SISU didn’t understand the Bosman ruling.
Whether or not RR explained it to them clearly / honestly and accurately we will never know.
SISU invested in players and placed their purchase value on their “balance sheet” (if you were).
So. If they spent 1m on a player, they didn’t see that as a revenue cost, just an asset purchase. They understood that some players may do well (and hence go up in value) and some may not (and go down).
What they didn’t understand was that players could move for nothing at the end of their contract.
The clearest example was that of Keiran Westwood. SISU went grey as soon as they realised that their “asset” was leaving for nothing. They tried everything to try to get him to sign and he was even dropped from the team.
After that, SISU went into panic mode, trying to either “secure” or offload their assets before they became “worthless”. Leon Best shipped out quickly, and so on.
To “secure” their assets they thought the best way was to sort out their contracts. “Contracts expert” Ken Delieu was brought in and Triumphantly secured David Bell on a long term deal.
That short time window of realisation (Realising that Westwood was going for zero) was the divergent point for Ranson and SISU and effectively stopped SISU from “investing” any further in the club.
The (guess figures) £20m “hole” in the balance sheet on behalf of their investors SISU thought they could plug for buying an asset (Ricoh) worth (guess) £25m for £5m, and putting it in their accounts as such.
The Council didn’t play ball and the rest Is history.
Anyway. It strikes me that Ranson wasn’t clear at the outset. He was also a nutter. Why sack Dowie (doing ok, we’d just paid a load of legal fees for him, and had a good, recent track record of getting Palace into the Prem) and bring in Chris F’in Coleman?