Today Sevco’s website announced that Stewart Robertson, the managing director, has withdrawn his name from consideration for election to the SPFL board. Their site carries the usual excuse making; he wants to concentrate on running the club.
This is about as far from truth as you can possibly get.
He ran last year when he was only months in the job. His decision to run this year was trailed well in advance, and he talked about “restoring the club to the top table”, which was pushing the Survival Myth as well as his own candidacy.
This site has heard that Sevco’s stated reason for his withdrawal is desperate spin to deflect from a much more significant truth; Robertson had canvassed for support and found that it was practically non-existent.
An email I received earlier today laid it out in simple language;
“You know why he withdrew James? To avoid humiliation.”
There are three seats up for grabs for the top flight teams, and until Robertson withdrew today there were only four candidates vying for them, including him.
Now all three seats will be awarded, uncontested.
What makes this retreat especially painful for the managing director and his club is that one of them will now automatically go to Celtic’s CEO Peter Lawwell, who will further cement his position as, now unarguably, the most power individual in Scottish football.
The other seats will go to Ann Budge of Hearts and Partick Thistle’s managing director, Ian Maxwell.
I have, on occasion, questioned the strategy Lawwell presided over inside Celtic Park but I have never once thought it a bad idea that we have his kind of influence in the game itself. We might not have responded as robustly – at least not in public – as some people would have liked over certain things (and we may yet surprise those people) but our position and power has been a benign and positive influence in the sport and that should never be overlooked.
Robertson and the board of which he is a member are simply not trusted by the rest of the clubs, and why should they be?
They continue to spend money they just don’t have.
They continue to create problems, both for themselves and the wider game.
Their conduct in the aftermath of the Scottish Cup Final was deplorable, reckless and dangerous. The tone of it was vicious, even deranged. Robertson personally made excuses and allowance for sectarian singing and a thuggish, neddish pitch invasion by his own fans.
That might have satisfied the goons amongst his own support, pandering to its very worst and most degenerate elements, but it was never going to cut it amongst his fellow directors and officials, who now see the Ibrox boardroom as populated by folk who don’t seem able to contain their baser instincts.
I’ve been told that Robertson was informed of this, in no uncertain terms, when he approached people at other clubs for support.
He was left in no doubt whatsoever that the club he represents would need to radically change its attitude and general tone towards the rest of Scottish football.
There was also some anger over Mark Warburton’s recent comments in relation to the SPL fixtures list and how the lack of home games against his club and Celtic might negatively impact on certain teams, like Motherwell, whilst benefiting others.
The anger of other clubs was not limited to these issues, but they are a good representation of the hardening of attitudes out there, and in particular since Dave King took over and decided that the club should adopt a more belligerent and arrogant demeanour.
That attitude, and the not-too-subtle assertion that Scottish football is lined up against them, out of jealousy, is a major contributing factor in the decision by the clubs to lock them out of the power structure for at least another year.
Robertson withdrew because he would have been crushed.
Sevco’s announcement goes on to reassure its fans that the club’s voice will still be heard, that its board will be listened to on issues affecting the greater good of the game.
This is 100% true, as far as it goes.
They will be granted the same level of respect as every other club side and not one bit more, and that respect should no longer be presumed. It will have to be earned, and it will come with its own set of responsibilities; the club will also have to listen and show the appropriate level of respect to the rest of the teams who play here.
Too many people inside Ibrox do presume things, and one of those things is that power will accrue to them naturally because they have a big stadium and a big wage bill. The two men who sat on the old Ibrox board – King and Murray – still believe things are as they were before, that the name Rangers carries some talismanic power.
They could not be more wrong.
An awful lot of clubs were not so secretly pleased to see the big ego bubble burst. They are dismayed, even angry, to see King and others try to reconfigure the game into the two club model that almost destroyed it, and whilst Celtic has changed with the times and our attitude has become more conciliatory and we’ve reached out to build consensus, the mind-set at Ibrox is pretty much as it was before, as if nothing happened, as if nothing changed.
But that paradigm is broken.
The old certainties no longer apply.
They had better start waking up to that fact soon or this period in the wilderness is going to last for years.