Craig Whyte was a Rangers wolf in cheap clothing as Paul Murray reflects on 'slow motion car crash' at Ibrox

“It’s a great deal for David Murray, a great deal for the bank and a great deal for Craig Whyte, But it’s a catastrophic deal for Glasgow Rangers.”

That was Paul Murray’s warning, one full year in advance.

From the first moment he clapped eyes on the man who would run his football club into the ground, Murray knew exactly what he was looking at. A wolf in cheap clothing.

“There had been a couple of people sniffing around the club - a guy called Andrew Ellis appeared around the summer of 2010 but the whole thing petered away quite quickly,” Murray recalls when asked to recount the events which led up to the collapse of Valentine’s Day, 2012.

“Alastair Johnston was the chairman at the time. We had a couple of bank representatives on the board, the main one being Donald Muir, who was really putting pressure on the club.

“They put together a document to try to sell the club. I remember in December of 2010 we were playing a European tie against Bursaspor in Turkey. Most of the directors were on the trip.

“Alastair took us aside and said, ‘I’ve got some news. Some guy called Craig Whyte has made an offer to buy the club’. That was the first time I had heard the name.”

Even now it still sends a shiver down his spine.

Murray goes on: “Eventually, by the end of March 2011, we had a meeting with Whyte at the Murray Group’s lawyers’ office in Glasgow.

“He sat on one side of the table with all the directors on the other. Alastair, John McLelland, John Grieg, Martin Bain and myself.

“To be fair to Whyte this must have been quite daunting. He was being asked questions from all angles.

“That was the first time I met Craig Whyte and the thing that struck me was that this guy just wasn’t what he was claiming to be. He had worked in