If you accept the mountain of evidence which points towards Sevco being, in fact, Skintco how then do you view Dave King’s latest media statements where he talks about giving the manager the wherewithal to bring in five players in the summer?
In the main, I think, this is simply King indulging in his usual nonsense.
I believe his club will spend big money like I believe that I’ll one day walk on the moon.
It’s not impossible, but anyone who expects to see that will probably die waiting on it.
The club announcement yesterday, put with the usual hyperbole and hubris, that they’ve made a reduced loss was remarkable for a couple of reasons; first, the accounts aren’t audited and with a final deadline of 31 March coming soon they need to find a firm who will sign off on them without a “going concern” warning or they will be refused a European license.
This will matter, even if they’ve not qualified to play continental football.
It will make it clear that the club is still shambolically run, that it has no long term plan and that the spin being put on their financial results is just that.
Yet I do believe they’ll bring players in, whether that’s with free transfers or the actual spending of money.
They will be increasing season ticket prices according to their status, with their fans due to be seriously squeezed for every buck, but none of this will be enough to prevent more losses and those are likely to be higher, month per month, because of loan repayments and the inevitable increases to the wage bill.
So that means more “soft loans”, as they are euphemistically referred to.
It means further scrambling around asking fan organisations to stump up, or getting current board members and “investors” to throw good money after bad.
The Scottish media is over-fond of telling us that the people who’ve already put their money in did it because they are “Real Rangers Men.”
Yet they call it “investment” too, as if the real motive was to generate profits.
They have little chance of ever seeing any.
In fact, what we’re seeing at Ibrox, in the interactions between King and his fellow board members, and latterly the fan organisations, might, in another context, be called extortion instead.
There’s even a word for what might – and I say might – be happening behind the scenes at Ibrox, and which is certainly implicit in King’s statements to fans.
It’s called a throffer.
An offer with a upside, but made under threat.
Some confuse this with the “carrot or the stick” approach; these aren’t quite the same thing.
The latter is a motivational tool, something to get you to do what someone else wants, with an implied downside versus an implied reward.
A throffer is different; the threat is literal, the offer real.
In fact, the Sevco board appears to use both … one in negotiation with the fans and the other in negotiation with its own investors.
King’s “carrot and stick” to Sevco fans is simple enough; spend money and there’s the possibility of players. Don’t spend it, and watch as Celtic potentially outdistance them. Neither of these things is explicitly guaranteed, but there’s a choice to be made.
To his fellow directors, who unlike the fans have not only an emotional and financial investment in the club but have responsibilities involved with its running, the rewards are real. “Invest” and receive shares in exchange for the money and the club carries on running. Fail to invest and the club goes under.
With that, their current shareholding is wiped out, they receive nothing for what they’ve already put in and furthermore the fans hold them personally accountable.
If they didn’t realise this at the start they were mugs.
They are on the hook now, and can’t wiggle free.
King’s announcement, yesterday, that more funding was required, and his confidence that it would be provided, appeared, to me, a not-too-subtle piece of intimidation.
Why does Scottish football let this farce continue?
There’s a simple way to resolve all of it, and protect the game and its integrity.
Pass some form of Financial Fair Play regulations.
Make them binding.
Punish violators with transfer bans and, if needed, points deductions.
Do it the way they do it in England and Europe; allow directors and the board to “over-invest” by only a certain amount.
After that, the club has to start making cuts and live within its means.
Why hasn’t it been done already?
Sevco posted just over £11 million in income in those accounts. They “raised” another £9.5 million or thereabouts in “soft loans.”
50% of their operating budget was, therefore, dependent on money the club doesn’t have.
We’re in the age of unreality again, somehow. With this club being allowed to do stuff no other club in Scotland would be able to.
They outspent their nearest rivals in the Championship by a ratio of 5/1.
Even without these secretive loans, which the Stock Market doesn’t even need to scrutinise any more, they would have had double the budget of Hibs.
This isn’t even partially disguised; it’s financial doping.
When Peter Lawwell was elected to the SPL and SFA Boards we were entitled to ask why our highly paid Chief Executive had become, essentially, a part-timer, dividing his attention between our club and his seats on the governing bodies. The only reasonable excuse for us not getting a grip on him and insisting he put his duties at Celtic Park first was the hope that he might be voice for the kind of real reform that Scottish football has been crying out for.
In his time there, how many worthwhile changes have there been?
Easy answer; none.
Indeed, many of the problems the game had before his election have become ever more obvious and unchallenged.
For one thing, he has acted as a Praetorian Guard for the disgraced and discredited Neil Doncaster, a man who Lawwell could have destroyed at a stroke but instead has chosen, for no reason we can see, to protect instead.
Financial Fair Play regulations should be his, and Celtic’s, gift to Scottish football, a game which has gone through “boom and bust” periods because some clubs have tended to spend their way to the edge of oblivion.
An FFP framework would have helped Motherwell, Hibs, Dundee Utd, Hearts and other clubs.
It would have absolutely saved Rangers, Gretna and Airdrie.
It is a matter of time before we lose another club completely, and the governing bodies appear not to care.
There’s simply no logical argument against Financial Fair Play except that one club most definitely will not like it, and be under no illusions that this is simply about one club; almost every other team in the land has gone through barren spells because they’ve had to.
Reckless spending has forced them to start cutting if they wanted to survive.
But as has been made clear time and time again, Rangers, and now Sevco, have no interest in that sort of thing.
I grew up watching the Ibrox club spend money it didn’t have; Rangers existed for the better part of my life as a creature living off credit.
They didn’t have to live within their means for 30 years before they crashed into oblivion when the taps were turned off.
Sevco has not had to do so for the first four years of its existence and shows no inclination to do it now.
The result is that we’ve ended up here again, back where we were five years ago with a club at Ibrox talking about spending cash it hasn’t got in an effort to win trophies the rest of the teams have to compete for with only with the money they bring in the door.
No other club has suffered more from adopting clear and transparent and financially responsible policies than Celtic.
We endured years of watching the team across the city blatantly cheat, and that we’re not leading the line in calling for these reforms looks like potentially destructive stupidity.
Of all the things our club owes us an answer for, this might well be the greatest.
Because if Sevco ever catches up to us the chances are that it won’t be because we made bad management decisions or have inferior players; it’ll be because we let them make a mockery of the regulations as they are written and didn’t do enough to put more substantial ones in place.
The fans will forgive mistakes. Eventually.
But a failure to even attempt to address one of the most pressing concerns we have, and which threatens our future prosperity and that of the game?
Well, that’s something we’ll hold against people forever.
It’s not too late to show that leadership, and make Scottish Football better, but time is running out.