Ibrox PR offensive only seems to have made matters worse

JOHN BENNETT, the vicechairman of Rangers, likes his buzzwords and catchphrases. How Rangers are going to be ‘best in class’. How he says things in his day job that are clearly so wonderful he has to say them again.

Gosh, how these little verbal flourishes fill up the time in a half-hour chinwag with the in-house TV bods when you don’t really have anything of note to say at all.

‘The bar only rises’ is evidently his favourite at the moment, though. It became tough to keep track of how often that — or some derivative of it — was mentioned midweek. It might have been fun to count, like you might count sheep, but it would have made it absolutely impossible to avoid drifting into Noddyland.

Bennett, a respected fund manager, looked like a decent chairman in the making at Ibrox for a while. A guy capable of speaking well publicly, coming across as a voice of sanity at a club that has contained no shortage of madness down the years.

Then, he started rattling on, after ‘55’, about people who had been hurting his ‘family’ and promising ‘quality over quantity’ when Amad Diallo, Aaron Ramsey and Juninho Bacuna were on their way in.

This week’s PR offensive — or should that be offensive PR? — doesn’t look to have done him or his board any favours either. How could it when you are effectively talking to people as if they are a few Swedish meatballs short of a smorgasbord for thinking that expected Champions League income in the region of £30m before outlays — on top of £20million for Calvin Bassey, £12m for Nathan Patterson, an estimated £10m for Joe Aribo and £4m compo for Steven Gerrard and his gang — might see a player or two signed between beating PSV and the transfer window closing?

Catchphrases came into it too. Bennett talked about an assumption money was ‘falling from heaven’. MD Stewart Robertson also resurfaced — briefly, thank God — to correct some who ‘think the money has fallen out of the sky’.

Maybe some headlines in some papers did once say Rangers could earn £40m from the Champions League, but it is wrong to build an argument based on that being the general assumption. Robertson says it is closer to £20m, but didn’t clarify whether ticket income was being counted in.

Yes, we all know those transfer fees don’t arrive in one almighty clump either. The dough turns up in dribs and drabs. Just the same way you pay it out for other clubs’ players.

Rangers fans have been milked merrily of late. They paid £180 for a three-game Champions League package before boss Giovanni van Bronckhorst admitted his team couldn’t compete.

Is it any wonder that a large number of punters are now upset over a round of interviews which then reeked of the underlying message: ‘How could you have been daft enough to think that Champions League money was going to change anything?’.

It is now six days until they go to Tynecastle. All those guys the club did spend millions on over the summer — such as Ridvan Yilmaz, Rabbi Matondo and Ben Davies — probably won’t play and no one will be any the wiser over why.

If Rangers don’t win, it won’t just be the bar that’s rising. It’ll be the temperature.