriously as well. 'But ultimately, when the crash came, I took the fall. No one else. I was captain of the ship. It was undoubtedly a low point in the club's history and even now, more than a decade later, I still feel responsible. 'It's still difficult to believe that it got as far as it did but I will never try to hide. Thankfully for the fans, Rangers have survived and across the past few years have remained competitive, even reaching another European final. 'I hope, in hindsight, Rangers fans will understand that there were a number of key factors going on in business and my life that they were simply not aware of at the time. I was caught in the perfect storm of a bank collapsing, a shocking result in Europe against Kaunas that cost us millions, a club essentially in financial difficulty and a medical condition that I couldn't announce publicly but put my life sharply into focus.' Preorder on Amazon HERE
Daily Record
an hour ago
- Daily Record
Ex-Rangers owner Sir David Murray says losing legs after horror crash inspired life of courage
Murray was left fighting for his life when a tyre blowout sent his high-powered sports car careering off the road. March 13, 1976 - little did he know it but Sir David Murray was speeding towards a crossroads. Driving home having just played in a rugby match on the outskirts of Edinburgh, the then 24-year-old future Rangers owner would be left fighting for his life when a tyre blowout sent his high-powered sports car careering off the road and into a tree. The burgeoning metals tycoon was able to be cut free from the devastated wreckage but the damage inflicted upon his mangled lower limbs gave surgeons no other option but to amputate his legs below the knee. In the days after as he began a gruelling recovery process, Murray realised he had only two directions in which to turn. He could point himself down a path of self-pity and despair. Or he could steer himself along a more productive and determined road, one where he would not allow his life-changing injuries to define him as a person nor a businessman. Now 50 years on, Sir David has opened up on the thoughts and emotions that inspired him to choose courage over resignation. And the four words that he chose to rebuild his life around. While recovering in the hospital, Murray received a letter from hero pilot Douglas Bader who lost both of his legs in an air crash in the 1930s but recovered to fly missions for the RAF during World War two. Recalling the events of that fateful day, he writes in his new autobiography: 'On an overcast Saturday afternoon on March 13, I drove my then two-year old son David to Musselburgh after gently persuading him that a nice thing to do would be to buy a bunch of flowers for his mum, Louise. "It wasn't a special occasion but he was happy to go along. 'I dropped him off back at home in Longniddry, East Lothian, then drove the 10 miles to play stand-off for Dalkeith against North Berwick. 'I kicked three conversions in a 16-9 victory and then began to make my way home. ' The car – a purple Lotus Elite – had been serviced just 24 hours earlier and unbeknown to me at the time, the tyre pressures had been inflated to almost twice what they should have been. 'I also didn't put my seatbelt on – it wasn't a legal requirement back then. 'As I made my way along a dual carriageway near Longniddry, in East Lothian, the front left tyre suddenly blew. 'There was nothing I could have done. 'The car lurched to the side, I left the road and smashed headlong into a tree. 'Revisiting the scene much, much later, I realised that just a few yards before the tree and a few yards after it, there was nothing but open fields. 'How that tree is still standing I don't know, but remarkably it is. 'I recently stopped at the same spot again and nearly 50 years after the accident, there are still marks on the base of the tree. Equally amazingly, there are also still purple shards of the car's bodywork embedded in my upper leg. 'Memories of the exact moment are hazy. The vehicle was made of fibreglass and the impact forced the engine block right through the facia and into the driver and passenger seat. 'I was immediately shunted right through the door and lay unconscious and bleeding next to the wreckage. If I'd been wearing a seatbelt, I'd have been stuck in the car – things might have been much worse. 'A number of rugby supporters who had actually been at the game stopped their cars and raced to my side. There was lots of blood and they applied tourniquets with their ties to try to halt the flow. 'They somehow kept me alive and even though I can remember nothing about it, an ambulance was called and arrived quickly to take me 18 miles to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. 'That night, I lost 13 pints of blood and there was no option for surgeons but to immediately amputate parts of my mangled legs through the knees.' Murray made his fortunes in the metal game. At its peak, his company was turning over £350million and selling 450,000 tonnes of steel a year - equivalent to the materials needed to construct a dozen Forth Rail Bridges. But it was his own iron-clad resolve that proved to be his most valuable personal commodity as he battled back from his brush with fate. He adds: ' My wife Louise, of course, was frantic with worry yet somehow I'd managed to call her from a hospital payphone while lying on a trolley taking me back to the ward. 'I told her, 'You have to come. I'm in a bad way.' I have absolutely no recollection of this. "Louise, my family and friends took turns to sit by my bedside during the following days as I struggled to recover. 'The anaesthetist Ned Trench and a surgeon fought to give me a better chance of a partial recovery, but five days after the accident they were finally defeated after an infection set in. 'I ended up having a further nine inches of my legs removed. Following this I was finally transferred to the Princess Margaret Rose Hospital for 10 weeks of intensive care. 'I must have spent days and hours wondering how I might cope with the rest of my life. I was still a young man, with a wife and young family and I was passionate about business and playing sports. I just felt numb but then that letter arrived and it made me so determined to carry on. 'I admire your courage'… four words that have long had a bearing on so many aspects of my life. It became a blueprint. Four words that a doctor or a nurse at my bedside in the hospital might have been expected to utter and if they had, they might have been referring to the fact that I apparently had never cried. Not once. "The reason I have built so much of my life around those words is that they were conveyed to me – in a private letter – by a man who personified courage: Sir Douglas Bader. "Like millions of others I was only aware of him because of the 1956 British war film Reach For The Sky where Bader was played by Kenneth More. In 1976, at the age of 24, I had just lost both of my legs – in a car crash – and was lying in hospital, a bi-lateral amputee, when the nurse delivered the letter that would act as a motivation throughout the rest of my life.' Former Ibrox gaffer Graeme Souness describes Murray in the book as 'the most competitive human being I've ever met'. It was that defiant streak the millionaire, now 73, leant on as he was forced to to learn to walk again with the aid of prosthetic limbs. And that determination was key to his establishing a billion-pound business empire and footballing dynasty that would see Rangers dominate Scottish football in the 1990s. 'In life, I never try to look back,' he adds. 'We all have decisions to make – some of them big, reflective moments – and I am a great believer in the fact that you either turn left or you turn right. 'If anyone I know is ever in trouble or facing adversity, I always tell them that every problem has a solution and to always look ahead. 'Be decisive. Stay positive. I had no intention of quitting.' Preorder on Amazon HERE
Scottish Sun
an hour ago
- Scottish Sun
Ex-Rangers owner Sir David Murray APOLOGISES for selling club to Craig Whyte 14 years after deal which led to collapse
He's lifted the lid on the most talked about deal in history SORRY END Ex-Rangers owner Sir David Murray APOLOGISES for selling club to Craig Whyte 14 years after deal which led to collapse Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) SIR DAVID MURRAY has apologised for selling Rangers to Craig Whyte — 14 years after the £1 deal which triggered the club's collapse. The former Gers owner admits the sale was a 'huge mistake' in his new autobiography 'Mettle: Tragedy, Courage and Titles'. Sign up for the Rangers newsletter Sign up 4 David Murray (right) signs over the rights of Rangers to Craig Whyte (left) 4 Craig Whyte leaving the high court in Glasgow. Credit: John Gunion - The Sun Glasgow 4 Sir David Murray leaves the High Court in Glasgow after giving evidence against Craig Whyte Credit: PA:Press Association Whyte took control in May 2011, but presided over the financial crash at Ibrox which resulted in administration nine months later and ultimately liquidation. Murray, now 73, claimed at the time he was 'duped' by Whyte. But he has now said sorry for flogging the club at a time he was battling health issues. He said: 'I apologise. 'It was a huge error of judgment in the middle of a financial crisis. 'Looking back, I had made a huge mistake. 'I deeply regretted and still regret selling the club to Whyte. 'And I freely admit that if the information had been available to me at the time I would not have gone through with it.' Whyte bought the club from Murray just days before Gers won the league title with a 5-1 triumph over Kilmarnock at Rugby Park. But the financial crisis soon unravelled, with Whyte wrestling with £18m debts he inherited and HMRC battles. New Rangers chiefs Andrew Cavenagh and Paraag Marathe's first interview It emerged the new owner had used money projected to come from future season tickets to allow him to complete his purchase. And under Whyte's stewardship, the Gers went into administration and then liquidation in 2012 — and were plunged to the fourth tier of Scottish football. SIR DAVID MURRAY: A TIMELINE 1951 - Born in Ayr 1974 - Founds Murray International Metals aged 23 1976 - Loses both legs in a car crash 1984 - Awarded Young Scottish Businessman of the Year 1988 - Buys Rangers FC for £6million 1989 - Rangers win the first of a record-equalling nine successive league titles and buy first high profile Catholic, Maurice Johnston, for £1.5m from under the noses of Celtic. 1991: Walter Smith succeeds Graeme Souness as manager. 1992 - Wife Louise - mum of their two sons - dies after a cancer battle. 1993: Rangers sign Duncan Ferguson for a record transfer fee between British clubs of £4million. 1995: Paul Gascoigne signs for a club record £4.3m. 1998: Dick Advocaat is appointed manager and club break their transfer record three times that summer by signing Arthur Numan (£4.5m), Giovanni van Bronckhorst (£5m) and Andrei Kanchelskis (£5.5m). Murray declares that for 'every £5 Celtic spend, we will spend £10.' 2000: Rangers smash transfer record by signing Tore Andre Flo from Chelsea for £12m. 2001: Murray Park is opened at a cost of £14m. 2007 - Knighted for services to business 2009 - Sir David steps down as Rangers chairman and as a member of the board, with the club having won 15 titles and 21 cups during his tenure May 2011 - He sells his controlling interest in Rangers for £1 to Wavetower Limited, owned by businessman Craig Whyte. Murray added: 'Do I regret the sale to Craig Whyte? Absolutely. 'I know others had doubts. 'Paul Murray was keen to buy the club and I had nothing but respect for him. 'He is a Rangers fan and wanted what was best for the club. But at that time he was not able to make a satisfactory offer. 4 Front page of the Scottish Sun dated 10 July 1989 Credit: News Group Newspapers Ltd 'There have always been suggestions that I was under ferocious pressure from the bank to do the deal but that was not the case at all. 'The bank wanted their money, of course, and I had made it clear that I wanted out of Rangers.' Ayr-born steel magnate Murray — who was knighted in 2007 for services to business in Scotland — bought Rangers for £6m from Lawrence Marlborough in 1988. Under his guidance, Gers enjoyed their greatest domestic era, including Nine in a Row championship success from 1989-97. They competed in the first Champions League in 1992/93 and made the 2008 Uefa Cup final in Manchester. Football's scoop of the century By Roger Hannah IT'S The Sun Wot Broke It. But Sir David Murray didn't mind that his historic swoop for Maurice Johnston was first revealed on the front page of this newspaper in 1989. He was just relieved he'd managed to help Graeme Souness pull off a transfer swoop which rocked Scottish football. Even now, 36 years on, landing the Scotland striker from Celtic's grasp — and making him the first high- profile Catholic to play for Gers — is regarded as the most audacious swoop of all time. And Murray recalls: 'All the talk was of Johnston joining Celtic. But Graeme came to me and said, 'Apparently he's not signed, the paperwork's not done, we can get him'. 'I asked for a day to think about it, phoned him and said, 'Yes, I think we should do it for numerous reasons — for football reasons and to remove an area where we can be criticised for not signing Catholic players. And why not make it the best one, who can come in and contribute?' 'Even though at that time Mark Hateley and Ally McCoist were the strikers and had an excellent partnership. 'Finally, just 24 hours before we were due to unveil the player, we took a call from a young journalist at The Sun in Scotland ahead of a story being published. 'On July 10, 1989, The Sun ran half of its front page with the simple headline MO JOINS GERS. 'It certainly didn't spoil the unveiling. If anything, it ramped up the tension!' Johnston, who had played with Celts before a spell at Nantes in France, was pictured with Hoops boss Billy McNeill in 1989 but hadn't signed his contract to return. Gers boss Souness, who had played with Johnston for Scotland, realised the move hadn't been concluded and kickstarted the monumental move. In his autobiography — published this week — he offers a deeply personal insight into his extraordinary life and work. He lifts the lid on his relationship with bosses Graeme Souness — still a close friend — Walter Smith, Dick Advocaat, Alex McLeish and Paul le Guen. Murray also reveals details of his relationship with superstar players including Paul Gascoigne and record scorer Ally McCoist, who would be appointed manager by Whyte after his buy-out - Mettle: Tragedy, Courage & Titles by Sir David Murray, is on sale Thursday July 3 from Amazon and all good bookshops. Preorder on Amazon here. Sir David is donating his royalties to Erskine Hospital.
