Murray, David
From RangersPedia
Sir David Murray was the longest serving chairman in the history of Rangers Football Club. He stepped down in 2009 to concentrate on his empire as the burden of being chairman finally got to him. He spent the majority of his time focusing on Rangers when in fact, we only accounted for 8% of his business. In the 80's, Sir David tried to take over Ayr United but the bid was rejected by the shareholders of the club. He then set his eyes upon Rangers. On 23rd November 1988, he purchased the club from Lawrence Marlborough for a fee of £6 million.
He had an ambitious vision for the club. He further developed the stadium, adding the Club Deck and filling in the corners to make Ibrox more intimidating. He oversaw the most successful period in the club's history, 9 in a row. Rangers won every league championship between the years of 1989-1997, equaling the record set by Celtic decades previous. He also oversaw the most expensive signing in Scottish football history, Tore Andre Flo, for a fee of £12.5 million.
After Walter Smith left the club in 1998, he appointed the first foreign manager to manage The Gers. 'The Little General', Dick Advocaat. He was given copious amounts of cash to chase Sir David's dream of conquering Europe but it never happened. The only team that came close was in the 92-93 season under Walter Smith when they were one win away from the Champions League final. Despite the lack of success in Europe, Dick Advocaat's team had us playing some lovely football. Just when it looked like there wouldn't be European success under his stewardship, up popped Walter Smith who lead us to the final of the UEFA Cup in 2008. We lost but it was our first European final in 36 years.
Murray left the second time under a cloud, the first time he left was in 2002 for 2 years. He couldn't take Rangers forward financially any longer. It seemed the spending under the days of Dick Advocaat and the catastrophe against Kaunas had left Rangers staring at a black hole. With debts of around £30 million, Rangers had to streamline their squad and let go 9 players in the 2009 summer transfer window. Had it not been for the SPL triumph in May, we would have saw our best players leave for peanuts. Fortunately we did win it though, some might say that was our most important title in our history. Murray remains the majority shareholder at the club and is actively looking for a buyer. His shares from Murray International have been put up for sale and it looks like a matter of time before someone relieves him of chairman.
