Scottish football has survived attempts to merge Hearts and Hibs as well as Dundee and Dundee United. Those were barmy enough.
Well, former Gers owner Sir David Murray claims that was the plan of newspaper baron Robert Maxwell back in the 1980s.
Murray had only weeks prior taken control of the club when he received a phone call from Maxwell telling him he would like to buy it off him already.
Worse than that, his plan was to also acquire Celtic and merge the clubs. Understandably, it was met with great resistance.
Speaking in his new autobiography, Mettle, Sir David said: “Football still has the capacity to shock and amaze and one telephone call just weeks after I had bought the club still astounds me to this day.
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“My son Keith came racing through to where I was sitting at home and said, ‘Daddy, a man is on the phone wanting to speak to you.’
“I asked him who it was and he said, ‘Robert Maxwell’. Now Maxwell still owned Oxford United and Derby County at the time and had a stake in Reading so I assumed he was on to talk about a player.
“But when I picked up the phone, the voice boomed down the line, “David, it’s Robert Maxwell… I want to buy Rangers from you and then I want to buy Celtic and merge the clubs.’
“I checked my watch to see if it was happy hour. I can’t remember my exact response but it was fairly terse.
“I remembered that he had tried to do something similar with Reading and Oxford United and a planned team called the Thames Valley Royals. Needless to say, we had no further contact.”
