From The Guardian:
‘Football fans invariably remember Ray Ranson as the
That often replayed cameo not only misrepresents a playing career forged on reliability but provides a rare example of something going awry for the man currently endeavouring to wrest control of Aston Villa from its chairman Doug Ellis.
Since abandoning playing a decade ago after appearing in 444 league games for City - still believed to be his enduring football love - and Birmingham, Newcastle and Reading, Ranson has exhibited enough of a flair for finance to accrue a £32m fortune.
Displaying a degree of improvisation largely absent during his defending days, he has morphed into a businessman so bold that detractors dub him a "casino capitalist".
It is a startling reinvention facilitated by his brainchild, a novel way of refinancing football transfers. Recognising that banks' borrowing limits were restricting clubs' transfer activities, he devised a part-mortgage, part-leaseback scheme whereby they could effectively rent footballers from financial institutions.
If a club signed a player for £10m it would immediately sell him on to a finance house before buying him back, the transfer fee repaid at considerable expense over the course of his contract. Moreover, Ranson provided a safeguard against clubs defaulting by insuring every deal. His Guernsey-based company was called Registered European Football Finance (Reff).
It could all have been very different had he accepted an offer from Kevin Keegan to coach
"I wasn't particularly clever academically but I had entrepreneurial skills," he has said. "I saw that just because the transfer system had worked one particular way for 50 years didn't mean it couldn't be done differently.'