Mark Warburton offered a hilarious vision of the future at Ibrox yesterday.
He is “building for the future.”
He believes in a long term plan.
He hopes that the club’s two best players – aside from “Messi” McKay – are going to “be there for the long haul.”
Admirable sentiments. Very good thinking.
Except one of those players is Kenny Miller, now 37. The other is Clint Hill, who is nearly 40. What is the long haul for those guys? Senior citizens coupon day at the local restaurants. Free bus passes. The long haul is plastic gums and soft slippers.
What in the Hell is he talking about?
For all the bluster that comes out of Ibrox at times, this is the sure sign of what “building for the future” really looks like there. Loan signings talked up to be world beaters. New contracts for guys who are well past their best but still better than the dreck around them. And all the while, the club is conspiring with the media to sell the one young player of value they do have whilst telling the fans that they aren’t interested in letting him go.
Warburton doesn’t have a long term future at Ibrox and the way he’s going about his transfer business offers the suggestion that he’s perfectly aware of that fact. He told the press last night that loan moves “benefit all parties” … well sometimes they do, but there’s a reason Brendan Rodgers hasn’t gone out and signed any. He really is building for the future, which starts with assembling a squad of young talented players you actually own.
There’s no other club like this, anywhere in the country, perhaps not even Europe. Everything they do right now is short-term, putting sticker plasters on gaping wounds. There’s no vision, no over-arching strategy, no plan that I can see or understand.
The media gives them a free ride the whole time too, although press conferences like that one yesterday must be plainly surreal to have to sit through. It helps the club, I guess, that the PR pitbull watches from the corner, although quite why any journalist should fear that discredited joker I do not know.
The most amazing thing about yesterday’s news on Barrie McKay wasn’t even so much that it’s been exposed as utter nonsense – from within the media itself – it’s the cynicism of it, the way it seeks to pull the wool over their eyes of the Sevco supporters themselves, who doubtless are buying, whole, into the notion that their club is grimly determined to keep him, when in fact the whole purpose of the stories is to advertise him as for sale.
You cannot look at their club and not see an institution in deep trouble. They are, quite literally, making it up as they go along right now. Long term vision? Loan deals and contract offers to the over 30’s club? And no-one’s called them out on this?
When does the media in this country stop fawning and start doing its job?
Graphics like this were once a joke. Now I wonder.
