Articles

Dave King: The Fiddler On The Roof

|
Image for Dave King: The Fiddler On The Roof

On 18 July, in the year 64, a fire started in the south-eastern part of the city of Rome where the Circus Maximus, the chariot racing stadium, stood. It spread quickly, and burned for five days. Three of the city’s fourteen districts were destroyed in the blaze.

Nero is said to have “fiddled whilst Rome burned.” The fiddle itself didn’t exist at the time, but he was familiar with the period’s equivalent and played it often, sometimes on stage where he was a regular in plays, even whilst he was emperor.

Was he performing as the city was burning?

Historians are divided on the idea. Some even say he took part in efforts to rescue the survivors.

What is known and recorded in history is that in the aftermath he used the destroyed land for his own selfish purposes. He didn’t restore it and the houses that were once there. He didn’t give it to the people of Rome. Instead, he constructed a magnificent palace, the Domus Aurea – the Golden House – which included a gold statue of himself, standing 30 meters high. It was named the Colossus of Nero … and was a testament to his folly, arrogance and madness.

When David Murray used the bank’s money – which later turned out to be our money – to build Rangers its training camp he named that white elephant after himself. This is his Colossus of Nero, a monument to his hubris and that of the club he helped die.

Ibrox will be the monument to Dave King. When he leaves Sevco, however it ends – and it will end badly, as it did for Nero – the state of Ibrox will be what decides how he’s remembered. Don’t bet on that being good either. If he presides over an accident that would be the worst kind of disaster, but there are others, on lesser ends of the spectrum.

Murray’s defenders claim that he sold the club to Whyte after “being duped.” The facts are much simpler than that. He found a guy he thought would take the fall. He thought it was Whyte who was being duped. He wanted a patsy, someone who would have his hands on the gears when the works blew up. He knew Rangers was on the verge. The second the bank stopped indulging them it was a matter of time before the end came.

King knows now that he can’t keep Sevco afloat.

He doesn’t have the financial wherewithal to do it.

But nor can he simply sell up and go, not with things are they are.

The roofs issue is a killing weight hanging over the whole club. They can’t go to the markets with a share proposal whilst this is out there. He daren’t ignore it, not with the council and the Scottish Executive now fully aware that there are problems. He has to think about the money, but time’s getting away from him. The thing with an issue like this is that it doesn’t improve with age. The degeneration is only going to get more pronounced and the sources are all agreed that a simple patchwork job will not do in the medium to long term.

The phrase being bandied around right now is that the roofs are “beyond economic repair.” That’s a deadly phrase. It means they are done. Shot. That they’ll need to be replaced. The cost of that can only be guessed at but King can only put it off for so long. He can do the patchwork job, like those nets, and get through the season and maybe next but this is just playing for time, and the longer he leaves it the worse things will get.

The costs, and the dramas, keep piling up for this guy. He has to build a team. He has to fix the roofs. He has to worry about UEFA financial fair play. He is fighting legal cases against Sports Direct, and only this week the club and the fans organisation has cut ties with Lionbrand, who they had earmarked as an alternative retail outlet. That’s come to an end because the company is facing its own legal difficulties with Puma and others.

Has he started to think yet that this isn’t worth his time and effort? It’s cost him very little, if any, money so there’s no problem there, but there’s no glory as the captain of this ship and he is increasingly aware of how Murray must have felt as it slowly dawned on him that the economic crash of 2008 had broken the mould.

Murray found his fool, not knowing that Whyte wasn’t as daft as he looked and realised exactly what he was buying, and actually planned to drive it into a wall. King knows that even the quid Murray got for his rescue package is more than he can expect to get for the time bomb he’s sitting on.

No-one will touch this club with the issues it’s facing.

King can wash his hands of this whole thing, of course. He sits in another country, far away from the day to day chaos that engulfs the club and those patsies he put on the board. They are the ones who have to take the big decisions, and the flak when it comes.

But he’s tied to this now, and he won’t be fiddling as Sevco burns. He’ll be sweating. Because there are people who’ve sunk more into this club than they can afford, and the Glorious Leader will have made them promises he now must know he’ll never be able to keep.

2016 was the year the club and its fans got a dose of reality.

It’s a small dose, for now.

But 2017 is going to be a game-changer. King must be dreading it.

Share this article