Rangers offer is expected within days

ANDREW Ellis, the London-based property developer, is expected to make a formal offer for Rangers this week. No bid has been tabled as yet – the club would have had to announce it to the Stock Exchange if there had been – but Ellis is considered a live prospect at this point. The sale figure, rumoured though not confirmed, is in the region of £33m.

There would appear be to a second interested party having a "nibble", as it was described by one source last night. A Far East consortium, from China and Singapore, is believed to have expressed an interest in the club, but Ellis would appear to be the front-runner right now. There doesn't seem to be much doubt within Ibrox about his financial wherewithal to take the club on.

Rangers have been presenting themselves as a cheap entry into football, the argument being that they win trophies, play to full houses and get into Europe, be it the Champions League or, more realistically in the future, the Europa League. There is fun to be had at Ibrox, has been the gist of their message.

The alternative is to spend countless millions more in buying an English Premiership team, probably a struggler already heavily burdened by debt, with no prospect of winning anything bar a relegation battle. "Where," a Rangers source said, "is the glory in that?"

The Ibrox club are a more attractive proposition now than they were a year ago, even six months ago. It's a leaner operation since Donald Muir, the turnaround specialist, was put on the board to watch over spending. Rangers' operating costs fell by 3.6m in the half-year to November while they reported a profit of 13m in the same period, due to their Champions League involvement.

The debt has come down from 31m in November to around 27m now with that figure set to fall further if Rangers secure the SPL championship and the 10-12m of Champions League money that goes with it. Soon, Rangers' level of indebtedness to Lloyds Banking Group could be in the teens rather than the twenties, a scenario that seems to have struck a chord with the two realistic parties taking an interest in them.

Rangers issued a statement yesterday, an indication that, perhaps, they're entering the end-game in this tortured affair. "The board of directors of the Rangers Football Club plc is aware of the recent takeover speculation in the media and refers shareholders and supporters to a previous statement issued in October 2009," it began.

"The club's board has been advised by its principal shareholder, Murray International Holdings Limited, that it is considering options regarding its shareholding in the club and this may or may not lead to MIH disposing of some or all of its stake in the club to a third party. The directors of the club will keep shareholders advised of key developments but the board is unable to comment further at this time."

Ellis is clearly a man they respect, but there is, however, a long way to go before a deal can be done. Nobody at Rangers is assuming this is going to sail through. If Ellis makes his bid then he will be entitled to a period of exclusivity during which time he can pore over the books without anybody else making a play for the club. It's interesting to note that Ellis also had a three-week period of exclusivity when attempting to buy QPR in 2001, but he withdrew his offer on the back of major supporter and local council opposition to his plan to move the club close to Heathrow airport. There was also a suggestion that he was struggling to find sufficient financial backing to execute his vision.

Ellis had another go at football in late 2002 when he took over as chairman of Northampton Town in the December, but then departed in controversy in February of the following year.

To add to the layer of caution, it should be remembered also that, in 2007, Sir David Murray came within hours of selling Rangers only to pull the plug on the deal at the last minute.

"We were all ready to go," Murray told Scotland on Sunday in August, 2008. "Donald (Wilson, his right-hand man] had negotiated it for months with complete confidentiality. Everything was pretty much agreed and then I said, 'Look, gentleman, before we do this, can you tell me how you're going to run this club?' I'm sitting there with all the legal documents in front of me and they outline their plans, 'We'll carve this up and we'll sell that off' and after a while I said 'Enough, we're not doing the deal'. We got up and walked out. We took our papers and went out the door. It wasn't for Rangers. In my opinion they did not want to take the club forward in a football way. They saw property angles. That's the closest I've come to selling; a few hours last year in a nice London hotel."

Until he sees Ellis's plans in detail, there is always the prospect that Murray – he will make the decision to sell, not Lloyds – will back away again. He's always stated that he will only sell to somebody who can take the club forward.

How all of this might impact on Walter Smith is impossible to know. Of course, Smith may well have made up his mind to leave in the summer no matter what happens. It's fanciful to expect Ellis to come in – if the deal ever gets done – and release a fortune to the manager to sign players. But it would probably require substantial new resources to make Smith have second thoughts.

Kris Boyd's future is also up for grabs. For that reason alone, Rangers fans will be hoping that Ellis is the real deal and that the striker will want to stay. It's suggested that if things runs smoothly, the transfer of ownership could be done in three months. But when have these things ever run smoothly?