Chairman John Bennett has spoken to RangersTV. Here is every word of his long-awaited update to supporters.

Can you explain the chain of events that means we will start the season at Hampden?

I think it is important to look at the chain of events. People like to say, quite rightly, nature abhors a vacuum and I am fully aware of the vacuum that seemed to be created. Nobody was straining more than myself for clarity and for certainty. I have wanted to deliver a certainty that we couldn’t deliver. I am going come back to that.

I apologise again on behalf of this club for the uncertainty it has caused our fans. I can assure the fans that the people in this club are working tirelessly to get this done. We need to finish the job. We must also not lose sight for whom this job was undertaken – our fans, and in particular our disabled fans. We have to finish the job. We will finish this job and, again, what gives the board and one of the things that gives me personally the will and the strength to get this done, is the people. The people for whom we are doing it, our people, our fans.

There are also people in the club. I see what they are doing, I see the work and how they are rising to this challenge. We will finish the job. The context is very important here. If we stand back a minute and look at the context of what we are dealing with, what we are dealing with here is a materials delay. We have a delay mid-shipment of our materials and we are not alone because it is happening globally and it is happening to so many entities, if you like.

Our situation is that we have three consignments on three vessels making their way to Glasgow. Pinch points are the ports, Singapore probably the biggest. Vessel number one has arrived, it is in Glasgow, those materials are in Glasgow. We await vessels two and three. I talked about materials consignment number one in Glasgow. Let’s talk about two and three and this is where I have been straining to get certainty and you can see that, I mentioned in the statement that we put out that the one thing we crave is certainty and I can’t give it.

It is an understatement for me to say that is frustrating, it is more than that. As things stand, delivery number two, and it is on delivery number two that we will begin when that gets to Glasgow you are going to see what I would call the beginning of the final installation. We need those three consignments to hit Glasgow. Only one has arrived. When delivery number two comes you will see the beginning of what I would call the final stages of installation.

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That will take time, it is not final and a few days. As things stand, subject to further slippage, and it frustrates me that I have to keep caveating it that way, that is scheduled to arrive in Glasgow in the second week in August. Vessel three, shipment three, is scheduled as things stand to arrive in Glasgow in the third week in August. Then we can begin to think about timelines.

When I think about timelines, it is an aspiration at this stage because again I am caveating it and there is still uncertainty. If I think about timelines, clearly it is about the timeline of us returning to our home, which we all desperately want, clearly after the September international break and it is a case of how long after the September international break? We can aspire, aspire, for that to be at the end of September but it is an aspiration.

I am sorry that I have to caveat this, it frustrates me so much that I have to caveat it, but I think I have given the reasons I have to caveat it – the shipping situation. Yes, I can have an aspiration to get our people back into our home for the final game of September. But, yes, it could slip beyond that.

Can you tell us why Hampden was chosen ahead of Murrayfield or a restricted Ibrox?

When I got the call in June that all those assurances that the board had received, both written and verbal, that all was on time… Well, when I was told that was not the case you then have to get a grip of it and you have to act, implement contingency.

Now, what I wanted from that moment when we realised we had to decant – and we are not the first club that has had to decant and we won’t be the last but it's happened to us – I said to the board that the number one aim here as we decant is to maximise the number of our fans that can follow their team and minimise the disruption to those fans.

For me, of course the prime choice, and we had some choice and some options, for me - prioritise Hampden for our fans. We know the geographic dispersion of our season ticket holders, etc. So a stadium big enough to house them and minimise the disruption. That is why it was all systems go for Hampden.

I thank, again, our people in the club for what they are doing right now and we can talk about that and mapping seats, etc. I know what Susan and her team in the ticket office are doing, I know what others are doing in facilities, security and hospitality. They are working so hard to make this as seamless as we possibly can to minimise the disruption. But the other people I want to thank are our counterparts, specifically at the SFA because they also rose to this challenge and they acted like partners with us. That is what you need. I have said this to people in the club.

In times of crisis, you find people out. You find out who stands up and who hides and so many people in the club have stood up and the SFA stood with us like partners in this. And the SPFL I want to thank as well.

I talked earlier a wee bit about nature abhors a vacuum and I was very aware of the vacuum. There was nobody straining more than me to give me certainty, I want to give our fans certainty. I want to get the message out, where are we, where are we when for all the reasons I have talked about you couldn't do that. An element of that was also when you are trying to secure that venue or any venue it is a multi-party arrangement.

People talk about stakeholders, if I can use that term, it's not just Rangers have made a decision and that's the state of it. You have to have your partners and your counterparts sign up and agree to that and that does take a bit of time and you have to co-ordinate. It's not just a case of Rangers putting out a statement saying we're off to Hampden, you have to get the agreement in place and that does take time. It's multiparty. And, again, as frustrating as it has been for everyone there was no one more frustrated than myself because I was desperate to get out there and get it done, get it done. It has been a challenging summer.

You talked about work behind the scenes to get this move underway are you able to provide an update for the fans on when they're likely to receive some clarification on where they will be seated for that Motherwell game? 

Yes. That is 24/7 work going on. People in the ticket office and elsewhere...that's a very good example of people working weekends or working around the clock on precisely that issue. I'm hopeful that by the end of this week we can provide that update.

Moving on now to the club finances. Can you give us an update on what the current state of play is with the club's finances?

Yes. I very deliberately called out a number at the AGM and it is not an overstatement to say that becoming chairman my number one mission off the pitch was to rid the club of pre-player trading losses. And I called that out at the AGM. That number to June 2023 was £10.5m, that's unsustainable and we should talk about sustainability, Financial Fair Play etc. That right there is wholly unsustainable and I said that has to go away. You can't just will things to go away, it takes action.

I look at that and that is well on the way to being eradicated and that has taken a lot of work from a lot of people and I have driven that, I have driven hard and it has been hard on some people, for example, to drive that through and execute it. But execute it we must. I'm not having club, which we'll come to player trading, and the famed player trading model we need to address that, but first get after what I call low-hanging fruit.

This club should not be losing £10.5m pre-player trading in a year, my goodness me. When I became chairman - and again it is not an overstatement to say this required cultural change. I talked about it with lots of people around the country, across the UK and in Europe. Football clubs are really good at spending other people's money, at wasting resources.

We were good at that as well. And that's changing big-style and fast because it had to change fast. That's cultural change, it has required people change. We're not done in terms of that cultural change, there is more to come to eradicate that £10.5m. That is not a sustainable business model if you are sitting there with that kind of number and that's before you come on to player trading which we should come on to.

We are in the midst of a transfer window, what financial backing have the board given so far in this window and is there more to come?

There is often talk about the phasing and I have seen that talked about the phasing of buying and selling. If you actually look at the facts, not just in this window but prior to this window, how has Rangers operated? And I actually want us to get away from how we have operated but how we have operated has been...the board has essentially backstopped each window. The board has backstopped each window. Yes, I have seen player plans in the past where outgoings will match incomings in financial terms.

That could be Plan A, I have rarely seen Plan A executed, it always seems to be, 'No, we have to backstop it' and that's what we've done. That's again what we have been doing in 2024. If I take 2024, the January window and this window, excluding loans, we're double-digit millions in commitments in transfer payables. Excluding loans we are about £11.5m in thus far on transfer payables. That is permanent transfers not loans, and loans, they are not free they come with loan fees with agent fees etc. So that is where we are in terms of 2024 - about £11.5m spend thus far.

What has Philippe Clement brought to the club since he came in as manager?

I think Philippe brought a lot of things, a lot of the right things. It's maybe sort of unfair or wrong or you're going to miss certain other words or points or strengths if you only mention one or two. Leadership, leadership which is crucial, he has brought that. Vision. And he is all in. Philippe, like a number of us, he is all in on this. And when I say he is all in, I have been struck by something that I completely endorse that he has said only recently and he has been very, very clear and that's regarding the player trading model, transfers if you like.

When Philippe has been asked in the media about incomings and the transfer strategy, the recruitment strategy, Philippe has been very, very clear and he has nailed it and we endorse it. That is, recruiting for the long-term as well as for the short-term and he has actually gone further than that, he has actually said, if I can paraphrase him, recruiting only for the short-term has caused problems historically. I completely endorse that. I completely endorse that even to the point that lessons, brutal lessons, have been learned.

This is a really tricky one in terms of the balance of the situation you have to navigate, it's not easy. And it's not going to be easy, this long-term/short-term recruitment strategy. At Rangers, and I've said this internally, there's a twin imperative now. Rangers will always be a club that needs to win, imperative number one. I've spoken to a number of clubs in Europe that don't need to win their league and it's quite an interesting conversation because they get a lot more time to build a player-trading model or any model. At a club like Rangers you don't get time. So at a club like Rangers imperative number one - you have to win, that won't change. Rangers are compelled to win. That's the impulse, that's why it exists, it won't change.

But the second imperative is if you're really serious about building, and I've heard it a lot in recent years, again, internally and it really frustrates me probably as much as any Rangers supporter is I hear a lot about this fabled, almost mythical player trading model. I hear a lot about it but it's not up and running. I don't see it. That would be an accurate observation and criticism. 

Imperative two, if you are going to build a truly sustainable operating player trading model, having fixed the line above it, if you're going to be serious about doing that, then you're going to have to invest in player recruitment for the long-term as well as the short-term. That's a really challenging route and thing to navigate and it's not done in one window. I'd like to think people can see the complexion of this window being long-term as well as short-term. We will never lose that compulsion, that need - 'I'm a Rangers man, we need to win'. That's your aim, but if you only recruit for the next season, that's where you get into that loop.

Philippe talked about it when we sat down in May to review the season. He said: 'John, this is a bigger rebuild than I expected.' That's what he was referring to recently when he talked about expectation when he came in. It was the first thing he said to me when we sat down. I said 'Philippe, me too', not least due to the investment we'd put in the prior year. So that's what we've got, we need to grip it and he gets that.

He talked recently about the alignment. He's all in on this and he's aligned. He and his team, and we've strengthened it recently with the appointment of Andries Ulderink, are fully aligned with this. (They know it's) absolutely right that the player trading model, that people like to talk about, will remain the stuff of myth. We have to make it a reality.

If Rangers were to continue down the path of short-term recruitment, look at the amount of changes this club has had in recent years at manager level, I've said to my board colleagues and others, while I'm chairman I want to end the years of rinse and repeat. I think you know what I'm talking about - by October there are big changes at the club. It's hugely damaging at every level of the club, financially etc. That must end. We must be all all-in. Philippe's all-in, we are all aligned and we have to deliver on that very tricky challenge we have to rise to.

Do you have an update on the CEO, is there any news on when they will be in place?

I wouldn't say that absolutely everything was parked when I got this call in June to say we had this materials delay but it was almost like that. The first priority was dealing with that and everything else was slowed down. That's been my other objective to get that delivered and I hope to have some news pretty soon about our CEO.

Do you have a message to the fans?

Because I'm one of them,  it's a message to me as well at a really challenging time. I don't make any bones about it, this is the biggest challenge I've faced. You have personal challenges with your family and those are the big, big challenges in life but outside of that it's the biggest I've faced. You need to rise to challenges. You don't really have a choice do you? We don't fold. 

Rangers fans have been through a lot of adversity at this club in its glorious history and this is a moment of adversity. This is painful, personally painful, bruising, challenging, all of the above but this club has a remarkable ability to rise to challenges and it will do that.

I've talked about the challenges, the stand, the project. Never forget for whom we are doing it. Never forget for whom we are doing everything - the fans. We are here to win for them. We will complete the project through our people. It's a moment of adversity, but we've been through these moments before and bigger, way bigger adversities. So we don't get consumed by this. We stand up, we grab it, we face it down. We finish the job.