In the early ’90s, a viral flyer claimed Sir David Murray secretly owned the Celtic View. While it sounded like a paranoid conspiracy, the truth was a story of financial transaction that was typical of the old Celtic board.
Celtic almost when bust before Fergus McCann and his consortium saved the club and turned it into the financial and domestic football powerhouse it is just now.
With nothing to cheer about this weekend after Celtic’s draw with Rangers, the Ibrox fan site Follow Follow filled up it’s empty vaccum with a ridiculous conspiracy theory.
The post on Follow Follow asked ‘Did David Murray own the Celtic View and the Celtic Programme?’, but nothing could be further from the truth for these moonhowlers.
Former Rangers owner David Murray and the truth behind the Celtic View
The conspiracy was so stupid, that the poster, resident nutjob Mark Dingwall, didn’t even get any replies as he posted this screenshot of a flier from the 90s.
The Celtic ‘Conspiracy’ vs Reality
- The Claim: David Murray owned the View through shell companies like First Press Publishing.
- The Truth: Facing a £5 million overdraft, the old board sold the club’s media rights to raise quick cash.
- The Link: First Press was run by Steve Sampson, a close associate and former employee of Murray. Critically, First Press also produced the Rangers News.
A Conflict of Interest
While Murray didn’t legally own the Celtic View, the optics were a disaster.
Celtic’s official voice was being managed by a firm deeply embedded within Ibrox.
The “Old Board” hadn’t sold the club to Murray; they were simply so bankrupt they had “rented” the View to his associates to appease the Bank of Scotland.
The McCann Resolution
Upon his 1994 takeover, Fergus McCann identified this as a humiliation. He famously vowed the previous directors wouldn’t get ‘one thin dime’ more than necessary and used his own capital to professionalise the club.
One of his first major acts was terminating the First Press contract and bringing all media 100% in-house.
Verdict: The flyer wasn’t a myth—it was a whistleblower’s warning. McCann didn’t just save Celtic from bankruptcy; he liberated the club from its rivals’ business circle, ensuring every penny spent by fans stayed at Paradise.
While David Murray never owned the Celtic View, the truth is a cash-strapped ‘Old Board’ sold the club’s media rights to a firm with deep ties to Ibrox.
This wasn’t a secret takeover, but a desperate surrender of the club’s identity that Fergus McCann famously reversed in 1994.
The Celtic Rangers conspiracy that is 100% true
Indeed, what Dingwall and his cronies over at Follow Follow will never admit was that when McCann did takeover Celtic, he found shares in Rangers that the Parkhead club owned.
Speaking to The Herald back 2009, McCann’s financial advisor David Low revealed, ““The club owned 5000 Rangers shares. They were promptly sold.”
I wonder why Dingwall didn’t speak about that. Well, why would he want to admit that at one time, Celtic actually saved Rangers’ future long before they died in 2012.
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