If The Daily Record is to be believed on its latest Ibrox exclusive, Sevco’s board has lost the crucial vote Resolution 11, which would have enabled the board to create a new share issue. This required 75% shareholder support, which they failed to get by 1%.
This is disastrous.
I’ll go into detail later as to why, but although the news has not been confirmed yet there is a hilarious spin on the story which has already made its way into the media. Dave King and his board appear to think the blame for this lies with Ally McCoist.
Ponder that for a moment.
King and his people have an entire support in thrall to them. That’s what we’re told anyway. Countless media reports present theirs as a unified club, one moving towards sustainability and a prosperous future. It’s a joke, of course, but the pretty picture is at least half convincing when you consider that the main Sevco supporter’s organisation, Club 1872, made a very public show of backing this and most of their websites did the same.
But how is it possible, then, for them to have lost?
Between the Easdale’s and Ashley, roughly 16% of the club falls outside the control of the current board. Another group of shareholders – at Blue Pitch – were prevented from voting entirely, something that many believe to be legally unenforceable and which would have been over-turned if subject to challenge. Ashley was to be similarly disenfranchised last year, and he went to the courts to fight the move, and succeeded. Blue Pitch never has.
Blue Pitch has clearly washed its hands of the club and probably considers it shareholding to be essentially worthless. That’s a measure of how outsiders see the idea of “investing” in the club, and shouldn’t be considered good news for their fans.
Facing Easdale and Ashley’s 16%, the club really should have got this one over the line.
That they didn’t is majorly embarrassing for them, so it’s not exactly a surprise to see them looking for someone to blame for it. Enter McCoist, who failed to cast a vote at all. Holding little over 1% of the shares, it seems that his support would have carried the day.
This is gut-busting stuff. I haven’t stopped laughing since I heard it.
Let’s forget for a minute that leaking this to the media is an astonishing low-order act – akin to giving them somebody’s confidential medical information – and probably against the law; consider that Ally is being made the scapegoat for failures he had nothing at all to do with.
The simple fact is that King and his board have been unable to convince enough of their own shareholders to back this move and get over the finish line. Fans know exactly what it means if the club issues fresh shares; it means that those they hold in their hands become worthless.
It seems that the message – the one this site and others have been sending for weeks – got through to enough of them. They get it. They aren’t buying King’s bluster or his assertion that this move is necessary to thwart Ashley and others.
King lied to them last week, and he used the media to amplify those lies. Fans heard what he and his acolytes had to say and enough of them held the line to stop this dead. If King had been more honest with them – “our survival depends on this” – instead of framing it as some kind of second front in the war with the club’s “enemies” he might have won.
Once again, the cosy relationship this club has with the media has done them no favours at all, and that’s set to harm them further with the way the former manager is having this laid at his door. McCoist is an utterly discredited figure, but I find it incredible to step back and consider where he is right now and what he’s doing, in the context of this.
McCoist made such a pig’s ear out of his Ibrox career that no football club anywhere in the country, wants to touch him. I predicted that he would never manage in a top flight, of any league, anywhere again when he left Ibrox; it now looks as if he’ll never again take a job managing at club at any level at all and as he’s no longer the fresh-faced golden boy of the first TV generation a move into the media seems unlikely at best.
So what’s he doing with himself?
He’s being used as the front man and the voice over for the Ladbrokes betting ads you see during the football. And how do you think he got that gig? Doubtless it was through Level 5 PR, who it just so happens represents Ladbrokes here in Scotland … which many of us has highlighted as a major problem, as they also represent Sevco.
They got McCoist his job on TV, the one his income depends on. Yet today that same PR company has turned the attack dogs on him over this failed AGM resolution. What’s left of his reputation in some circles amongst the Sevco support is being tarnished further.
He probably thought he could depend on the people running the club, and Level 5, to have his back.
Today they’ve shown him how foolish that belief was, for these are the most unscrupulous people in football in Scotland today and they will sacrifice anyone and anything to keep criticism and scrutiny from their own door. McCoist has been cast to the wolves as a distraction from the bigger story; that this club isn’t united at all, that a lot of the fans do have issues and questions and doubts, and they are wholly reasonable questions, and issues and doubts.
And King and his board have no answers at all.
McCoist didn’t do this to them, but this is another example of how hapless this guy actually is. The great irony of what they’ve done today is that McCoist would probably have given them support had they asked for it, instead of assuming it. The vicious way he’s been briefed against – and the violation of his shareholder rights – shows you how desperate people inside Ibrox are to find scapegoats for their own screw-ups … and this is a big one.
This is the worst thing to happen to an Ibrox club since McCoist’s leadership resulted in those twin European knock-outs in 2011.
That led to administration and finally liquidation.
Today they’re a step closer to the abyss … and Ally is once again in the vicinity.