Credibility is a bitch.
When you’ve got it, you’re riding high, the cock of the walk, the one everyone wants to look up to. The one who sets the trends and the example.
Lose it – and it doesn’t take much – and it can set you back years.
Who remembers Gerald Ratner?
He was the guy who ran the high-end jewellery company which he demolished overnight in a speech to the Institute of Directors, at the Royal Albert Hall in 1991, where he said that his products were “total crap”, in a moment of utter bravado which still takes your breath away to consider it. The share price went through the floor; £500 million was wiped off the company balance sheet before its board removed him from the chairman’s seat.
During 2012, Neil Doncaster and Stewart Regan did much the same thing to Scottish football, when they said the top flight TV and merchandising contracts were worthless without a team called Rangers in the league. The clubs still voted for sporting integrity, but those two were never removed from office for their colossal talking down of the game.
Dave King has a credibility problem right now.
Sevco fans are fed up waiting for this guy to deliver on his promises of money for the team. Money to keep on the lights, laundered and sifted through God alone knows what processes, isn’t what they care about, it’s not what they are interested in. He made a promise; that’s what they remember, although as some of us are fond of reminding them he really didn’t. He said some vague things which the press spun the way they wanted to and which have, as a consequence, become canon. I love that this is a corner the press has painted him into.
With his word already being called into question on that, the last thing he needed was a challenge to his invincibility in the courts via Mike Ashley. He really has bet his reputation with the fans on being tough and having “got a result” in that particular field. The media loves him for it, and has constantly portrayed Iron Mike as being on the defensive.
But Ashley has had more on his plate than King of late. Those who wondered why he was being silent and very cagey weren’t paying attention; Ashley has been embroiled in a real three ring circus of controversy and calamity over his business, Sports Direct, and their multiple sins against its workers. He’s had to navigate the troubled waters of parliamentary select committee hearings, HMRC investigations and TV and newspaper exposes.
He’s had a lot on his mind. King barely registered; like a fart in a big room he was a localised problem, a minor annoyance, nothing more.
Mike Ashley had two advantages over King during that time; an iron clad contract where there were still years to run and a vast personal fortune to play with. King needed this situation resolved yesterday, because his own funds are limited and running out fast.
But Mike Ashley is not a nice man. His business practices – although wholly legal, and not everyone can say the same – reveal a hard man with harsh methods. King picked the wrong guy to fight with, and no mistake. We’ve been waiting for this shoe to drop for a while.
The word is that the court case Ashley has just raised is about more than just the way King has handled the Sports Direct contract. There’s a suggestion that King and his club owe Sports Direct money, quite a lot of it, and that he’s suing for that amongst other things.
King’s act of sabotage against the company and against the shirt sponsorship deal has also given Ashley ammo; this is an organisation run by amateurs, in a gangster fashion, not one run by reputable men with a solid plan for engaging with outsiders.
The court case to come will test King and the Sevco board to the max. Ashley is no longer distracted by bigger issues; he now has the time to turn his attention to the small man from South Africa and his pitiful threats, and the Sports Direct supremo can do so from a position of overwhelming strength, knowing this was the last thing King and his board needed.
There are still Sevco fans who are behind the guy, in spite of the mounting evidence that he is a man without a plan, without a clue as to what comes next. If Ashley inflicts a legal defeat of this magnitude on him and the club – getting back control of the intellectual property assets, winning court costs and forcing the club to pay any outstanding monies due for unsold stock – the last basis on which the King regime had legitimacy is wrecked.
A defeat here would confirm this guy as a busted flush, someone making it up as he goes along, without any coherent strategy at all. God knows what the impact would be on the club’s financial standing. But his credibility – such as it is – would be gone.
Some mistook Ashley’s quiet for weakness.
That was fanciful nonsense, but that’s become this club’s stock in trade.