It is the prerogative of every club’s board of directors to act as they will, and to behave either as reasonably or as crazily as they like.
That is between them and their supporters, as they are only meant to be the custodians of the institution.
It is not their play-thing to do with what they want, but the law gives them the statutory authority to do just that.
It is the shareholders – and/or the fans – to which they eventually must answer if they make a mess of things, yet even that reckoning will be of little comfort to those people if the behaviour of the directors sends them to the wall, as happened at Ibrox before.
Having witnessed that, you would think Sevco fans would be tremulous at the prospect of it happening again and that they would do everything they could to prevent any action which threatened such an outcome.
Yet today they are cheering from the rafters as their club delivers the signing they all wanted for the summer, Kemar Roofe, who Anderlecht signed last season and who they’ve released for half what they paid for him, the second signing they’ve made this summer of a footballer who tried and failed in Belgium’s national league.
Is he a good signing? He’s certainly had two good seasons in his career, both at Leeds, but it’s worth noting that they punted him to the Belgians and then got promoted … it makes you think, doesn’t it? Time will tell what he can do for them.
But the finances involved in this can’t be in insignificant.
We’re talking about a footballer who is going to set them back around £3 or £4 million, plus wages.
Sevco is betting on three things, and on the first they are going on all.
That’s stopping ten in a row, because if they don’t they are in a world of hurt.
The suspension of disbelief over there cannot last much longer and when the house of unreality they’ve built starts to crumble I reckon it’ll all fall and it will fall fast.
Once we bag ten in a row and the history is bagged, you watch as their discontent becomes fury.
But they also need to sell Morelos, and that’s the second major bet they are making and the odds on that are good but not at the price they want.
In fact, the chances of that are so low as to be verging on non-existent. If, as looks more than possible, they scare away potential suitors by asking for daft money and those suitors go elsewhere the game is up.
What happens if they don’t sell Morelos? It makes them a more formidable footballing unit, to be sure, but the lights at Ibrox dim a little further with every day he’s there.
They cannot afford to keep that man around. They need the money badly.
Third, they are relying on European qualification which is as perilous a course as it ever was. Indeed, it is going to be the minefield to end them all this season, and with one tie qualifiers, and no guarantee of getting them at home, the course is loaded down with danger.
Slip just once and they are done. This is a gamble with their very survival they are taking here, and they aren’t just looking to get one of these across but they need three out of three, a perfect score; stop the ten, sell Morelos and get to the Europa League Groups.
Their fans are delighted this evening; their craving for signings has been sated and Gerrard’s little tantrum has got him more money they don’t have to spend.
What a colossal gamble this is, with a club which is up to its neck in debt going all in.
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