Regrets? Sir David Murray has a few. Selling up after 23 years as chairman of Rangers isn’t one of them - but giving the keys to Craig Whyte most certainly is. Millionaire metals tycoon Murray was the man who bankrolled an era of glitter and gold at Ibrox. Over the course of his two-decade run as Rangers owner and chairman, he estimates that sums close to £80million were invested by himself and his businesses. That hefty wedge of notes brought an array of international stars to Govan and with it a haul of trophies. Fifteen league crowns, 20 domestic cup wins and a European final. These were the best of times to be a Rangers fan. And yet Murray now stands accused of being the person responsible for setting the club on a course to wrack and ruin. The man who famously vowed to spend a tenner for every fiver slapped down by Celtic has been left with the legacy of being remembered chiefly for the EBT gamble that has cost the club so dearly. When he bought Rangers from Lawrence Marlborough for £6m in 1988, the Ibrox outfit had a spending power that allowed it to compete with the richest clubs in England and across Europe. But by the time mysterious Scottish businessman Whyte offered to take the club off his hands for a solitary pound coin, Murray’s Rangers were struggling to keep up with city neighbours Celtic, never mind competing with the continent’s biggest clubs. Faced with difficulties in his metals empire, a global economic recession and a disastrous early Champions League exit at the hands of Lithuanian minnows FBK Kaunus, Rangers were already operating under close scrutiny from their bankers at Lloyds Banking Group. With an investigation brewing into the controversial £47million EBT tax scheme Murray had deployed in order to continue signing big names, he decided the time had come to escape the suffocating pressures of the Ibrox boardroom too. But by handing the keys to the club to Whyte in May 2011, he had sealed the club’s fate. Within nine months the club’s operating company would lurch into administration and then liquidation. What’s followed has been decade and a half of torture for a Rangers faithful forced to watch as Celtic have lifted 13 of the last 14 league titles. The club continues to battle against the fallout from that astonishing collapse to this very day. Now in his new book Mettle - which is being serialised in today’s Daily Record - Sir David apologies for the role he played in the demise of the Ibrox institution. He writes: “More than a decade after the event, the question I still frequently get asked is: ‘Do you regret selling Rangers ?’ The answer is always: ‘No...my time was up.’ “Honestly, 23 years was too long. We had enjoyed the greatest success in the club’s entire history but it was time for change. But do I regret the sale to Craig Whyte ? Absolutely. I apologise. It was a huge error of judgement in the middle of a financial crisis. Looking back, I had made a huge mistake.” During discussions with Murray, Whyte gave assurances he had the cash to not only wipe out the club’s debts but also further funds to upgrade Walter Smith’s squad and Ibrox itself. As it turns our, this Walter Mitty character had neither. It was the Daily Record that revealed he had struck a deal to mortgage off future season-ticket sales with finance firm Ticketus just to raise the readies required to complete the transaction - a fact that was kept from Murray, along with the fact Whyte had previously been barred from acting as a company director. The former chairman later claimed he’d been duped by White - a line he sticks to in the book, “As it happened, Rangers went into administration in 2012 after failing to pay a multimillion pound HMRC tax and VAT bill,” Murray, now 73, explains. On the Rangers tax case he is clear that the factual amounts charged by HMRC assisted in restricting others parties in acquiring the club. They chose to gross up the payments through the trusts, increasing a non grossed up claim of £23.5 million to £37 million. Interest of £10.4million was then applied. A penalty of £23.5 million was then added which is virtually the maximum allowed with HMRC citing the illegal nature of the schemes. In effect, a base claim of £23.5 million became more than £70 million. The penalty was appealed by the liquidators then ultimately withdrawn in full by HMRC, who belatedly agreed the allegation of illegality was unfounded. He added: "Administrators described their ‘widespread’ concern at the Ticketus arrangement, where the club were paid money upfront for season tickets sold for multiple seasons to help cashflow. “I deeply regretted and still regret selling the club to Whyte . And I freely admit that if the information had been available to me at the time I would not have gone through with it. My decision was taken in good faith. There is only so much information out there. “After someone has been disqualified for seven years it is not that easy to carry out checks. But I was in a situation where we had been endeavouring to sell the club for four years. We had received proof of funds. We had a legal document confirming he was going to spend money on players , eventually, once he had paid back the loan. “He met the criteria that were in his offer document. What we wanted to do was get debt out of the club. “The phrase ‘debt-ridden club’ was being used a lot. Whyte made a statement that the club was never in better financial state when he took it over. I thought: ‘I hope to God I have done the right thing. I’ve passed it on. This is a guy saying he is going to spend money on players, on health and safety and do Ibrox up.’ “That was a legal offer document which you were entitled to feel would be honoured. I know others had doubts. Paul Murray was keen to buy the club. I had nothing but respect for him. He’s a Rangers fan and wanted what was best for the club. “But at that time he was not able to make a satisfactory offer. He wanted debt left in and the tax case put to one side. There have always been suggestions that I was under ferocious pressure from the bank to do the deal but that was not the case. “The bank wanted their money back, of course, and I had made it clear that I wanted out of Rangers . At that time we were going into recession and people were not exactly queueing up to buy football clubs. Lloyds wanted out of the football industry. “I wanted out but if we had known about the Ticketus issue we would never have done the deal. If I could turn back the clock, I would.” Whyte would later be cleared at a High Court trial of buying the by fraudulent means. But Murray remains unhappy about the way the case was handled. Looking back on his first interactions with the Motherwell -born businessman, he said "Whyte seemed quite affable and plausible. I remember someone asking at the time: ‘Does this pass the sniff test?’ and yes it did. He was Scottish, supposedly a Rangers supporter, he had the money and of course there was a Stock Exchange document there. “If you can’t believe that, then what the hell can you believe? A journalist asked me at the time if our due diligence should have been more thorough. It’s easy to look back and say: ‘Yes, of course it should’ but anyone typing Whyte’s name into Google back in 2011 would have found one article from years before. Nothing else. “It seemed strange. There was even a rumour that everything about him had been removed from the internet. I’ve no idea how true that was. What Whyte had that other potential bids did not was the backing of a reputable legal firm. “The fact he was clearing money into their clients’ account and the fact that they confirmed they had sufficient funds to complete the transaction that was being negotiated goes a long way to being positive confirmation. “So many aspects of the Whyte trial still rankle with me today. For starters , I believe it should have taken place in Edinburgh or another town. “I’ve had it recently confirmed that prior to the trial, it was stated that anyone with knowledge of the case, with shares, bonds or a season ticket at Ibrox at the time of the indictment could not be a juror. “Now Donald Findlay [Whyte’s defence lawyer and former Gers vice-chairman] was a prominent season ticket holder, shareholder and club director. I understand that as a defence counsel, he wasn’t subject to the same strict criteria as those on the jury. “But I wish he had been, and it still doesn’t sit well with me to this day.” The bitterness felt by the Rangers faithful shows no sign of relenting either. Murray understands that - but he hopes they will take on board the situation he and the club found themselves in as the world economy suffered its biggest downturn since the Great Depression. Against the financial crisis, the businessman was faced with a life-threatening medial procedure to fix an aortic aneurysm, something he reveals in the book for the first time. “It has now been 14 years since I relinquished control of the club and there is no doubt that my legacy was tarnished,” he writes. “The first 15 or 16 years of my tenure were outstanding from both a sporting point of view and a business perspective but the final few years were tricky and took a lot out of me. “When we were in that tight period I ploughed a lot of money into the club. I worked out that our company had put just short of £80million into Rangers during my time at the club. Others, including Dave King , invested seriously as well. “But ultimately, when the crash came, I took the fall. No one else. I was captain of the ship. It was undoubtedly a low point in the club’s history and even now, more than a decade later, I still feel responsible. “It’s still difficult to believe that it got as far as it did but I will never try to hide. Thankfully for the fans, Rangers have survived and across the past few years have remained competitive, even reaching another European final. “I hope, in hindsight, Rangers fans will understand that there were a number of key factors going on in business and my life that they were simply not aware of at the time. I was caught in the perfect storm of a bank collapsing, a shocking result in Europe against Kaunas that cost us millions, a club essentially in financial difficulty and a medical condition that I couldn’t announce publicly but put my life sharply into focus.” Mettle: Tragedy, Courage & Titles by Sir David Murray, published by Reach Sport rrp £22, is on sale Thursday 3rd July from Amazon and all good bookshops Preorder on Amazon HERE