Dave King did a lot of complaining when he was here last week. Complaining about Sports Direct. About Mark Warburton. About the Takeover Panel verdict. About having to come here so often, although unicorns have been spotted more times at Ibrox in the two years he’s been on the board.
He complained about everything, it seemed to me, but the standards of the Scottish press.
They are just fine and dandy, all except Keith Jackson who did his own complaining after King left him out of the Magic Circle (Jerk) when it came to his big interview.
Let’s pause for a moment to have a laugh at Keith’s expense. Apologies to him in advance, because I did feel bad for him the other day when he was tweeting his displeasure. (No, really!) He was right to be miffed at being left out, and he was right to have a swipe at King’s claim that Warburton was thin-skinned when he was adopting such harsh measures against the few journalists who dared to question his commitment to the club.
Make no mistake, Jackson is one of those guys. In recent months, and towards the end of Warburton’s tenure Jackson asked some pointed questions and attempted to deal with some of the all-too-obvious contradictions in the South African tax crooks so-called plans.
He deserves credit for it; he arrived late to the party, but he at least showed up.
And for that, he was punished. Punished by a man who probably wouldn’t even be at Ibrox but for Jackson and his newspaper. I give him credit for asking the questions he did lately; if he’d asked them sooner the club might be in better condition, but that’s a debate for another day. Jackson has been loyal to the King regime. They’ve treated him like a dime-store hooker. Used him, abused him, and dropped him off in the rough part of town without bus fare.
That’s what these people do. Knowing that, and seeing this coming, doesn’t make it any less abysmal of them. So yes, I felt bad for him this week. Perhaps him and some of the other journalists who were excluded could get together a wee concert part of their own.
Protest outside Ibrox, that kind of thing. “We Deserve Better.”
I’m fairly sure there are banners saying that lying about somewhere.
Or, and this is a radical suggestion, I know, they could use their exclusion in a positive way.
If the regime doesn’t want you inside the tent then stand outside, unbutton your fly and aim. Their little concert party could actually do the job for once, and really dig into this guy’s comments and stupid boasts. They could speed up his departure.
In the meantime, seeing what’s happened to them, Michael Gannon is taking no such chances. His piece on King today – Dave King: Pragmatist – drips of sycophancy and spinmeister sweat. Honestly, it was a naked plea not to be kicked out of the family bed. Anyone who read the piece without a sick bucket handy … well, you must have been all puked-out. That kind of weekend, was it? Because otherwise it was pretty hard to stomach.
King still has his media apologists; they were out in force this week, having been fed their lines.
They trotted them out like good little boys and girls.
Today was the turn of Gannon and an old friend of this site and the Bampots; Gordon Smith, the man who went to work for Craig Whyte and was the last person in the country, save for Jim Traynor, to realise he was in the employ of a crook. You have to hand it these people; they claim to love their club but Holy Hell, have they sang the praises of some right dodgy folk whilst in the process.
Even the headline of Smith’s piece is enough to give you the dry boak, or at least make you laugh uncontrollably; “Hats off to Rangers chairman Dave King for his honest utterings” it reads, and I promise you, I did not make that up.
King has had a bad month. He replaced his manager, but the Bampots would not let up. His choice has been revealed as having had a single interview (if that; there’s a lot of dubiety about it) lasting a half hour. King himself never spoke to him once during the “exhaustive and extensive” search.
The hunt for a Director of Football – supposed to take place before the manager was appointed, let’s not forget – was put aside and won’t now commence until the close season; laughable, but what we’ve come to expect from the club.
Add to that, the commencement of court proceedings launched by Sports Direct, the Big Tax Case appearing at the Supreme Court and the farrago over the accounts … March was a pretty tough month for Dodgy Dave King, and no wonder he told his pet hacks he didn’t want to spend quite so much time here in the future.
And things are worse than they look; there is some speculation – hardening into fact – that the unaudited six monthly accounts the club released to such media fanfare contained an even darker fact than that they actually reported a loss and not a profit as the hacks were at such pains to suggest.
If, as some internet reports say, King really did declare the £2 million plus “soft loan” in those figures as “income” then the club ended a six month accounting period where they had season ticket money and all those home cup ties with a £3 million loss …
This isn’t impossible, by the way. It’s the beauty of unaudited accounts; you can put any old smash in there and pretend it’s real and there’s nothing anyone can do. Those accounts were released for media consumption only, as we head towards the March deadline for the SFA to submit its UEFA licenses.
King is like a juggler trying to keep 100 balls in the air at once.
You can admire his command of the press and his ability to fool the dumber elements of the Sevco support, but if just one of those balls hits the floor the party is over.
In April he has to make the offer to the rest of the shareholders, as laid down in the Takeover Panel Appeal verdict; he says he might contest that. Either he doesn’t understand how it works – it was an appeal hearing; there’s no contesting it – or it’s another lie to buy him time and con a gullible media.
His manager will face a proper baptism of fire at Hampden, which will set up one Hell of a battle between Caixinha and the board over the close season. Ashley will continue with his litigation, in spite of King’s plea for a deal … April is stepping up to be a month far worse than this was.
Will King still be Sevco chairman at the end of it? I don’t think so, but if I had a vote in it I would, of course, love him to stay on.
The entertainment this guy provides is wonderful stuff and so long as he runs the Ibrox operation they will remain a shambles.