Ray Ranson scored only once in eight seasons at Manchester City, but his financial acumen could lead him to net his biggest footballing prize. Ranson was a rare footballer: his playing style was workmanlike and doughty, but his plans for the future soared beyond the stands at City’s old Maine Road ground and into the money-laden corridors of City of London institutions.

Even while he was playing, he started an accident insurance cover scheme for players. “On days off, players went out for a round of golf or played snooker, but I took a train to London and did some business,” he said.

His determination paid off, first when he joined Benfield Greig, the reinsurance brokerage owned by Matthew Harding, the Chelsea vice-chairman at the time. Ranson also devised a new way of financing transfers. Registered European Football Finance was the result, a company that helped clubs to buy players on a part-mortgage, part-leaseback scheme, and he helped Leeds United to put together the packages that took Rio Ferdinand, Mark Viduka and Olivier Dacourt to Elland Road.

Ranson’s part in the fall of Leeds has been criticised, but he said that he had nothing to do with the club’s cash problems and has claimed that his financing schemes have saved two other Premiership clubs. Although Harding died in a helicopter crash in 1996, Ranson kept investing in Benfield Greig, selling his stake in 2002 and making a handsome enough profit to forge a business empire under the banner of Sports Asset Group, which includes Prozone, offering computerised analysis of players’ performances to coaches.

But the big ambition of running his own club has eluded the 46-year-old Ranson. So far. Doug Ellis, the former owner of Aston Villa, turned down his £45 million offer last year in favour of Randy Lerner, the American businessman. The experience of negotiating with Ellis had been logged, though, and Ranson was set on his path to acquire a club he could run “like a 21st-century” business. He has been able to put together the financing to raise £90 million to buy Manchester City. But that would only be the start, for Ranson appears to have radical plans for financial and structural changes.

That may inject fear into fans worrying about their club’s future, but unlike the deals that have taken Manchester United and Liverpool into foreign ownership, Ranson has two rare assets for a prospective buyer: he is a local lad, born in St Helens, Merseyside, and he was a footballer, with the bulk of his career being spent with the club he is trying to buy.