I see the papers are up to their old tricks again.
A month or so ago, in the aftermath of the Great King Takeover, I said that a PR offensive would get underway in an effort to sell The Peepil on the merits of buying Sevco season tickets.
Today we’re seeing the early outriders of that strategy.
The Daily Record is running a sterling back-page, maintaining that Celtic are being stingy and tight whilst the Sevco board splashes the cash.
Their rationale for that is that we’re unwilling to pay £4 million for a guy who’s not a first team regular at his own club and we won’t meet the absurd weekly wage demands of a Premiership striker who doesn’t score goals.
Sevco fans, in the meantime, are said to be convulsed with excitement about the prospect of signing a career loanee who just failed a medical.
But hey! He’s going to cost them actual money, a massive £200,000 … so King is clearly going to deliver the goods as promised.
Hmmmm let’s see … would you spend £200,000 to con folk into forking out £12 million ….
Tough one, isn’t it?
Apparently for the Scottish media it is.
(There’s also some question as to whether there is even a transfer fee involved, but “Sevco Swoop For Unfit Freebie” doesn’t get the juices flowing.)
This afternoon, hilariously, the Sevco website has Warburton heading to the Euro Under 21 championship finals, although they’ve taken care not to suggest that he’s there looking at players.
They’ll leave that to their hack media mates, who will breathlessly splatter the back pages with it tomorrow.
See, this is the beginning. This is where it starts.
Get used to this kind of arrant nonsense appearing in the papers, especially now that 52 year old “up and comer” Mark Warburton – with his whole 20 months of senior management in the game – has been put in the Blue Room.
I took a peek at Mark’s career, and at why he was sacked by Brentford, in a piece for On Fields of Green earlier today.
That club owes its current position to a superb, gutsy and ideals driven chairman and super-fan, Matthew Benham, who made his vast fortune as a professional gambler betting on football matches. He based his entire success on a complicated mathematical algorithm which he wanted to install at Brentford.
Warburton said no. He thinks his own ideas are better.
Maybe he’s right, yeah?
Except that Benham also owns Danish club FC Midtjylland, who have just won the first title in their history, utilising the chairman’s methods.
So you tell me; who do you reckon was knows his stuff on that front?
The manager approaching pension age or the guy who made millions betting on football?
The papers don’t bother to ask those kind of questions.
Instead they try to destablise Celtic.
Ronny Deila and our board know what’s at stake this season, and that the objective, aside from winning five in a row and putting us at the halfway point of history, is to advance the club’s position in Europe.
We need to qualify for the Champions League Group Stages, not only for the shot in the arm that it will give our reputation but to make the gap between ourselves and the rest – Sevco in particular – even greater.
But Celtic will take its time making the big decisions.
This is how we unearthed players like Wanyama, Hooper, Johansen, Biton, Van Dijk and others.
The media will try to distract us as much as possible. We know that.
These kind of tactics – as pitiful as they are – are intended to get our fans clamouring for action now.
They think the sight of Sevco scrambling around for players in the lower leagues will make us do that.
Does you feel your intelligence is being insulted?
Yes, that’s a natural reaction. I feel the same.
But you know something?
When this is all they’ve got … they’ve got nothing at all.
This is what we’ve reduced them to.
So keep driving home the totality of our victory.
Don’t let them forget who the last superpower in Scottish football is.
They hate that.
It reminds them that they died.
Can’t agree with you more mate they are a dead team and we should not let them forget. Ever.
have to agree i noticed the swoop and stumble, particularly on the wilson story like we are competing at the same level , thought it was my paranoia / obsession , hope they dont outbid us to often
Sick of reading your blogs now and constantly reading about sevco ,who cares what they do this is a celtic blog not let’s talk about sevco blog
Easy answer Hammy the Hamster …
DON’T READ THEM. SIMPLE.
That enormous sum of £200,000 will have hurt them badly , whilst there is the odd diamond unearthed at bargain basement prices its going to take a lot more of Dave’s cash to have any chance of extraction from the diddy league’s. At this Rate it will be a long time before they challenge for anything and that makes me very very happ
Yetstill we have Celtic supporters praying for the return of this Odious club.I certainly do not,and a Great many people in Society do not want them Either.