Rangers are not a selling club says irate Murray after Cuellar 'mayhem'

SIR David Murray, the chairman of Rangers, yesterday attacked the destabilising website culture designed to provoke "mayhem" after insisting the Ibrox club told the truth about the sale of defender Carlos Cuellar to Aston Villa when the Spaniard invoked a clause in his contract which allowed him to leave Scotland for a fee of £7.8million.

Already incensed by a humiliating loss to Kaunas in Europe, the Rangers' support was in ferment after the loss of such a key player. There were calls for heads to roll and mutterings about protests before tomorrow's game against Hearts at Ibrox. Recalling how Alan Hutton was also offloaded to Spurs for £9m in January, many followers angrily complained Rangers had become a selling club.

"Rangers have to buy and sell," Murray countered last night. "But up until we sold Cuellar, in the previous 18 months we'd spent £25m and taken in £10m. That's not a selling club, in my school sums. We sold Carlos, and we will use all those funds to buy new players.

"I'd hope by the signing deadline we'll have two or three players in. And we need to sign starters. We don't need any more fringe players."

That does not likely to include Dutch defender Glen Loovens, however, as the Cardiff City defender was last night reported to have chosen to join Celtic instead for a fee of around £3 million.

But in a robust defence of his board's actions, Murray rubbished concerns he was more interested in cashing in on Cuellar than developing the football team. "The problem is we have a web culture today and a media who read websites and don't have a relationship with football clubs any more and people want to make the situation worse," observed the chairman. "People are putting that on websites, knowing there's no truth in it at all, but just endeavouring to cause mayhem.

"We told the truth. There is nothing untoward as far as Rangers is concerned and Carlos will confirm that himself – indeed he already has."

Murray also gave numerous assurances that all of the £7.8 million received for Scotland's player of the year would be invested in strengthening the team. However, it's clear Rangers were caught on the hop by the suddenness of Cuellar's departure, as well as the ferocity of the reaction, and now find themselves between a rock and a hard place in the search for new faces before the transfer window closes.

Well aware, after running Rangers as part of a successful business empire since the winter of 1988, that you're damned if you do and damned if you don't as a football chairman, Murray accepts the clock is ticking on his watch. He doesn't expect to recoup all of his investment when he steps down but will be content with a fair offer.

"I'm told people phone in and say: 'Murray must go' ", he said. "It's obvious one day I have to go. My family would love me to go. But I'm not going to leave this club until I'm sure there's somebody to take it on and it's in safe hands. That's the end of the story."